How Agrarian societies stifled innovation
Or why change does not always lead to faster rates of innovation
This is my second post on Agrarian societies. I would recommend reading the first post before reading this one.
One incorrect assumption that some readers make when I discuss society types is that the transition from one type to the next involves an increase in progress (or the material standard of living for the masses) and the rate of innovation. This is sometimes the case, but typically not.
Those people who think that I believe human history has been a long steady march towards better and better conditions apparently are confusing my beliefs with what is sometimes called “Whig History” which was presented by many British historians who are loosely affiliated with the British Whigs and Liberals.
It is very clear that Agrarian societies did not lead to an increased material standard of living for the masses. Virtually all the increased food production went to:
Having more babies, who ate away much of the surplus (see Thomas Malthus for more details)
Forced extraction of the food surplus by elites who dominated the political, economic, military, and religious institutions. They typically did so via taxes or land rents (because they owned most of the land).
Nor is clear that Agrarian societies had a higher rate of innovation than Horticultural societies. Some historians (one example) have claimed that most of the important innovations of Agricultural societies came during the early Horticultural period.
I do not think that we have enough data to be conclusive, but I think that it is clear that Agrarian societies did not have a significantly higher rate of innovation than Horticultural societies.
This article will explain why.
See also my other articles on Society Types and related topics:
Why are there such huge variations in income across the globe?
Commercial societies (which invented modern progress)
The following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.
Though Agrarian societies had both cities and more efficient food production systems than previous societies, these societies tended to stifle innovation. The most important reason is that people were still fairly spread out geographically. The 97 percent of people who lived outside cities, tended to live in isolated villages or hamlets. People living in such circumstances were rarely exposed to new ideas or technologies.
The diffusion of technologies, skills, and social organizations within Agrarian societies was primarily vertical: from father to son and from mother to daughter. When children became adults, they supplemented this learning by copying other members of their local community. Because peasant villages were relatively low in population and each member was very similar to each other, there are relatively few other models to copy. There were simply too few people to come in contact with, so the diversity of options to copy was limited.
Members of Agrarian societies also had strong Survival-based values. By that, I mean that they were focused on group survival. Survival-based values tend to make members skeptical of new technologies, skills, and social organizations. Because their lives hung on the edge of survival and they often faced catastrophic disruptions such as plague, famine, and wars, change was often regarded as bad and not worth the risk.
Members of Agrarian societies also had strong ethnocentric beliefs. Because each ethnic group had a suite of technologies, skills, and social organizations that changed relatively little for generations, they were invested with positive moral values and associated with their ethnic group.
The technologies, skills, and social organizations of other ethnic groups were not just different, they were often regarded as strange and even immoral. Adopting objects or behaviors that were associated with outsiders would make one stand out from the group and potentially be viewed as a traitor.
The political, economic, military, and religious elites of Agrarian societies had a strong material incentive to reject innovations in technologies, skills, and social organizations. Their standard of living and social status were based upon extracting wealth from the rest of society. New technologies, skills, and social organizations potentially undermined their ability to do so. New ideas and behaviors might raise the expectations of the peasantry and create prosperous newcomers who might threaten elite domination.
In Agrarian societies, patronage (support from your superiors) was far more important than merit or achievement. The political, economic, military, and religious elites usually lived in national or regional capitals. Those living in rural areas strove to find favor from those above them so they could move to regional capitals. Those living in regional capitals strove to find favor from those above them so they could move to the national capital. Those lucky enough to live in the national capital found that they still had to get by mainly upon political patronage from their superiors, rather than their skills and achievements.
Because wealth and income were so crucially tied to extraction by elites, merchants, and artisans were forced to produce and market products that appealed to those elites. The only way to earn money was to produce and market luxury goods that provided amusement to elites and reinforced their social status. The peasantry simply did not have enough money to buy more food, tools, and materials. Relatively poor artisans in villages and local market towns could purchase some goods and services, but there was rarely enough demand in these areas to create large markets.
Whereas today, we tend to look outward toward people who are similar to us, in Agrarian societies everyone looked upward: upward for approval, upward for markets, upward for patronage, upward for marriage. This meant that the tastes and preferences of the elite had a powerful effect on the rest of society.
While informal classes dominated Horticultural societies, elites within Agrarian societies formed impersonal institutions. Warriors were institutionalized into armies. Priests were institutionalized into churches. Royal followers were institutionalized into royal bureaucracy. Merchants were institutionalized into royal monopolies.
While today we live in a society with thousands of institutions – corporations, churches, charities, clubs, and relatively autonomous local governments – Agrarian institutions were far more limited in scope. In any one domain Agrarian elites believed that there must be only one institution, that institution must be highly centralized and it existed at the pleasure of the monarch or emperor.
Elites in Agrarian societies kept a very tight rein on the institutions that were allowed to exist. The king or monarch established royal monopolies in the political, economic, military, and religious spheres. No new institutions were allowed to exist without royal permission. Inevitably, royal bureaucrats and their followers staffed these institutions and made sure that they followed the dictates of the sovereign.
New institutions with new ideas were expressly forbidden unless the monarch could be convinced it was for his benefit. Because new institutions play a key role in innovating new technologies and skills, these royal monopolies deadened innovation.
Institutions in Agrarian societies were overwhelmingly government-sponsored monopolies whose aim was to extract wealth for the benefit of elites. Competition, diversity, and decentralization represented potential threats to the established order, so they were not allowed.
These centralized, non-competitive monopolies tended to stifle innovation. Monopolies stamp out much of the variation that makes innovation possible. Except for the areas of military and elite consumption, Agrarian societies tended to experience diminishing rates of innovation over time.
Agrarian societies did tend to be fairly innovative in areas that directly benefitted elites:
Military technology and organization
Elite consumption and entertainment
Extractive organizations designed to extract the food surplus from the peasantry.
The royal court was the center of every Agrarian society. The court consisted of the monarch, his advisors, and an entire entourage of hangers-on. The court functioned not only as the political center; it also functioned as the economic, cultural, artistic, and social center as well. This forced almost everyone who wanted to excel in a domain to focus a great deal of time on currying favor from the Royal Court. This meant that no one was ever truly independent. The opinion of the royal court always trumped competence.
While copying the successful is a highly effective strategy for diffusing innovations, in Agrarian society copying the successful often achieved the opposite. The successful persons in Agrarian societies won their success by birth or by currying favor from elites. Because Agrarian elites were typically suspicious of innovation, copying the successful merely hardened the status quo. Other strategies for copying had the same results as there was simply too little diversity in society.
Agrarian transportation and communication technologies were not advanced enough to bridge significant geographic barriers. Therefore, face-to-face contact between people from different cultures was rare.
Most day-to-day transportation was by walking. Some regions with domesticated horses, oxen, or camels adopted these animals for more rapid transportation, but land transport was still very slow. Carts and wagons were about as sophisticated a transportation option as the typical peasant could own.
Before the invention of the moveable type and the printing press, there were also very limited options for distant peoples to communicate with each other. Books were rare and mainly religious in content.
Even after the invention of the modern printing press, the vast majority of people in most societies were illiterate. Most people had a difficult time even imagining the lifestyles of people in other societies, so there was no opportunity to copy them. All of these factors together seriously limited the rate of diffusion of technology, skill, and social organization within Agrarian societies.
Zero-Sum Competition
A defining characteristic of Agrarian societies was that it was far easier to prosper by stealing other people’s wealth than by creating new wealth. Because the economy was overwhelmingly rural and additional income was often extracted by elites, economic growth was very slow, if it existed at all.
The opportunity for an individual to transform their wealth and social standing by work and innovation was very limited. For peasants in particular, life involved constant physical toil with little chance of improvement and a constant threat of immediate disaster from drought, war, or disease.
This depressing existence created a mentality among the inhabitants of Agrarian societies that was profoundly zero-sum: “I can only benefit at the expense of others; if someone else benefits, that hurts me.” This zero-sum mentality undermined the voluntary cooperation that is essential for innovation and progress.
Wealth and income in Agrarian societies were based upon arable land. While the amount of arable land could be expanded at the expense of nature, it was usually necessary to take it forcefully from another person. Violence, war, land rents, and taxes were the principal means by which to succeed. Hard work, skills, and innovation were helpful, but either humans or nature could take the benefits gained away in a flash.
Agrarian societies had two different forms of competition. The first was the military competition between societies. Success in war was critical to all Agrarian societies. Victory meant increased wealth to extract. Failure in war meant diminished wealth and perhaps even extinction of the entire society. When they were not fighting a war, Agrarian societies were preparing to fight the next war.
The other form of competition in Agrarian societies was between individuals who sought to move up in the ranks of centralized extractive institutions. Because these institutions dominated society and had huge resources in an otherwise poor society, moving up the ranks was the only realistic way to be successful (other than conquering new territories in war). So success in Agrarian societies was zero-sum in this way too.
In my next post on this series on the impact of society types on human history, I will explain Commercial societies (the society type that I believe invented human material progress).
The above is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.
See also my other articles on Society Types and related topics:
Why are there such huge variations in income across the globe?
Commercial societies (which invented modern progress)
Excellent summary! BTW, you had previously asked me what I meant by saying that "coordination" is a major field or dimension of progress. To use this article as an example, I would frame the situation in part that agrarian societies had major difficulties with "Coordination". Elite exploitation, external exploitation (Mongols, other kingdoms, etc), cartels, etc are coordination and cooperation failures (with cooperation a subset of coordination)
We are not capable of progress if we are struggling against each other in strongly zero sum ways, and we can’t innovate fast enough and create wealth if we don’t coordinate well.