Music as an Analogy for Economic Order by Michael Hudson

Music and economics each are abstract in their own way, and few people see much of a connection today. There is of course the "economics of music," but as Prof. Senn observes, music is a profession whose members are among the least economically motivated. Performing a musical work is so creative an act that amateurs do it without remuneration, and aspiring musicians sometimes even pay for the privilege of performing in major concert halls.

Not many people deem the Dismal Science to be aesthetic. Few economists practice it for their own creative enjoyment. Whereas music may be performed simply for the joy of it, economics subjects everything to the measuring rod of money, and deals on a mundane level only with that part of life that can be quantified in terms of prices and costs.

The term "harmony of interests" is of course well known, and Henry Carey wrote a book by this title, which inspired Friedrich Bastiat's "economic harmonies." The metaphor extends back at least to classical Greece. This essay sketches how musical principles were used as early analogues for economic relations and good social order.

Harmony

The first musical dimension is the scale itself. Its twelve tones (the seven notes A through G, plus the five sharps or flats that make up an octave) must be tempered so that they resonate harmoniously. There are mathematical relationships to such tuning, as the tones are proportional to string and tube lengths. The Pythagoreans demonstrated such relationships with a monochord, an instrument whose single string could be divided a movable bridge (the kanon) into halves, thirds and smaller proportions to produce the basic musical intervals.

Any discussion of natural proportions provides an analogue for distributive justice and social order. The mathematical ratios underlying music's harmonic relations were related to worldly political relations as well as applied on the cosmological level to music's sister science, astronomy (the harmony of the spheres). As Edwin Minar observed in his Early Pythagorean Politics in Practice and Theory (1942:33), "the most important element of Pythagorean morality is 'armonia, which means in practice that subjects must be 'persuaded' to accept willingly the dominance of their natural superiors."

Alas, only a few well‑born individuals could enter the select company who determined policy under Pythagorean‑oligarchic regimes. These opponents of democratization found it natural that a small landowning class should hold onto what its ancestors had taken during the Dark Age that followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilization c. 1200 BC. Disharmony stemmed largely from people -- especially the demos -- not knowing their proper place in this social order. The forces of democratic change were countered by idealizing a harmony in society based on "co-operation" with (i.e., obedience to) hereditary leaders controlling religion, culture and the court system. It is in this political context that their musical philosophy must be understood.

To the casual scholar the name of Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570-497 BC) is associated with the earliest Greek writings on tuning, geometry and mathematics. But Walter Burkert (1972:9) warns that we can believe almost nothing of the ancient traditions regarding his scientific discoveries, Pointing out that "the musical experiments which are attributed to Pythagoras are physically impossible," Burkert suspects that the acoustical discoveries associated with his name stem from two later followers from Tarantum: Archytas c. 400, and Aristoxenos c. 325, creating a "Pythagoreanism without Pythagoras."

Elaborating on what the Pythagoreans had started, Plato (c. 429-347) placed music at the head of his quadrivium at the Academy he founded in 387 at Athens. In this earliest and most vaunted educational institution of antiquity, music emerged as antiquity's most highly politicized art -- not training for musical performance, but the mathematics of tuning as a body of intellectual symbolism for the epoch's anti-democratic political forces. Just as tuning the scale was a matter of proportions, so well-proportioned societies were held to reflect mathematical relationships which preserved the status of the wealthy oligarchic families.

The Pythagorean clubs, from Croton to Athens

Around 750 BC, Syrian and Phoenician merchants established trade relations throughout the Mediterranean. Populations recovered, creating pressure for access to the land that had been monopolized by warlords. In city after city, commercial revival set in motion pressures for the demos citizen-army to improve its economic status. Starting with Sparta and followed by Corinth c. 557, the wealthy landed families who sought most inflexibly to maintain their hereditary power were overthrown by populist "tyrants."

This was the century in which Pythagoras grew up on the island of Samos. Herodotus (3.39ff.) reports that c. 532 the island experienced a social revolution led by Polycrates, who exiled the rival aristocrats and broadened economic opportunities for the population by promoting handicrafts, a large public works program and the navy. Freed from oligarchic control of the land, Samos prospered.

We cannot understand what made Pythagoreanism and its music theory so influential without understanding the vehicle by which it was spread: the political clubs (hetaeries) which were the basic building blocks of Grecian society in the absence of strong state organs.

Calhoun (1933:13ff.) has traced these clubs back Homeric Greece, a region of small settlements ruled by chieftains surrounded by companions who provided supporters to their cause. Gradually, their power had to be shared with the families who established themselves as a landed aristocracy. Each leading family had its retainers, and each popular leader or contender sought to attract others into his political club.

So typical did these clubs become throughout Greece that most of the aristocracy were "clubmen," that is, members of hetaeries composed of about twenty friends who were roughly equal in age and came from similar social backgrounds. These clubs typically held banquets and drinking bouts, and became the natural vehicles for hatching plots and organizing political initiatives. Kylon became an early tyrant of Athens by means of such cliques. Later, as rivalries developed among the leading families, Peisistratos and Cleisthenes used their own clubs as instruments of political manoeuvering.

As the transition occurred from aristocratic to democratic rule throughout Greece, such clubs were mobilized to block further democratization. They helped fix law suits, planned legislative initiatives and attacks on rivals, and on occasion directed political coups. In this evolution into political organizations involved in covert dealing and influence peddling they have been likened to New York City's Tammany Hall.

Pythagoras became the patron saint of the most anti-democratic clubs. They used the principles of musical harmony as a patina of pseudo-science to give intellectual legitimacy to a movement whose worldly consequences were anything but harmonious. The Pythagorean clubs became a network of civic cults rising above the local sphere to which most clubs related. There seems to have been some connection with the Delphi temple (the name Pythagoras means "voice of Pythia," the snake-goddess of Delphi and its oracle). They have been likened to the Free Masons, in that they served as a kind of Council of Foreign Relations or New World Order.

Fleeing Samos, Pythagoras and some followers are reputed to have settled in Croton, in southern Italy. Known as Magna Graecia ("Greater Greece"), the region had been colonized by the Greeks in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Its most prosperous city was Sybaris, whose living style was so luxurious that the adjective "sybaritic" has survived in modern languages. The city issued the region's earliest known coins, and Athenaeus (XII.518) relates that "the Sybarites were the first to forbid noise-producing crafts from being established within the city, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, and the like, their object being to have their sleep undisturbed in any way; it was not permitted even to keep a rooster inside the city."

With the flowering of commerce, Sybaris had experienced its own democratizing revolution. A populist leader, Telys, seized power and exiled the families who had monopolized the land and forced the population into debt.

Just as Samians such as Pythagoras had done, the exiles from Sybaris sought refuge in Croton, at the altars in the marketplace. Telys demanded their return, probably to punish them. Croton's leaders debated what to do, and are reputed to have been swayed by Pythagoras reminding them of the sacred obligation to protect suppliants. Croton accordingly went to war against Sybaris. (Burkert 1972:116 points out that this story sounds suspiciously as if it were based on contemporary plays, The Suppliants, by Aeschylus and Euripides.)

Sybaris was attacked by Croton in 510 BC. And just as harmonious relations had characterized Sybaris at peace, so music played a role in its war. According to an anecdote repeated by Athenaeus (XII.520), the Sybarites "carried their luxurious refinement to such a point that they even trained their horses to dance at their feasts to the accompaniment of pipes. The people of Croton knew this when they made war on the Sybarites." As the cavalries opposed each other on the field, Croton's musicians began to play the horse-marching music, whose tune reportedly was revealed by a Sybarite flute player seeking revenge for some insult. When the horses heard the pipers, they went into their ceremonial march and became useless for battle, dancing away with their riders to the side of Croton.

The majority of Sybarites and disenfranchised debtors are reported to have wanted the land to be divided by lot, but the victorious Crotonites gave control to their own aristocracy to divide among themselves, and Iamblichus reports that "the populace forsook them" (Guthrie 1987:118). In fact the city was destroyed, in a manner that Burkert calls "the worst atrocity wrought by Greeks against a Greek city in that era." It was an example of oligarchic misbehavior rivaled only by the Athenian dictatorships a century later, in which Pythagoreans also played a subversive role as would-be Guardians acting quite unlike the ideal of philosopher kings.

Croton's victory enabled it to support oligarchic parties in other cities. "A common method," writes Calhoun (1933:140ff., cited in Minar 1942:27), "was to organize a Pythagorean society in each city, which then aided them in seizing power." Most of these clubs had about twenty members, and they typically met in the gymnasia, a popular civic center for aristocratic gatherings. (Croton's "mother" lodge was uniquely large, numbering about three hundred.) They were centers of power among the leading families, working with other clubs to control public offices by covert manoeuvering and financial subsidies that did not stop short of outright bribery. Forming the brotherhoods from which autocratic leaders were chosen, their political program was to restore the so‑called "ancestral constitution (patrios politeia), basically the old authoritarianism that had survived from the Dark Age.

Democrats who opposed the aristocratic program were told that they would have to go to school to "understand" the oligarchic mathematics of "harmonic proportions" that served as the code phrase for "unequal equality."

So we have (l) religion, (2) cults, (3) leisure, (4) sports (the gymnasia), hence "public figures" such as sports heroes (viz. Alcibiades), (5) the educational system (capped by Plato's Academy), and finally (6) the justice system and courts. In the end, the oligarchs won as they would do throughout the remainder of history: the old fashioned way, by tricks. For (7) the electoral process weighted in favor of the rich, and specifically by landlords.

The ULTIMATE cheating is legitimizing the theft! This is done by propaganda. Note not only Rome's second and "peaceful" king Numa (rumored by mythology to have been tutored by Pythagoras), but Servius for trickiness (in Tribes chapter.)

Third world students often come to the United States to study international economics in the hope of understanding why the international specialization of labor and domestic wealth relations are so unequal. They are distracted to the study of calculus. For what purpose? They can never use this arcane mathematizing. It can never have real numbers attached to it, for its categories are irrelevant. But the students are shunted aside. It is explained to them that all exchange IS equal, because it is all in equilibrium. Hence, both sides balance.

In the process of learning this, they are co‑opted or distracted. And just as not many third world students can travel to North America or Europe to study. (The root of our word school is scholia, originally meaning leisure. One use of leisure in classical antiquity was indeed to study (and hence to become a scholar). The other was to practice cavalry tactics, the military leadership whose rank in the army was defined by the amount of land they held. The leisure class (and until the present century, the cavalry officer corps) historically has been the wealthy rentier class, monopolizing the army as well as culture and religion -- and most of all, the land and the money it generated.

Examples: Loki, legal trickery. Insurance companies (pro rata), health care. All in the mathematical details of the contracts.

Another way of tuning the scale is by thirds. The interval of the (major) third is the second different overtone, following C, C', G' and C'', namely, E. C-E-G thus forms the basic triad of music. However, to make it resonate harmoniously with all the other notes of the scale, it too must be tempered.

Music, like labor, must work in a disciplined way, to the thousandth of a second. Yet to take this principle to its extreme leads to the alienation of performing repetitive tasks (numbing).

Even new CDs of musical performances from the 1930s are as speeded up as old 8 millimeter silent films, because the "original" European recordings were issued closer to 75 RPM than the nominal 78 RPM.

Music leads to disequilibrium, by means of dissonance. There is periodicity (as the broadest form of rhythm). That would be akin to the business cycle (repetition of the basic theme on a higher level).

A Stradivarius violin: not only does it not depreciate in value, but you have to play it to keep it in tune and keep its wood vibrant.

The distinction between productive and unproductive: reinforces the inner harmonic structure, vs. distracts or dissolves it. There is an alternative, of course: carrying it to a higher level (modulation in music; the generation of a new stage of development in economics).

In society, the new "stage" comes from a breakdown. One thinks of Beethoven's floating dissonances, RESOLVING themselves in the new higher modulation. (Which is implicit in the opening four to eight bars of the musical piece.)

Dear Mason, August 13, 1997

"They said it couldn't be done." You will notice that I have indeed been able to work land monopolization (and debt, of course) into my musical analogy for economic decadence at the end of this article, and along the way for the Pythagorean support of landlords in the Crotonite attack on Sybaris (from which our adjective sybartic comes). So what do you think of THIS? (Pity there is no Georgist literary journal to circulate this. If we had such an organ, I'd do the English version there and publish this essay in German for Juergen.)

Dear Wolfgang,

I have now filled out my musical essay (and have not even gotten around to revising my essay on Buecher and economic anthropology). I never dreamed that it would take an entire month. But it quickly became obvious to me that I could not decontextualize the association between music and social order from the institutional setting of this philosophy: the Pythagorean clubs. This led me to discuss the evolution and political role of these clubs, in order to put their musical philosophy in perspective.

I don't want this to displace my major essay on Buecher's anthropology itself. I gather that I will have two essays in this volume (as other authors have done in some of your earlier volumes). Please confirm this; if I had to choose, my anthropology essay comes first, because this essay will probably be placed in my book on the Collapse of Antiquity. (Sorry for the University of Chicago barbs -- but remember, I'm also a U of C graduate. Its Prof. Bloom's travesty that I'm attacking here, and the Chicago Schoool's links to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, which seems a remarkable reincarnation of the Pythagorean clubs.)

I hope I haven't lost the "poetry" of my thoughts in the process. It was because of your kind comment that I took so long to elaborate my essay by finding the appropriate scholarly passages. Tell me if you think they weigh things down too much. But I do want to keep the parallels between musical and economic decadence at the end -- that was the ultimate point that I was making.

(Somehow, Peter Senn always seems to bring out the best in me. He begins on my wavelength, but always comes from a different direction, and I want to approach the same subject from my own perspective. Tell him we make a good team.)

Yours,

Michael

From Wolfgang

Dear Michael,

Many thanks for cc'ing the musical comments to me. I read it with great

pleasure, and I sent Juergen a note (unsolicited) that it's eminently

publishable. I didn't know we shared that interest, too; the (social and

epistemological) theory implications of musicology form one of my favorite

side areas, and I've just been a referee for the new Chairs in musicology

both at Berkeley and Princeton. (Well, not that that means that I actually

*know* anything.)

A few very small comments from my side: of course, there's a difference

between music and rhythm, and Buecher addresses the latter. Greek music,

as far as I can see, is singularly rhythm‑free (of course, we don't quite

*know* that, but that's how I interpret the fragments we do have).

In any case, I agree with your use of music in Plato, but there's more to

that. After all, the constitution of the NOMOI is to be established by the

preamble being sung; there is the question of whether it's the

emotion‑stirring quality of music and drama/poetry in the POLITEIA that is

seen as the big problem, etc. Not that you need to be exhaustive on "Plato

and Music" in a paper like that, but I think some of these features have

direct bearing on your topic. One could also mention that Plato's "bad

music ruins the polis" argument has very emphatically been used by Allan

Bloom in _The Closing of the American Mind_ for today. This is a very,

very bad book, but that passage has been very much discussed, and thus it

might be interesting to refer to.

Since you so very nicely employ etymology, I am not sure whether Plato's

works should really be referred to by their common English names; as far as

I can see, usually they aren't anymore in the scholarly literature. NOMOI

are arguably not what we would call Laws, and a POLITEIA is certainly not a

Republic. But this might be an indiosyncrasy of mine. On the other hand,

regarding the much‑debated translation of arete', I think that in the end

it IS actually virtue, only that we have a strange attitude for the latter

word these days.

Is "Well‑Tempered Klavier" the usual expression? I would think it should

be "Well‑Tempered Piano" or "Wohltemperiertes Klavier".

For the tendency for simple crescendo in American orchestras, and then the

culmination in silence, it struck me that Bruckner's IXth, 3rd movement, is

the perfect example for that. And it is also in harmony the last time that

the harsh dissonance in the end is resolved in that friendly bird‑song like melody.

As regards star conductors replacing more anonymous music‑making, this is

indeed (it seems) a comparatively recent phenomenon on your scale, but

already 250 years ago, the Master of Music at the European courts (and I

would liken him to the conductors) would often earn the highest salary

within the civil service (although the primadonna Italian singers and

dancers might top him).

This is already it. My assistant Rainer Kattel, whom you've met in

Heilbronn, just published a very interesting essay (I think) on arete' and

polis in Xenophanes' thought; I've asked him to send you an offprint. Have

you received Erik Reinert's outline for the 1998 Oslo meeting? Your

influence is very noticeable! I was going to do something polis‑related,

but I think it should be about money theory, after all.

All best,

Wolfgang

414 Aristoxenus, fr. 23: "Pythagoras seems to have honored, most of all, the study of numbers, and to have advanced it in withdrawing it from the use of merchants and tradesmen, likening all things to numbers . . ."

422 The quadrvium was "not merely a Pythagorean import brought by Plato from Italy." "It was the cultural influence of the Academy that brought the system of the 'four fields' to their position of special prominence. The 4 mathemata (mathematics, astronomy, music and geometry).

429 Neubebauer's 1928 suggestion has been proved, "that the 'Pythagorean theorem' had been used routinely for centuries in Babylon, and was therefore obvfiously not a discovery of the Greeks."

438 "The term logos, in its mathematical sense of 'relation, ratio, proportion,' has been attributed by von Fritz to the Pythagoreans, and conjecturally, to Pythagoras himself." von F. believes that its origin lies in music theory. But to the Pyth's it became something "hidden."

439 "Now a distinctive feature of the Greeks' calculation of proportions, and in particular of Pythagorean musical theory, is the occurrence of certain terms like epitritos logos, epogdoos logos, and the more general epimorios logos, which from a German or an English point of view seem odd. Their sense is quickly evident; epipriton, for example, 'a third in addition,' means 1 + 1/3 or 4/3. But the question remains, what made these ratios so important that they alone, in the Greek language, have special names, whilc a fraction like 3/5, unlike 6/5 (epipempton), can only be expressed in a cumbersome circumlocution. The answer is simple: they were terms used in the calculation of interest. Whoever lends money expects to get his principal back and a specified fraction of it in addition. This could be epitriton (4/3, or 33 1/3% [Xen. Vect. 3.9, Isaeus fr. 79 Sauppe, Arist. Rhet. 1411a17]), epipempton (6/5, or 20%, Xen. Vect. 3.9), more usually ephekton (7/6, or 16 2/3%, Demosth. 34.23), sometimes epogdoon (9/8, or 12 1/2%, Demosth. 50.17), at the lowest epidekaton tokon (interest of 1/10; this was what the gods received). It is precisely the tenth or fifth that must be added, 'extra,' because the other party lays claim to it."

Thus, music and interest were the two most usual purposes of calculation (and ceremonially, building sites, which were frozen music, as McClain has shown).

"But the calculation of interest is in fact called logixesthai: logisoumai tous tokos, says Strepsiades (Clouds 20). Logixesthai refers to the elementary techniques of calculation learned at school, whose culmination and most difficult part was the calculation of interest (Hdt. 2.16.36).

441 The harmonic mean discovered in the context of Pyth'n music theory actually has another use: approximating the square root. Iamblichus says the 'most perfect proportion' is 12:9=8:6, and that Pythagoras introduced this from Babylon. The Babylonians used it to zero in on the square root. But "the Babylonians did not know the concept of proportion; but the 'mean' may very well have been employed in calculation."

448 "Logous ("proportions") may be geometric, financial or musical. "It is not the fact that mathematics is mathematical or geometrical that moved the Pyth'ns so deeply, but that an everyday concern like music, impinging on us directly through the senses, turns out to conform to mathematical rules."

But before Hippocrates, there is no indication of any Pythagorean geometry.

457 Aristotle says that Hippasus was the first to 'publish and construct' the 'sphere of the twelve pentagons,' that is, the dodecahedron."

Von Fritz (1940:92) has ascertained that the overthrow of the Pythagoreans occurred not only in Croton, but throughout all southern Italy, reflecting the popular anger at their conspiratorial activities. "The great anti-Pythagorean outbreak, including the burning of the house of Milon at Kroton, between 450 and 440 C . . . led to the first emigration of Pythagoreans from Italy and the estblishment of Pythagorean centres at Phleius and Thebes. . . . The final exodus of the Pythagoreans from Italy (except Archytas and his friends in Tarentum) c. 390," led to the transplantation of the pythagoriatai in the Greek motherland."

100 "After the revolution of c. 450, the Pythagoreans, we are told, again tried to create a center of their activities, this time at Rhegion."

31 Aristoxenos claimed "that Pythagoras liberated Sybaris from tyrannical rule." But it is known that "The downfall of Sybaris coincided with the downfall of Telys' rule. To call the destruction of a city her liberation from tyranny reveals certainly some political bias."

87 "The last Pythagoreans may have had every reason to make the rbellion of the middle of the fifth century appear as restricted as possible, but they can scarcely have committed the gravest errors concerning the one single event in which their revered teacher had been personally involved.

89 Pyth. may have died by the time his followers migrated to Metapontum, and simply his spiritual presence lived on to accompany them.

100 Von v. notes the/"There is a striking resemblance between the form of Pythagorean

101 'rule' and the way in which Plato and the Academy later tried to take part in active politics." But this was not a result of Pythagorean influence on Plato, despite his testimony in the seventh letter.

Calhoun, George Miller (1933), Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation [1913, repr. Rome 1964 as Studia Historica 7).

1 Thuc. (8.54.4) describes the extension to Athens of the oligarchic movement which had its inception in Samos in 411. Pisander visited "the sworn associations which already existed in the state for the management of lawsuits and elections," and persuaded them to unite for the purpose of overthrowing the democracy.

Aristides was "the great exception to the common practice of the age, as the one man who attained political eminence solely by personal worth and integrity, unsupported by club affiliations. For he, according to Plutarch (Arist. 2), kept aloof from clubs, believing that the power derived from such associations was an incentive to unjust action." Also Socrates. In Plato's Apology (36B) he said he avoided matters which engaged most Athenians: finance, the attainment of office, political parties, and clubs.

They indulged in bribery, fixing trials, conspiracy, false witness, assassination.

5 Club members were "partisans," political adherents, "clubman," "co-conspirator," "companion." They engaged in cabals (hence the cabalism of Pyth'n "wisdom").

7 "After the revolution of 411, which had been organized and directed by the cubs, etairos often bore the added implication of 'oligarch,' and was employed without any qualifying attribute to designate the member, not merely of a political club or hetaery, but of an oligarchic club, a 'clubbist.'" This is first found in Thuc. "He first tells us that the promotoers of the movement organized into a conspiracy those of the army at Samos who

8 were 'suitable.'"

11 "The oligarchic party did not organize clubs to resist the democracy which Cleisthenes founded, but merely adapted to the changed conditions an institution of great antiquity which had long before played an important part in the struggles between the rival aristocratic factions."

12 The conflict to which Aristotle alludes, between Cleisthenes and Isagoras for the archonship, "was not between these aristocratic clubs on the one side and the commons on the other, but between the clubs which were supporting Cleisthenes and those which took the part of Isagoras, and the expression used by Aristotle (Cons. Ath. 20; Hdt 5.66, 69-70) refers to an inter-club struggle in which the party of Cleisthenes proved to be the weaker."

These clubs operated WITHIN the larger factions that defined Athenian politics.

"Aristotle's account ... shows conclusively that the clubs were not first organized by the oligarchs after the expulsion of Isagoras as a means of secretly resisting the encroachments of the newly established democracy. They had already existed under the old aristocracy and had doubtless played their part in the struggles between the factions of the Hill, the Coast, and the Plain."

13 "These clubs were part of the system by which Pisistratus and his sons were enabled to maintain their authority against attacks from within." Hetairies of the tyrants are mentioned.

And Hdt says that Cylon's attempts to establish a tyranny constituted a hetaery.

14 From the earliest Athenian historical records, the clubs are found. They were comparatively small bodies of close friends and age-fellows, attaching themselves to a leader of wealth and social standing. They often helped leaders direct a coup, or "fix" law suits, or sponsor legislation. These were almost invariably done via clubs.

15 The original meaning was a close relationship between members of the Homeric nobility.

We cannot understand what made Pythagoreanism and its music theory so influential in antiquity without understanding the vehicle by which it was spread: political clubs (hetaery) and elite schooling.

CoO8 The club relationship usually involved an equality of age. And clubs usually held banquets. The entire etiquette of eating was basically designed for these clubs.

Homer depicts kings and chieftains scattered in little settlements, "whose respective power and prestige corresponded roughly to the number and rank of the hetairies who sat at their boards, followed their leadership in war, and acknowledged their authority in time of peace."

16 "By a gradual process, extending over a considerable period of time, this powerful class appropriated to itself the kingly functions, and the state became a formal instead of merely a virtual aristocracy. The new condition engendered rivalry of a more pronounced nature between the great families of the nobility, a rivalry which made doubly important the possession of hetairoi, and which finally developed into the bitter factional strife, already seen in the Cylonian episode, that is the distinctive feature of sixth century Athenian history."

With the institution of the democracy, clubs "became means for influencing the demos at elections and in the law courts."

17 Some club activities were fair and legitimate. Simply meetings of a social character, like clubs today, noted for their banquets and drinking bouts. But like rich men's clubs (Skull and Bones, etc.) if there were plots to be hatched, they were done via these clubs.

27 And it was precisely these innocent practices that gave clubs their "cover."

24 "Although the clubs were not restricted to any one party, the majority of them seem to have been oligarchic." Most members were recruited from the upper classes.They took the major role in the two oligarchic revolutions, and their activities can be traced to the end of the fourth century.

"The hetaery of Andocides and Euphiletus, one of the most notorious political clubs in the history of Athens, was accustomed to assemble for dinners and drinking parties, and it was at one of these gatherings, according to Andocides, that Euphiletus proposed the mutilation of the Hermae." The club of Andocides had about 23 members.

29 One limitation on size was imposed by the fact that Athenian houses were not very spacious, evenin the fourth century, "and the custom of reclining at table must still further have limited the number of the guest who could be entertained in the andron."

30 Men might belong to several hetaeries.

31 Their names were like motorcycle gangs today: "gentleman beggars," amateur tramps, 32 rebels, etc. Much like the Tammany clubs, they liked to take over the names of barbarious

33 peoples. They often behaved like "riotous men-about-town," with an irreligious spirit.

32 So these clubs "first existed for social purposes primarily and were later turned to political uses." Largely by Pyth'n influence.

me: It would be quite rude for clubs simply to promote upper-class positions nakedly. There had to be a patina of justice, to make all this seem natural. That was what the Pyth'ns gave these clubs. Music theory and numerology played much the same role as a secret knowledge of nature (which seemed to legitimize oligarchic coups) much as the mathematics of modern-day libertarian economics makes any degree of injustice appear as if it were in equilibrium.

34 Aristotle (Pol. 1310a9) cites the oligarchic oath: 'I will be evilly disposed toward the demos, and will contrive against it whatever ill I can." This oath "is commonly associated with the Athenian clubs." But Calhoun cannot find any evidence for this.

36 They had initiation ceremonies, often demonstrating an element of impiety and outright contempt for religion.

37 Politically, the clubs functioned as secret organizations. (And Pyth. gave them a secret knowledge.)

40 "The ancient regarded club affiliations as particularly important for litigants."

41 They lent money to their members, which could be used to bribe juries.

43 Andocides (1.132f.) describes how "Agyrrhius and a number of speculators who were engaged in farming the taxes had organized a sort of business club with the object of stifling

44 competition in bidding and thereby increasing their profits. The first year they had been successful in carrying out their scheme, but the year following Andocides had organized a rival company and had overbid them, finally securing the contract at a price six talents in excess of that wich they had paid. Thereupon Agyrrhius and his associates decided that they must get Andocides out of the way at any cost, by fair means or foul, and they joined with Callias and Cephisius in prosecuting him on a charge of impiety. They then raised a sum of money to assist in the prosecution, each one contributing a share."

45 "A money contribution was a convenient form of assistance in cases where it was inexpedient for the connection between the litigant and his supporter to be generally known. Thus we are told by Demosthenes (19.216) that Aeschines, in the case of the false embassy, used Philip of Macedon as his 'choregus' and employed the funds which that monarch contributed in hiring witnesses to testify in his behalf."

47 "The Athenian who was afraid that he might be prosecuted for some violation of the law could anticipate proceedings by having a friend or some one secured for the purpose bring a suit involving the very charge he feared. This 'friendly prosecution' would either be dropped before it came to trial, or would be so laxly prosecuted as to insure an acquittal. In the former event, if psubsequently a bona fide accuser appeared, the abandonment of the previous suit could be effectively referred to in addressing the jury. If the case had actually been tried and had resulted in an acquittal, the defendant could enter a paragraphe to that effect and put a stop to further proceedings."

48 Another tactic was the counter-suit, "brought by a friend or hired agent against an accuser or one who was suspected of intending to bring an accusation. . . . So effective was this mode of procedure, and so easy for a man possessed of wealth or comrades, that it was one of the most common means of defense in litigation." The penalty usually involved civic disability, thus blocking the accuser from bringing suits.

51 Demosthenes (21.123) "asserts that these prosecutions were for the express purpose of 'getting him out of the way' and thus putting a stop to his suit, and states that this is the common practice of wealthy scoundrels when poor men attempt to get redress in the courts."

53 "These counter-suits did not always aim at a conviction, and wer sometimes not even brought into court, but were instituted merely to influence public sentiment."

56 "Friends and associates could render a litigant valuable service by creating sentiment in his favor prior to the trial of his case," bad-mouthing his opponent, and generally trying to influence public opinion.

57 For in Athens, "where a jury constituted an appreciable percentage of the enfranchised population, such tactics would have far greater effect than they possibly could in our greatm odern cities."

70 "Before Euclides, the bribery of juries could not have been a complicated task." Aristophanes Wasps 389 parodies this.

77 "The pages of the orators are filled with charges of perjury."

79 "The defendant in Mantitheus vs. Boeotus belonged to a club of litigious men, headed by Mnesicles and Menecles, who assisted one another in the courts by means of perjured tetimony." Club members would contribute testimony much as one might contribute money.

80 "Here then we have clubs composed of professional sycophants, men who gained a living by means of prosecutions. The members were versed in the tricks of the courts, were willing to commit perjury if necessary, and were formidable by reason of their close organization and system of mutual support. Men who would give their testimony as a

81 speculation in which the profit was contingent on success assuredly would not hesitate to testify falsely if a sufficient cash consideration were offered."

"Men were also induced to commit perjury in the hope of injuring some personal or political enemy, and one of the first moves of a litigant and his friends was to seek out the enemies of the opponent and enlist their support. Here also associates could be of service."

95 Other types of clubs included "business and trade asociations, such as the company of tax-farmers." But "The clubs of sycophants and professional pettifoggers, like Menecles, Mnesicles, and Melas, were a factor of great importance in the Athenian judicial and political system."

97 Grote, VI, p. 246, described the clubs as existing 'partly for purposes of amusement, but chiefly pledging the members to stand by each other in objects of political ambition, in judicial trials, in accusation or defense of official men after the period of office had expired, in carrying points through the public assembly, etc.'

98 "In Athens the law courts were a common medium of political attack.

1. For one thing, there was no public prosecutor. The state did not initiate prosecutions, but individuals -- anyone could do so. Most litigants "were actuated in great part by personal feeling and for whom the interests of the commonwealth were incidental to the attainment of their own ends."

2. The laws were framed in general terms, and thus could be applied in a great variety of cases.

99 3. Great latitude existed for introducing evidence into the pleading. "An accuser was not restricted to the point at issue, but was free to attack the whole ife and career of the defendant, of his relatives and even his ancestors, and ws permitted to employ personal abuse of the coarsest and most vulgar type. His advocates (synegoroi) could make any statements they wished, and were neither required to prove their assertions nor held responsible for the truth of their allegations. Consequently, it often happened that a case was not decided upon its merits, but the defendant was called upon to answer for every peccadillo of his whole career."

4. Athenian juries were "large bodies of untrained men, selected at random." Most had

100 factional sympathies, and were open to bribery.

5. Opportunities for machination were many. A politician could arrange for a suit to be brought "against a political antagonist, to bring him befoire an irresponsible, impulsive jury, and there to assail his whole life, his domestic relations, his personal character and disposition, and his political record, with abuse of the most violent kind."

103 "In a majority of cases the truth or falsity of the charge mattered little; the real issue was political. The verdict of the court was determined by the relative popularitiy of the defendant and the accuser, the acceptability of their respective policies, the political strength each could command, their services to the state in the past, and the need for their services in the present. . . . The great political attacks were carefully timed. Miltiades was accused after the reverse at Paros; Pericles was assailed at a moment when the plague had reduced the populace to despair and frenzy."

105 Typically, agents were employed, to conceal the connection with the real mover.

"The possibilities of the political suit are particularly to be seen in the revolution of 404. Opposition to carrying out of the revolutinoary program was effectively crushed by a series of prosecutions brought against the democratic leaders. First Cleophon, the reigning demagogue, was cited before a court made up of oligarchic sympathizers and was condemned

106 and executed, ostensibly for desertion of post, 'but in reality because he spoke against * * * tearing down the walls (Lys. 13.12). Shortly thereafter, Strombichides, Dionysiodorus, Eucrates, and others of the more influential politicians who had combined to resist the oligarchic movement were arrested on trumped-up charges and in course of time were put to death, in order that they might not speak in the assembly against the program which the oligarchic conspirators had arranged."

"After the installation of the Four Hundred in the council house, a number of the surviving

107 democratic leaders were executed, imprisoned, or banished."

"Political assassinations were of common occurrence in the Greek cities." In Athens, a slayer could escape the death penalty relatively easily, often by accepting exile (hence, foreigners were hired as assassins, because they didn't mind leaving the city).

"The revolution of 411 was marked by assassinations from the start. At Samos, the associates, led by the general Charminus and aided by Samian oligarchs, assassinated the demagogue Hyperbolus and probably others of the democrats."

108 "In Athens, after the clubs had joined forces at the solicitation of Pisander, the younger associates organized themelves into a band to which were entrusted undertakings that involved violence. Their first move was secretly to assassinate Androcles, together with other prominent democrats. This band of assassins was then used to stifle opposition in the assembly and boule, for every speaker who dared to raise his voice against the oligarchic program was promptly and secretly put to death, and so cowed was the populace that no attempt was made to seek out and punish the guilty parties."

"Againin 404, the leaders of the oligarchic organization found it advisable to 'remove' the most influential men of the popular party before proceeding to the consummation of their

109 plans, and after the establishment of the Thirty they continued to make away with those whom fear, avarice, or personal enmity suggested. During their brief tenure of power they were responsible for the deaths of over fifteen hundred persons, if the estimate of Isocrates and Aeschines is to be accepted." Ie, like Chile under the Generals/Chicago School.

"In general they did not employ the secret methods of the Four Hundred, but the ssassinations were thinly veiled by a pretended adherence to legal forms, and the victims were executed on the strength of false informations laid by creatures of the oligarchs." But a band of reckless young men was employed for violence, when needed.

110 In short, the clubs did not shrink from foul play. Most Areopagites were members of oligarchic clubs. They probably caused the political assassination of Ephialtes in 462/1, in retaliation for his convicting many individual members of the Areopagus and shorn that council of its most important functions.

111 Most assassinations were not dicted by general political enmity, but had a definite purpose, usually to prevent the victims from addressing the ecclesia or boule in regard to legislation.

The clubs created caucuses to control the assembly, to act in concert.

112 In 404, "A central committee composed of five 'ephors' was chosen," and they in turn appointed lieutenants called 'phylarchs' who communicated their decisions and orders to the clubmen.

113 The general strategy is parodied by Aristophanes in Ecclesiazusae, in which women make a coup by using all these conspiratorial methods.

Assemblies were packed, members were bribed, speakers were interrupted and heckled, booed or applauded.

131 "Haussoullier has shown that the majority of the deme officials, according to the inscriptional evidence that has been preserved, belonged to a comparatively small number of rich and influential families which dominated the political life of their respective demes."

132 Isocrates (8.50): 'Although the punishment by death is provided for the man who is convicted of bribery, those who do this the most openly we elect generals, and the one who can corrupt the greatest number of citizens we place in charge of our most important interests.'

141 Clubs often supported foreign powers. "To the Greek, to be ruled by his political opponents was an intolerable humiliation, to be averted at any cost, even if it became necessary to deliver his state into the hands of its foemen. . . . In nearly every instance in which an attack upon a city is described, there is some allusion to a party within the walls who are making preparations to betray the city into the hands of the enemy, and numbers of captures testify to the success of such plots."

142 "The first authentic instance of the introduction into Athens of foreign allies in an attempt to overthrow the government is also the earliest appearance of a hetaery in the political field. About 632, Cylon and the members of his club, when they seized the acropolis with the intention of establishing a tyranny, wee aided by a Megarian force, obtained from the tyrant Theagenes, the father-in-law of Cylon (Thuc. 1.126.5). Nearly a century later, Pisistratus and his party made use of foreign money and arms, furnished principally by the Thebans and by Lygdamis, afterward tyrant of Naxos, in overcoming their opponents and effecting the second restoration (Hdt 1.61)."

Hippias sought the aid of Persia, "and his adherents in Athens had made preparations to receive the Persians before the Athenian army could return from the field of battle (Hdt. 6.102, 115ff., 121ff.).

147 Ideologically, the clubs may have "attempted to justify their course by the view that the democracy was an usurpation, based on sheer physical superiority, of the power which traditionally belonged to the old aristocracy." (final sent.)

, and with the philosophical school that used music as a metaphor to describe the social order

The exponential mathematics to proper tuning involve the calculation of proportions.

But it is in the realm of distributive justice that musical analogies are strongest.

The linguistic root of harmony (Greek 'armonia) is *arth, which also provides the root for arthron ("joint"), as well as for the English words art and arrangement, articulate and arithmetic, and perhaps also "order," via Latin ordos (Shipley 1984:16ff.). This idea of joining and fitting is related to that of ligature and religion, whose common root lig derives from from Latin ligare, meaning to bind or connect.

Invention of the word kosmos was attributed to Pythagoras, signifying "right order" (from the same root as cosmetic). But rather than the equitable "straight" order of distributive justice (misharum or andurarum) maintained by periodic cancellation of personal debts and redistribution of the land to the citizenry as found in the Old Babylonian period of Hammurapi's day, the oligarchic Pythagorean clubs fought for total political and economic control as they monopolized the lands and disenfranchised much of the citizenry by driving cultivators into debt bondage.

In the musical scale, some notes are more important than others. The most important is the first overtone (the octave), and the second (the fifth, that is, G' if we start with C as our tonic, and its first overtone C').

If economics and astronomy (via calendar-making) were one inspiration for the development of arithmetic in the ancient world, music was another. Indeed, certain striking parallels between music and the calendar led the structuring of ancient social relations to be based on music as well as astronomy. Just as there are 12 notes in the octave, for instance, so the year has 12 months -- and twelve tribes administering the typical amphictyonic center on a rotating basis. These musical mathematics were built into the cosmology of creation in many ancient texts (see McClain 1976 and 1978).

This is the equal temperament system that Johann Sebastian Bach made famous in his Well-Tempered Klavier, which presents 24 preludes and fugues through all 12 of the major and minor tones of the musical scale (that is, the octave).

"To halve an interval means the extraction of a square root." This is like doubling the size of a cube.

"Iamblichus says the 'most perfect proportion' is 12:9=8:6, and that Pythagoras introduced this from Babylon." The Babylonians used it to zero in on the square root, although they did not know the concept of proportion; but the 'mean' may very well have been employed in calculation."

Burkert makes the point that the other use for logarithms in antiquity was to calculate compound interest: "a distinctive feature of the Greeks' calculation of proportions, and in particular of Pythagorean musical theory, is the occurrence of certain terms like epitritos logos, epogdoos logos, and the more general epimorios logos, which from a German or an English point of view seem odd. Their sense is quickly evident; epipriton, for example, 'a third in addition,' means 1 + 1/3 or 4/3. But the question remains, what made these ratios so important that they alone, in the Greek language, have special names, while a fraction like 3/5, unlike 6/5 (epipempton), can only be expressed in a cumbersome circumlocution. The answer is simple: they were terms used in the calculation of interest. Whoever lends money expects to get his principal back and a specified fraction of it in addition. This could be epitriton (4/3, or 33 1/3% [Xen. Vect. 3.9, Isaeus fr. 79 Sauppe, Arist. Rhet. 1411a17]), epipempton (6/5, or 20%, Xen. Vect. 3.9), more usually ephekton (7/6, or 16 2/3%, Demosth. 34.23), sometimes epogdoon (9/8, or 12 1/2%, Demosth. 50.17), at the lowest epidekaton tokon (interest of 1/10; this was what the gods received). It is precisely the tenth or fifth that must be added, 'extra,' because the other party lays claim to it."

In sum, music and interest were the two most usual purposes of calculating exponential growth, most familiarly in the realm of financial calculations concerning the rate at which a principal multiplies itself at compound interest. (These problems have been traced back to the Old Babylonian period. See for instance Nemet-Nejat 1993.) "But the calculation of interest is in fact called logixesthai: logisoumai tous tokos, says Strepsiades (Clouds 20). Logixesthai refers to the elementary techniques of calculation learned at school, whose culmination and most difficult part was the calculation of interest (Herodotus 2.16.36).

Progressing from one musical key to the next is known as modulation. The progression is from tonic to its "dominant," that is, the interval of the fifth. (The next note often fills out the tonic triad -- an E, or an Eb if the key is minor, producing C-D-G or C-Eb-G.) In modulation, the initial theme is repeated, but in a higher key.

There is an analogy for evolution here. Just as music-works modulate in a pattern based in nature (the overtone system), so society evolves in ways that tend to repeat similar social and political patterns, but on a higher plane each time, returning finally to the original key or modulating to one of its higher harmonics. Plato and Aristotle described how monarchies led to aristocracies, which gave way to democracies that collapsed into tyrannies to start the sequence all over again.

Any interpretive doctrine claiming to have a natural order at their root presents itself as a scientific method of analysis. Music is based on the overtone system found in nature: the many subsidiary tones heard when a bell or other complex instrument is sounded. The music theorist who elucidated the modulatory compositional structure of classical music in modern times was Heinrich Schenker. By no coincidence he began his masterwork, Der Freie Satz, with a quote from Hegel about how the inevitability of a culture's unfolding history was contained in its very seeds. In the 1950s an East German theorist wrote a monograph finding a parallel between Schenker's analysis of the inevitability of music (and hence, the task of the performer to bring out its inner structure and forward motion) and dialectical materialism (and hence, the task of the historian to bring out society's own inner laws of motion).

While the core of music is harmony, the tune and its counterpoint creates a forward motion (Auskomponierung) that passes through conflict (dissonance), calling for resolution into a new harmony (the next chord). Here is an obvious analogy to the laws of social motion, moving forward via crises to resolve into new equilibria, which in turn become unbalanced and move to the next stage (key), until finally the circle is closed. This inner structure (Schenker's Hintergrund or "background") represents the long shape of the piece, the counterpart to le longue duree in economic development. The middleground and foreground appear to the audience as surface sensation, but a trained musician will perform the musical work in a manner that brings out thistonal striving, step by step and key by key. A good historian will likewise trace the inner logic of the concrete history that is unfolding as his subject matter.

Within the melody itself, some notes are more important than others -- namely, those tones to which tensions resolve. In C major this would be the tonic chord C-E-G (made up of the first four overtones) and its dominant chord, G-B-D generated from its second overtone. Once a key is established, a hierarchy of tones and chords is therefore implicit. But Arnold Schoenberg developed his 12-tone method of composition precisely to counter this hierarchic relationship, putting in its place what he called a "democracy of tones." The objective of his twelve-tone rows, unlike popular melodies, was to avoid favoring any single note or its chords. He did this by not repeating any note until all the other notes of the twelve-tone gamut had been sounded.

Twelve-tone music has not found much of an audience, precisely because it lacks the tonal focus that most listeners find pleasing. The music of Schoenberg and his school is self-professedly dissonant, and while Schoenberg himself was a great enough genius to pull off this method (along with his two best students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern), the attempt has died out among all but the most academically arcane. To the classically trained musician, and also evidently to the public, this music lacks the natural basis found in tonal music. But for this very reason, to be sure, atonal music reflects the aimlessness of our times.

A schematic and arbitrary 12-tone row, for instance, was chosen as the basis for Karl Blohmdahl's science-fiction opera Aniera, based on Harry Martinson's poem about a space ship crew lost in space and floating aimlessly through time when its gravity drive fails. Unfortunately, the musical tone row is symptomatic of the aimlessness of modern life (which Martinson's poety had managed to transcend). The parallel with economics is obvious: the post-classical dissolution of value judgments based on concepts of productive as opposed to unproductive labor, consumption, employment and debt, and a rejection of a meaningful concept of "surplus" (which in many ways is the equivalent of tonality in music).

Also highly abstract is Schoenberg's revival of the medieval European practice of playing of tunes backwards (retrograde) and inverting them (playing them upside down). These treatments of melody are so ingenious but geometric in character as to defy perception by many listeners upon first hearing. The abstract mathematical exposition of modern economics often appears equally arcane and inaccessible to all but academic economists.

The musical melody (melos) or "tune" can be abstracted into a sequence of harmonic chords (triads) stretched out in time. This is analogous to Buecher's theory of stages of development. But how do we get from one stage to the next?

Classical music is thus much more than just a series of harmonious chords. A triad simply resonates; it doesn't go anywhere under its own steam, for its harmony in itself is static. The social analogue would be the static character typical of utopian communities leaving no leeway for evolution or change, as a result of their ultimate authoritarianism

Whereas harmonic analysis abstracts the music-work into a sequence of slices (chords, as in a figured bass as "signposts" along the way), counterpoint deals with how voice-leading propels the music forward from one consonance to the next, through dissonance and conflict, to arrive at the final higher harmony.

If conflict (musically speaking, an inequality of perfect proportions) puts the music-work in motion as the unfolding of the melody creates a pressure to resolve itself in a new harmony, then perhaps we may speak of social counterpoint as society's motion is driven forward by tensions arising out of inequality ("dissonance"). As Heinrich von Kleist wrote in his Puppentheater, we cannot go back to heaven, because St. Michael stands there with his sword guarding the heavenly gate. So we must go forward, through sin and suffering, and arrive by the back gate. This image provides a view of history in which harmony finally is achieved only by resolving the strife of existence. Economically, one may find a parallel with dialectical materialism and the theory of one stage leading to the next.

[But] just as unmeasured harmonics result in a dissonant "sharp" tuning, an undue speeding up of tempi produces the excesses of Taylorism and its stopwatch management. To the new managers, "scientific" production becomes a question of how intensively employers can work their laborers.

(Veblen and Marx well described the mind-dulling boredom of the assembly line. I will quote briefly from their works.)

While the economy picked up the metronome principle in Taylorist work methods, the actual performance of classical music was more rubato and "romantic." Too much reliance on the metronome leads conductors to sound like Arturo Toscaninni's rendering of Beethoven's symphonies as if they were composed for an Italian marching band. This standardization of rhythms (and dynamics) through entire symphonic or sonata movements produces a loss of musical life similar to what occurs in Schoenberg's "democracy of tones." Beethoven is said by his contemporaries to have changed tempi over twenty times in the first movement of his Ninth Symphony. German conductors long maintained this tradition, but in the past half-century the performance of music has yielded to a harsh standardization, a quasi-military stiffness, and to the banality of workplace Muzak.

Just as rhythm and the dynamics of crescendo and diminuto are becoming more stiff and unyielding, performances are being speeded up. Ravel's Bolero deliberately served as a metaphor for society dissolving into a mad frenetic dance, but many contemporary performances of the classics stand as symptoms of the problem.

The reaction to today's loss of phrasing and rhythmic dynamics often is simply for the music to get louder. But the same loud volume level seems to be maintained almost from the outset (a tendency in which American orchestras have taken the lead). The end result is to make people deaf. So the culmination of the above musical tendencies is silence, like a requium dying out after a furious early dies irae.

Another dimension of this musical speedup and growing loudness occurs when musicians play the notes without musical feeling. Budgetary constraints on orchestras (downsizing) leave inadequate rehearsal time, especially where music is privately funded. The upshot is that the notes are performed without the phrasing and shifts in dynamics that characterized musical performance in the past.

Civic leaders in Bronze Age Mesopotamia were called literally "rulers." They ruled, by taking measures. The symbols of Sumerian kingship accordingly were the (measuring) rod and coiled ring of measuring rope with which the rulers laid out the dimensions of the temples and other sacred precincts.

Prof. Senn points out that music provides a self-generating, creative pleasure, and often is performed for scant compensation in comparison to the training needed. The usual economic measures of labor's reward for professional effort thus do not apply to musicians.

[ Today, public subsidies are defrayed by taxing the population at large. The BBC traditionally raised money to provide its radio programming by levying a radio-set tax, and later a TV-set tax. We find the public at large obliged to pay for the news, dramatic and musical presentations enjoyed by a narrowing upper layer of the population. Even so, equality of music and other high culture is being degraded as the financing of orchestras and other fine arts faces tightening economic constraints.

[ Over the past century the tuning of orchestras -- the oboe's basic A -- has risen. As the pitch has been screwed up, as the tempo of music becomes speeded up, and as performances get louder (starting loud and staying there), music is being turned into a symptom of the anxiety of our time, if not indeed a kind of primal scream.

[ Our century is one of technological innovation, but each major advance in the reproduction of sound -- from 78 RPM phonograph records, to LPs, casette tapes and CDs -- has made musical recordings cheaper by sacrificing the fullness of natural sound. And while recorded music has made great performances more widely available than ever before, it also has provided the ability to listen to music alone. Music is becoming more individualistic as its performance has evolved from an originally ceremonial public context to private occasions. ]

But] With individualism comes the cult of celebrity -- the star system that has replaced the more anonymous music of former times. The most important musical celebrities tends to be strong conductors. More and more, they are indulging in egocentrism at the expense of classical traditions. (Wilhelm Furtwangler referred to the "spastic school" of conducting.) There is perhaps an analogy here with strong but arbitrary and dictatorial central planning.

Modern economics has become amusical in the sense that its equilibrium mathematics is that of a sound dying out, dissipating rather than driving forward.

And we all know what happens when the demos makes NOISE. In the Mesopotamian Creation Epic, the gods destroy the world, and start again.

179 He refers to "the counterproductive nature of the prophets' economic ideas from a real world standpoint."

181 "Isaiah was consulted by kings Ahaz (Isa. 7.1-9) and Hezekiah (Isa. 37, 38) and composed royal records of kings Uzziah and Hezekiah (2 Chron. 26.22; 32.32) . . . Jeremiah was consulted by a representative of King Zedekiah (Jer. 21.1-2) and was an associate of the most powerful in the land. . . . The political program of the prophets as spelled out in the book of Deuteronomy was accepted and implemented in ca. 751 by Israel's Jeroboam II and by the Judean kings Hezekiah and Josiah in ca. 716/715 and 621, respectively."

Silver (1995:181, citing Lambert and Millard 1969) points out that in the Sumerian myths of Atrahasis and of Enki and Ninmay, the lesser gods had to do hard labor digging canals under the supervision of the greater gods (Jacobsen 1987: 153-55; Komoroczy 1976). Their 'noise' (cries of outrage) caused the awakening of the great god Enlil or Enki."

If music connoted social harmony, then noise signified the ultimate social dissonance. And although Plato associated the tritone with tyranny, noise was a phenomenon of the crowd, the ochlos that made up what aristocrats scornfully called the ochlocracy.

Silver (1995:181) has traced this metaphor back to Sumerian mythology. Pettinato, he observes, "sees a connection between the 'noise' in the Mesopotamian myths and the se'aqah ('outcry') heard by the Lord in Genesis 18.21 and the story of Gomorrah in Genesis 19." He notes that Von Rad (1972:211) finds that outcry "is a technical legal term designating the scream for help of one who suffers a great injustice. The cry was (c)hamas 'Foul play!' (Jer. 20.8; Job 19.7), a term that has the same force as Akkadian (c)habalu ('to oppress, wrong, deprive a person of something to which he has a right') (Speiser 1964:117, n.5; CAD A.1)." An echo of this usage is found in Isaiah 5.7: "And He hoped for justice, but behold, violence. For righteousness but behold an outcry."

Gerhard von Rad (1972), Genesis: A Commentary. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: Westminster.

182 Cicero Republic 2.39 (see also 1.43): The principle that should guide all republics is that 'the greatest number should not have the greatest power,' for 'equality results in inequality since it allows no distinction in rank.'

In China, see Han Fei tzu, Han Fei tzu chi-shih. Commentary and textual criticism by Ch'en Ch'i'yu. Hong Kong: Chung-hua (1974). 35 (p. 771) (Wai-ch'u shuo, hu hsia), quoted in Thomas H. C. Lee, "The Idea of Social Justice in Ancient China," SJAW 125-146. China was experiencing a great famine. Marquis Ying asked his Majesty to release some of the state's stores. But King Chao-hsiang replied, 'In accordance with the law of our country the people shall be rewarded for merits and punished for crimes. Now if I give out the vegetables and fruits of the Five Parks, I will in so doing reward men of merit and no merit equally. To be sure, to reward men of merit and no merit equally leads to disorder.'"

Joel Kaye, Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: 1998): 41:

“Aristotle separated justice into two particular forms, distributive (iustitia distributive), and rectifacatory, sometimes called corrective or directive (iustitia directive), each form determined by the mathematical process involved in reaching the just mean. Distributive justice involves the distribution of common goods by a central authority in proportion as the recipient had proved himself worthy of reward through service. Since the qualitiy of service and virtue is inherently unequal in men, distributive reward must also be unequal. The determination of distributive justice therefore requires the establishment of a ‘geometrical’ rather than an ‘arithmetical’ equivalence, in which greater service receives proportionally greater reward. (An arithmetical equivalence would entail all receiving a numerically equal reward.) Aristotle calls the form of proportionality governing distributive justice ‘geometric’ because that is the term mathematicians give to ratios in which the whole is to the whole as either part is to the corresponding part.” See Ethics, v, 3 (1131b12-13).

Ethics, v, 1 (1131a30-32): ‘The just, then, is a species of the proportionate (proportion being not a property only of the kind of number which consists of abstract units, but of number in general).’

Mathematical equivalency is only among individuals of equal status, as in compensation debts.