London: Penguin Random House, 2025; 579pp; ISBN 978-0-241-74124-5
Reviewed by Brian Martin
To appear in Anarchist Studies
People have heard about the collapse of the Roman Empire, and perhaps the Aztecs and Incas in Central and South America. But there are many others, and much to learn from them. In Goliath’s Curse, Luke Kemp takes the reader on a journey through the rise and fall of ‘civilisations’, from the earliest ones to the present day. He never uses the word anarchism, but nevertheless his analysis is rich with insights for anarchists.
Before there can be a collapse, there must be a rise, but for a long time humans lived together in relative harmony, without extensively exploiting, enslaving or killing each other. Kemp surveys the evidence from societies before the advent of agriculture about 11,000 years ago, along with evidence from contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. He concludes that ‘for the vast majority of human history there were no chiefs, commanders, or aristocrats. … Our Palaeolithic ancestors were egalitarian’ (p36). This is not a new assessment; it is in fact similar to Harold Barclay’s in People Without Government, written decades ago.[1] Kemp brings the discussion up to date, with extensive referencing from recent studies. Unlike Barclay, Kemp is not an anthropologist, but he draws so convincingly on anthropological sources that he sounds like one. This is all a prelude to Kemp’s impressive examination of societal collapse. And for a collapse, there has to be a system of power, something that has been built up. Hunter-gatherer groups have never been very large. They can split, disperse or die out. With the rise of agriculture, people stayed in one place and increased in numbers, setting the stage for systems of rule.
Kemp introduces the word Goliath as a generic term for a system of power in which a small number of individuals exercise power over the masses, extracting wealth for their own benefit. As he puts it, ‘a Goliath is a collection of hierarchies in which some individuals dominate others to control energy and labour’ (p5). The Roman Empire was a Goliath; so were the Aztec and Inca empires, and a succession of empires in China, Egypt and elsewhere. Later, there were colonial empires run by rulers in Portugal, Spain, Netherlands and Britain. There were also others, for example Cahokia in North America a thousand years ago. A state is also Goliath, but Kemp’s definition of a Goliath as a collection of dominance hierarchies can also include patriarchy and racial domination as systems. Surveying numerous examples of Goliaths, Kemp examines the factors that enabled their rise and the reasons for their fall.
He notes that most of what is called history is about ‘civilisations’, like the Roman and British empires. Calling them Goliaths, he provides evidence that they were not and are not so civilised, in the usual sense of being peaceful and compassionate. Goliaths are extraction machines, oppressing the population in the service of the wealthy and powerful. Surprisingly, the average person is better off after a collapse. Kemp provides evidence that people were taller and happier before the emergence of agriculture, and in the periods after a Goliath collapsed.
Let us start with what makes a Goliath possible. Kemp identifies three kinds of ‘Goliath fuel’: things that enable the creation and maintenance of Goliaths (pp63–68 et al.). The first type of fuel is ‘lootable resources’ (pp64–71 et al.). The earliest lootable resource was grain. It could be stored and hence became a target for attackers. To protect grain from being seized by violent enemies, communities needed their own fighters, whose commanders basically set up a protection racket, guarding the grain but demanding privileges. Hunter-gatherer societies seldom accumulate enough resources to be worth seizing by others like them. They cannot carry around large quantities of possessions. With agriculture, this changed. It was the beginning of Goliaths. Grain was the key lootable resource for thousands of years. Later came commodities, fossil fuels and, very recently, data. As the forms of lootable resources changed, so did patterns of domination.
At this point, it is useful to mention the psychological dimension of Kemp’s analysis. He says traits that emerged during millions of years of human evolution, mainly in egalitarian groups, provided a mix useful for survival. This included the capacity to cooperate, as well as a desire for status. A small fraction of humans manifested what is today called the dark triad — narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism — and sought power over others. In egalitarian groups, individuals with these traits were held in check by another trait, resistance to domination. But the development of agriculture and the production of lootable resources enabled dark triad individuals to gain and wield power over others. The combination of psychology and changed opportunities enabled a shift from egalitarianism to exploitation.
Another factor enabling Goliaths is ‘monopolisable weapons’ (pp66–67 et al.). This refers to weapons that can be controlled by a small group and used to dominate others. For early Goliaths, they were hand-held bronze and iron weapons. For colonial empires, the key monopolisable weapon was gunpowder, used in muskets and cannons. For today’s Global Goliath, nuclear weapons serve this purpose. Kemp calls the third Goliath fuel ‘caged land’ (pp66–67 et al.). When people are being exploited and oppressed, many of them try to leave, which they can do when there are exit options. When the earliest Goliaths collapsed, it was by most of the population leaving to live self-sufficiently in nearby lands. Goliaths, to maintain their power, need to keep the population within their boundaries. Today, it is nearly impossible to escape to somewhere else without a requirement for personal identification; surveillance is ubiquitous. Kemp says that a long-term trend is that Goliaths try to control populations. Exploiting them by extracting resources is not enough: they need to be under the ruler’s thumb.
Kemp’s analysis of lootable resources, monopolisable weapons and caged land is impressive in its wide scope. He traces the evolution of Goliaths in different parts of the world in just enough detail to show how they emerged and exerted control. This would be depressing except that Goliaths eventually collapse, and collapse is Kemp’s special interest.
Why does a Goliath collapse? Kemp studies various factors that contribute to the vulnerability of different forms of Goliath. One important contributor is economic inequality. Over time, many Goliaths become more unequal, and when they do, this incentivises the oppressed to escape or revolt. Furthermore, elites become more removed from the population and, without feedback, become worse at decision-making. Another factor Kemp calls elite factionalism. A Goliath is an extraction machine, with power-seekers at the top, and the accumulation and concentration of resources are attractive to other power-seekers, leading to instability. Kemp tells how the Aztecs and Incas were beset by competing factions, which led to their downfall when Spanish conquistadors arrived. The Spanish invaders would not have had a chance if their adversaries had been united. Economic inequality, increased extraction and elite factionalism make a Goliath vulnerable. What finishes them off, often, is external shocks, of which climate change is one of the most frequent and important. Prolonged drought can cause the collapse of a Goliath reliant on grain production and a growing population.
Kemp devotes hundreds of pages to analysing early Goliaths and their characteristic features, laying the groundwork for examining today’s system of rule. He says we live in a Global Goliath, a system of domination that covers most of the world’s population. It is global capitalism, where the wealthy and powerful extract resources from everyone else, with inequality of wealth and power becoming greater. But the system is evolving with the rise of digital resources. Kemp calls this emerging form the Silicon Goliath. Lootable resources in the Global Goliath are grain, fossil fuels and commodities. For the Silicon Goliath, they are all these plus data, now looted by AI companies. The key monopolisable weapons in the Global Goliath are nuclear. For the Silicon Goliath, Kemp adds killer robots, otherwise known as autonomous weapons. Then there is caging. It’s now almost impossible to find a place to escape a system of rule. Even to get around, passports and ID cards are needed, and with the Silicon Goliath there is advanced surveillance with biometric identification and social media analysis powered by AI. This sounds gloomy. Kemp lays out the dangers facing the world today in a way fitting for climate catastrophists, adding in the factors of mass surveillance and autocracy. These are setting the scene for global catastrophe. This is the latest version of Goliath’s curse.
Goliath’s Curse, in the course of analysing societal collapse, offers much for anarchists. Kemp’s treatment of the viability and benefits of societies without the state fits perfectly with anarchist views, and is backed up with extensive references to the latest research. Then there is Kemp’s examination of Goliaths, which meshes with the longstanding anarchist critique of the state but goes beyond it in several ways. Kemp generalises the challenge facing opponents of the state to that of the Goliath, today the Global or Silicon Goliath, a combination of systems of domination that is worldwide. Thus, the challenge is not just to oppose and transcend the state but the entire world system built on mutually reinforcing states. In analysing the earliest Goliaths, Kemp shows how the rise of a single Goliath triggers a chain reaction of Goliath creation. There is something similar today in the way that states justify their military establishments by hyping the threat from others. In Kemp’s picture, Goliath creation builds on three main factors: lootable resources, monopolisable weapons, and caged land. Anarchists have paid attention to each of these, but not treated them as a group, as the foundation for state and global domination. Also valuable for anarchist thinking is Kemp’s analysis of the triggers for collapse, including increasing inequality, elite factionalism and external shocks, especially climatic ones. Anarchists have long cited inequality as a reason to oppose systems of domination, and pointed to corruption and abuse of power as symptoms of an oppressive system. Kemp adds evidence that these are not just problems to be opposed but are the things that lead to collapse.
What to do? In an epilogue, Kemp lays out a series of things that should be done to avoid global collapse, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions, getting rid of nuclear weapons, controlling AI, increasing democratic control and promoting greater economic equality. These are all worthwhile goals but give little guidance on what to do. For individuals, Kemp recommends not supporting any group (like fossil fuel companies) that is a major contributor to global catastrophe, becoming actively involved in political discussions and actions, and refusing to be dominated. After such a powerful analysis of Goliath, these might seem anodyne. I think there is more for anarchists to learn from Goliath’s Curse, by considering each of the key elements contributing to global domination — what Kemp calls Goliath fuel — and using them as guides for making challenges.
Lootable resources are crucial to building a Goliath, and for the Global and Silicon versions of Goliath, these are grain, commodities, fossil fuels and data. The implication is that when resources are less lootable, namely less able to be controlled centrally, dominators have less basis for control. One road is to oppose the creation and use of lootable resources. This ties into ongoing challenges to industrialised agriculture and support for local organic farming. It ties into ongoing challenges to global warming, but also to nuclear power (another centralised energy source), and support for energy efficiency, local production of solar and wind power, town planning to increase reliance on walking and cycling, and simpler lifestyles to reduce commodity production. It ties into campaigns against surveillance and vast databases. These campaigns already exist and can be supported. What Kemp’s analysis adds is the crucial insight that lootable resources are Goliath fuel. All resources need to be examined in this light. Giant solar arrays are more easily controlled than rooftop solar panels. Basically, everything needs to be assessed based on how easily it can be exploited and controlled. This might seem natural from an anarchist perspective. It is also a guide for assessing future developments and for raising in campaign discussions.
Monopolisable weapons are also crucial to building Goliath. For today’s world, Kemp cites nuclear weapons. The obsession of existing nuclear states to oppose other states gaining access to them fits with the idea that a monopoly of dominant weapons is key to Goliath power. In this perspective, movements against nuclear weapons are anti-state-power movements. We can also look at this from the other side: what weapons are least monopolisable? In my view, the most promising candidate is nonviolent action, also known as civil resistance, which includes rallies, strikes, boycotts, fasts, sit-ins and other forms of protest, noncooperation and intervention that do not involve physical violence against opponents.[2] Nonviolent action is a threat to rulers because it has the potential to undermine loyalty, especially the loyalty of the military and police. In the traditional picture, the state is an entity based on a monopoly over legitimate violence within a territory. Undermining the monopoly is a challenge to the state; the widespread use of non-monopolisable methods of struggle is one way to do this.
The third key Goliath fuel is caged land, which here means anything preventing escape from top-down control. Kemp cites passports, borders and surveillance as contributors. Governments seek to identify every individual, now with the added techniques of facial recognition, social media analysis and DNA analysis. Very few individuals are able to survive off the grid, and leaving for another country is difficult for those without resources. The open borders movement is one avenue for mounting a challenge; so are campaigns against surveillance. Being alert to the various methods that governments use to monitor and constrain citizens offers a guide for campaigning. Building alternatives, such as encrypted communication, is another route.
More generally, Kemp’s analysis of Goliath encourages big-picture thinking, both long-term and society-wide. It is stimulating to think of the full duration of human existence, including the long period of cooperative living that shaped human psychological proclivities, the rise of agriculture that enabled the first Goliaths to emerge, the processes by which they trigger more Goliath formation, and the curses that lead to Goliath downfalls. Anarchists can gain inspiration from the long history of human cooperation and better understand the challenges posed by today’s Global and Silicon Goliath. According to Kemp’s analysis, all Goliaths eventually collapse, which would be a cause for optimism except that the collapse of today’s Global Goliath is likely to be uniquely devastating. Furthermore, he notes that if Goliath fuel remains, new Goliaths will emerge on the ruins of the old. This provides a direction for strategy. First, challenge Goliath, which meshes easily with anarchist challenges to the state. Second, attempt to eliminate Goliath fuel and build non-fuel alternatives. Kemp has introduced Goliath as a new term for a system of oppression, and a very useful term it is. Whether or not it catches on, there is much to learn from his analysis.
Brian Martin, University of Wollongong
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