[[EPZ Thousand Plateaus - Gilles Deleuze Félix Guattari]] again on absorption of surplus Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia,450 >According to V. Gordon Childe's great archaeological thesis, the archaic imperial State implies a stockpiled agricultural surplus, which makes possible the maintenance of a specialized body of mercantile and metallurgical artisans. Indeed, the surplus as the content proper to overcoding must be not only stockpiled but absorbed, consumed, realized. Doubtless, this economic requirement that the surplus be absorbed is one of the principal aspects of the appropriation of the war machine by the imperial State: The military institution is from the start one of the most effective means of absorbing surplus.