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I think you can grasp at the extant evidence of a lot of forager societies and see all sorts of social arrangements. Some of them may appear to be pre-MArxist c

by ch4s3 2y ago

I think you can grasp at the extant evidence of a lot of forager societies and see all sorts of social arrangements. Some of them may appear to be pre-MArxist communism if that's what you're looking for but the idea that it was ubiquitous is plainly false and there's scant evidence that it was necessarily common. For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). We know that the Poverty Point culture built great mounds, engaged in a trade network running from present day Louisiana to the Great Lakes, didn't farm, and built ceremonial spaces. We could go down this hole pretty far. There are numerous examples of foraging societies that held hunting grounds not in common, but among families by hereditary right. Many gifting cultures had a feature where people tried to accumulate personal property in order to be able to attract followers through their largess, some of the cultures did not practice agriculture. > but even just through "traditional" western anthropology, we've long assumed that social stratification arose at the same time as sedentary agriculture. More recent work of "traditional" anthropology, as you've so derisively called it, has called this into question. There are numerous examples of cultures that were not sedentary agriculturalists who had complex hierarchy, personal possessions, social distinctions, and complex cultural practices. If anything it is increasingly clear that cultural difference and complexity was the David Graeber & David Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything gives a great treatment to the subject and shows hoe political heterogeneity of ancient peoples and foraging cultures was far greater than previously assumed. I think that the records such that they exist show that per-colonial Hawai'i was less of an outlier than you may believe.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). Slavery in the new world isn't really comparable to chattel slavery. It's more like a permanent hostage situation than anything. To be clear I don't know much about the Sailish situation per se but that's true across many of the other peoples of North America. I'd be pretty shocked if Sailish were breeding and making commerce from human slaves when nobody else was. That said, this seems kind of unrelated to the topic at hand. Besides, there's a lot more interested stuff to discuss in the forms of stratification you find in north america, and stratification doesn't necessarily imply non-egalitarianism. One-vote-per-person elections, for instance, as you see with the Haudenosaunee are a form of egalitarianism and stratification in the same breath—albeit one that intersects with the clan structures (which were, themselves, egalitarian). To be honest I'm unsure how gender intersects with stratification in anthropological literature (or I've forgotten), but that would be an interesting way to attack the concept of egalitarianism. I suspect/recall that was treated distinctly, though, as basically every human population alive today has some form of meaningful gendering. My point being: complex societies and complex stratification isn't itself enough to dispute the existence of primitive communism, even if I implied (incorrectly) it was before. The important aspect is communally-determined division of resources and labor under a natural economy, as you can still witness today (or in recent memory) on most (all?) continents. In fact, this is discussed in the first few chapters of Dawn of Everything—see the bit about how the natural economy allows people to basically walk away from coercive social structures, especially in high-resource areas like wetlands and river deltas. I can't speak to the people of Hawai'i specifically, but I'd assume that the stratification (potentially re-)arose when hitting the population cap of the natural economy. Anyway, as I think you can read, I wasn't arguing for ubiquity, but rather the existence of it or a comparison to the social stratification we are forced to deal with today. Graeber's own Debt: the first 5000 years gives excellent arguments how the introduction of commerce exacerbated basically all the social structures we associated with sedentary society. Just because you can find some cultures (as I noted with the pre-colonial Hawai'i people) that have stratification doesn't mean you should chuck the entire idea in the trash. It's still an extremely useful concept and comparison to the society we live in today.
- ch4s3 2y ago
  > Slavery in the new world isn't really comparable to chattel slavery That's not relevant though, it's a good example of a foraging culture practicing something completely unlike pre-Marxist communism. My point is that this was a highly stratified culture that raided neighbors for slaves and held them as personal property and symbols of status. Its a perfect counter example to the notion that anything like communism was a norm among non agrarian cultures. > stratification doesn't necessarily imply non-egalitarianism. That's a very different goal post. Egalitarianism is clearly a spectrum and even at one extreme it isn't synonymous with proto-communism. > One-vote-per-person elections, for instance, as you see with the Haudenosaunee The Haudenosaunee practiced agriculture so they don't demonstrate anything about "hunter-gatherers". I'd also like to point out that their "Mourning Wars" show something about as far from egalitarianism as I can imagine. Ritually sacking neighboring towns to torture and kill people to find cosmic justice for your own towns dead is... well hardly friendly. With respect to women in the Five Nations, they did in fact own land, homes, and various small goods and the lands and homes were hereditary. This is not pre-Marxist communism. >In fact, this is discussed in the first few chapters of Dawn of Everything—see the bit about how the natural economy allows people to basically walk away from coercive social structures, especially in high-resource areas like wetlands and river deltas. Right, but that isn't communism or even really related. Yes you could clearly just fuck off before the world was so full of people. > Anyway, as I think you can read, I wasn't arguing for ubiquity, but rather the existence of it or a comparison to the social stratification we are forced to deal with today. It's an interesting set of comparisons, but it's really apples to oranges. I'd certainly rather live in the US today than to be a neighbor or slave of the Salish people or to be captured and tortured to death by a Haudenosaunee war band. I'm happy to not have to bow to a Natches sun king. I think if you read The Down of Everything more carefully you find that the message is not that people in the past necessarily lived freer lives, but that their social arrangements were more experimental across time and place, and that there were more different ways of living. Some were at times and places freer in some key ways, but it's hard to generalize. Moreover all of the talk about pre-Marxist communism just feels like a warmed over attempt at historical materialism which is a dead idea.

by ch4s3 2y ago

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> For example the Coast Salish while foragers were also inveterate slavers who held personal property (slaves counting as such). Slavery in the new world isn't really comparable to chattel slavery. It's more like a permanent hostage situation than anything. To be clear I don't know much about the Sailish situation per se but that's true across many of the other peoples of North America. I'd be pretty shocked if Sailish were breeding and making commerce from human slaves when nobody else was. That said, this seems kind of unrelated to the topic at hand. Besides, there's a lot more interested stuff to discuss in the forms of stratification you find in north america, and stratification doesn't necessarily imply non-egalitarianism. One-vote-per-person elections, for instance, as you see with the Haudenosaunee are a form of egalitarianism and stratification in the same breath—albeit one that intersects with the clan structures (which were, themselves, egalitarian). To be honest I'm unsure how gender intersects with stratification in anthropological literature (or I've forgotten), but that would be an interesting way to attack the concept of egalitarianism. I suspect/recall that was treated distinctly, though, as basically every human population alive today has some form of meaningful gendering. My point being: complex societies and complex stratification isn't itself enough to dispute the existence of primitive communism, even if I implied (incorrectly) it was before. The important aspect is communally-determined division of resources and labor under a natural economy, as you can still witness today (or in recent memory) on most (all?) continents. In fact, this is discussed in the first few chapters of Dawn of Everything—see the bit about how the natural economy allows people to basically walk away from coercive social structures, especially in high-resource areas like wetlands and river deltas. I can't speak to the people of Hawai'i specifically, but I'd assume that the stratification (potentially re-)arose when hitting the population cap of the natural economy. Anyway, as I think you can read, I wasn't arguing for ubiquity, but rather the existence of it or a comparison to the social stratification we are forced to deal with today. Graeber's own Debt: the first 5000 years gives excellent arguments how the introduction of commerce exacerbated basically all the social structures we associated with sedentary society. Just because you can find some cultures (as I noted with the pre-colonial Hawai'i people) that have stratification doesn't mean you should chuck the entire idea in the trash. It's still an extremely useful concept and comparison to the society we live in today.

ch4s3 2y ago
> Slavery in the new world isn't really comparable to chattel slavery That's not relevant though, it's a good example of a foraging culture practicing something completely unlike pre-Marxist communism. My point is that this was a highly stratified culture that raided neighbors for slaves and held them as personal property and symbols of status. Its a perfect counter example to the notion that anything like communism was a norm among non agrarian cultures. > stratification doesn't necessarily imply non-egalitarianism. That's a very different goal post. Egalitarianism is clearly a spectrum and even at one extreme it isn't synonymous with proto-communism. > One-vote-per-person elections, for instance, as you see with the Haudenosaunee The Haudenosaunee practiced agriculture so they don't demonstrate anything about "hunter-gatherers". I'd also like to point out that their "Mourning Wars" show something about as far from egalitarianism as I can imagine. Ritually sacking neighboring towns to torture and kill people to find cosmic justice for your own towns dead is... well hardly friendly. With respect to women in the Five Nations, they did in fact own land, homes, and various small goods and the lands and homes were hereditary. This is not pre-Marxist communism. >In fact, this is discussed in the first few chapters of Dawn of Everything—see the bit about how the natural economy allows people to basically walk away from coercive social structures, especially in high-resource areas like wetlands and river deltas. Right, but that isn't communism or even really related. Yes you could clearly just fuck off before the world was so full of people. > Anyway, as I think you can read, I wasn't arguing for ubiquity, but rather the existence of it or a comparison to the social stratification we are forced to deal with today. It's an interesting set of comparisons, but it's really apples to oranges. I'd certainly rather live in the US today than to be a neighbor or slave of the Salish people or to be captured and tortured to death by a Haudenosaunee war band. I'm happy to not have to bow to a Natches sun king. I think if you read The Down of Everything more carefully you find that the message is not that people in the past necessarily lived freer lives, but that their social arrangements were more experimental across time and place, and that there were more different ways of living. Some were at times and places freer in some key ways, but it's hard to generalize. Moreover all of the talk about pre-Marxist communism just feels like a warmed over attempt at historical materialism which is a dead idea.