How Racist Capitalism lies here ♦ Anarchist writer attacks Communism here ♦
Indigenous forager people built huge earthworks at Poverty Point (USA) some 3500 years ago. Similar prehistoric urban centers also existed in Japan and elsewhere.
How Racist Capitalism Lies About Prehistory… and What We Can Learn from It
LOS ANGELES (USA), February 13— “Maintaining a society of people who are free, equal and autonomous takes a lot of work!” Eleanor, an anthropologist, was leading our second discussion of The Dawn of Everything.
This book is packed with data that upend what we’ve been taught. “Tens of thousands of years ago, people were not just grunting bodies – they had philosophy, culture and art. That goes counter to prevailing popular culture,” remarked Luz.
Eighteenth-century European intellectuals debated what it meant to be “civilized.” They contrasted themselves to people they racistly called “savages” living in places that European capitalism sought to dominate.
Hobbes claimed that “human nature” was to be selfish, ruthless, and generally sinful. He advocated authoritarian government as the only way to control these urges and organize a complex society.
In contrast, Rousseau imagined “noble savages” supposedly living in small egalitarian bands until agriculture led people rushing into the chains of modern society.
This dualism has framed most social theory ever since. “I believed the Rousseau myth,” said Ernie. “I drew hope from the !Kung and Hansa people. Why not go back to an egalitarian foraging way of life like theirs? But agriculture seemed to make that impossible. This book broke open the possibility of egalitarian society for me in a new way.”
“The people who actually worked with the !Kung knew that the story was more complex,” Eleanor responded. “They did not idealize them or imagine they were some ‘primordial’ forms of human society.”
Linda reported that the European debate was a response to the “Indigenous Critique.” French missionaries and traders met indigenous people in the northeastern American woodlands with very different ideas and ways of living.
And they wrote about them. An impoverished French nobleman known as Lahontan recorded his debates with the Wendat indigenous statesman and philosopher Kandiaronk, who had visited France.
Kandiaronk blasted French capitalist society. The French did not take care of each other. In contrast, no Wendat would let people starve and die in the streets.
The French believed outlandish things on faith. They could not debate matters rationally as Wendat people all did. Incredibly, French people were willing to take orders from others and subject themselves to laws and punishments.
After reflecting on European society for six years, Kandiaronk said, “I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman.” He traced that to their “distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’” and affirmed that “what you call money is the devil of devils, the source of all evils.”
The European ruling class had to respond to this powerful critique. Turgot provided one in the 1750s with his ideology, now familiar, of “stages” of history. Turgot argued that the freedom and equality of Wendat life were signs of their “inferiority.” Every household, he conjectured incorrectly, must have been self-sufficient and very poor. He claimed that technological advances drove social reorganization ever upward, from hunting to pastoralism to farming to commercial life (capitalism).
“When I was young, I watched Bronowski’s ‘Ascent of Man’ on public TV,” declared Nina. “What ‘ascent’? More warfare, more greed.”
Turbot’s racist technological determinism framed most anthropology for a long time. That included the 19th century US scholar Lewis Henry Morgan. His studies of indigenous Americans provided the main material for Engels’ Marxist classic The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
But the evidence now available to us – and there is much in The Dawn of Everything – proves this wrong.
Briefly: Archaeologists are literally unearthing large cities around the globe with no traces of inequality. On the other hand, some foragers (hunter-gatherer-fishers) lived in distinctly inegalitarian ways.
People who knew about and practiced some agriculture often continued to forage for most of their food. Within the same society, people would often live as free equals for part of each year but under authoritarian constraints for the rest.
The authors use this evidence selectively and sometimes in doubtful ways to make what is essentially a case for anarchism (against communism). Eleanor noted important material that they ignored entirely. We’ll write more about this later.
But we’re finding in the book a liberatory narrative of human possibilities for social organization. As our discussions continue, we’ll have more to say about ICWP’s vision and plans for communism.
Anarchist Writer Attacks Communism
“We might call this ‘mythic communism’ or even ‘epic communism ‘– a story we like to tell ourselves,” Wrote David Graeber. “Since the days of the French revolution, it has inspired millions, but it has also done enormous damage to humanity. …All of us like communists a good deal of the time. None of us like a communist consistently. ‘Communist society’ – in the sense of a society organized exclusively on that single principle – could never exist. But all social systems, even economic systems like capitalism, have always been built on top of a bedrock of actual existing communism.” (Debt, page 95)
As you can see, Graeber attacks communism and communists by embracing it and them. I’m glad a book club has taken the task of reading his latest work. Based on Debt and what I have read about The Dawn of Everything, I think the thrust of Graeber’s work is to undermine Historical Materialism. Of course, I could be wrong.
I look forward to reading more reports from the collective that is reading the book. Having a collective is already an advance on the way I took on reading Debt with just casual conversations with one friend. And reacting to that first report has already resulted in me finding out about a group of radical anthropologists based in London – at least one of whom (Chris Knight) writes informatively about early communism.
—Comrade in USA
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