Primitive Communism... Proof?

[Rafiq]

I got into a debate which I lost due to lack of knowledge. Some of the main points the guy made were:

I'd like you to adress these points accordingly:



1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!


2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.

3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.

[Sensible Socialist]

I got into a debate which I lost due to lack of knowledge. Some of the main points the guy made were:

I'd like you to adress these points accordingly:



1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!
Many tribal communities operated on a communal basis and none would have survived if they were murdering each other like animals. Which actually is funny, considering capitalist nations often engage in wars in which we murder each other just like animals.



2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.
I don't think that has ever been proven. Considering capitalism have been around just a very short time of all human history, our "nature" must have undergone some serious changes.


3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.
Is the person you are debating aware of democracy? It seems he has a hard-on for authoritarian rule.

[Rafiq]

Many tribal communities operated on a communal basis and none would have survived if they were murdering each other like animals. Which actually is funny, considering capitalist nations often engage in wars in which we murder each other just like animals.

Proof? Source?




I don't think that has ever been proven. Considering capitalism have been around just a very short time of all human history, our "nature" must have undergone some serious changes.

But apparently they said "we always killed each other and had leaders"



Is the person you are debating aware of democracy? It seems he has a hard-on for authoritarian rule.

He is not in favor of democracy. And if he is, he still thinks you need someone to lead, even if that means electing the leader.

[Imposter Marxist]

1) Plenty of historical books talk about early human development.
2) Ask him to prove it. (Burden of Truth)
3) See "2)"

[Rafiq]

1) Plenty of historical books talk about early human development.

Again, source?

[Thirsty Crow]

Maybe you could start with Chris Harman's A People's History of the World and keep an eye for additional sources within the first few chapters which deal with "primitive communism".

[hatzel]

Try Kropotkin's Mutual Aid :) It just seems such an obvious choice, though, so I don't know if we could perhaps come up with something a little more...exotic and unexpected...

[Jimmie Higgins]

I got into a debate which I lost due to lack of knowledge. Some of the main points the guy made were:

I'd like you to adress these points accordingly:

1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals! It's not so much that they owned the means of production than that they were all the means of production. Cooperative labor was basically the way for small bands to survive. There was simply not enough surplus before agriculture for some people to have a permanent non-working position where they could dictate the work that others had to do. It took agriculture and the ability to store food and other resources before there had to be permanent positions in society where one person spent all his time not working in the field or hunting but guarding the food or taking inventory or whatnot.

Unless someone invents a time machine, there can't really be definitive proof one way or another. But Marx and Engels and other took a lot of their theory from reports by missionaries and so on who came into contact with small bands of people. A lot of the arguments about the violence of "tribal people" comes from a white-man's burden perspective historically, but a lot of the actual recorded instances of cannibalism or intense warfare are from tribes who had already been displaced by settlers (and therefore had to fight with other tribes) or had societies in decline due to displacement, disease, etc.


2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect. Then why did it take human civilization 9,800 years to develop capitalism?

Selfishness and Greed and so on are meaningless in the abstract. Is someone who is starving and hording food "greedy" in the same way that CEOs who lay off people and then collect bonuses are "greedy"? Besideds capitalism doesn't operate on the basis of "greed" it operates on a basis of profits and the profit-motive is the reason for a lot of the way companies will destroy the earth to make a buck, break out backs in labor to make a buck, etc.


3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.That's what Mubarak said: "It's me or chaos". Right before he sent people with horses into a protest and paid thugs to attack and turn a peaceful protest into a 100,000 person street brawl.

[Zanthorus]

1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together!

The classic piece on this is Engels' Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which was inspired by Engels' reading of Marx's Ethnological Notebooks and in particular the notes Marx took on Lewis Henry Morgan's Ancient Society. Engels's and Morgan's pieces are on MIA along with the third part of Marx's notebooks:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/morgan-lewis/ancient-society/index.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/ethnographical-notebooks/ch03.htm

Jack Conrad did a supplement for last weeks Weekly Worker, When all the crap began, discussing societies prior to the dawn of class divided social forms and drawing on much more recent anthropological work by Chris Knight of the radical anthropology group:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004288
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004297

[Savage]

2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.

I can't believe this one is still going around. If the vast minority of people in the world that represent capital share their interests as a class, why do you think that this greediness/selfishness represents humanity as a whole? If greediness/selfishness was in fact inherent in humanity then any sort of class society would fall to pieces instantly, because the selfishness of one class, be it the bourgeoisie, feudal aristocracy, the roman patricians etc, relies on the selflessness of the exploited class, that is until their consciousness is developed.
Primitive communist society did exist for tens of thousands of years, but this was never a world human community for obvious reasons.

[bcbm]

1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!

kind of both. people lived in more or less egalitarian gatherer-hunter groups but there could also be pretty nasty conflicts between them.

[Amphictyonis]

1.Google Marx and the Iroquois then read. Also how many people has the US military killed?
2.Google Kropotkins "Mutual Aid; A Factor of Evolution" and read.
3.Look up what the economy was like in Spain when Anarchists had control. Be sure to point out it didn't fail because of "chaos" in the work place.

[gestalt]

1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!

Unfortunately, providing definitive proof of this is nigh on impossible for a couple of reasons: 1. There is no historical record, as textual language is a product of the Neolithic and urban revolutions. 2. There is little to no archaeological record which lend itself to the study of social stratification in the hunter-gatherer phase. Some anthropologists rely on observations of modern tribal to develop their theories, but there are some flaws to this approach.

However, our comrades have already touched on several key points we can posit: as with other animals we most likely lived in small kin groups, as we were hunters and gatherers and constantly moving we likely had no need for the concept of private property (e.g., land ownership), there was scant surplus which is the primary reason for the need for and rise of agriculture and animal husbandry.

Richard Lee is an expert on this era and economic anthropology.



2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.The mode of exchange influences, and some argue determines, "human nature." Also, by what measures does one "prove" selfishness, greed and the like?

Even still, capitalism has been in existence for four centuries at best, humans have been around in their modern form for at least 150,000 years. It is asinine to believe that an economic mode which has been around for less than 1% of our collective existence is the perfection of the form and the end of history.


3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.This is unfounded, disprovable with historic examples and semantical. One can take initiative without creating or imposing hierarchy.

This position reduces down to, "If no one tells me what to do, I won't do anything or worse: everyone will do what they want!"

[mikelepore]

1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!

So what if people murdered each other? All that is being claimed regarding primitive communism is that the means of production, which were the forests and fields and rivers, had no owners. No one hired other people to use the resources, confiscated the goods produced, and then sold the goods back to the producers.


2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.

If it's true that people are naturally selfish and greedy, that's an additional argument for ABOLISHING capitalism. It would mean that society has been unnecessarily choosing to give those selfish and greedy people the opportunities to act on their harmful impulses, by allowing them to legally inherit membership in families of stockholders, landlords, speculators, etc. When a society doesn't want people to act on any form of harmful impulses, it must do what it can to abolish any opportunities for them to act on those impulses.


3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.

Just because we need managers, that doesn't mean that they have to be stockholder-appointed managers. They could be committees of worker delegates instead. The workers would exercise better judgment in choosing the managers than stockholders ever could, because the workers are familiar with the production process. Who would more likely be the best judge of who would make the best board of directors for an airplane plant -- the workers who every day operate the technical details of the airplane plant, or a random selection of people around the world whose only connection to the place is that they have placed phone calls to stockbrokers to buy some shares? Clearly the workers are in the best position to make the selection of the management.

[janrae20]

I wish they care! I am a one man rebel!

[#FF0000]

The guy you're arguing with sounds like he is old. Is he old?

[Tim Finnegan]

2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.
Ignoring any value judgements in regards to the latter claim, I'm not sure I understand the connection here. Why is capitalism any more expressive of this innate human selfishness than any other system? I can't help but feel that this individual may be employing a certain amount of circular logic.

Incidentally, am I the only one who if fascinated by how frequently propertarians vacillate between declaring that humanity is suited to liberal capitalism because we are a benevolent and freedom-loving species, and that it is suited to liberal capitalism because we are selfish, thoughtless mob? Doublethink defined...


3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.Well, if I understand current thinking on primitive communism correctly, they did entertain leadership roles, but they were situational, rather than permanent. It's what's known as an "adhocracy", a system in which the collective temporarily delegates decision making to its most competent member of members for the duration of any given task, e.g. the best hunter takes the lead when hunting, the most diplomatic takes the leader when communicating with a neighbouring band, etc.

[ar734]

I got into a debate which I lost due to lack of knowledge. Some of the main points the guy made were:

I'd like you to adress these points accordingly:



1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!


2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.

3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.

1. Every pre "historical" pre "civilized" society lived that way. Including native Americans, Australian aborigines, Polynesians, Eskimos, the African San (still existent) and Amazon primitive tribes.
2. humans also commit murder but that doesnt mean we live in murderous societies or that humans are naturally murderous. Capitalist societies have proven to be quite murderous.
3. The third point is true: the workers will take over the factories and lead them themselves.

[robbo203]

I got into a debate which I lost due to lack of knowledge. Some of the main points the guy made were:

I'd like you to adress these points accordingly:



1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!
.

The evidence that there were, and still are, classless, primitive communistic societies based on food sharing and egalitarian social arrangments is pretty solid and exhaustively covered here. So I wont go on about it. The other point about high levels of violence/ homicide is I think one that has gained currency recently thanks to the efforts of one, Stephen Pinker, author of The Blank Slate whose perspective is essentially a sociobiological one. If my memory is correct, Pinker based his assertion on archaelogical examination of the remains of bones by someone whose name I forget now which purportedly revealed a high level of fatalities by violent means, particularly among young men. Generalising from the data - if indeed such speculations are correct - is risky at the best of times. We talk blandly about "hunter gatherer" societies overlooking that there are different kinds of hunter gatherer societies - notably band societies and tribal societies. Most of the evidence of violence seems to relate to the latter and of course levels of violence will differ enormously from one example to the next depending on circumstances. Contact with colonising powers and deteriorating environmetal conditions seem to have been contributory factors. I could go back to stuff I looked at a year or two ago (if I can still find it!) but I can distinctly recall many instances of primitive HG band societies in which levels of violence were virtually negligible. Many HG groups happily coexisted with sedantry farmers for thousands of years


2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect. .

If human nature is essentially selfish how come the great majority selflessly permit a tiny minority to appropriate the wealth that they produce? How did we arrive at a situation in which this tiny is able to economically exploit the majority by paying the latter less than the value of the wealth they create?


Actually all this talk of selfishness and the like reflects a somewhat sloppy application of concepts like "the selfish gene" which not even Dawkins himself gave warrant to. (He has maintained that his book with that title has been misunderstood by the Left just as it was mistakenly embraced by the Right as a vindication of social darwinism). There is a nice little paragraph in Roger Triggs book which puts such terms in their proper context:

Sociobiology often operates with curious notions of what is in someone 's interests. For example, advantage is often defined as reproductive advantage. This may be useful as a technical term, but it is grotesque to trade on the ambiguity by demonstrating that an apparently altruistic action is really in someone's interest (and hence, perhaps, 'really' selfish) My reproductive advantage is a biological notion and may be very distinct from what is to my personal advantage. Ruse for example, calmly remarks that 'of course there may come a point in the life of an organism when it would pay to lay down its life for its siblings'. When a theory can conclude that it 'pays' any creature to lay down its life, it is operating with a very technical sense of 'payment' which bears no relation to questions of personal advantage or to the classication of behaviour as selfish
(R Trigg, The Shaping of Man: Philosophical Aspects of Sociobiology, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982, p.116-7)



3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.

You need to define what you mean by "leadership in this context. You are always going to get some people who are more skilled and adept at doing some things than others. I am quite happy to defer to a trained neurosurgeon to go ahead an probe around my cortex with a scalpel. I would be slightly hesitant about allowing my drinking mate in the pub to do this - particularly after a pint or two and notwithstanding that he would have my best interests at heart.

What socialists oppose is leadership in the political sense of some elite or vanguard making decisions , or capturing political power, on behalf of the working class. This can only lead to substitutionism and the continuation of class relationships. It is emphatically incompatible with the marxian principle that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves

[Dave B]

The problem arises from the fact that whatever primitive people ie hunter-gatherers were doing they left little record of it as they didn’t write it down.

However there are still primitive societies still in existence and they can be and have been observed eg Kalahari bushmen



[Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they did have hereditary chiefs, the chiefs' authority was limited. The bushmen instead made decisions among themselves by consensus (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Consensus), with women treated as relatively equal. In addition, the San economy was a gift economy (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Gift_economy), based on giving each other gifts on a regular basis rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services.]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmen)

The San are particularly interesting as recent mitochondrial and Y chromosome research on the origins of modern humans appears to trace back to this very group.

there is also the Piraha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_people)

And the Anutan




[Concern for others is the backbone of Anutan philosophy. 'Aropa' is a concept for giving and sharing, roughly translated as compassion, love and affection. Aropa informs the way Anutans treat one another and it is demonstrated through the giving and sharing of material goods such as food. For example, the land on Anuta is shared among the family units so that each family can cultivate enough food to feed themselves and those around them.]


http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/anuta/index.shtml (http://www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/anuta/index.shtml)

Radio programme;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00k8lfz (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00k8lfz)

The Mir system as discussed by Kropotkin was also mentioned and referred to by Engels.

On Social Relations In Russia by Engels Afterword (1894)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm)

I seem to remember that Pipes in his book on the Russian revolution also gives some space to this.

There was also a sort of parallel in the Scottish Clan system which, despite its patriarchal nature, did still involve collective and co-operative production the remnants of which amazing survived into the early part of the 20th century.

http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page39.html (http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page39.html)

.

[ChrisK]

Just pick up a used introduction to cultural anthropology. It will cover this.

[Q]

The Radical Anthropology Group (http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/RAG.html) bases itself on Engels' work in the earlier mentioned Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State with modern scientific evidence.

[bcbm]

However there are still primitive societies still in existence and they can be and have been observed

there are also quite a few who have resisted all attempts at communication, which is kind of cool.

[bcbm]

The guy you're arguing with sounds like he is old. Is he old?

kind of ageist bro

[Rafiq]

The guy you're arguing with sounds like he is old. Is he old?


Yeah, he's pretty old.

Usually old people just dismiss me as young and naive.



kind of ageist bro

Well, we can't really deny that there is a significant number of elderly who tend to be more conservative and authoritarian than 'everyone else'. And by old, I mean old.

[Oswy]

I got into a debate which I lost due to lack of knowledge. Some of the main points the guy made were:

I'd like you to adress these points accordingly:

1. Prove that humans lived in classless, primitive communist society in which the people owned the means of production together! From what I hear, people murdered each other like animals!


2. It has been PROVEN that human nature is in favor of capitalism. humans are naturally selfish, greedy, ect.

3. You ALWAYS need someone to lead. Same goes for a factory. You ALWAYS need someone to lead a factory, and you always need a leader or else you get CHAOS.

1. All humans lived as hunter-gathering groups until what is termed the 'neolithic revolution' (c. 8000-5000 BCE) when the evidence shows the emergence of a settled agricultural mode of production in several parts of the world. To put this in context it means that for 99 per cent of our history as a species we have lived as hunter-gatherers. There are still some groups of hunter-gatherers today, though they are much marginalised and may well disappear this century, but setting aside the issue of their 'contamination' by the modern world, they offer some evidence of the community-based subsistence life all our ancestors evolved through.

2. References to 'human nature' should always be treated with caution, not least because humans have historically shown themselves capable of living in all kinds of different ways, but also because the kinds of 'human nature' we express are easily driven by the kinds of environments we exist within. In short, capitalist society encourages (even demands) selfishness and rewards greed, so we tend to behave accordingly or suffer the consequences. Aside from this, there is simply no way to establish 'human nature' outside of an economic and social context and which in turn reveals a particular kind of 'human nature'.

3. Lots of institutions are organised through committees and consultation processes. We may need leadership but that leaves an awful lot of room for different kinds of leadership.