Neolithic Revolution and the mode of production

[DOOM]

So I get that this may be a controversial topic within marxist theory, but for this boards sake, let's discuss this.
So what has actually happened after the neolithic revolution? I get that this was the start of commodity production and extraction of surplus value, but what kind of mode of production prevailed at that time? What were the crucial characteristics of it and how did it differ from feudalism?

[Rusty Shackleford]

I'm a bit rusty on this but isn't the neolitic revolution the period of domestication of certain crops and animals?

If so then this is the first step towards class divisions and sexual division in terms of labor and social power.

Commodity production doesn't come for some time after this period as humans learn to be more and more productive and also interact with other groups. With the advent of domestic crops and livestock though, labor is focused on more specific tasks regarding those things and then property comes into being after a long period as well.

I'll hazard to make a guess that for some time, the communal system still prevailed before events led to the prevalence of slavery and land ownership.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Iirc the beginning of commodity production and slavery coincides with the spoils of war gained from groups fighong over resources

[motion denied]

Surplus product does not equal surplus value.

I have problems on turning surplus-value (and value production) into a transhistorical category. Remember that the "differentia specifica" of the capitalist mode of production is surplus-value, the buying of labor-power to valorise capital (capital valorizing itself). That is, Marx's categories are specific to capitalism.

[Rusty Shackleford]

This period is obviously not a period of capitalist anything.

That being said surplus from these new more productive methods of obtaining food and from loot from raids and so on acted as a catalyst to further develop property relations and a focus on trade

[Blake's Baby]

Property relations certainly; especially when you have Neolithic 'settlers' building fences and saying 'these animals and plants belong to us', when previously Mesolithic people were likely rather more nomadic. Maybe not all of them, but even settled Mesolithic people didn't domesticate animals or plants. Must have been a shock to follow the deer/wild cattle/go hunting pigs and find some newly-arrived farmer shouting 'get off my land!'

Trade, I'm not so sure. There are objects (usually as far as we can tell prestige items) that might be 'traded' but anthropologists recognise a dozen or more different forms of transmission of goods which don't all represent 'trade' (as in 1-an exchange of 2-values).

Goods can be given as presents; they can be taken as curiosities; they can be given from one to another to another to another to another and end up 1,000 miles away; they can indeed be 'traded' (you give me that amber, I'll give you this axe). But it's not as simple as (for example) 'obsidian from Turkey ends up in Hungary, therefore communities in Turkey were trading with communities in Hungary'. My suspicion is most Neolithic communities were self-sufficient in everything except 'luxuries' but that's a bit of a methodological problem (tautology really) because 'luxuries' in this context pretty much means 'exotica'.

I'm not sure that surpluses were used for trade so much as insurance against famine next year. Certainly there were surpluses, but production for trade I really don't think was generally the point, even up to the Middle Ages.

[Alexios]

Don't you think it's a bit ridiculous to even try to assign a "mode of production" to a period from which almost no sources exist?

[Blake's Baby]

Not really. People need to eat. The economy is generally geared round production of necessities, until we get to... now really. We can make some assumptions about how economies were organised in pre-history. A lot of archaeologists are going to be out of a job if we can't (me included).

[DOOM]

Surplus product does not equal surplus value.

I have problems on turning surplus-value (and value production) into a transhistorical category. Remember that the "differentia specifica" of the capitalist mode of production is surplus-value, the buying of labor-power to valorise capital (capital valorizing itself). That is, Marx's categories are specific to capitalism.

Yeah I'm a bit confused with marxist terminology sometimes.

[Hatshepsut]

So what has actually happened after the neolithic revolution?...What were the crucial characteristics of it and how did it differ from feudalism?


This period is obviously not a period of capitalist anything. That being said, surplus from these new more productive methods of obtaining food...acted as a catalyst to further develop property relations and a focus on trade

Perhaps the most influential theory regarding how the neolithic revolution came about was advanced by Kent Flannery, who believed that increasing population pressure in regions of high-quality foraging led parts of the population to disperse into more marginal areas, where they diversified their subsistence base to cope, for instance by inventing fishing. Then they began deliberately planting seeds of desirable plants to encourage higher yields of foodstuffs. Since these "fields" weren't actively cultivated--plant and run, and come back later when it's ripe, you might say--this doesn't constitute agriculture per se. But it's a start. Flannery's model is called "the broad-spectrum revolution," and he pointed to a specific area along the Iraq-Iran border where it occurred about 15000 years ago.

Archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, who adopted a Marxian viewpoint, apparently coined the term "neolithic revolution" for the last phases of the stone age, when agriculture began, in the same area Flannery studied. Because fields don't move, agriculture led quickly to towns. Towns and settled assets require military defense, so there was indeed a rapid change in human social relations, to larger, more organized polities than the earlier bands or tribes, with an elite emerging who could control distribution of agricultural produce to an extent, redirecting some of it to themselves. Discovery of bronze metallurgy intensified the urbanization process. Soon, elites could exact labor levies for construction projects such as irrigation works and walls, and thus sequester wealth and physical symbols of power in the first cities that show monumental architecture.

The neolithic differed from feudalism in that while there were rulers, no long-term hereditary aristocracy had yet been set up; instead each ruler seems to have promoted his (or rarely, her) own courtiers. The neolithic "states" were much smaller than the feudal ones, with less organization of landholding into estates. Another difference is that religion had not yet been institutionalized in large temples to act as parallel power centers. There was no money. Exchange was by barter or by personal obligation.

Both these theorists have been criticized. It is true that physical evidence surviving from that era is limited, making it hard to determine what caused what. But social class was the very first distinction made in starting civilization, clearly predating the invention of writing. Similar lines of development also happened independently in other parts of the world.

Gender division of labor arose long before the neolithic, as males could hunt while females gathered plant foods and tended the young and old. Since women actually contributed more to hunter-gatherer economies than men, they probably enjoyed social equality. They didn't necessarily work harder; plants are easy to collect and offer reliability of yield, unlike hunting. Equality norms hold among the San hunter-gatherers of Africa known in modern times. The introduction of military activity and of owning animal herds or fields changed things, allowing men to arrogate more of the decision-making. Farm labor is arduous, and since women were in the fields with the men but also bearing and raising children, an unequal division where women faced more work burdens with fewer rewards often resulted. Meanwhile, elites lived off tax produce and did no labor except for administrative duties and army campaigns. The latter, of course, brought in slaves.

[Sasha]

Mesolithic tribes waged brutal warfare over huntinggrounds and had exstensive flint mines and traded with other tribes. All these things have been with us since the dawn of time, even chimps will share their food if enough is there to strike alliances or avoid conflict.

[Alexios]

Not really. People need to eat. The economy is generally geared round production of necessities, until we get to... now really. We can make some assumptions about how economies were organised in pre-history. A lot of archaeologists are going to be out of a job if we can't (me included).
Yes, and I don't think archaeologists are doing anything wrong. What I'm skeptical of is using Marxist historical materialism to make judgements of entire eras from which few or no sources survive. How can we really classify something as a mode of production if we don't know the nuances of the system? Even with Classical and Medieval history this is often difficult or impossible.

[Blake's Baby]

Mesolithic tribes waged brutal warfare over huntinggrounds and had exstensive flint mines and traded with other tribes...

Evidence, please.



... All these things have been with us since the dawn of time...

Yeah, not religion, please.



Yes, and I don't think archaeologists are doing anything wrong. What I'm skeptical of is using Marxist historical materialism to make judgements of entire eras from which few or no sources survive. How can we really classify something as a mode of production if we don't know the nuances of the system? Even with Classical and Medieval history this is often difficult or impossible.

Well, we don't know the nuances you're right but to say there are no 'sources' is to underestimate non-textual sources. We can be pretty confident about the nature of many societies in the European Bronze and Iron Ages and we can be slightly less certain but still fairly sure about how society was organised in the Neolithic, and even in the Mesolithic we can make certain statements.

I don't see a problem with the claim that the Mesolithic was egalitarian and the Neolithic society (associated with the Linearbandkeramik and Childe's 'Neolithic Revolution/'Light from the East' theory) was a class society. Because that's the direction the archaeological (palaeo-botanical, archaeo-zoological, genetic etc) evidence points us.

[Sasha]

Warfare; http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba52/ba52feat.html
http://www.academia.edu/480836/Violent_interactions_in_the_Mesolithic_evidence_an d_meaning

I admit that the mines I thought where mesolithic but where very late or early Neolithic, my bad

[Blake's Baby]

A lot of that evidence is controversial Sasha. Some of it's about the Neolithic not the Mesolithic - even one of the most widely-quoted examples of a pre-historic massacre, Talheim, mentioned in the CBA article - "Massacres were not uncommon in prehistoric Europe. Perhaps the most dramatic case we know took place at Talheim in south-west Germany, where a mass grave dating from about 5000 BC contained 34 men, women and children, killed by multiple axe and adze blows to the back of the head. Three of the dead had also been shot with arrows from behind. Here the victims had been unceremoniously thrown into a pit without grave goods" - a couple of paragraphs later this dramatic example is admitted to be Neolithic people who seem to have been massacred by other Neolithic people. And even the people you're citing to back up your argument (eg Nick Thorpe in the CBA article again) say "I don't believe that warfare is inherent in human nature, or a constant feature of human history. Archaeology suggests that there have been times and places where conflict has been relatively common or uncommon" (rather than 'been with us since the dawn of time').

The evidence for massacres and organised inter-group conflict is sketchy in the European Mesolithic. But I will read the Roksandic material fully and refrain from further comment on it until I've done so. Got to admit the Mesolithic of Eastern Europe is not my strong point.

[Blake's Baby]

Sorry, weird double post thing going on.

[Prometeo liberado]

If I'm not mistaken what occurred next was the "Axial Age". This proves that stock "markets" (insert trading debt)were created and the by product was factories, elementary capital exchange. Usery thus became not only a sin but a type of virtue.