Not Primitive Communism

There is the Marxist idea that pre the large-scale agricultural revolution (or the neolithic revolution) ‘hunter-gatherers’ or agricultural minimalists were living in primitive communism.

Nothing could be more wrong! They lived sustainably, new nothing of systemised warfare, maintained a strong sense of egalitarian solidarity, and enjoyed a work-life balance only labouring 15-20 hours per week.

Acute stratification and classism was birthed by imperial agricultural-dominant societies which denuded the local land-base and sought to conquer new lands with the storage of grains as surplus that could be hoarded and transported to feed populations and armies.

Jared Diamond has identified this imperial domination concurrent with the rise of the ‘neolithic revolution’ as the worst mistake in the history of the human race. Nutritionally poor (with the over-proliferation of grains and cheap carbohydrates) and politically unstable and belligerent, we are still paying the vast karmic penalties for such short-sighted epistemic socio-structural error and ecologically unsound manoeuvre in human relations.

We live in primitive capitalism – primitive and plagued by inefficiency in meeting human need, and ancient cultures were not primitive. I am not saying that many elements of ‘civilisation’ are not redeemable: there are many virtues of ‘civilised’ societies, and ones that we should retain. Progressive elements to governance and governmentality, separation of church and state, and unprecedented technological innovation are to name a few of these redeemable virtues.

Let’s not be too quick apply blanket labels to entire and complex social and political systems. But there is more of a case to give the taxonomic categorisation that capitalism is in fact primitive, compared with ‘hunter-gatherer’ or agricultural minimalists than the other way around!

I understand that it may seem primitive compared with an idyllic post-capitalist society which has never been achieved yet with advanced technology. However, First Nations Peoples have already achieved really existing egalitarianism.

Also, as a side-note, the form that an egalitarian post-capitalist social system would workably look like may be at odds with the communist ‘ideals’ of dismantling private property and the nuclear family (families with two parents of any gender). Marriage, and property – if fairly acquired (and reflects inclusive use-value – a personal conception of property, not capitalist bourgeois conceptions of property), should be retained in any humane post-capitalist egalitarian society with advanced technology. Whilst I am for retaining a small state, and state sanctioned private property upheld by a police force – for various reasons¹, see Fresco and Meadow’s resource based economy without state sanctioned bourgeois private property, but with ‘access abundance’² for an alternate or slightly different view to mine: (https://www.thevenusproject.com). Fresco’s idea was that ‘people don’t want to own things’, what they want is access to them. I believe the right to exclude others from using possessions and assets should be enshrined and upheld by a small state, enforced by the legal system and a policing force, with a separation of powers.

Some food for thought!

1. One main reason is that some individuals and groups of persons, have irrevocably chosen and pledged for an absolutist evil – rejecting and repudiating good-nature and worshiping immorality instead. I note that morality and immorality are consistent in their quest for greater power, it is just the kind of power where their differences are at stake. ↩︎
2. Obviously ‘abundance’ is a relativist concept meaning that a good or service is so numerous that is freely available to all. Please see Kubler, M 1 January 2018, ‘Michael Kubler : The Price of Zero Transition to an RBE, Zday [ The Zeitgeist Movement ]’, last accessed 12 November 2024, YouTube, 9:47 – 10:28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ogy7sCAfJY&t=608s ↩︎