> On Feb 24, 2026, at 18:30, hari kumar via groups.io
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> In partial exculpation of my unwarranted extrapolation of Engels's quote on
> ’shamefaced materialism', I was grappling with Graeber and Wengrow.
I read that tome a couple of summers ago. It was a slow read. I actually read
two other books during the time that I was reading that. It's an interesting
and frustrating book about the interaction of human societies and the
development of human cultures. Regarding Marxist analysis, they argue against
the "history by stages" belief found in Engels Origin of the Family and a great
deal of Marxist literature, particularly the 19th century.
> I spent a long friggin day on getting my head around the ramifications of
> this following set of data as explained below:
>
> "A very recent paper explored an example of how early inequality developed in
> pre-history, and the social structure of early society.
I think Graeber (if he were alive) and Wengrow would say that there is no such
thing as the "social structure of early society." I think they would argue that
we find communism in one N.American nation and a slave state in an adjacent
one. They applied a theory of "schismogenesis" to help explain the
distinctions. But they don't explain much. Graeber seemed to enjoy taking
undeveloped swipes at Marxism.
There is one chapter or section labeled "the end of the mode of production" or
words to that effect. But they give very good illustrations of the Marxist mode
of production such as the contrast between the Ohlone acorn-based society in
northern California compared to the fishing cultures of the Pacific Northwest.
The latter captured and exploited slaves, supported a king and warrior class
that accumulated community wealth to be distributed at potlatches, and had a
mode of production that required many hours of processing at the time of
harvest. This, as Graeber and Wengrow explained, meant that they needed to
defend their stores immediately after harvest and until they consume it. The
Ohlone acorn-culture, however, processed harvest food immediately before
consuming the food. Stealing Ohlone stores in a raid, therefore, would steal
much less labor-time than in the fishing cultures. The Ohlone were reportedly
egalitarian.
It sounds like a mode of production to me.
>
> What does all this mean? It means that in more or less ‘normal’ villages of
> the period, wealth was being accumulated. That was associated with an influx
> of Neolithic farmers.
I think there is a belief among many experts that there was no single culture
of hunter gatherers or maybe not for Neolithic farmers. If Graeber and Wengrow
were right about this, one dig would come up with one set of observations about
communal wealth while another society might have a different social structure.
> Within that same village, there were - likely ‘low status” - probably slaves
> - who were un-related to the families with wealthy grave goods, and who were
> buried sans wealth. This is unable to be explained by the type of analyses
> put forward by Graeber D and Wengrow (“The dawn of everything - a new history
> of humanity”; 2021 Toronto, Canada).”
>
> I am - and was earlier today - trying to understand if Graeber was a
> ’shame-faced materialist’ or an idealist….
I don't have my head around "shamed-face materialism" but found Graeber to be
someone who takes potshots at Marxist analysis without giving any analysis to
explain it. But I have not studied Graeber, so I may have missed his critique
of Marxist analysis. It was not in his overly-long book on The Beginning of
Everything, which is was a fun ride but leaves the reader wondering what was
their point.
Mark
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