> On Feb 25, 2026, at 06:51, hari kumar via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes FWIW I agree overall with this view. In fact one thing I remarked on the > book is remarkable reluctance to do a frontal attack on M and E. It is alwasy > in a sideways assault. But I am only about over a half thru’. > I find it a fast read actually. But maybe as I am focused on trying to pick > out pieces to cite or refute.
I kept following the footnotes and doing too much background reading. As my summer reading turned into fall reading, I stopped chasing down questions such as their claim that some Amerindians would traverse the length of the continent, and that travel through the territories of other tribes and nations was somehow facilitated by clan culture. > > I don't know how familiar people here interested in this sort of thing know > about Charles Woolfson: “The Labour Theory of Culture: A re-examination of > Engels’s Theory of Human Origins”; London 1982. I have read this repeatedly > over and over agin since ca 1990 when I got it. I can highly recommend it to > anyone who still is influenced by the Althusser-Lukacian line that Engels did > not know much and anyway distorted science etc etc… way. I haven't read much from Althusser or Lukacs and don't think I've been infected by their perspectives. Except maybe on dialectics: Lukacs and others held that dialectics applied only to human history and not to the rest of nature as Engels believed. So, for a long time, I suffered from an ambiguity on dialectics, but I'm much better now. https://archive.org/details/LabourTheoryOfCultureRoutleCharlesWoolfson/mode/2up The Labour Theory of Culture: A Re-Examination of Engel's Theory of Human Origins : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive archive.org Woolfson's book looks like a must read on this topic. I think Graeber and Wengrow completely reject Engels. But as you wrote, Hari, they do it sidewise. More of an insinuation or a smear than an argument. But I believe what G&W wrote about the great diversity in structures and practices of pre-historical human foraging and farming cultures. There generally has been no necessary progression of social relations and productive forces, or commonality of social structures across different societies until very late in human history; G&W noted that some human cultures transitioned from settled farming to foraging as well as vice versa. They had a chapter on hybrid farming/foraging cultures IIRC. I think they argued against Engels and Marx on whether human history proceeded in stages: Each stage was defined by a mode of production determined by a set of productive relations and forces. That is the argument (or straw man) that Graeber and Wengrow seemed to attack - sideways. I don't think that Marx or Engels would rule out a great diversity in human societies that forage or farm. I do think that they were right in that many of those human societies were communal in property ownership up to and including their own time (e.g. communal land ownership in Palestine up to the 20th century). Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40846): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40846 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117988661/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
