On 4/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>The scarcity issue is tricky , if you think about it. "Civilization" > begins > based on the origin of agriculture and the _surpluses_ (the opposite of > scarcity) that agriculture provided. The surpluses are the original basis > for non-producing, predominately mental "laborers", priests and chiefs. > Somehow, in this fall from the Garden of Eden, these non-producers decide to > become the original ruling , male supremacist, exploiting class. To do this > they create _artificial_ scarcity, artificial Necessity ( I have a huge > essay on Necessity I'd like to share with you). In a technological context > in which they have the capacity to produce much more than hunters and > gatherers, abundance and surplus, they institute artificial scarcity and > artificial lack of Necessities for the oppressed masses in order to control > that producing class mass ! This is of course the a fundamental thesis of > Marxism. << >
For a slightly different view I highly recommend Barbara Ehrenreich's "Blood Rites". It was extremely dissed on this list and on Pen-l for overuse of the "Meme" meme, and for excessive eliding of "war" as in a few dozen men going after each other with spears compared to humanitarian bombing. But the thing is , subtract that and her thesis still stands. The following is like all such discussion a story - no more or less speculative than the other stories that have been offered. Her points are the following: 1) While you are right to reject 'hunter-gatherers", what precede this was not "gatherer" but "forager". [the last my terminology, but her meaning]. Humans were not vegetarians, but opportunists. We would eat fresh carrion, infants of other species when we could find them, insects, and a variety of other animal protein source. 2) Up until the invention of the bow predation was a major cause of death among humans. Yes we have spears, but spears are too great against giant cats. The Masai were (rightly) considered enormously brave for going after lions one on one with spears. But you will notice that no-one goes one on one against Jaguars or Tigers or Leopards with spears, at least not voluntarily. And the cats that were around at the time of prehistoric humankind were much nastier mothers than anything around today - sabertooths for example. Other species too - dire wolves (which survived way past prehistoric times) some of the bear species and so on. We weren't prey animals exactly; there weren't enough of us to be a staple of anything's diet. But we were snack food an desert for a whole lot of creatures. 3) So, though not classic prey creatures, we probably had to follow to some extent the classic herd strategy in the face of predators. If worst came to worst males were probably more dispensable, since if you lose a male you don't really lose reproductive ability as long as some males remain, where each female lost is reproductive ability lost. I will speculate (and this is me, not Barbara) that loss of males to predators was seen as roughly equalizing the sacifice and danger females faced in childbirth). 4) Then the bow was invented. That changes the balance of power. We had fire and spears, before, but the bow gives the chance to kill predators at a much greater distance. We aren't snack food any more - a great liberation. Bt the predators are still dangerous. As late as the Vietnam war there were villages in Vietnam that lost people to tigers. Don't know if it is still the case today. So the great slaughter begins. Humans start killing off the great predators. And the great herds too - too many ruminants around and the predators will feed on them and stay around to be a danger to humans. Kill off the great herds, hunt in deliberately wasteful ways, and you cut off their food source, starve them out. And it is not as though these herds are a vital food source to humans; in spite of opportunism, plants remain our main food source, though as long as you are wiping out herds you will feast on them too. 5) S long as there are still massive amounts of predators to wipe out this does not change your social structure. The death rate between men and women is no longer equal, since women still die in childbirth, whereas hunting is now comparatively safe. But once the major predators in an area are wiped out you have a bunch of unemployed men with weapons. The hunters probably are men. (Once it becomes safe there is no reason women should not take part. But if the social role of men was orginially as the ones to take the brunt of animal attacks, then once hunting became practical it probably did end up as a mans role.) OK unemployed men with weapons - that is a problem. So what do the men do? Well in some social unts they probably were reasonable and started doing their share in the gathering and crafting and childcare and whatever. But at least some social units found an exciting new game - war, where they attacked other tribes, took religious objects, kidnapped women, drove the other social unit of their territory, maybe took slaves. (Some Native American tribes had slaves without agriculture. It is apparently possible in a non-agricultural society.) If the women of the tribe object - well the men have the weapons. Basically it is Engels theory, but before the invention of agriculture. The change in the means of production is the invention of the bow. The surplus is the labor the used to spent on protecting against animals, plus the protein from hunting - which is very inefficient compared to foraging, but is still a surplus compared to the old diet where the men contributed even less. And you get gender oppression, class oppression and national oppression of sorts all at once. Men have the weapons and reduce women to an oppressed class - even more so if they steal women from another tribe . Women are opressed both as a gender and as a class. But in addition, you have the opression of the other tribe/social unit driven out. So national opression. Also, if you take men slaves, or if there are men in the tribe who do useful work instead of becoming warriors - you have some men who are oppressed on a class rather than geneder basis, possibly even on a "national" basis. So you have at least three opressions occurring at once gender, race/nation/ class or caste. And the invention of war. How true is it? As I said, it is pure speculation and story telling; don't think it is possible to come up with valid hypothesis that far back, let along theories. But unless you can come up with known facts it contradicts, I don't think it is any worse than any other such speculations.
