* * From: Gil Skillman < As will be clear, I'm not so sure about the criticism of my argument that Charles advances here, but I was very interested in the perspective represented in Sahlins's treatment of "hunter-gatherer" societies, which I think raises some fundamental issues of descriptive accuracy and historical dynamics.
^^^^ CB: Hello Gil. I don't know whether my criticism will stand up , but I'll try to clarify. ^^^^ To begin-- >Where I say: > > >Thus, to withdraw a portion of the "total labor of society" away from some>line of production in order to devote it to another is to deny some form of >"needs" being met. Labor allocation matters because labor is economically>scarce, and couldn't possibly matter if labor weren't ultimately scarce in>this way.< ^^^^^ CB: I guess I'm questioning whether "labor is economically scarce" at all times. Maybe that's a simpler way than all I wrote below. Couldn't there be enough labor available sometimes to do all the work, such that there wouldn't be a problem of allocation ? Let me start there. >Charles writes: >: I'm thinking the fallacy in this is that it seems to assume that humans>could produce an infinite amount of things, use-values. The notion that all>labor allocated to one line of production _could_ be allocated to some other>line of production implies actualized infinite production is possible. It >also implies that people have infinite wants/needs ( see quote from Sahlins >below). Gil: I don't see the basis for this criticism. In the specific context of the passage I cite from Marx, the relevant level of production is that which could be attained for a given "total labor of society," which of course is not infinite. And I don't see how the premise that labor can be reallocated from one line of production to another implies that "actualized infinite production is possible." To the contrary, I think it's pretty clear that no such implication follows. Nor does it imply anything about the potential extent of people's wants and needs. ^^^^^^ CB: The need for reallocation of labor from one line of production to another only arises if there isn't enough labor to do all the work in all the lines of production at once. If there is a surfeit of labor, enough labor, then there need not be any allocating. The only way there would always be an allocation problem is if there was always more work to do than labor to do it. That would only be a permanent problem if the amount of work to be done were infinite. If the amount of work to be done is finite, then it is possible that there could be enough labor to do all of it, and no need to allocate labor between different productions leaving some lines with a scarcity of labor. If there is a finite amount of work to be done, then there may not be a scarcity of labor. >If labor is allocated to productions A, B and C and is sufficient to produce >all that owners A, B and C aim to produce, to say that labor _could_ have >been allocated to D or E....Z ,AA, BB, ... Is to render it "scarce" through >imagining an impossibly infinite production world and infinite wants/needs. Sorry, I still don't see it. For example, in the passage I cited Marx wasn't talking about applying existing labor to *potential* or *imaginary* lines of production, but just reallocating labor across existing lines of production. But even if he did the former, it wouldn't, it couldn't, then imply infinite production, since in any case the "total labor of society" is in any case finite. >In a world of finite needs, it is possible to have unscarce labor and unscarce products, no ? Yes. And if a product that requires labor to produce is nevertheless unscarce--that is, it is not demanded--then according to Marx it doesn't have a value, even if labor were expended on it. That's the point I was trying to make. ^^^^ CB: Yes, I think this is the same as saying that commodities must have use-value in order to have exchange-value. I agree. I will copy here the section of your post that is the heart of this discussion: Gil: Second and more generally, Michael's response obscures the point that the labor embodied in a commodity is itself a reflection of scarcity, that is, of expenditure of a resource that has alternative economic uses. ^^^ CB: I think this might get at what I'm wondering about. If there is enough labor for all the work that is to be done in society as a whole, then the labor embodied in a commodity is not a resource that has alternative economic uses. Specifically, there is no work that goes undone "elsewhere" because labor is expended "here", because some other labor is doing the work "elsewhere". There is no "opportunity cost" ( I think is the term). If labor is abundant, then , there is no problem of allocating it in one place and foregoing its use elsewhere. Use in one place does not imply scarcity elsewhere. ^^^^ Gil: Marx makes just this point in his 11 July 1868 letter to Dr. Kugelmann defending his formulation of value theory in _Capital_: "Every child knows too that the mass of products corresponding to the different needs [of a country] require different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of distributing social labor in definite proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of social production, but can only change the form it assumes is self evident." Thus, to withdraw a portion of the "total labor of society" away from some line of production in order to devote it to another is deny some form of "needs" being met. Labor allocation matters because labor is economically scarce, and couldn't possibly matter if labor weren't ultimately scarce in this way. ^^^^^ CB: But in the situation of an abundance of labor, allocation does not mean taking labor from one line of production in order to devote it to another,nor to deny some form of "needs" being met. There is enough labor for both lines of production. So when you say above: "Thus, to withdraw a portion of the "total labor of society" away from some>line of production in order to devote it to another is to deny some form of >"needs" being met. Labor allocation matters because labor is economically>scarce, and couldn't possibly matter if labor weren't ultimately scarce in>this way.<" My response is labor is not necessarily economically scarce. And labor can still matter even if it is not ultimately scarce in this way. >^^^^^^ > > >The Original Affluent Society > >Marshall Sahlins Gil: Intriguing, but this characterization raises two questions in my mind. First, one of anthropological accuracy: is it really true that hunter-gatherers were generally comfortable? ^^^^ CB: If you can , get _Stone Age Economics_ by Sahlins. "The Original Affluent Society" is a chapter in the book. Of course, you ask "the" question. Sahlins has all the data on it. Sahlins is sort of the leading American anthropologist, very much respected. When I was his student , he taught the Economic Anthropology class. His thesis that primitive life was not "nasty, brutish and short" is well supported in his book. Here's a summary of some of it from someone commenting on another list. "However, this Hobbesian "life is brutal and short" representation of our prehistorical ancestors is questionable. In temperate climates, adults in hunting and gathering tribes spend maybe 8-10 hours a week to gather the resources they need to subsist. To engage in the kind of wild speculation sociobiologists are famous for, let's say that the living conditions of humans 200,000 years ago was much like hunting and gathering tribes we know of. This means that there was far more leisure time for religious rituals, family interactions, and relaxation for humans back then than there is for the typical worker in an industrial society today." (Miles) Gil: I've read several "contemporary" [between the 17th century and now] European accounts of encounters with hunter-gatherer societies, particularly in non-tropical zones, where it was found that the hunter-gatherers regularly endured severe privations like near-starvation-- which they did not appreciate in Zen-like terms--in cold months or during droughts. ^^^^^ CB: There other European accounts that are more in line with Sahlins' thesis. The big problem with all European accounts is a sort of "Heisenberg uncertainty" type issue in which the European observers have already impacted the societies which they observe, i.e. _causing_ the servere privations. In other words, contamination. But , of course, what you read is the conventional "wisdom" and "data" that Sahlins is challenging. Sahlins does have lots of data, both ethnographic and ethnohistorical. ^^^^^^ Gil: But second, suppose Sahlins's assessment is generally true. Then what do you suppose was the impetus for agriculture, mining, metalworking, and other early productive developments, if all needs and wants were routinely met in these societies? Pure (albeit counterproductive) curiosity or cussedness? ^^^^^ CB: I think about this question a lot, because I had classes with Sahlins back in 1972-73. Here is a rough answer. Sahlins' thesis doesn't mean that _no_ hunters and gatherers ever faced disaster or discomfort over those tens of thousand of years. In fact, seems to me the best hypothesis is that the hunters and gatherers who eventually developed gardening ( the Neolithic) and then agriculture probably were groups who fell into crisis, and started storing surpluses. Necessity is the mother of invention. But it would just take a few to start down the path to "civilization" , and the vast majority could have remained living in equilibrated and stable "Gardens of Eden", the affluence that Sahlins describes. For example, the peoples who populated much of the Western Hemisphere until European invasion, the Australian Aborigines, much of Africa, New Guinea, Oceania, Eskimos, the Central Asian Steppes. As I once said to Sahlins in class, the societies that did leave hunting and gathering were the "changers". The old stone age technology remained stable for tens of thousands of years . It was conservative, unchanging. The "changers" would be the few unstable societies who decided to start storing up surpluses "for a rainy day" like the rainy day of Noah's flood, or some other big disaster. Most societies have myths concerning the destruction of the "whole world". I believe the Aztecs have four eras in which the whole world was destroyed on the famous Tizoc stone, cosmological monolith.
