>>> Leigh Meyers > > CB: Have you heard of the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins and his > thesis in _Stone Age Economics_ ? >
Is this the fellow who proposes that primitive societies have much more leisure time and other advantages 'lost to civilization'? If so, that's whom I'm riffing from, unaware of the name of the person who promulgated that thesis ^^^^ CB: Yes. He was my advisor in my senior year of college. I learned the thesis in a spoon fed way. One of the chapters is "The Original Affluent Society", riffing on John Kenneth Galbraith's book title. Yes, we can survive, thrive, even, without private property , maybe, since we did it for thousands of years, although , of course, we've lost a lot of the old skills. ^^^^ As an aside... At work there's a calendar with silly questions. The question today is: Is Lapland a monarchy? A: Lapland has no formal government at all. Yet they don't seem to be spiraling down the behavioral sink. Sounds like a good plan for industrialized society... which is... Leigh On Dec 7, 2007 10:26 AM, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> Leigh Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/07/2007 12:10 > PM >>> > On Dec 7, 2007 7:02 AM, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > So, given all you say above, you are hard pressed to explain how and > > why so many Soviet people were motivated to do so much work. > > You are especially hard pressed to explain it since you seem to > think > > there was no reserve army of unemployed to pressure them to work. > So, > > from your standpoint all that was produced was done at gunpoint. > > > > The muzzle of the gun was sociological, that their newly found freedom > (from various forms of serfdom) could evaporate into another callous > monarchy... or worse. > > ^^^^^ > CB: Yes, it's necessary to move one level of abstraction to a > "sociological gun". There is a sociological gun behind the protection > of private property under wage-labor/capital relations too. Both > capitalism and socialism have states. > > In fact, there was a legal responsibility to work that went along with > the right to a job under socialism. Odd nobody said " he who doesn't > work doesn't eat" yet. > > ^^^^ > > FWIW, primitive societies were very labor efficient too! > The need to survive DOES that. > > Leigh > > ^^^^^^^