[Marxism-Thaxis] Worst mistake
Below is an interesting article that can form the subject for discussion. Paddy The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race WORLD FOOD ISSUES: PAST AND PRESENT Jared Diamond on Agriculture Discover Magazine, May 1987 Pages 64-66 To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence. At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We're better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape? For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It's a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it's nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive. From the progressivist perspective on which I was brought up, to ask Why did almost all our hunter-gatherer ancestors adopt agriculture? is silly. Of course they adopted it because agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep. How many milliseconds do you think it would take them to appreciate the advantages of agriculture? The progressivist party line sometimes even goes so far as to credit agriculture with the remarkable flowering of art that has taken place over the past few thousand years. Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had. Thus it was agriculture that enabled us to build the Parthenon and compose the B-minor Mass. While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world? While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Worst Mistake
Below is an interesting article that can form the subject for discussion. Paddy The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race WORLD FOOD ISSUES: PAST AND PRESENT Jared Diamond on Agriculture ^^ CB: From a Marxist perspective, the origin of agriculture - domestication of plants and animals - was the basis for producing surpluses, which in turn supported non-productive classes that evolved into exploitative classes. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Worst Mistake
Paddy Hackett The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race ^^ CB: From a Marxist perspective, the origin of agriculture - domestication of plants and animals - was the basis for producing surpluses, which in turnsupported non-productive classes that evolved into exploitative classes. Paddy: I understand what you are saying Charles. But does this linearity constitute progress? On what basis can it be validly concluded what is advanced, progressive or better. Can it be validly concluded that bacteria or chimps are less succesful or more advanced species than homo sapiens? Paddy Hackett ^^ CB: No, I don't consider the origin of _exploiting_ classes as progress. Now with nuclear weapons, I'd say that in the long run, it has been regressive, not progressive. Of course, I was an anthropology major in school, and we are often accused of indulging in romaticizing noble savages. I have a paper I wrote arguing that primary culture is superior to state-exploitative culture, given that primary culture lasted for hundreds of thousands of years successfully, and now state-exploitative culture threatens extinction of our species. In other words, no, I don't think it's progressive, in the big picture. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Worst Mistake
Paddy Hackett: Very interesting Charles. But where does that leave us? What is to be the politics --some form of animal rights or liberation movement? CB: I'd say the politics are to be Marxism. With a worldwide communist revolution, we can abolish and dispose of nukes, end war, etc. We may not make it , but the only possible way out of class exploitative society is the revolution that Marx, Engels , Lenin taught would be the end of class exploitative society. ^^ I am not saying it is actually wrong to suggest that the introduction of agriculture, as such, is not progressive. What I am concerned about is the basis for such a conclusion. It does not appear to me that marxism has presented a valid basis for concluding that agriculture constituted a step forward. ^ CB: It has turned out to be a step forward and a step backward. You know: contradiction. The step forward part is ability to feed more people. That's straight forward ok. But it has turned out to have serious sideeffects that aren't so good. Knowing what we know now, we can get rid of the backward aspects and keep the forward aspects. Trouble is most people and especially the curent ruling class, do not know what we know. So, we face a serious challenge of saving the world. Anthropocentric foundations cannot be simply accepted as assumptions. And if they are to be made it must be made clear that they are being made and why. CB: Well, yea, but I'm not sure how this relates to what we are discussing here. I do think we have to be centered on ourselves as humans in many senses. Anthropocentrism is only an error if we take it to mean that the Universe or God have developed as if humans were the center of the Universe, that human are the center of the Universe, from the standpoint of the Universe itself , in some sense.God is not anthropocentric. However, humans are rightly anthropocentric or focussed on preserving and taking care of themselves. ^ Can we with justificaion claim that humanity constitutes the apogee of development -or the axis of development. ^ CB: We can claim that we are the center of the universe FOR US, yes. So, no the Universe doesn't consider us as the apogee or axis of development, but WE should consider ourselves as the axis of development FOR US, all the while knowing that we are alone in that regard. If we don't look out for ourselves, the Universe is not going to do it, so we _have_ to focus on ourselves. But even with that, we will probably go extinct eventually, when the sun burns out or so. ^^^ Has Galileo, Darwin not refuted such conceptions. CB: Yes, they have. But I'm not sure what I said that made you mistakenly think that I think that humans are the apogee or axis of development of nature, from nature's standpoint. We are appropriately the center of the universe from _our_ standpoint. Our interest in the rest of the universe is in how it affects us, no ? ^^ Is the problem here not centrally linked into the matter of consciousness and idealism. Can marxism not be accused of beingan idealism concerning this. Is the view that consciousness, spirit, determines being at the heart of the marxist conception of man --christianity (Hegel) in another guise. CB: Read what I said above and see if you still think this. Anyway, focus on survival of the human species, alone as we are in the universe, is not idealism in the sense that Engels and Marx described it as an error, no. In fact, it's materialism, as far as I can see. Idealism is basically religion. How is saying that there is no God , and so we have to look after ourselves idealism or religion? Not hardly. It's precisely materialism. ^^^ If so this may help explain its failure to grip the masses giving us the present condition in which there exists no revolutionary communism today. The philosophy of man was a matter of interest in the seventies I believe. Lucien Seve, Althusser and Garaudy. Paddy Hackett ^ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
