I think I actually agree with every word Charles writes here; it must be some kind of a first. A small side point: Yes, Sahlins considers himself a Marxist. But he doesn't advocate that we become hunter gatherers. Learn from them, yes. As Charles suggests. To advocate taht we become H-Gs, that would be profoundly anti-Marxist, also nuts. --jks
CB: I could see a society in which part of growing up would involve living in areas that preserved the various and successive modes of production in human history ( not just hunting and gathering) learning to live in each, sort of a profound summer camp element in everyone's elementary curriculum. Then the optimum level of energy expenditure for the main form of society could be shaped with people who could live comforably and happily without all the per capita energy expenditure of today. There would be a selective integration of modern high technique with ancient technique, and lifestyle. The exact balance would be decided by people in communist society, and not under the pressure of competiton of capitalism which drives constant "growth". The significance of Sahlins book is that it is feasible to develop a modified version of foraging or gardening or agricultural lifestyle , that is safe and comfortable, carriers the health benefits of an outdoor life; and this could be! integrated with elements of modern hi tech lifestyle providing flexibility in energy expenditure if there is a problem with depletion of fossil fuels or global warming from capitalism's fierce energy expenditure pace.
There is nothing in Marx that conflicts with a modulated growth regime more rationally tied to actually existing resources and conscious of profound pollutions and depletions uncovered by natural science since Marx's lifetime.
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I was going to mention earlier in this thread that the way to deal with so-called scarcities is to study ecology---the bio-science version, not just the pop-political version. What you find are all kinds of models of living systems that have evolved within a great variety and variation of scarcities and plentitudes. Everything alive is performing this feat minute to minute to keep from dying off. So, it is the oldest game in the book and there are a lot of diverse strategies to explore.
Capitalism as a system is pretty worthless as a sustainable model since it has a one note song, something akin to a virus, exploiting an existing system to maximize its own reproduction through hosts, most of which die off.
I want to make an addition to Charles' summer camp idea.
Different cultures have evolved with biomes. Terrestrial biomes are characterized by climatic and soil conditions and are the largest ecological units: Dessert, Savanna, Rain forest, Temperate forest, Taiga (coniferous forest), Tundra. There are also oceanic biomes such as the Intertidal zone (beach), Neritic zone (along the coasts and over the continental shelves), Surface zone, and the Abyssal zone.
In a sense you can consider pre-industrial cultures to be systems of human organization adapted to particular biomes.
In any event, the biomes or large scale units of plants and animals are organized into interacting communities that share broad environmental conditions of both plenitude and scarcity and most of our biological and cultural history has been concerned with creating ways of living in these diverse circumstances.
Before we start congratulating capitalism and its neoliberal political lackies for anything but a strategic manipulation of their own waste, fraud, and abuse, let's remember that most of human history was accomplished without them. And, it is extremely doubtful that human life prior to their stellar arrival was little more than mean, brutish, and short. That's capital's own record of accomplishment.
Chuck Grimes