[lbo-talk] The state

Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu
Wed Mar 30 09:48:41 PST 2005


I know that a belief in innate hierarchicality is a vital premise for your misanthropy, but Charles has already answered this question (which, by the way, is not about proto-humans). For the large majority of the years during which homo sapiens has existed in modern form, people lived in kinship societies which were extremely egalitarian, and produced no durable hierarchies. That fact alone disproves the innateness claim.

The reason things changed was not because of human nature. It was because of increased population and the subsequent invention of agriculture. Those are both social-situational changes, not automatic expression of inborn human aggression. If anything, despite their unfortunate consequences, they are evidence of human inventiveness and mutual care.

Meanwhile, Charles might also have mentioned a second reason to disbelieve the innate hierarchy story -- the human brain. We are vastly different in that area from even chimpanzees. Our instincts, whatever they are, do not automatically manifest themselves.


> > --- Charles
> > http://www.lsa.umich.edu/anthro/faculty_staff/wright.html
> > > ) Humans had been
> > > living in non-hierarchical societies for , oh ,
> > > 200,000 years when the state
> > > arose, according to current paleoanthropolgical
> > > evidence.
> > >
> > > So, there is nothing in our nature that prevents us
> > > from living without
> > > states or . .. It is possible for the
> > > state to whither away,
> > > naturally
>
> Charles, birds have hierarchies, dogs live in hierarchical packs and so do
> most primates. What makes you think that proto-humans did not? Lack of
> evidence (which is understandable since these groups were non-literate) is
> not the evidence to the contrary.
>
> I agree with Justin that we need the state to have all the goods things
> that
> we enjoy, and it is even better if the state is a democratic one. Modern
> statelessness (e.g. in Afghanistan or Ethiopia) will almost certainly
> result
> in warlordism of the worst kind rather than hunting and gathering utopia.
>
> Wojtek



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