Correction of previous post : "It corroborates Marx's claim that bourgeois economics is NOT our natural state or something."
Here is part of an anthro-anarchist argument on the bourgeois mode of production and culture as unfit, contra Social Darwinism.
Charles
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" Indigenous Knowledge in Aboriginal Land Recovery "
By John Henry
Introduction
This paper argues for return to primary (primitive) culture and social organization , if not material technique. Both Australian and American aboriginals have focussed on land recovery as a way of liberating and reviving their cultures. Thus, I develop the argument for Aboriginal Land Recovery.
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Ethnology has discovered that "primitive" or primary cultures put people before "things". That is, they gave and still give more priority to ordering good relations between people, and they order "things" to that end ,as contrasted with Western Civilization. Primary cultures are stateless societies as well. They had (and to some extent still have after contact with civilization) no or little hierarchy ( outside of age grade)with attending oppressive apparatus for controlling subjects and objects in territorial boundaries. By implication, primary cultures are not imperialistic on the capitalist, Roman, Greek , Mesopotamian or other models. Furthermore, despite the evident poverty in present day primary cultures, life in those cultures had a certain affluence , as was famously demonstrated by Marshall Sahlins. That poverty is likely the result of contact with imperialist exploitation, and bourgeois thought and propaganda, commodity fetishism, but not of primary cultural structure, knowledge or potential. Primary culture does not treat land and resources as commodities and private property. Finally, and this is perhaps my most unusual claim, anthropology has discovered that in the Darwinian or evolutionary sense, primary cultures are more fit for survival strategy than civilization, at least based on the best evidence so far.
From the above, I conclude that primary culture is spiritually and materially superior to civilization. What is the evidence supporting the premises to this conclusion ?
Or , is not the following true ?
A fundamental and well accepted fact of anthropology is that _homo sapiens_ came to be at least 34,000 year ago ( e.g. Lasker 1976, page 304). But maybe even 200,000 years ago ( Kottak 2000; 2004) . It is a well settled in archaeology that no state came about before about 6,000 years ago ( Kottak 1974; page 213; 7,000 years ago Kottak, Wright). Therefore, it is assumed in archeology and paleoanthropology, that most of human existence time wise has been in stateless societies. Stateless societies have existed for 34,000 years or more. Until the fall of the Soviet Union , civilization and states which had only existed for 6 or 7,000 years were moving in an arms race and confrontation toward nuclear holocaust , and potential species self-extinction , more than any other recorded or known time in human history. If we were to extinguish ourselves in this mode of destruction with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction ( who knows what kinds of weapons all the bourgeois state's scientists might come up with) obviously, this capitalist mode would have failed the Darwinian test for survival. All previous material modes, no matter how impoverished in there modes of _production_ in comparison with the capitalist mode, would make our species more fit than the capitalist mode because of their correspondingly low modes of destruction, especially mode of species self-destruction. Capitalism's anti-species being quotient is dangerously high for our Darwinian fitness.
On this evidence, which type of society is more fit in the Darwinian sense ? Stateless, primary cultural societies are more fit, by the best evaluation of the material facts , by the most honest inferences from the practices of the materially robust actually existing societies and the materially poor, technologically primitive societies which were actualized predominantly over thousands of years in the past. Despite the relatively low production , the low level of destruction gives the older forms higher survival fitness.
Social Darwinists, evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists need to take note.
The thought that I have here that I haven't seen elsewhere ( although my knowledge of anthropological literature is not professorial) is , again, the application of a kind of species fitness test to homo sapiens.
There are other "secrets" of anthropology and Marxism which are corroborative evidence for my audacious conclusion that primary culture is more fit than "civilization". These secrets fit well with the 34,000 vs 6,000 figures. ( 200,000 years and more for the species lifespan makes the argument even stronger , of course, as the stone age , low tech, culture was biologically, evolutionarily fit to last so long).
As Alfonso Ortiz said, Western science is preoccupied with time. Well, those time figures, 34,000 YEARS , 6 or 7,000 YEARS are bold enough for an elementary school child to grasp. They are to be found in any 101 or high school text book in anthropology and archaeology. The trend of fossil discoveries and theoretical revisions over the last 35 years in anthropology is to increase the estimate of timespan of the era of stateless , kincentric societies. No one claims that the possibility that a state institution existing increases as we look further back in time. On the contrary the overwhelming consensus is the opposite. Nobody claims Neanderthals had states that I know of. They didn't even have developed stones ( another Third World nation). All the professional discussion about different state forms - ancient, archaic, slave, civilized, Western,Occidental , Oriental, imperial, feudal, capitalist, tributary, etc.- does not push the origin of any type before ...
We will have to survive another 25,000 years at least, and with nuclear weapons sitting around, to last as long as stone age society ; unless we achieve nuclear disarmanent.
Of course, some would say that large population and high technology cannot be had without a state, a special repressive apparatus. But what _is_ their argument ? Does anyone believe that the state is necessary to keep they themselves from committing crimes, making war or terrorism, to prevent men from beating and raping women ? No. It is most often other people and peoples whose natures must be suppressed and controlled. Today, it's "Islamofascists" ,yesterday it was "Communists", before that it was "savage" Indians and Africans who were "inherently" violent and dangerous. Is the state necessary to keep _you_ in line ? Not me.
Some might say "that's a crude, socalled Darwinian test " I say what good is Darwinism for us if we don't use it to save ourselves ? Who cares that "species" have come and gone, are fit and unfit, if we don't seek fitness for ourselves ? Of course life is about more than just surviving, but without surviving , we can't do anything else.
We might step back from the worst case scenario of species extinction. Even if a nuclear holocaust doesn't kill all humans, surely we can agree on the Universal Human Value of avoiding nuclear war, and all war, which is integral to the institution of the state. Our most ancient ancestors had conflict no doubt, but, the best evidence seems to indicate that they did not have the institutions of war and conquest. This supports the claim that our natures do not prevent us from having world peace today and in the future. The goal of world peace is not corny or hopeless.