> Alan Rudy
>
> I think we agree that all previous societies were - and all existing
> societies are - grounded in exploitative relations between classes...
> Do we also agree that the material content and particular dynamics of
> those relations (across societies) have been - and are, in comparison
> to our own - qualitatively different?
>
> ... SNIP ...
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Actually, Marx and Engels learned that the earliest societies were
> non-exploitative. Engels added a footnote to the first sentence of the
> Manifesto on this. _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and
> the State_ lays this out.
>
> I'm not sure how this cuts in our exchange here.
>
APR: I'm pretty sure I don't trust almost all of 19th C anthropology... but assuming we accept the claims Marx and Engels drew upon - and they were far far superior to the silliness Durkheim embraced - I agree with you I'm not sure how it cuts here... Bookchin, however, would say that the cut it makes is one which necessitates explaining the origins of domination (in our case, exploitation... but he, of course, had a very problematic account of original sin and a rather lame understanding of the science of mutualism.)
Combining my response to your Geertz query with thoughts about what you wrote in response to Carrol in this same thread (where I fell, the vast majority of the time, on your "side")... I think we agree about the centrality of class analysis, exploitation and struggle... and I'm beginning to think we agree that - at that level of abstraction - we don't know very much.