[lbo-talk] The Tape of Human History

[Michael Yates]

In foraging gather and hunter societies, the maintenance of egalitarian relations of production is of critical importance, and groups go to great lengths to maintain these without violence. See the work of Richard Lee who studied the !Kung for many years. See especially his famous Christmas story. This is not to say that violence doesn't occur. It does, but the differences between these societies and modern ones with respect to violence seem profound. Of course, we cannot infer what happened tens of thousands of years ago from what happens in these societies in modern times. But in leaderless societies without class differences, there would not appear to be the same sources of violence as in class-based societies. Also, violence between different groups occurs, but as I understand it, the nature of these conflicts is again much differently structured than in modern class systems. Conflicts over scarce resources occurs but in foraging systems, the lower population densities and the easy capacity to move helps to limit these.