The vast majority of humans who ever lived did so in "non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures", so if you are right, then that sentence is one of the most hopeful things I have read in a while. Because it implies that human society can once again be organized in such a way that does not posit self-interest and greed -- Homo economicus = Homo avarus -- but rather generosity and cooperation -- Homo economicus as Homo benignus -- as the prime incentives/motivations that drive human co-existence.
In other words, a civilization in which people get up and go to work not to make money to obtain things and a "better standard of living", but in which people get up and go to work to contribute, to be creative, and to give to others, knowing that their needs will be taken care of because everyone else is doing the same.
I've dreamed about this, but wrote it off as irresponsible idealism. But what you are saying, it seems, is that this was actually the norm and the default for tens of thousands of years. Is that right? Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
I feel like being a devil's advocate here because, as much as I'd like to believe that, there is no historical record of it. And the reason is not that history is written by the imperialistic winners of wars, but that history is written by literate people [hence civilised, hence city-dwelling]. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
And yet
any quick survey of ethnography or field anthropology would reveal the wealth of literature (and the longstanding academic and political squabbles) over the world's non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures
all of which, DeAnander continues,
are cultures of reciprocity, gift exchange, and other "sharing" mechanisms rather than hoarding and hierarchical control.
What this says to me is that we are at a point in history where we recognize and treasure the fruits and benefits of civilization (e.g. writing, science, surfing, etc.), while at the same time have evidence that what drove that civilization until now -- "hoarding and hierarchical control" -- is not what drove human (pre-civilizational) society until very recently. And what drove most of human society before -- "reciprocity, gift exchange, and other 'sharing' mechanisms", if what DeAnander says is true, or at least the impulses of generosity that underly them -- could be harnessesed to move civilization to a next level -- a post- acquisitive-economy -based civilization.
Thesis: non-hierarchical, sharing/giving-based pre-civilization
+
Antithesis: hierarchical, hoarding/controlling/appropriating-based civilization
=
Synthesis: less-hierarchical, sharing/giving-based civilization Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
Decentralised but disconnected. Anarchy?
Society 2.0 (now)
Centralised, but connected. Hierarchy?
Society 3.0
Decentralised but connected. Synarchy? "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
nice thought.
on a lighter note
I've often said that if intellectual property lawyers had been dominant in our late prehistory, we'd never have got past the stone knife stage...
The debate over who was here first started about the same time that Columbus was first arriving in the New World. In 1590, a Spanish Monk named Friar Joseph de Acosta reasoned, after much examination and comparison, that most of what was in the New World simply walked over from the Old World. He postulated a land connection between northeast Asia and northwest North America, even though that area was completely uncharted in his day. In the post-Revolutionary War United States, the scientific community was discouraged from looking into the issue so that they wouldn't inadvertently give any kind of legitimacy to the Native Americans or to their claims to the land the Europeans were stealing. [emphasis mine: politicising science is nothing new!] By the early 1900's, the archeological community had been looking and was generally in agreement that Native Americans had been in the country no more than 4,000 years. Then, in 1908, George McJunkin, the son of former slave parents, found the first Folsom Point. At the time, he was working as foreman on the Crowfoot Ranch near Folsom in northeastern New Mexico. He was also an amateur fossil collector, arrowhead hunter and naturalist. One day after a flash flood he came across some strange looking bones sticking out of the side of Wild Horse Arroyo. They were a local curiosity item until Carl Schwachheim came over from Raton and took a look at "McJunkin's site." He got in touch with Jesse Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. Figgins visited the site in 1926 and organized a full excavation for 1927. That's when the actual Folsom Point was found. Radiocarbon dating places these artifacts at 10-to-11,000 years old.
By the early 1900's, the archeological community had been looking and was generally in agreement that Native Americans had been in the country no more than 4,000 years. Then, in 1908, George McJunkin, the son of former slave parents, found the first Folsom Point. At the time, he was working as foreman on the Crowfoot Ranch near Folsom in northeastern New Mexico. He was also an amateur fossil collector, arrowhead hunter and naturalist. One day after a flash flood he came across some strange looking bones sticking out of the side of Wild Horse Arroyo. They were a local curiosity item until Carl Schwachheim came over from Raton and took a look at "McJunkin's site." He got in touch with Jesse Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. Figgins visited the site in 1926 and organized a full excavation for 1927. That's when the actual Folsom Point was found. Radiocarbon dating places these artifacts at 10-to-11,000 years old.
was chatting with a colleague today who said the archaeology/paleo-ethnography world is buzzing with the new notion that the chronological spread of Folsom Point technique may not have indicated the movements of "Folsom Point People" (as it has been interpreted for quite some time by academics raised in a culture of ownership, patents, etc -- plus in some cases lingering infection with racial/genetic superiority memes) but the free dissemination of a new idea/technology via visiting, trading, ceremonial warfare and the usual intertribal contacts. "hey that's a cool idea, let's try it!" is mostly how we refined and invented and improved our techne. monkey see, monkey copy, monkey improve :-) same goes for small farmers sharing and improving and further specialising seeds.
what this means about the current state of intelprop Enclosure and monopoly control I shudder to think. good thing there were no C&D letters when we were working on stuff like pottery glazing :-) The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
the chronological spread of Folsom Point technique may not have indicated the movements of "Folsom Point People"
D'UH'oooooo, ya THINK?
It's called: Trade Networks.
(Now if Egyptologists would figure-out graffiti is not a reliable dating methodology .... )
Come on, you yourself encouraged this renascent optimism in me with your comment that
what we believe is "natural" conditions and limits what we believe is possible; enlarging our notion of what is possible is directly threatening to elites who (for good reason!) want us to believe that things either have always been just as they are now, or are getting better and better every day.
We all agree it is our responsibiltiy to make things get better in fact, and not just in the rhetoric and ideology of those you call the "elites" (I prefer "entrenched interests" myself, because in my book you and I are both members of the "elites", but whatever: I think we are both referring to the same forces of inertia and reaction). And to do that, we have to enlarge our notion of what is possible, as you say, and for me my notion of "the possible" has not really included the idea of a "giving/sharing-based industrial economy": I took self-interest, hierarchy and "hoarding" as you say, as unalterable givens of human nature in any society, however it may be organized. While I note (and must look further into) Miguel's reference to the The Ape and the Sushi Master and Millman's mention of evolutionary psychology's descriptions of humans' inevitable "base 'desires'", I remain hopeful, and optimistic, that humans -- with courage, imagination, and perseverance -- will prove creative and resourceful enough to overcome the entrenched interests (including whatever destructive tendencies and instincts we are genetically programmed with) to keep the baby of civilization while throwing out the bathwater of imperialism and the rest of it.
Nice connection of the new Folsom Point technique "monkey see, monkey copy, monkey improve, monkey disseminate" hypothesis to Intellectual Property, Enclosure and Monopoly issues. More evidence that pre-civilizational humanity can teach contemporary imperial-civilizational humanity how to achieve a non-imperial civilizational humanity. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
And yet any quick survey of ethnography or field anthropology would reveal the wealth of literature (and the longstanding academic and political squabbles) over the world's non-imperialistic (aka indigenous) cultures
as long as wealth comes from accumulation by force, i.e. by forcing the market/finance economy into the indigenous and subsistence economy, it is achieved by scarcity and precarity creation. I don't see how "redistributing wealth" solves the problem -- it becomes ouroborean very fast, like "waging war for peace."
redistributing land maybe -- now we're talking. but that would vitiate the most essential operating requirement of the wealth-accumulating system: the utter dependence on the money economy of all persons below the elite, so that their labour and obedience can be commanded.
btw, can we observe a distinction of terminology between agriculture, the tradition of the ploughed field and the (varying degrees of) monocrop, vs horticulture or permaculture, both of which were practised with high sophistication by many non-imperial type people? it would make discourse a bit easier if we could separate these two practises which have very different impacts on surrounding biomes. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Thanks for pointing out the obvious, that land ownership is wealth.
I'd venture that more blood has been spilled over land reform than over anything else since the invention of agriculture.
the whole point of the Linebaugh review was that the wealth of the affluent British anti-slavery philanthropist was generated by the very system of slavery and expropriation that he deplored
The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country; and less so, perhaps, in this country than in some others. The social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, but of conquest and violence: and notwithstanding what industry has been doing for many centuries to modify the work of force, the system still retains many and large traces of its origin. The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped impediments upon some, to give advantage to others; they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented all from starting fair in the race.
I know someone whose father (now brother) owns a very impressive country estate in Norfolk. His family, ancestral pile and thousands of acres and all, are as worried about paying repair bills as anyone else is.
Some slight exaggeration there, for sure, but the pile and land aren't quite the meal ticket they used to be. And don't forget most of these piles were built using slave money, based on the remote ownership not just of plantations but of people to work them.
The same is true today, where wealth is created by corporate quasi-slavery. Owning a corporate tower block means nothing unless you can rent it out, or - better - fill it with productive workers who will do your accumulation for you, in return for wage payments that can be as nominal as you can make them.
But if you don't own the corporate tower block you can't enslave the productive workers... And the productive workers are only productive when enslaved, presumably?
What, then, are sources of wealth? "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
What, then, are sources of wealth?
Power.
But that was my point. Owning huge swathes of land does not produce income automatically.
In fact the source of income of most landowners wasn't land - it was the exploitation of physical and intellectual labour.
The idea that land ownership is inherently productive is a feudal throwback, when ownership really meant a right to tithes from the productive work performed on the land.
Now we've moved on to symbolic feudalism, where being a CEO or a shareholder means that tithes are paid symbolically, in the form of credits which can be bartered, rather than in terms of cattle that can be slaughtered and roasted and wheat that can be turned into bread.
Effectively, symbolic capital has replaced land as the primary form marker of social dominance. But the model is very similar - 'growth' and 'profit' are what happens when you add labour to capital, just as much as when you add them to land.
Agreed that the estate has ceased to be used productively with a tangible "usufruct" but lots of people are prepared to pay NOW very large sums of money for the permanent rights of exclusive use of the estate for whatever use they wish (subject to planning permisissio! ;-))
So to the extent that someone is prepared to pay a large rental value in exchange for use this land REMAINS "productive". "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
The access rights are a cost, paid for with a one-off payment in fee simple and supported with continuing maintenance outgoings.
It's true that exclusive access has some market value, which possibly increases over time, but unless that value is realised (with the disbenefit of losing somewhere to live) it remains a cost, not a benefit.
Even with rocketing real-estate prices, the inherent profitability of an ancient pile with landscaped gardens is much lower than other kinds of real estate investment.
I'd suggest reading them anyway, because they're entertaining. But there's one memorable scene where he's looking at a wall of water coming down one of his interior walls during a storm and thinking 'I really can't afford to fix this.'
It's true that it's hard to be sympathetic when people are - by most people's standards - really very rich.
But the original argument was that land is inherently a source of power. And while there's some legacy traditional value associated with it, my point is that if you have £x million to spend and want to make a good return on it, buying a big country house may possibly not be the best way to do it.
If people insist in keeping the symbols of wealth when the sources of wealth has passed, they might find it hard to do. If reformed from symbols of wealth to productively used assets, the former symbols (land, gold, money) can be very productive, but that includes giving up the status of the symbol.
Land is not inherently a source of power, it has to be used as well. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Or you can sell the house to a hotel developer, or for a conference centre, or to someone who will turn the manicured gardens into an organic farm. In any case, if the house and land are wealth they can be turned into economic power. If they can't, they're not wealth to begin with.
Or if the house really has sentimental value for you and you want to die in it you can take a reverse mortgage on the damn thing. "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
And use an LLC or LLP wrapper to do so.
Then when the time comes to go into sheltered accommodation, you still have a (100-x)% share of the ownership and of the market rental, and have the option of selling the property conventionally, or bringing in another "Occupier" into the property and selling some or part of your share of the rentals he pays over time.
Or to minimise your Inheritance Tax liability when you die in the house you love, you can pass over some of your Equity Shares over time to your kids and pay them a rental in cash or even in more equity shares instead of cash.
Infinitely configurable, (and you don't need a Will cos the LLP agreement says what happens when you die). You won't read much about it because simple models like this don't appeal to professional advisers paid by the hour, rather than by the outcome. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Sorry, I can't think on a full stomach. Why does the investor give you the money, what is the "agreed market rental" and who lives in the house? "It's the statue, man, The Statue."
can we observe a distinction of terminology between agriculture, the tradition of the ploughed field and the (varying degrees of) monocrop, vs horticulture or permaculture
I am talking about something more radical.
You are talking about what to do with the surplus output of economic activity, economic activity that currently is driven primarily by an assumption of scarcity and a conditioned impulsion to acquire and accumulate -- in a word, a primarily self-interest based economy.
What I am talking about is changing the pimary basis/motive power of the economic activity itself from self-interest to giving/sharing. In other words, one will not work primarily to gain wealth or status or power for oneself, or even for one's kin, but rather primarily for the benefit of others in general, with the understanding that others will help the individual achieve their own physical, psychological, intellectual, social and even spiritual needs.
I guess this is a sort of blown up extrapolation of some recent psych findings that have given a lot of press in the media that people obtain a lot of "happiness" through giving to others. (Though it's always dangerous to build castles in their based on pop-media interpretations of feel good psychology!)
There is a dark side to such a model: The crushing of the individual and individualism for the sake of the group. See communism, see certain aspects of Japanese culture.
But I think a healthy balance can be achieved. I think social democracy (as far as I understand it) is a huge step in that direction. But I want to find out if it is possible to go further and deeper. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
In this participative model the individual may remain individual while still benefiting from the "common bond" to which he has - consensually (not by imposed government fiat) - agreed.
Moreover this is not a RE-distributive model but a PRE-distributive model.
Within an "Open Corporate" there is no Profit and no Loss: and it is in members' interests to cooperate, rather than to compete.
It opens up the possibility of a model neither Private nor Public but both/ and - where investment may be obtained for developing public assets by selling not the assets themselves, but merely a proportional "Equity Share" of their production (or the revenues from the sale of production). "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
But the more I know about cooperatives, the more I know I don't know about them, so would like to impose a moratorium on myself for mentioning them until I do some more homework.
Actually, that goes for a lot of subjects discussed here! Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
