[robbo203]

Hud955 wrote:

Hi Robbo, yes, you will see these terms used in all sorts of ways, by all sorts of anthropologists.  As I said, there is no commonly agreed terminology.  The schema I have given is that used by most hunter-gatherer ethnographers in the UK.  They find it useful to make the distinction between complex hunter gatherers and tribal societies,  because while complex hunter gatherers are still hunter gatherers (even though very unusual ones) tribal peoples are generally not, though again there are exceptions.  Complex hunter gatherers seem to achieve their unusual structures through control of exceptionally rich resources.  Some even have incipient or undeveloped class relationships.  The Indians of the Pacific North-West – the classic example – were slave raiders. Complex hunter gatherers are rare, though perhaps not as rare as was once thought.  Evidence of several ancient ones has turned up in recent years.  Most on-line stuff about hunter gatherers is very dodgy.  It's highly politicised and therefore a contested area, so you need to go back to academic texts for security.  I'll try and find you some references for this. 

 Sorry to harp on about this, Richard, but it would be quite useful to point me in the direction of those references  you mention. Ive been doing a little research on the internet and everytthing Ive turned up thus far seems to equate "complex HG societies" with not just stratified societies but tribal societies or chiefdoms.  Even Douglas Fry who I know you regard highly as a commentator on this subject points out in his book "Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace" that complex sedentary HG societies are "chiefdoms"  (p.71) although confusingly on p.72 he remarks that power in bands and tribes , power and leadership is weak and dispersed whereas, in chiefdoms (and states), it is centralised I might be completely missing something, of course, as I havent read the whole book but have only perused parts of it here:https://books.google.es/books?id=LSm6MLV42zgC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=tribes+versus+complex+hunter+gatherer&source=bl&ots=EWKaH8bS0p&sig=_lCRaigXw_pqKhFLGQCwlgeDrs4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Zc3yVLvELcS8UZeGguAH&ved=0CCIQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q&f=falseAn additional puzzle to me is that whereas the economes of chiefdoms, according to Fry, are often based on "farming or fishing", the economy of complex HG societies is obviously based on…er… hunting and gathering (although I guess fishing would count as a form of hunting) Also of course there is the fact that some pastoralists societies which we have talked about,  such as the Nuer, are highly egalitarian in structure My question is – if complex HG societies are "chiefdoms" can we usefully talk of chiefdoms that are non tribal in their social structure?  If not then it would seem that Fry is adopting the same taxonomy employed by the likes of Kelly. no? 

[robbo203]

Hud955 wrote:

Really glad you made this point, Robin. I think it needs to be made strongly and often.  Although we cannot 'go back' to a hunter gatherer lifestyle there are several principles underlying  hunter gatherer egalitarianism which on the face of it would translate rather neatly into the mass social production of socialist society.  One of them is the freedom of movement provided by common ownership and free access.  (On a small point – while few hunter gatherers are now free to relocate collectively, the ability of individuals to move from band to band still exists in many areas and remains an essential factor in their ability to maintain some sort of egalitarian relationships despite the incursion of commodities into their societies.)

Agreed.  I was particularly thinking of the case of the Ik of Northern Uganda , documented by  Colin Turnball in his book The Mountain People (1972).  Turnball describes the Ik as hunter gatherers who were forced to become farmers as a result of their relocation following the establishment  of the Kidepo National Park  and, although this claim has been questioned, it does seem that Ik society was subjected to considerable strain and social fragmentation in the wake of a serious drought that hit the area which it could no longer escape from by simply moving elsewhere (as it would have done in the past). This kinda illustrates the complexities of the relationship between environmental and social factors. Restraints on the freedom of movement traditionally enjoyed by nomadic HGs  not  only undermines an important conflict avoidance mechanism built into HG society  but also makes them much more vulnerable to adverse environmental conditions which negatively impacts on their ability to procure their means  of subsistence which, in turn, feeds back and alters their culture and society.  In the case of the Ik, starvation brought about a marked shift towards anti-social egoistic behaviour such as the abandonment of children and the elderly  (although Turnball has been accused of somewhat exaggerating this). My earlier reference to the emergence of warlike tendencies among the Maoris , precipitated by the hunting out of large fauna in New Zealand, is another example of this. Thanks for your explanation of complex HG societies, Richard, which is very useful.  It does indeed go to show how anthropology is an arena of competing ideologies.  This is particularly true of economic anthropology with the debate between the "formalists" and the "substantivists" which, as I hinted earlier, has important implications for a historical materialist approach,  Check this out :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_formalist_vs_substantivist_debate 

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

And I believe it is undisputed that personal homicide may occur within those bands (from time to time), and that occasionally (especially to dispose of a bully and a wanna be leader) maybe even the odd conspiracy and group slaying?  As you say, hunting accidents with poisons do happen…

 YMS Christopher Boehm is the guy you need to read in this connection with his theory of "Reverse Dominance Hierarchy".  This link here discusses Boehm's theory  in nice easy straightforward terms, showing how "egalitarian societies maintain their structures and the emergence of hierarchies and inequalities are blocked and thwarted via the use of levelling mechanisms": http://egalitarian.wikispaces.com/Reverse+Dominance+Hierarchy+-+Boehm From my general reading on the subject I arrive at two conclusions 1) There is no substantive evidence of inter-group warfare before 10,000 years ago (see Brian Ferguson's work on this).  Nor would there be any compelling reason why there should be in an "immediate return" society, lacking either the means nor the need to store food surpluses.  In short, what would groups fight over if they had unmediated free access to their means of  sustenance and in which there was little or no sense of  territoriality  (being essentially nomadic groups)?2) There was undoubtedly intra-group violence committed in the Paleolothic era by hunter gatherers based on the evidence of contemporary HG groups but this would be overwhelmingly one on one violence. Moreover,  there are serious difficulties with projecting what is the case today backwards onto a remote past because one of the key factors that would have tended to mitigate violence – the unrestricted freedom to "vote with  your feet" and simply  move on – something that might have profound significance in a future socialist society –  is no longer generally available to modern hunter gatherers.  This is to say nothing of the direct impact of hundreds of years of colonialism and genocide on contemporary HG groups Furthermore, Soderberg and Fry's recent survey of 21 contemporary HG groups suggest that levels of violence are not quite as high as they are sometimes  presented to be and that this distorted picture may be the result of cherry picking notable outliers ( like their Tiwi in their example)http://www.wired.com/2013/07/to-war-is-human-perhaps-not/ I have also pointed out that according to one researcher , Charles Tan, the figures relating to violent deaths committed by non state societies on each other may actually be distorted by the inclusion of  some deaths that were actually caused by the state.  See herehttps://www.academia.edu/5735381/Analysing_Steven_Pinkers_rates_of_violence_in_non-state_societies Incidentally, I  would  be very interested to learn if anybody has more information to offer on this last point or references they could link to In general, though, regarding intra group one-on-one violence, I think there would be several factors that would tend to mitigate this:1) the strength of public opinion within face-to-face groups in which individuals are intimately aware of their mutual dependence2) the tendencies of groups to fission or break up in response not only to environmental scarcities (where the carrying capacity of a particular locality has been exceeded) but also in response to social tensions within the group itself . If you are not happy with someone in the group there is nothing to stop you  just leaving – perhaps with you close kin in tow – and setting up another band or indeed joining another already existing  band3) the universal availability of potentially lethal weapons. The knowledge that if you killed someone it is quite likely that his or her close relative would seek revenge and would have the means to inflict revenge on you by slaying you, would surely act as an effective deterrent to committing acts of violence.  Conversely , it is  where the means of  violent coercion are monopolised by only a section of the population  – which is precisely how some would define the state –  that you are more likely to see these actually being used to cause deaths I realise this argument is one that is used by the gun lobby in America  but of course there is a world of a difference  between the availably of potential lethal weapons  in a modern capitalist society like America  in  which there is a massive asymmetry of power and a traditional hunter-gatherer which is fundamental egalitarian to its very core 

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

Some info on Kelly's ideology:

 My intention in mentioning Kelly was not really to get into a discussion about his ideology which is all to apparent as you say but merely to point out that the expression "complex hunter gatherer society" has been used by  people like him and others to signify also a tribal form of society as opposed to band society.

[robbo203]

Hud955 wrote:

Social anthropology has never established a technical vocabulary for itself and so miscommunication is always a potential problem within the discipline.  There are numerous issues: hunter gatherer specialists tend to use common terms for kinds of social organisation differently to other anthropologists, the meanings of these terms have changed over the years along with theoretical positions, and British anthropologists use them differently to American anthropologists.   That all said, most hunter gatherer specialists (a discipline within the discipline) use the classifications established fifty years ago by James Woodburn and elaborated by others.  These are principally: immediate return (band) hunter gatherers, delayed return hunter gatherers and complex hunter gatherers.  These are distinguished from chiefdoms, tribes and states.  So, no, complex hunter gatherers are not tribes.  In simple terms, tribes have formal leaders, are highly stratified and are most commonly horticulturalists, not hunter gatherers.  The term chiefdom', is vaguer.  It is an intermediate category.  It applies to a stratified (though not a class) society and can overlap with 'tribe' if the chief has significant actual or ritual power.  I assume 'state' speaks for itself.

 Just a small technicality,. Richard…. I have seen complex  HG societies – or to use their preferred term, complex forager societies  – being defined as "tribes" and being "characterized by the presence of elites, social inequality, warfare, and specialization of tasks"  (http://foragers.wikidot.com/complex-forager-societies) Kelly who carried out a major survey of HG groups also seems to go along with this distinction.  See here: https://books.google.es/books?id=CDAWBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=complex+forager+societies+simple+tribes&source=bl&ots=uqgsLIN_Ja&sig=rwVhKEWYzUH08eC2KVzGNU8038o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0WnxVKefLsvzUI3PgOAC&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=complex%20forager%20societies%20simple%20tribes&f=falseI would be interested in this alternative definition you present of complex HG societies as being non tribal.  Do you have some handy references? I guess the main point is that with tribes the question of territorality comes into the equation and hence we see the beginnings of warfare in tribes whereas with nomadic bands – simple HG groups –  territorality was not an issue.  Evans-Pritchard's classic study of the  Nuer tribe in Southern Sudan (who were mainly pastoralists and whose whole way of life revolved around cattle)  notes that kinship or quasi kinship ties no longer suffice to hold together these larger groups togther which is precisely why the principle of territoriality comes into play.  Although of course the Nuer were fiercely egalitarian  and non hierarchical which does quite fit in with the definition of "tribe" offered above.  The Nuer also engaged in wars, notably with the Dinka people….

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stuartw2112 wrote:

Robin agrees we don't really know anything about human nature, but insists that if there is one thing we definitely do know it's what he asserts as dogma. I'd go with the first proposition and reject the second.As for what humans would fight over if they didn't have to compete over natural resources and trade routes – is this a joke question? Religion and ideology, to ignore the more evil options, would seem to be prime candidates, if history is any guide.

 This is not quite what I said, Stuart , and it is odd, to say the least, that you should  characterise what I definitely said about  "human nature" as amounting to a "dogma" – the fact that we are highly adaptable social animals.  Is that a "dogma"? I don't think it is.  I think its an amply verifiable fact that human beings have lived under a huge variety of social arrangements and in a huge  variety of physical environments – from the Arctic to the Tropics – and so stands out as being  quite unique among animal species. What I was attacking was the sociobiological dogma that human beings are innately warlike.  Note that this is not the same as saying human beings are not prone to violence.  My argument, drawing on the evidence of people like Ferguson and Fry, is that that there were no wars – defined  here as systematic large scale and lethal intergroup violence – amongst Paleolithic hunter gatherers –  and that the first signs of war only appeared less than 10,000 years ago with the rise of agriculture , sedentism and the state.  This is far too short a time in evolutionary terms to have made a discernable impact on "human nature".  Ergo, war is a social institution not a biological phenomenon. This is why I think the question of why wars happen is highly relevant to this thread and I'm a little surprised that the Moderator has taken such a strict line on what is, or is not, off topic. It is relevant to the topic because the whole point of the topic is to discuss what gives rise to war. If human beings are not innately warlike (and the evidence of the pattern of violence in hunter gatherer societies – which is overwhelmingly one on one violence , not intergroup violence  – demonstrates this)  then I cannot see how wars are ever likely to happen in a future socialist society  where institutionalised scarcity and commercial rivalries no longer exist.  The argument the wars are fought for reasons other than conflicting economic interests, while true enough in itself, is not a sufficient reason, as has been pointed out. Of course organisations  like Isis or Boko Haram cite religious reasons for their murderous campaign of war – even if those religious beliefs they spout bear little or no relation to Islam as such (something which further reinforces the view that religion and ideology serve as a smokescreen to  opportunistically camouflage the underlying economic motives for war and to invest war with a necessary aura  of moral righteousness).  However, while clearly the ideology  and declared religious  beliefs of Isis and Boko Haram do help to explain their actions they do not really explain how or why such organisations have come to such prominence and gained such influence.  I suggest that part of the reason for that is that they appeal to a constituancy whose economic interests have been thwarted and refuffed and that the story of these organisations cannot really be fully grasped outside of  the context of conflicting capitalist interests and imperialist rivalry in places like the Middle East and Africa.  There is only so far you can push the argument that wars are fought over religious beliefs etc and no further and this stops well short of a fully rounded explanation. There is a great quote from Carolyn Merchant  which, for me, sums up rather well this whole  base -superstructure dialectic and acknowledges their reciprocal influence:An array of ideas exists available to a given age: some of these for unarticulated  or even unconscious reasons seem plausible to individuals or social groups; others do not.  Some ideas spread; others die out.  But the direction and accumulation of social changes begin to differentiate between  among the spectrum of possibilities so that some ideas assume a more central role in the array, while others move to the periphery.  Out of this differential appeal of ideas that seem most plausible under particular social conditions, cultural transformations develop (The Death of Nature: Women , Ecology and the Scientific Revolution,  Harper and Row 1980 p.xviii). One final point worth mentioning and this is something that Louis Dumont mentions in his book "From Marx to Mandeville" – that what we call the "economic realm", a kind of quasi-objectified , self sufficient or separate dimension of social reality , subject to its own inner laws, is something that really only came into own with the rise of a capitalist money-based economy.   The significance of this is that it is  only truly under capitalism that we are enabled to apprehend the apparent causal interrelationships between the economy and other aspects of society such as its superstructure.In hunter gather societies, or indeed traditional horticulturalist or pastoralist societies,  there was or is no such  "thing" as "the economy" as such.  Everything is mixed up.  The way you went about acquiring your daily subsistence was at one and the same time a cultural and religious activity.I think this point might have significant implications for the way in which this topic might be discussed 

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

Robbo203,Wars within capitalism are fought within the constraints of capital and commodity relations, but once we are freed from economic constraints, and enter the realm of freedom, then we may choose to fight wars for other than economic reasons, who knows?

 For what reason, though, YMS? It hardly seems probable at all.  You say that wars are fought within capitalism  within the constraints of capital and commodity relations.  True. But at the root of that is the property relationship and the conflicting material interests that arise from that. This conflict of interest expresses itself in different forms depending on the particular form of the property – or class – relationship. The historical materialist analysis of  war does not limit itself to capitalism but purports to explain the phenomenon of war under any and every form of class-based society as the expression of conflicting material interests. My point is quite simply that , if this is the case, then this ipso facto rules out the possibility of war in a socialist society.   Socialism lacks the material basis – the private property and the conflict of interests that arise from that – that would furnish the necessary motive for waging war. Might I bring this discussion back to the question of hunter gatherer violence?  It seems to me that the arguments of people like Ferguson and Fry  that there is no evidence whatsoever of warfare – that is, of systematic organised intergroup deadly conflict – before 10,000 years ago , are highly persuasive. Ferguson in particular has been highly effective in rubbishing the interpretation of archaeological forensic record offered up by the proponents of the war-is-innate-in-humans school of thought.  The material basis upon which wars might have occurred was simply lacking in Paleolithic hunter gatherer  band societies. Indeed a key characteristic of such societies was conflict avoidance made possible by the ability of groups to simply move on in a world where there were no boundaries to contend with. Apart from  anything else, population densities were so low that the likelihood of aggressive intergroup encounters was minimal. In any case what would be the point in such aggression in the context of an "immediate return" form of society when you could just help yourselves (literally) to the fruits of nature – the equivalent of our socialist "free access".  On the contrary , the ethnographic evidence of contemporary hunter gather bands – such as amongst the Australian Aborigines – suggests that they would have been linked by cordial ties of gift exchange.No doubt there would have been some violence but overwhelmingly the evidence suggests this would have been one-on-one violence.  See Soderburg and Fry's recent survey of 21 contemporary HG groups which I referred to earlier which underlines this point.  But even such violence would have been limited by the tendency of such groups to split up or fission as a result of internal tensions Organised warfare appeared on the scene, and with it the shift from HG bands societies to larger scale, more hierarchically organised tribal societies only comparatively recently.  And the trigger for that was environmental scarcities. A classic example of this is the case of Maoris of New Zealand The rapid colonisation of New Zealand by the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori tribes some 800 years ago was facilitated  by the abundance of game they encountered there at that time,  Among these were various kinds of flightless or semi-flightless birds which, having had no natural predators to contend with, had only a poorly developed instinct to flee.  The easy availability of quarry like the large moa bird made for a good living and enabled the human population to expand rapidly on a high protein diet.  However, by the 16th century much of the mega fauna had been hunted out, while the importation of alien species (such as the Polynesian rat) may have also contributed significantly to the decimation of indigenous species.  Increasing food shortages precipitated a period of conflict between hunting groups which led to the appearance of warlike and hierarchical tendencies within Maori culture as evidenced by the remnants of numerous military compounds (called "pa")  dating from this time. Ever wondered where that traditional performance  of the "Haka" came from which the All Blacks rugby team engage in before they proceed to yet again relentlessly crush the English side?  Well, there you are – it dates from an in era in which intergroup conflict began to manifest itself within Maori culture Scarcity is something that is embedded within the very nature of capitalist commodity production and transmitted  through the diffusion of capitalist culture.  We talk about the artificial creation of scarcity for good reason; capitalism cannot cope with the stupendous potential abundance it has made possible.  It is like the proverbial snake that eats its own tail. Socialism by liberating technology from the constraints of capitalism returns us to a state of affairs in which the ideology of scarcity no longer exists.  More than anything else, this is the reason why war will not happen in a socialist  society. The suggestion that a ritualised and lethal display of large scale violence might still occur – some kind of death cult  or perverse  aesthetic appreciation of the art of killing for its own sake, perhaps – is something I find not only appalling but improbable to a vanishing point. Can one seriously regard such an idea as being compatible in any way with the whole ethos of a society in which  the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all?  

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stuartw2112 wrote:

It was a car crash, but would an SPGB candidate really do any better under that kind of questioning? After all, you're proposing, not 500,000 new homes, but social housing for the whole planet. How much would that cost?

 Stuart, in the UK there are an estimated 1 million empty homes. Here in Spain there are reckoned to be 3-4 million empty housing units .  And in China there are supposed to be about 64 million empty apartments.  Yes, thats right 64 million (http://www.grist.org/cities/2011-03-31-chinas-ghost-cities-and-the-biggest-property-bubble-of-all).  This is to say nothing of empty retail establishments, empty offices , empty factories etc etc.. Never mind the cost of building more houses – what about the human costs of not using those that have already been built? Just the other day in Granada (my nearest city) we had a case of a woman who flung herself from her apartment several floors up.  The reason?  The banks were going to repossess her property.  There is a glossy magazine in my local branch of the Spanish bank I bank with featuring properties for sale that have all been repossessedMany of these i guess will continue to remain empty for quite a while yet….

[robbo203]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Robbo203

Quote:

And if people are naturally warlike – that is to say, if wars will occur again and again regardless of the kind of society we live in  – then socialism must be considered dead in the water.  I do not imagine for one moment, YMS, you seriously think  we could or would divide the world up in socialism  and engage in wars with each other. How do you imagine a socialist society could survive for one second if this was true.

Socialism provides according to need, if we need war, we'll organise one, its perfectly conceivable that ritualised lethal warfare could be compatible with common democratic ownership of the means of production.  Unlikely, but who knows?

 I can't believe I'm reading this, YMS.  Its like saying that, since socialism provides for need, if there is need to exploit other people, socialism will  happily accommodate that need; notwithstanding that by definition socialism is a classless society and therefore  a non exploitative society. How on earth is warfare conceivable in the context of, or compatible with, common ownership and democratic control of the means of production? I'm talking about war here – systematic organised large scale violence –  not the occasional brawl that goes badly wrong and somebody gets glassed or knifed  and dies on the operating table. I thought we socialists argued that war in the modern world is all  about the commercial rivalries in capitalism and, as self respecting hardline materialists,  we look askance at suggestions that  wars are fought over such ethereal things as religious or political beliefs.  These later are supposed to serve merely as a kind of ideological smokescreen  to hide the real economic motives for war. Now you are telling me that wars might be fought for things other than commercial rivalries or vested economic interests.  Why?  Well, because there couldn't be such things in a socialist society so by inference there must be other reasons why wars might be fought in a socialist society.  And if those "other reasons" apply to a socialist society I cannot see how they might not also apply in capitalist society. Meaning that in capitalism wars could be fought for reasons other than commercial rivalries  which is not exactly the SPGB's position as I understand it. Is that Vin I see on the horizon, galloping on his charger in this direction with lance poised ready to strike a lethal blow against the heretics like YMS who seem to have abandoned historical materialism

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stuartw2112 wrote:

Robin: "There is absolutely no way round this for revolutionary Socialists.  If human nature is warlike because hunter gatherers were warlike  then that rules out socialism. QED"I really have no idea why you would want to make yourself a hostage to fortune in this way. The plain fact is that it is very hard to figure out what is supposed to count as part of our "nature" and what is not. That's why the arguments can drag on forever, as on this forum – they are unresolved issues in science. What seems equally plain to me is that it is plausible that Robin is wrong – that war, violence, greed, stupidity, you name it, is a part of our natural inheritance as human beings. 

 The problem is, Stuart, is that it is not me who is making some definitive  assertion about what  human nature consists in. The burden of  proof lies, as it should, with those – like E O Wilson – who assert quite candidly that human nature is warlike.  Such proof as they provide to back up this claim is very weak indeed.Of course people are capable of engaging  in war, violence, greed, stupidity,  etc  but that does not make these things " part of our natural inheritance as human beings".  This is where I think you go wrong. You observe human beings acting in a warlike manner and deduce that they must therefore be warlike "by nature".  Human nature, or human inheritance,  implies more than mere potentiality.  It implies an irresistible disposition to behave in the way stated and I deny that human beings have an irresistible disposition to wage war.  Wars are not the result of innate dispositions but material circumstances and, in capitalism, that means the commercial rivalries  built into the system itself

stuartw2112 wrote:

As a socialist, I am totally relaxed about whatever turns out to be the case. The classic example is a classic for a reason so I'll repeat it. If anything is part of our natural inheritance as humans, surely it is our sexual drive. We want to have sex, and the urge is a strong one, and the urge and the behaviours that go along with it must be evolved ones that have a genetic basis. It's surely totally uncontroversial to say so. And yet I have never ever come across anyone who points out this fact and then goes on to argue that unchecked population growth and rape are therefore inevitable, and hence it's not worth doing anything about it. No one argues that because it's obviously daft. We're naturally sexual creatures, yes, but we also (naturally?) come up with ways to organise our behaviours in socially acceptable ways, using a variety of things including ritual, taboo, social organisation and technology (contraception).The same applies to war. Maybe we are naturally warlike. Seems plausible. Does that mean we can't organise ways of mitigating the risks of it happening? Even in capitalism, the answer is obviously no – after all, we do it all the time.

 No, the same does NOT  apply to war.  That is the whole point, Stuart! The evidence very firmly suggests that human beings did NOT engage in war  before say 10.000 years ago.  Read what Ferguson pr Fry have to say on the matter  and the links I earlier provided.  If wars did not happen earlier than 10, 000 years ago then by no stretch of the imagination can we be described as "naturally warlike".Of course wars happen but they happen for reasons other than our human nature.  Of course, also, the fact that wars happen  does not mean  that we cannot, as you say,  organise ways of mitigating the risks of it happening. Point is you could just as easily argue (although this is not what I am arguing) that these pacific  tendencies are likewise just as much a part  of  human nature and so therefore reduce the whole argument about "human nature" to a meaningless absurdity. As I said, if there is anything we can safely say about human nature, it  is that we are highly adaptable animals capable of behaving in a wide variety of ways – both pacific and warlike. What triggers one form of behaviour rather than another has to do with our social environment and the material circumstances we find ourselves in.It has precious little to do with "human nature" as such which people like E O Wilson keep banging on about

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

There is absolutely no way round this for revolutionary Socialists.  If human nature is warlike because hunter gatherers were warlike  then that rules out socialism. QED

I don't think this does follow.  If in certain (knowable) circumstances prehistoric humans engaged in warfare, we can know to build around and avoid those warfare conditions.  The case for socialism certainly doesn't rest on humans being naturally angels, or need a 'New Man', and it rests on the impulse for freedom and the non-necessity of class.  If it turns out, when we are free, that humans are by nature Evil, so be it.We might even decide to divide the world up, like, like the Byzantine chariot fans, Blues and Greens, and have wars between ourselves for n o good reason, because that is our nature.  I doubt that would happen, but whether it would or not has no bearing on the case for socialism.

 Er no …this is not quite what I was saying, YMS. Both you and Vin have, I think,  possibly misunderstood the point I was driving at.  I was certainly not suggesting that the case for socialism rests on "humans being naturally angels" Not at all.  Just because I am attacking the idea that humans are naturally warlike does not mean I promoting the idea that human beings are naturally pacific.  What i am actually attacking is the belief that they are naturally anything – apart from perhaps the fact  that we are "naturally" social animals – and highly adaptable animals. Being adaptable we are capable of being either warlike or pacific but that does not mean we are "naturally" either of these things…..Vin statesThe case for socialism is based on class struggle not 'human nature' (whatever that is) It does not require 'nice' people (whoever they may be) Yes but the case for socialism has also to address the case against socialism or leave those unconvinced by the case for socialism, unconvinced. The human nature argument is  part of the case against socialism.  Just as we socialists argue against those who say "human nature" means that people are naturally lazy or naturally greedy so we have to argue against the view that view that people  are "naturally warlike".And if people are naturally warlike – that is to say, if wars will occur again and again regardless of the kind of society we live in  – then socialism must be considered dead in the water.  I do not imagine for one moment, YMS, you seriously think  we could or would divide the world up in socialism  and engage in wars with each other. How do you imagine a socialist society could survive for one second if this was true.  Of course it not because we had all been transformed into natural angels that socialism would rule this out but because there would be absolutely  no  reason for engaging in wars in the first place. Ironically I am the one who is putting forward a historical materialist position here -despite being accused of somehow departing from such a position. I repeat – if people are "naturally warlike" that means wars are likely to happen in socialism.  And if wars are likely to happen in socialism that spells the implosion of socialism itself – its collapse under the weight of a self contradiction.  Wars imply a fundamental conflict of interests which is not supposed to happen in socialism Ergo, we have to address the question of whether people are naturally warlike.  And that necessarily means addressing the question of whether hunter gatherers were warlike.  Because the argument  that people are naturally warlike takes it cue from what human society was supposed to be like when we lived as hunter gatherers – the 95% of our existence on this planet when our "human nature" was supposedly forged – at least according to those who put the human nature argument against socialism Don't believe me ? Well then read E O Wilson's essay and tell me again that this is not what he is sayinghttp://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/07-is-war-inevitable-by-e-o-wilson

[robbo203]

duncan lucas wrote:

robbo-Why do you think the leaders of countries  and the worlds richest people meet yearly under intense protection . They are deciding how the  World shoud  be run -the IMF-Banksters-all the Worlds Leaders if  that isnt NWO I dont know what is ,its staring you in the face . Its now 2 % of the world  who are richer than over 1 BILLION  of the 98 % . THe UK/ US EU is OWNED by big business Camerons cabinet consists now of Millionaires .

 Duncan, I don't doubt that (some) world leaders and (some of) the world's richest people meet yearly under "intense protection". I don't deny that there are "conspiracies" in the loose sense of the word, hidden agendas which the influential and the powerful wish to pursue.  What I do deny though, and emphatically , is that the general outline of society and the broad pattern of developments in society is the outcome of some kind of elite conspiracy.  This is plain nonsense. You may not realise this but what you are arguing for is an incredibly disempowering and anti-working class view of the world.  It is a version of history dubbed by  Carlyle as the "Great Man" model of history -. a top down elitist version of history in which "the masses" are portrayed as a dumb, malleable putty to be shaped moulded and directed as the high and mighty see fit. Might I recommend to you Plekhanov's famous 1898 essay "The Role of the Individual in History"  (https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.html). Seriously, give it a read.  Plekhanov  brilliantly took  apart the Great Man theory of history, arguing that it was based on a fundamental flaw – an "optical illusion".  So called Great Men are the product of their times rather than their times being a product of them. If Napoleon had not existed then a Napoleon-like figure would have emerged in France in the early 19th century anyway. That is what the mood of the times required after the chaos and dislocation of the French  Revolution: some strong arm figure to restore social order. So it is the case today.  You overlook that these world leaders you refer to are put into power by the masses voting for them. Ultimately it is the masses who are the real shapers of history, the drivers of events.  Unfortunately for socialists at the present time the masses are pro-capitalist and pro-nationalist and are willing to write a blank cheque for the politicians to get on with the job of trying to manage capitalism.  But capitalism functions  according to its own set of generic rules or "laws". No one actually controls or is capable of controlling the system. You refer to the massive inequality that exists in the world today as if this was the planned outcome decided upon by a tiny group of immensely powerful conspirators. No it is not! The implication of what you saying is that if our leaders intended otherwise  we could  have a much more egalitarian form of capitalist society. It is merely a question of goodwill and the determination on the part of these leaders. The Left frequently resorts to this kind of  bogus explanation which seeks to portray the non realisation of certain political aims or policies as being the result of "betrayal" by the leadership. If only Trotsky had come to power and not Stalin things would have turned out so differently This is nonsense. Capitalism cannot function except on the basis of gross inequality. . Consider what happened in the case of Russia when the Bolsheviks took over the reigns of power and sought to manage capitalism along the lines of a statist model. Around the  time of the 1917 Revolution,  Lenin enthusiastically endorsed the principle of equal pay for everyone – what is called uravnilovka or income leveling. However, in less than a year later, in an address given in April 1918 (published as "The Soviets at Work") he abjectly recanted:   “We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed a very high remuneration for the services of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a departure from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule." Stalin  too recognised the importance of unequal remuneration upon coming to power and having to fashion policy to fit the needs of the developing system of Soviet state capitalism.  But Stalin but went a lot further than Lenin in denouncing the "evil of equality" and declaring Marxism to be the  "enemy of equalisation". Uravnilovka, was vigorously opposed on the grounds that it undermined incentives and economic performance.  And most surreally  of all, Foreign Minister Molotov once declared that  "Bolshevik policy demands a resolute struggle against equalitarians as accomplices of the class enemy, as elements hostile to socialism." (Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia, p.69 http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm). In other words the Bolshevik were forced to do a complete about turn because the exigencies of running capitalism required this of them. Capitalism exists because we the masses, the  working class,  allow it to exist. We are the ultimate authors of our own fate – including the unpalatable  fact that we own so little and the !% so much 

[robbo203]

I think that even if there are conspiracies, and SP is quite right to point out that there are,  the point is surely that the overall pattern of events or the essential structure of society itself, its outline, and the way in which it basically functions, is not at all a conspiracy.   To claim that it is is to vest far too much power in a tiny minority of conspirators and to overlook the  divisions that are almost certainly going to arise amongst them.  By the same token, a conspiratorial perspective can have a disempowering effect on the majority who are the supposed victims of some conspiratorial plot. But more than that, conspiracy theory taken to its logical conclusion presumes that "the system" can indeed be controlled and regulated from above.  It feeds into the same kind of arguments that inform reformists and left wing advocates of more state involvement in the economy -the illusion that politicians can control the system when the system clearly controls the politicians.  The system – capitalism – operates according to its own generic "laws" and no one actually controls it in the way some conspiracy theorists seem to imagine

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

Wars are not caused by the belief that we are innately violent. Wars are caused by conflicts of economic interests within the 1%. They are fought over resources, markets etc. If you were able to convince every worker that we are not naturally aggressive (which is demonstrably untrue) ) that would not result in a peaceful world.Removing the economic reasons for violence is the answer. Inate violence is less important when we have nothing to fight about. You are wasting your time asking workers not to go to war by convincing them that they are acting out of character. They will stop fight in wars when they understand the causes of wars. Then they will turn their aggression on the 1%

 I think you are missing the point here, VinI agree that wars are not caused by the mere belief that we are "innately  violent" but, rather, occur for the reasons you cite.  However, I am not talking about why wars happen but the justifications offered by the warmongerers  for engaging in wars. Warmongerers don't tend to offer justifications along the lines that wars are fuelled by economic conflicts and we have to confront what they say just as much as what they don't say about war. What they say about war is enormously influential and is one of the reasons why workers go to war against their own interests – because they actually believe the crap pumped out by the warmongerersPart of that whole elaborate structure of justification offered by the warmongerers is the belief  the war is innate in human beings and thus unavoidable.  If you believe  that war is unavoidable – because it is  "natural" to human beings – then that clearly undermines any resistance to war.  Why resist something from which there is no escape? Our alleged inborn predilection to wage war? Another aspect of this ruling class ideology is the belief that we all separate out into different groups – – nations that have competing interests and that the nation or group that we belong to can be stronger by uniting against outsiders.  Again, this is rationalised or "naturalised" by appealing to what supposedly went on in our Paleolithic past in which the outlines of our "human nature" were said to be essentially forged – the 95% of our existence on this planet when we lived as hunter gatherers.  Which is why the question  of hunter gatherer violence simply cannot be ignored or brushed under the carpet as some kind of esoteric academic topic of interest. You know as well as I do that the human nature argument is perhaps the most insidiously  prevalent objection raised by workers against the possibility of establishing socialism.  If it is believed that war is inherent part of human nature ,  how can you seriously imagine for one moment that workers who hold this belief  will ever consider the prospect of a global cooperative  society – socialism – as being possible?.  If war is part of part of our human nature then wars are likely to occur in socialism.  And if that were the case then i would argue that that in itself negates socialism.  It  is also incidentally is at odds with your own explanation  as to why wars happen – namely because of the commercial rivalries inherent in market capitalism. You therefore have as much a vested interest as I have,  as a revolutionary socialist , to debunk the myth that war is part of our human nature.  And since human nature is necessarily something that is supposed to have emerged from our overwhelmingly hunter gatherer past that necessarily means looking at the question of violence in hunter gather society. There is absolutely no way round this for revolutionary Socialists.  If human nature is warlike because hunter gatherers were warlike  then that rules out socialism. QED

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Violence is conventionally understood in terms of the presumed death count…

For any cohort in any society, the 'death count' is always 100%!

 Of course.  But I am saying this is the formal  measure of violence which these people chose to employ and one presumes by that that they mean the intentional act to inflict harm on others resulting in their deaths (although, of course they may not necessarily have the intention to actually kill the other person even if that is the outcome) 

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