Primitive Communism: A mutual exchange of gifts

[coberst]

Primitive Communism: A mutual exchange of gifts

The mutual exchange of gifts between individuals and groups represents the heart of archaic economic activity. When food was available everybody had food; the hunter, who returned with food, distributed it among the rest of the community. If someone had something someone else wanted, it was given to them. This represents the core of primitive communism.

The common attitude in modern sapiens regarding income might well be expressed as “I’ve upped my income, now up yours”. Such was not the case in early times. The process of freely giving and freely receiving of gifts was embedded in an important cosmological perception.

Primitive human life had a perception that wo/man owed a great debt to invisible powers. These early humans were conscious of the need for a vigorously maintained balance sheet. Primitives recognized man’s essential relation to nature. Nature gives freely of her bounty to humans and humans were beholden and grateful. They demonstrated this essential truth with fellow human creatures, with nature, and with the invisible world of the dead and the gods.

“In the archaic consciousness the sense of indebtedness exists together with the illusion that the debt is payable; the gods exist to make the debt payable. Hence the archaic economy is embedded in religion, limited by the framework, and mitigated by the consolation of religion—above all, removal of indebtedness and guilt.”—Van der Leeuw

Why can humans neither now nor long ago, be comfortable and satisfied with a bountiful nature, which can easily supply all our needs? We cannot because both primitive and modern men and women require an economic surplus; the surplus is necessary so that s/he can have something to give to the gods.

The ceremonial destruction of mountains of food was a religious act. It was an attempt to keep “the cycle of power moving between the invisible to the visible world”. Could this same motive explain our modern inclination for war?

Quotes from “Escape from Evil”—Ernest Becker

Questions for discussion

Why can humans neither now nor long ago, be comfortable and satisfied with a bountiful nature, which can easily supply all our needs?

The ceremonial destruction of mountains of food was a religious act. It was an attempt to keep “the cycle of power moving between the invisible to the visible world”. Could this same motive explain our modern inclination for war?

[grimrebuke]

Simple, nature no longer by itself would satisfy our needs, let alone our wants. When groups of humans grew to a size that hunting and gathering was no longer sufficient to supply the tribe, they were forced to socially adapt. Prior to that, roles and responsibilities within the tribe were easily discerned. Those who could hunt hunted, those who could gather gathered. From the time when two people got together and determined that if one hunted and the other went and got water, then they would each have half of their survival needs met in a little over half the time. When that happened, they had more time to invent better hunting weapons, or craft better water containers.
Fast forward to the tribe and the same applies. One buffalo can be carried by 5 men and will feed 30 people for a couple of days. Thus came efficiencies of scale.
Now, once these populations got to be too large to effectively get all the food they needed from one place, they had to wander in search of food. This became a diseconomy of scale. The resources and the management necessary to acquire such resources became cumbersome. So they learned herding, husbandry, and farming. These new technologies had an interesting side effect. Now, a handful of people could feed an entire community that was much bigger than a small tribe. But with this efficiency came some decission making. Who will do the farming? And this is where communism fails, because a handful of people could be punished by making them produce all the food for a community while the rest of the community only needed to eat. So comes the idea of trade, in return for my supplying the food, you will make me clothes, or better tools, or milk and beef. Thus starts bartering.

Communism can work in small tribes, but once a population reaches a certain size, specialization has to kick in for the population to survive.