Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 12:50:41 -0600
Subject: Re: "Progress" -Reply




>  Lisa: I reject both the idealization of 'foragers in
> Eden' and the notion of 'brutish, nasty and short'.  >

Adam: The more advanced a society is, the less it is dominated by
nature.  Life was just more precarious. The lower the productivity of
labour, the less able the society to cope with climatactic /
ecological change.
Surely this is just self evidently true ? 

Lisa:  Nope.  People dependent on agriculture and irrigation may be
_more_ susceptible to drought.  Elaborate centralized canal systems
are more easily sabotaged and destroyed by war than small scale
ditches.  Once dependent upon ag. then there is a quest for making
water supplies more dependable, yes, but if the climate changes in
general, there is not much to be done.  And picking up and moving is
terribly expensive, either in hauling stuff along or leaving it
behind.  Nomadic foragers move quickly and easily a long way.  

The precariousness of forager life is sometimes exaggerated.  True
there was no medical care, but there was also very little contagious
disease.  High parasite loads were found mainly in the tropics.  The
contagious killers of medieval times did not even exist
pre-agriculture, as populations were too small, low-density and
mobile.  Imagine - no cholera, no tuberculosis, no polio, no obesity,
no smoking - and everybody walked a couple miles every day.  Low
birth rates and no hospitals kept the maternal death rate quite low
also.  

Marx was right on the money when he dredged up the historical sources
to show that 15th c. feudal peasants generally ate better than 19th
c. laborers.  They probably had lower disease rates, lower infant
mortality, etc. as well.  

I've heard there's also evidence in the middle east that early
farmers were less well-nourished than the previous foragers in the
same area.  Come to think of it, is it contradictory to claim that
change is a result of "crisis", yet the new solution is "progress" ??
 If people have to change because the old way doesn't work any more,
then why would the new way necessarily be better?


The idea that "advancement" means "dominating" nature, I'm none too
sure about.  I know that's a common idea, but much of our alleged
control of nature has actually backfired upon us.  The "control" and
channelization of the Mississippi has just resulted in _larger_
floods, although less frequent, for instance.  The very high
productivity of US agriculture has deeply depleted ancient water
tables, degraded the soil and resulted in massive loss of topsoil to
erosion, etc.

I suspect the idea of humans "controlling" and "dominating" nature is
part of the ideology of technical "progress" that is invoked to
justify many nasty, anti-socialist things.  But I would still try to
address the idea of "objective" progress separate from that.

As I recently read in Marvin Harris' _Cultural Materialism_, it is
true that energy usage per capita has increased, along with
population density, throughout the changes of the last 10 thousand
years or so.  In what sense that could be called "progress", I don't
know.  [Harris doesn't talk about it in terms of progress, but asks
what is all this energy being used for, then offers an answer.]

Adam:  In ALL previous societies, there have been periods of absolute
shortage ie where there simply has not been enough food for the
population. 

Lisa:  I'm not aware of this.  I expect that in any society with
significant inequality of use-rights, social influence and especially
anything like classes, it is the poor that starve.  It may or may not
be true in any particular case that if the food were shared equally
that there might not be adequate nutrition for anyone, but we hardly
ever get to find out if this is so, because they don't even try. 
Rich people often _claim_ that it is so...

Somalia is a good recent example.  There were many people there who
ate very well throughout the drought and war and still are
well-nourished - the relatively wealthy.  The worse times got, the
more they hoarded, to ensure their _own_ well-being.  

Cheers,
Lisa  


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