Date: Mon, 20 May 1996 13:17:10 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: Anthro, foragers, classes


Lisa wrote a while ago
> 
> But there are many varieties of foraging societies as well.  The
> Kwakiutl, for instance, famous for "big men" and potlatches, are
> considered "complex foraging societies".  They present a huge
> contrast to, say, the Ache [prounce the e like "ay"] of the temperate
> rain forest of Paraguay, or the Hadza of Tanzania.  
> 
> The Kwakiutl had no farming or herding at all.  But they had
> permanent villages, long-term sturdy buildings, named positions of
> special social status, partly hereditary, culminating in the "big
> man" position.  They also had various property rights of lineages to
> specific salmon fishing spots and such, some quantities of storable
> goods, and lots of inequality between villages, lineages, families.
> 
> It looks something like classes to me.  [Somebody has probably
> noticed and written about that before.]  So, maybe this kind of
> non-egalitarian, competitive "complex foraging" society could develop
> classes to some degree before agriculture/herding were developed, and
> we could end up with classes and cities by that route.

The question of class societies based on foraging is an interesting 
one.  One the one hand it seems possible as Lisa argues.  On the 
other hand, it seems hard to think of examples.  The various 
hierarchies of the Kwakiutl and other potlatch societies do not 
disqualify them from being a non-class society.  The question is did 
the elites live from the systematic extraction of surplus production 
by the non-elites.  A lack of egalitarianism does not create a class 
society.  Admittedly the potlatch cultures were extreme examples.  
For instance, slaves were kept after being taken in military raids on 
neighboring communities.  The potlatch involving the systematic 
destruction and redistribution of wealth in service of the 
acquisition of status served to mitigate tendencies to inequality and 
exploitation.  Slaves were killed during potlatch ceremonies.  While 
the systematic  murder of a potential underclass is hardly 
praiseworthy, it is a very direct way to prevent their emergence as a 
class in society.

This raises the broader question of the historical  transition from non-class to 
class societies.  The emergence of a surplus raises the possibility 
of a transition to a class society.  Sometimes this transition takes 
place, sometimes it doesn't.  Where it doesn't cultural mechanisms 
(perhaps like the potlatch) will often be in place which prevent the 
emergence of classes and the active reproduction  of a primitive communist 
mode of production.  Where such a transition does take place, it is 
likely to take place through different paths.   Early Greek 
agricultural societies produced a feudal elite through the collection 
and redistribution of differing agricultural production between the 
coastal plain and the hillsides.  German tribes became feudal through 
trade with and conquest of the Roman empire.  Capitalism emerges from 
the early New England settlements through the market erosion of 
egalitarian access to land.  Engels proposes one plausible route but 
it is only one of the possibilities.

Terry McDonough




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