Date: Thu, 9 May 96 13:23:21 GMT
Subject: Re: Engels, foragers and "surplus"



> 
> I'd like to review OFPPS and summarize Engels' story about the origin
> of the oppression of women, because I don't remember it quite exactly
> like either Adam's or Rahul's brief posts.  I once did a bunch of
> stuff on M1 on OFPPS and foragers' surplus, which I can dig out, or
> Adam you might want to check the archives for Dec 95 and Jan 96.  
> 
> [I agree that the sexual division of labor, along with division by
> age-group, was among the first division of labor.  But I don't buy
> all the other stuff that often seems attached to that phrase.]
>

But the sexual division of labour is related to the big brain, small
jaw, long childhood syndrome. It increases as the productivity of labour
increases ( higher level of technology => bigger brains required,
smaller jaws neccessary => babies increasingly helpless => childhood
starts earlier ( because of "premature birth" ) and ends later (
because of higher level of culture req'd for this level of technology ).

It is one aspect of the overall division of Labour.

> Many foraging people have been documented as working well under 40
> hrs per week for subsistence.  If some of the time spent singing,
> gambling, gossiping, napping, etc. were spent on digging, picking and
> tracking, more food could be brought in.  
>

It may not be true that there is more food to be got by doing
more work. Given a certain level of technology, there may be 
effectively limited resources. The productivity of labour needs to
advance to make it worth bothering to do more work.

eg for a fornight in spring a certain plant may produce some nice 
shoots to eat. I can spend 40 hrs over two weeks collecting them,
or I can spend 80 hrs in one week.

At the same time, there are some rather inedible, hard roots.
These have to be cooked. If I know how to cook them, I might
spend 80 hours this week collecting shoots, and 80 hours next 
week collecting, storing and cooking the roots. If I don't know
how to cook them, I'll spend 40 hrs a week enjoying the spring
sunshine ( not that there's much of that in the UK at the moment ! ).


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Given that there is a potential surplus, why should a particular
group exploit it ?

I think this is just a specific case of a general question, namely,
why does one mode of production replace another ?

Well, the answer is that it doesn't always. There are factors
pushing towards a new set of social relations and factors
pushing against it.

Factors pushing for it are that the society in question is in crisis.

Internal:
A particular relationship between humans and between humans and nature
is disturbed for some reason or another, and only new techniques and
relations of production seem to offer a way forward. 
External:
There may be competition from other groups of humans, and the only way to
compete ( in terms of population growth, or in direct military terms )
is a new set of social relations ( the ability to wage war is after all
a direct result of the total quantity of surplus labour a society
can mobilise ).

Factors against:

In general, the old ruling class will resist, although in the case
of the transition to class society, there isn't one.

Ideology reflects the past social relations not the future ones, so
the new social relations will appear "unnatural".

For all revolutions other than the socialist revolution, the majority
do not gain much in terms of living standards, particularly not in the
short term. We all live longer, more healthily, and there are more of
us, than there were before class societies developed. But to start with,
the working class would quite likely have been worse off ( certainly
the case with proletarians in early capitalism ). So most people
might quite correctly see their interests as being opposed to
historical progress.


Whether the class struggle pushes society forward, or results in 
the "common ruin of the contending classes", is not predetermined.


You have to realise that in any forager society today, the factors for
change have over a long period of time been weaker than the factors
against it. The relations of production have in effect, squashed and
prevented new forces of productions from developing, on a permanent
basis, without those societies collapsing under their own contradictions.
THIS IS VERY UNUSUAL. This scenario is completely different to what happened
to the ancestors of most human beings alive today. In order to maintain this
way of life, the new techniques and relations have somehow to be supressed
on a long term basis, and one way of doing this is to not exploit resources
which are available. But, I repeat this is very unusual ( and can only be
done in ecological niches anyway, which are inherently unstable, and
lead to the rapid assimilation of forager societies ).



Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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