Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 09:51:53 -0600
Subject:  Engels, foragers, herding, agriculture, classes 


But Engels was so very wrong about some of these things!

>>> Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>  5/13/96, 04:57am >>>
You have actually provoked me into rereading OFPPS, at least skim
reading  it. There are a number of obvious weaknesses in it ( eg he
didn't seem to be aware that apes were social animals ).

Lisa: Great, and good point.  Other weaknesses to follow...

AR:  There's also a lot of specific stuff about the different forms
of family  leading up to the "pairing" within an essentially
matriarchal context, and then matriarchy's overthrow by monogamy (
for the female, anyway ).

Lisa:  Please note that "group marriage" is a myth.  Nobody was ever
married to a "group" of people, a category of kin.  There has often
been observed that there is a category of people that I may call
"husband" but it means only that my actual socially recognized mate
is supposed to be chosen from this group.  If I am allowed to fool
around, it might be expected to be with those people, because I'll
likely end up marrying one of them.  This is pretty far from "being
married" to all of them, in the mythical "punaluan" marriage. 
Morgan/Marx/Engels were totally off the track on this point, as I
suspect Bachofen was before that.  Apparently Morgan's method was to
infer the ancestral necessity of such a form, based on its "vestiges"
still visible today.  Bogus.

[BTW, I'm looking for used copies of Morgan's _Ancient Societies_ (I
think) and also some Bachofen.  If anybody runs across them, please
email.]

AR:  But, what Engels says is that class society grew up in the old
world out of pre class pastoral societies ( and agriculture as
opposed to horticulture started off as a means to feed these animals
in environments where there was no readily available grass lands
throughout the year ).

In other words, he argues that class society did not grow directly
out of forager society at all.

Lisa:  Certainly he claims that _property_ is a necessary prior
condition for class.  He focusses on herds as property, and I think
that the alternative is land for farming, and all the mixes of these
two production methods.  I'm sure some specific peoples and histories
did come through/from a pastoral society, but certainly many also
came from agriculture without any pastoral "stage".  

But the idea that agriculture started as a way to feed grain to
cattle, no way!  This is very expensive cattle feed.  The only place
this has ever been evidenced that I've heard of is in modern
capitalism, as in the currently enormous proportion of agriculture
going into animal feed only.  Foragers and others, as well as some
moderns, do often desire and relish very fatty meat, but if you
actually had to do the work of early agriculture yourself, you would
eat the grain directly.  That is certainly the evidence of grinding
stones, which pre-date agriculture by over 10,000 years.  People ate
seeds.  

Probably the only way keeping animals could _not_ be a net deficit
for a local/family food/energy budget is if the animals eat stuff
that people can't, such as grass.

Makes sense?

Regards,
Lisa



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