Hunter gatherer violence

[stuartw2112]

Yes, very well put Bill, I agree with all you say. And, at the risk of bringing down the moderator's wrath, may I take this opportunity of saying that I thought your SS article on parliament was very fine indeed. Cheers

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Stuart, you're onto a good point,moving the decision over that is truth to any sort of vote just brings back the same questions as it arouses for an individual.

No, it doesn't.This just shows your individualist ideology, that sees the decisions made by a group as being same as individual decisions.This is because a group decision is a democratic decision, but since you reject workers' power, you reject democracy. You want 'individual freedom', the bourgeois myth made real.

YMS wrote:

(and adds the further question of deciding what is the voting polity: whites in the the early 20th century US outnumbered blacks, and literally voted to make them inferior, so I guess black people must have been inferior, by that logic).

This shows that you can't tell the difference between proletarian class conscious democracy and bourgeois parliamentary democracy.You fear workers, and so assume that workers are racist.

YMS wrote:

Of course, if an observable event happens…

What's this got to do with science? Most real events are not observable.

YMS wrote:

There are masses of evidence that inter human viuolence occurs within hunter gatherer tribes,and that violence has occurred in history.

This 'evidence' exists for YMS because he employs an individualist ideology, and so 'violence' for him is 'individual on individual' violence, not 'class violence', which is what we're interested in.We're talking about politics and society, whereas YMS is discussing biological individuals. I warned readers earlier about the ideological definition of violence one uses determines whether 'evidence' exists or not.

YMS wrote:

Anyone who has been out on a saturday night and seen two gangs of lads kicking at each other is witnessing something on the size and scale of what would have been a war between HG groups.

Here we have a clear example of YMS's method. "Use your eyes, and look at individuals".No class analysis, no situating 'lads' within bourgeois society and culture, and the extrapolation of unhistorical analysis into a universal lesson."Thugs fight now, so all humans forevermore, even with socialism, will fight".This is laughable as serious anthropological analysis.

YMS wrote:

Stuart is right that it's obvious that in the right circumstance we all have the capacity and prepensity for lethal violence…

More pointless 'universal speculation' about 'individual propensities'. No situating in 'right circumstances'. Just emphasis on the 'capacity for lethal violence' that we all apparently have. "It's natural", comrades!This is just a joke, to anyone seriously interested in anthropology, especially from a Marxist perspective.

[stuartw2112]

You see, this is where ideology gets you – you can't even see what's right in front of your face, ie, the propensity of biological individuals to violence. Have you never been out drinking? Or read this forum?

[LBird]

stuartw2112 wrote:

You see, this is where ideology gets you – you can't even see what's right in front of your face, ie, the propensity of biological individuals to violence. Have you never been out drinking? Or read this forum?

[my bold]Yeah, on the 1st July, 1916, right in front of my face a couple of hundred thousand isolated individuals (who, coincidentally, were all wearing khaki uniforms and had done basic training and had been subject to endless war propaganda about 'Boche frightfulness') just happened, all together on a natural whim, to jump out of their trenches, and due to their natural propensity to stick bayonets in other isolated individuals who wear field grey and have pointy helmets, ran towards hundreds of machine guns and got entangled on barbed wire, and 20,000 died and 40,000 were injured.Of course, about 1% of these hundreds of thousands, liked a drink on a Saturday night, got pissed, and battered each other over the head with beer bottles. This 'natural propensity', admittedly only present in a minute number, is the source of The Great War.So, I've seen it with my own eyes – drunken fights in pubs between thugs, and hundreds of thousands infected with this 'natural propensity for violence', set off to stick knives in other, equally culpable, men, who all just like killing.Yes, indeed, THIS IS WHERE IDEOLOGY GETS YOU, stuart.As an explanation for the terrible casualties caused by the Battle of the Somme, it seems lacking to me, a Communist.I'd think it was more to do with class society and capitalism, rather than 'human nature', but, one's "own eyes" don't lie do they, to the non-ideological?Quite frankly, YMS's post was pathetic, and your inability to see that, given our recent discussions, makes me wonder if I'm wasting my time talking to fellow workers, like you, stuart.

[stuartw2112]

But the point of the whole thread is that violence is just as prominent in communist societies. Denying it because it doesn't fit in with your ideology is dangerous – you can't learn from it.

[stuartw2112]

Final word: your last post illustrated an earlier point of mine – that ideology is violence. You cling to yours, you get upset and angry when I say something I shouldn't from your ideological point of view. Imagine that anger and upset with state power – or that of the organisd producers, whatever – behind it. That's one of the reasons, to refer to your arguments elsewhere, that the SPGB is so right to emphasise the importance of bourgeois, liberal freedoms.

[LBird]

Are these serious posts from stuart?

[robbo203]

stuartw2112 wrote:

We see eye to eye on that at least Robin! Though don't we both come from a political tradition that, in caricature at least, makes equally mad claims about billions voting? ;)To get back to the subject of the thread, though, before we get told off by the moderator again, I think socialists should be perfectly relaxed about these kinds of questions. So what if it was found that a tendency towards violence and war is innate, hard-wired into our genes? If true, we need to know it. Not least so we can create social structures that promote peace and understanding between innately crazy creatures. State repression is hardly the only or the best way to achieve this – as anthropology shows all too well.

 Yes, Stuart, to answer your first question, we do, but  the vote in question  is presumably a  one-off thing and does not entail the necessity of acquiring an intimate close knowledge of say , String  Theory, along with thousands upon thousands of other scientific theories in order to determine their "truth" by means of a knowledgeable vote. Individuals dont have to read all 3 volumes of Capital to understand and want socialism.  There is simply no comparison here and I have no hesitation in deciding which one of these is the "mad claim". On your second point, you raise an interesting question and I link this to Vin's suggestion in another post that  hunter gatherer violence is a matter of little import in the struggle to achieve socialism and that we should be focussing on things that matter – the problems that workers have to endure under capitalism.  Of course we should be doing that but the question of hunter gather violence should not be so readily dismissed as being of little or no importance to socialist.s,  We should be aware that it is used as ideological tool  against those who question the dominant capitalist ideology and put forward a socialist alternative to capitalism. Consider what lies behind the argument  that "war is innate, hard-wired into our genes".  It stems from the idea of group selection and the notion that "in-group amity" necessitates  "out-group enmity".  Or to put in more familiar terms. we need a common enemy in order to unite and express solidarity with each other as human beings living in  distinct groups.  War, in other words, is the basis of our human sociality. It is necessary for human progress and, above all, it means violently  pitting "us" against "them". I'm astonished that any socialist cannot see the central relevance of this to the case for socialism.  How often are we told that socialism might work on a small face to face scale but "world socialism"?  – Forget it!    Human beings are naturally prone to fighting with each other rather than coming together to forge a common global society . Or as Edward Wilson  put it "War is embedded in our very nature". If so that means a permanent state of global disunity In that event  I don't see much hope for socialism ever being established and focusing on the problems that workers face now will be to no avail – all that could only ever lead to ultimately is settling for some reformist programme if you wanted to actually do something about those problems as opposed to just talking about them. Socialism would be out of question since according to the theory , global cooperation and solidarity is out of the question. Well, I disagree with the theory. Hunter gatherer groups like the Aborigines in fact maintain vast networks of solidarity extending over hundreds of kilometres and there is a degree of porosity between groups,   War in the sense of systematic organised violence between groups is a recent phenomenon as Brian Ferguson points out and I wish people here would read the links I gave earlier to the stuff he has written.  Of course there is some one-on-one violence in contemporary  HG groups as there no doubt was among prehistoric HG groups but that is not the same thing as war.  And unlike in the Paleolithic era HG groups today  do not really have the option of moving on if local resources are depleted – not with national boundaries and special reserves into which they are shunted like some endangered species for tourist to take photos of.  Nomadism , the ability to move around freely and vote with your feet, was a very major  component in the well honed strategy of conflict avoidance among prehistoric hunter gatherers.  Also there are other explanations for human solidarity than the supposed link between  "in group amity" and "out-group enmity".  In-group amity does not have entail outgroup enmity.  The awareness among members of a group that they depend on each other and benefit from each other can shift the focus instead towards the internal dynamics of the group with the application of sanctions against free riders for example At bottom what is at stake in this debate on hunter gatherers is what it means to be a human being and we should not lose sight of this. Its implications for the struggle to achieve world socialism can hardly be overstated.

[robbo203]

oh,  and as an example if what we are up against as socialists, read this essay by E O Wilson on "Is War Inevitable" http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/07-is-war-inevitable-by-e-o-wilson then tell me why you consider the question of hunter gather violence is  a matter of little importance

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Of course there is some one-on-one violence in contemporary  HG groups as there no doubt was among prehistoric HG groups but that is not the same thing as war.

[my bold]robbo, I agree with much of your post.One key thing is your outlining of the concept of 'violence', which I've also stressed is an ideological concept, and how one regards 'violence' will determine one's view of h-g 'violence'.If the ideology being followed by the anthropologist is 'individualist', then 'one-on-one violence' counts as 'violence'.If the ideology being followed by the anthropologist is 'socialist', then 'war' counts as 'violence'.The former is about biological contact and personal pain, the latter about social conflict and widespread destruction.If the reader employs an individualist ideology, they will find that 'violence exists in h-g societies', and agree with the anthropologists who stress this form of 'violence'.If the reader employs a socialist ideology, they will find that 'violence does not exist in h-g societies', and agree with the anthropologists who stress this form of 'violence'.My advice to comrades is to read as many anthropological accounts as possible, by anthropologists who employ differing ideologies, and to be aware of their own ideological approach (ie. definition) of 'violence'.For those seeking 'The Truth' of 'what really happened', of an 'objective account of violence in hunter gatherer societies', I'd warn that you're going to be disappointed, comrades.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Of course there is some one-on-one violence in contemporary  HG groups as there no doubt was among prehistoric HG groups but that is not the same thing as war.

[my bold]robbo, I agree with much of your post.One key thing is your outlining of the concept of 'violence', which I've also stressed is an ideological concept, and how one regards 'violence' will determine one's view of h-g 'violence'.If the ideology being followed by the anthropologist is 'individualist', then 'one-on-one violence' counts as 'violence'.If the ideology being followed by the anthropologist is 'socialist', then 'war' counts as 'violence'.The former is about biological contact and personal pain, the latter about social conflict and widespread destruction.

 Violence is conventionally understood in terms of the presumed death count,  This is what the archaelogists and anthropologists are primarily disputing in the debate on hunter gatherer violence – how many people were actually killed – although of course there can be non fatal and also "structural" violence Also once again to remind you recognition that individuals exist or possess an individuality  is NOT to be confused with "individualism"  Individualism is a specific politico-economic doctrine which is focussed  outwardly on the relations that individuals have with one another and posits self interest as the driving force in the way they relate to each other

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

Violence is conventionally understood in terms of the presumed death count…

For any cohort in any society, the 'death count' is always 100%! We can't get away from discussing meaning, by pretending that there is some 'objective' measure called 'death count', which all anthropologists can agree upon.'Violence' and 'death count' are ideological constructs. That's what you, perhaps unknowingly, acknowledge when you say "conventionally understood".Whose 'conventions'? In what way are they 'understood'? Who determines the 'period' of the 'death count'? What is a 'death' that counts? Falling off a cliff?I'm sure everyone can think up some more objections to 'death count'. Ideological, social and historical.

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Violence is conventionally understood in terms of the presumed death count…

For any cohort in any society, the 'death count' is always 100%!

 Of course.  But I am saying this is the formal  measure of violence which these people chose to employ and one presumes by that that they mean the intentional act to inflict harm on others resulting in their deaths (although, of course they may not necessarily have the intention to actually kill the other person even if that is the outcome) 

[LBird]

robbo203 wrote:

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

Violence is conventionally understood in terms of the presumed death count…

For any cohort in any society, the 'death count' is always 100%!

 Of course.  But I am saying this is the formal  measure of violence which these people chose to employ and one presumes by that that they mean the intentional act to inflict harm on others resulting in their deaths (although, of course they may not necessarily have the intention to actually kill the other person even if that is the outcome)

I think my 'bolds' emphasise the problem!I'm sure I've missed a few!I'll settle for your 'Of course', robbo, as a sign that we're not really that far apart.

[Anonymous]

robbo203 wrote:

On your second point, you raise an interesting question and I link this to Vin's suggestion in another post that  hunter gatherer violence is a matter of little import in the struggle to achieve socialism and that we should be focussing on things that matter – the problems that workers have to endure under capitalism.  Of course we should be doing that but the question of hunter gather violence should not be so readily dismissed as being of little or no importance to socialist.s,  We should be aware that it is used as ideological tool  against those who question the dominant capitalist ideology and put forward a socialist alternative to capitalism.

Wars are not caused by the belief that we are innately violent. Wars are caused by conflicts of economic interests within the 1%. They are fought over resources, markets etc. If you were able to convince every worker that we are not naturally aggressive (which is demonstrably untrue) ) that would not result in a peaceful world.Removing the economic reasons for violence is the answer. Inate violence is less important when we have nothing to fight about. You are wasting your time asking workers not to go to war by convincing them that they are acting out of character. They will stop fight in wars when they understand the causes of wars. Then they will turn their aggression on the 1%  

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