Would the police force exist in a Socialist world?

[Hud955]

Steve.  LOL.  I haven't a clue what your comments about religion and original sin are aimed at.  Your comments appear to have missed the whole point of my comment and to provide no answer to it even though they appear to disagree with it.  Take another look.If you claim that anthropologists have falsified the evidence, for whatever personal reasons, where then are you getting your information on hunter gatherers from?  I'm guessing that you haven't spent your life doing field work among them.  The view you present of hunter-gatherers is a sentimental one.  Many social anthropolgists in the past had Marxist leanings, (though their Marxism tended to be of the 'vulgar' variety.)  Socialists need to look the evidence squarely in the face and deal with it.Just to pick up one point, for example: many hunter-gatherer groups *are* socially stratified.  Some, like the Indians of the pacific north west are even slave owners.   This is why social anthropologists divide them into various categories of social organisation.  I spoke of 'band hunter-gatherers' which are those that have an egalitarian lifestyle. Many others don't.  Those that do are not, as you believe, full of compassion and empathy.  This is a myth.  Band hunter-gatherer societies whether they are found in the arctic or in the African Savannah are universally individualistic in their organisation.  They share, and they work together for the mutual interest of the group, but they are not what we would call alutruistic or compassionate or empathic at all in their relationships.  Individuals are brought up from the moment they are born to know their own mind, to act on it and to take complete responsibility for their own lives.  They do not, on their whole, go out of their way to help each other when they are in trouble.  The research of anthropologists of all political tendencies from field studies around the world over a very long period confirms this over and again.

[steve colborn]

Are you a member of the SPGB? If so then yes, Socialism will start off with a given set of values, and as a Socialist, if you are, you will understand and agree that this will apply. IE, understanding, ie why we want a different way of organising society, than the one which puts minority interests above the interests of the rest of us. Empathy and cooperation. Understanding that it is only with this in mind, we will be able and moreover have the will and reason to organise society differently. Cooperation, understanding that this, along with understanding, is the only way that Socialism could work. If we do not cooperate on an intellectual and knowledge based level, the new society will not work. Empathically, because if we do not agree, we would have no "reason" to fight and work for a new society.I could go on, but it's late at night, I'm tired and quite frankly sick of re-stating the same old, same old, obvious arguments, to people who should already understand and appreciate them!Going to stretch my legs to get rid of the horrible cramps in them. Take my medication and cogitate on how best to put my argument across tomorrow, so that it is easier to understand!Be well m8, night night and lets get on with screwing capitalism. Steve.

[Hud955]

Steve, it is because I am a member of the SPGB, a Marxist and a materialist that I fundamentally disagree that values are the starting point of any socialist discussion. I'm really very surprised to hear all this idealist thinking coming from you and SP.

[Hud955]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Hud955 wrote:

The Middle ages were very much a devil-take-the-hindmost kind of society whose social values were far from the ones you propose.  This is even more pronounced in hunter gatherer societies, which have been around not for thousands but for tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of years.  These societies are not known for holding compassion in very high esteem.  Those that we know of all develop extreme forms of individualism, and members of these societies tend not to help one another when they are in trouble

I would be very interested to see the evidence for this rather bold statement..

Try:The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in hunter-gatherer lifeways by Robert L Kelly (the early chapters give a good account of the history of studies among foragers  – the current term in anthropology for hunter gatherers.  One of the best ways to get into the subject at something more than the popular level.)The Cambridge encyclopaedia of hunter gatherers.  (Gives a good overview of various cultures, though is a bit vague about what it defines as hunter gatherers).The other side of Eden by Hugh Brody  (Looks at hunter gatherers in general but particularly focuses on the Inuit – a great read)Life histories of the Dobe !Kung by Nancy Howell  (Much as it says)Anthropology and the Bushman by Alan Barnard  (Barnard is always worth reading.  He is usually accessible and fair minded.)On primitive society by C R Hallpike  (Hallpike is now retired and a bit crusty but he is very easy to read and gives a good general overview.)or practically anything else on the subject.  Far from being a 'bold' statement, this is really very uncontroversial stuff.  The evidence is long-standing and overwhelming.  Though you will get all sorts of confusing views promoted by popular writers, largely because they do not distinguish between the various kinds of hunter-gatherer groups and their very different forms of organisation.

[ALB]

Whatever else can or cannot be said about "primitive communism" it was:1. The original state of our species homo sapiens which lasted for tens of thousands of years..2.  A society based on free access to nature and the sharing of its products.3.  Non-hierarchical, i.e a society without social classes.4.  A society without a State, i.e without any body of armed men to enforce social discipline (i.e, to stay strictly on topic, without a "police force"). In fact an alternative name amongst anthropologists for such societies is "societies without a state".We point to this of course to show that humans can live in a society without classes, a state, private property or money because they once did, not because we want to idealise the hunter-gatherer way of life. What we want is to create the above social conditions of these societies but on a world scale and on the basis of modern technology which has made this possible.There's a relevant article in the December 2006 Socialist Standard here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1228-december-2006/driven-eden

[Young Master Smeet]

ALB wrote:

4.  A society without a State, i.e without any body of armed men to enforce social discipline (i.e, to stay strictly on topic, without a "police force"). In fact an alternative name amongst anthropologists for such societies is "societies without a state".

Well, there would have been a body of armed men, known simply as 'The Men'.  They would have enforced discipline, such as it was.And this brings us to the point, the capacity for the use of force will not disapear in socialism, the point is that no section of society can monopolise it it for their own interests.  Hence why I stated, as a pretty cold reading, that whatever form of organisation society takes to defend itself, it can't be based on special powers or unique rights, much like the current English common law power of arrest.

[Hud955]

ALB wrote:

Whatever else can or cannot be said about "primitive communism" it was:1. The original state of our species homo sapiens which lasted for tens of thousands of years..2.  A society based on free access to nature and the sharing of its products.3.  Non-hierarchical, i.e a society without social classes.4.  A society without a State, i.e without any body of armed men to enforce social discipline (i.e, to stay strictly on topic, without a "police force"). In fact an alternative name amongst anthropologists for such societies is "societies without a state".We point to this of course to show that humans can live in a society without classes, a state, private property or money because they once did, not because we want to idealise the hunter-gatherer way of life. What we want is to create the above social conditions of these societies but on a world scale and on the basis of modern technology which has made this possible.There's a relevant article in the December 2006 Socialist Standard here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1228-december-2006/driven-eden

 Completely agree with your conclusion Adam and what you say of primitive communism is also true, though it is not so obvious that all hunter gatherer communities did live in a condition of primitive communism.  It is only those groups that lived from day to day that this can be said of.  It takes very little for social stratification to begin to appear – the storage of food for example.  If you reframe your statement to refer to early hunter gatherers rather than 'primitive communism' 1. is definitely true; 2 is very largely true, though not universally by any means; 3 is largely true though evidence of some 'stratified' forms of early society have been discovered by archaeologists (though I don't know enough about that to comment). 4. is also true. I agree with YMS too.  Assassination as a form of social control is common within hunter gatherer societies.  The normal way of controlling disruptive members is leg pulling and social opprobrium.  When that doesn't work, expulsion from the band is normal.  And if they refuse to go, some lads get together and bump them off.  The murder rate is also very high, though perhaps less than some popular writers have claimed.  In principle though you are right and hunter gatherers have some very interesting lessons for us.  But we shouldn't romanticise them or turn them into a model for socialism.  Their relationship to the means of production will not be the same as in socialism and their level of subsistence is very different.  Most goods in hunter-gatherer societies are not owned in common (the unit of possession is generally the family), but that is because most goods are not the means of production.  And their concept of possession is of course very different from our concept of ownership.

[Young Master Smeet]

I'm reminded of the story Werner Herzog tells of when he was filming Fitzcarraldo : Klaus Kinski was throwing tantrums on set (at least partially provoked by Herzog, it has to be said), and one of the Indian chiefs they were working with went up to Herzog and said: "Shall we kill him for you?"  They were prepared to kill him for being annoying and ego maniacal.I'll just add, that one of the features of their society is the small size of the their groups, the pressures of complexity don't exist, and they are more likely to strike off in a new band than build a big community.

[Anonymous]

Hud955 wrote:

In principle though you are right and hunter gatherers have some very interesting lessons for us.  But we shouldn't romanticise them or turn them into a model for socialism.  Their relationship to the means of production will not be the same as in socialism and their level of subsistence is very different.  Most goods in hunter-gatherer societies are not owned in common (the unit of possession is generally the family), but that is because most goods are not the means of production.  And their concept of possession is of course very different from our concept of ownership.

May I use part or all of the above statement as a synopsis for your upcoming meeting at HO on the subject of Hunter Gatherers on May 26th?  http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/hunter-gatherers-clapham-300pm

[SocialistPunk]

Hud955 wrote:

Far from being a 'bold' statement, this is really very uncontroversial stuff.  The evidence is long-standing and overwhelming.  Though you will get all sorts of confusing views promoted by popular writers, largely because they do not distinguish between the various kinds of hunter-gatherer groups and their very different forms of organisation.

A quick search on the internet brought up the following links. With more time no doubt I could find lots more stuff.http://www.compassionatwork.com/art_minniecon.html"So when a person is born, they have to go through these initiations, right through until they die. What happens at death, there is a huge mourning. The women will cut themselves to express their sorrow and anguish at the loss of someone so important to the community. There will be bloodshed, and a whole range of incredibly deep emotions are expressed.That blood is being shed not only because of the personal depths of sorrow, but to express to the family that has lost a loved one. This is their way of saying 'sorry' with them. Because it is a very painful thing to lose someone so close. If the person who dies is of high esteem, it becomes a very big community affair. That person then goes back into the Spirit World again, and they become what we would call a part of our ancestors who are always with us."                                                                                

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1317867/Prehistoric-humans-compassion-cared-others.html"Some of the earliest humans in Europe developed commitments to the welfare of others between 500,000 and 40,000 years ago, a team from the University of York has discovered.""Their findings showed that the injured and infirm were routinely cared for in this period. The researchers examined archaeological evidence for clues as to the way in which emotions began to develop in our ancestors.Analysis of remains showed that a child with a serious brain abnormality was not abandoned, but lived until it was five or six years old."                                                                               

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http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy"We tend to think of empathy as a uniquely human trait. But it’s something apes and other animals demonstrate as well, says primatologist Frans de Waal. He shows how our evolutionary history suggests a deep-rooted propensity for feeling the emotions of others."                                                                             

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 http://news.nd.edu/news/16829-research-shows-child-rearing-practices-of-distant-ancestors-foster-morality-compassion-in-kids/"Three new studies led by Notre Dame Psychology Professor Darcia Narvaez show a relationship between child rearing practices common in foraging hunter-gatherer societies (how we humans have spent about 99 percent of our history) and better mental health, greater empathy and conscience development, and higher intelligence in children."                                                                            

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Then there is this from the "Human Nature. Whoopee!" thread in general discussion.

Hud955 wrote:

The problem with this whole area of discussion is that it is a hotly contested field (or range of fields), invoving a huge array of empirical research and complex argument.  Most people you engage don't want to go there.   And the fact is we are not experts either.  So it is dead easy for anyone to cite a piece of evidence selectively, and equally easy for someone else just to deny it. And before you know it you have a frustrated stalemate.    I think the only way forward with most of us is to keep it simple and make a few telling points,

Still think the following is not a bold sweeping statement to make?

Hud955 wrote:

The Middle ages were very much a devil-take-the-hindmost kind of society whose social values were far from the ones you propose.  This is even more pronounced in hunter gatherer societies, which have been around not for thousands but for tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of years.  These societies are not known for holding compassion in very high esteem.  Those that we know of all develop extreme forms of individualism, and members of these societies tend not to help one another when they are in trouble

[twc]

My dear Socialist Punk, the situation is by no means as obvious as you think.Much of your referenced material is probably correct. But that is not the point.The materialist conception of history is concerned with consciousness that arises out of the social relations — the conditions of ownership and control — that necesarily coalesce around the substance of social reproduction. In primitive societies these social relations of ownership and control are neither scientifically comprehended nor scientifically constructed by the members of that society in the modern sense that they can be by the members of a future socialist society based on common ownership and democratic control that emerges out of the positive achievements and the destructive ruins of capitalism.Primitive consciousness is prey to the scientifically limited and so uncritical comprehension of the primitive social relations that generate it. [It is necessarily mystified.]Primitive consciousness universally conceives the structure of its own society through that universal extension of the biological family — "kinship relations" — those famous systems of social consanguinity first discovered by Lewis Henry Morgan.What Hud955 is pointing out is that The default [spontaneous] consciousness that arises from primitive common ownership of the means of social reproduction is unquestioned sharing of social consumption — what you conceive of (by comparison with our own society) as a caring society.The possibility of variations on this unquestioned sharing consciousness arises precisely because the primitive "kinship" social structures are essentially "unconscious" or "spontaneous" social constructs.The functioning of primitive "kinship structures" is prey to the limitations of the primitive consciousness they generate. From this arises what you might (by comparison with our own society) conceive of as aspects of a non-caring society.However, judgement of "caring" or "non-caring" behaviour is ridiculous if we use as standards of judgement criteria transferred directly from our 21st century capitalist society back into primitive stone-age society.There are simply no "obvious" socially universal standards of "caring" and "non-caring" behaviour because such standards arise out of and must conform to the needs of society — which, as we socialists know, society is a process.By modern bourgeois notions, primitives behaved both sensibly and stupidly, and they simiarly behaved both caringly and uncaringly.That's precisely how Europeans also appear to primitive consciousness. You only need read the excellent first-hand accounts of the First Fleeters in Sydney [e.g. Watkins Tench] to glimpse this two-way admiration and contempt of aborigines and Europeans for each other's social intelligence and stupidity, and especially for each other's social "caring" and "non-caring".[Recall, the First Fleet biographers were men of the Enlightenment who first filtered their observations of a pristine 50000-year isolated culture through Rousseau's "noble savage" conceptions.]What appears as primitive "non-caring" is, just as YMS revealed, the overriding necessity of a grand unifying social structure trumping the necessity of a mere individual in that structure. [This is exactly what happens in capitalism all of the time. The grand social necessity for capital to expand trumps the necessity for us mere individuals to live in security and to die in comfort.]In other words, the modern rock-solid case for socialism depends entirely on class, not at all on values, no matter how much we are motivated by our common sociability.Values are consequential to the case for socialism. Values are not fundamental to it. Values continually change, and the finest of them are daily trampled underfoot before our eyes.Class, however, is fundamental to the case for socialism. It is constant, and is daily reproduced ever more strongly. 

[steve colborn]

I could not disagree more with your post twc. Once again you, as others have done before, argue on the purely "mechanistic" level. You talk about the materialist conception of history, as if it were some holy grail, when in fact, it is merely an overarching theory of social development. No more no less. It pays no heed to the fact that, what is under the microscope are thinking, conscious human beings! Each individual in so many different and varied ways.The values that are so glibly sidestepped, as of no more than a side issue, are not merely fundamental to the case for Socialism but are intrinsically linked to it, intertwined if you like.If you take the "human element" away from the case for Socialism, you devalue not only it but any resultant society, that will be brought about by, "human beings", working together cooperatively, on a conscious level.By the way, I fundamentally disagree that a thoroughgoing knowledge of Marx is a necessity to understanding the case for and the need for a change in society and with it, the concomitant change in societal relationships. Steve.

[ALB]

Surely the issue here is not whether the values of hunter-gatherer societies exist or are desirable (as some are), but how did they arise? In other words, does "(social) being determine consciousness" or is it the other way round, ie that "values" determine social being, as philosophical idealists would claim?

[Hud955]

SocialistPunk wrote:

Still think the following is not a bold sweeping statement to make?

Hud955 wrote:

The Middle ages were very much a devil-take-the-hindmost kind of society whose social values were far from the ones you propose.  This is even more pronounced in hunter gatherer societies, which have been around not for thousands but for tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of years.  These societies are not known for holding compassion in very high esteem.  Those that we know of all develop extreme forms of individualism, and members of these societies tend not to help one another when they are in trouble

LOL.  Of course I do.  What on earth do you think your few casual quotes add up to?  Let's just take your aboriginal example.  It is rarely a good idea to generalise from traditional Australian aboriginal culture since so much of it was destroyed and altered by heavy contact with Europeans from the nineteenth century onwards.  Almost no aboriginal people now live by hunting and gathering, and for a long time many denied their culture and abandoned it.  They are now just in the process of rediscovering or remaking it, so there is a real problem of historical continuity.  And of course as every anthropologist knows (and as every socialist knows when listening to the ideological claims of any culture) you have to interpret carefully what you read and hear.  But even if that were not the case, what would we be able to conclude about aboriginal culture from the extract you quoted?  Not a lot I would suggest.  Perhaps that families love one another and they have a powerfully ritualised way of expressing that love.  Another of your quotes demonstrates, perhaps,  that hunter gatherer parents love their children  Of course they do!  What on earth would you expect? What makes you think that the fact that they have these pretty universal human feelings towards their families defines their social behaviour, which grows out of their social neccessity and not out of family feeling.   As, I think, twc is pointing out, trying to intepret cultural 'values' for people whose social conditions are so different from ours and claim them as models for socialism is a dangerous game.Just to reinforce the point, by no means all Australian aboriginal groups were band hunter gatherers.  So we need to know what sort of social organisation we are hearing about.  Many lived in stratified societies which were not at all egalitarian.  In some aboriginal groups, for instance, the disposal of women was historically controlled by older men, so that younger men had to subordinate themselves to obtain a wife.  The fact that people can bewail their dead doesn't mean they live in societies that are naturally built around the feelings (or values) of caring, or altruism or egalitarianism.  What's happened to your Marxian materialism, SP?  Their societies develop in ways that meet the demands of their material conditions and in band hunter-gatherer societies, there appears to be a huge demand for people to be individually self-reliant.  There are many, many accounts from anthropologists, some of which will be found in the books I suggested, of people being left to die when they could easily have been helped.  Women too are often expected and expect to get on with childbirth by themselves, and when things go wrong, they are often neither comforted nor helped.As for the words you quote from me, they make my point nicely.  Picking casual quotes from the Daily Mail, (of all places), or isolated pieces of research demonstrates nothing.  It takes a lot of work to synthesise the mass of anthropological data that has been accumulated over the last hundred years. So, in my view at least it is best not to try to hang 'bold' statements of the kind you are making on isolated bits of (in several cases highly dubious) evidence but to go instead to where you will find good generalist analyses.  And when you find that there is broad agreement over that analysis, then you accept it.  Frankly, when it comes to choosing between the considered opinions of the experienced, and the romanticising of the wishful, I think I know where I prefer to look.

[alanjjohnstone]

“the modern rock-solid case for socialism depends entirely on class,” twc “By the way, I fundamentally disagree that a thoroughgoing knowledge of Marx is a necessity to understanding the case for and the need for a change in society and with it, the concomitant change in societal relationships” – Steve No socialist will dispute what you say, Steve. Socialism and class existed before Marx and outside Marx. It has never been part of the SPGB case to expect an expertise in Marx The case for socialism, as i see it it , depends on workers recognising and seeking their self-interests. No amount of pointing to a starving child in Ethiopia will result in a desire and drive for a socialist society. We have to recognise that socialism is “for ourselves” and the only way to achieve it is to work and co-operate with others who share the same feelings and affinities and those arise from being members of the same class since it cannot be fulfilled as an individual and the collective unity required exists only as members of our class.  The task of socialists is to build upon this concrete identity of class, not appeal to abstracts like empathy or compassion or pity for the less fortunate than us.

[Author]

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