[P2P-F] THE politics of egalitarianism

Tue Sep 20 10:58:20 CEST 2011

Dear Vasilis,

Thank you so much for your interesting comments, I posted them here on the
wiki, see

http://p2pfoundation.net/Community,_State,_and_the_Question_of_Social_Evolution

Can you post this as a blog post October 4 or after?

Also, can you find out more about the book this is originally from?, i.e.
the politics of egalitarianism?

Michel

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Vasilis Kostakis <kostakis.b at gmail.com>wrote:

> Michel,
>
> What I found interesting is cited below in a form of narrative excerpts. In
> general, I think that the text is less related to the first quote that you
> mentioned than it is more an analysis of Marx's Ethnological Notebooks.
>
> Actually the author claims that Marx repeatedly emphasised the viability of
> communal forms as lived in particular societies: "Over and again Marx showed
> how they pose inherent opposition to state forms of control and are
> therefore targeted in repeated attempts by state agents to prevent their
> reproduction as communally organized" (32). Galley points to the importance
> of kinship and community as "the most compelling dynamics that either
> deflect or reflect what is a terrifying insecurity" (32).  Always referring
> to Marx's Ethnological Notebooks, the author argues that "the resilience of
> communal forms in the face of overarching structures of domination was a
> central issue in Marx's examination of literature on precapitalist
> societies" (34).
>
> It explicitly stated that Marx was against Social Evolutionism: "Marx
> recognises periods of dramatic change in social organization of political
> economy, but these are historically, not naturally or evolutionary
> determined" (35).  According to Gailey, Marx highlights that "communal
> property cannot coexist indefinitely with patriarchal family relations
> because of the fundamental opposition the latter poses to the formerQ
> similarly "common usage" or custom cannot persist unchallenged alongside
> state-associated law. Where archaic forms persist, Marx does not depict them
> as "vestiges" or cultural lags, but fundamentally as evidence of resistance
> to the penetration of state-associated institutions" (35). According to
> Gailey's reading of Marx's Notebooks, "the state is fundamentally parasitic.
> Nowhere in the Notebooks does Marx discuss the state as a progressive force
> in human evolution or as a force in ameliorating social problems" (37); the
> state, following Marx, "in all forms is an excrescence of the society" (46).
>
> The author shares Diamond (1975) and Krader's (1975) view concerning the
> continuity of "Marx's attention to the primitive commune as a model, at a
> different level of socioeconomic integration, of an emancipatory future"
> (43) and brings to the front conclusions from critical anthropological
> research in North America. Then Gailey explains why Marx's Ethnological
> Notebooks has been marginalised by researchers and scholars articulating
> that their reading reaches the conclusion that socialism is not a telos:
> "Socialism would be beneficial only insofar as it facilitated the
> achievement of a dialectical return to the communal societies of the past"
> (45). "Fully capitalist societies...would be less likely to foster socialist
> transformations, since communities are...effectively dissolved" (48).
> Therefore, according to Gailey's understanding of Marx's Notebooks,
> capitalism is not a necessary stage on the road to socialism.
>
> v.
>
>
>
>

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