this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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They believe life was more fulfilling before the agricultural revolution. Obviously they are aware of the tradeoff of letting go of modern medicine.
But anprims tend to think the tradeoff is worth it. In that in their view the only way to truly eliminate hierarchy and oppression is to eliminate the technology that supports it. And just as states were only able to form after the agricultural revolution, they believe the nomadic nature of hunter gatherers makes states forming nearly impossible and thus lets them live in small decentralised egalitarian groups.
Their difference with regular anarchists is they think this is only achievable if we destroy technology. As they see technology as a monopoly by the state to oppress the masses and reinforce heirarchy.
I’m not an anprim, but I think it’s a fascinating ideology. And I wouldn’t call them “dumb” before you really understand what their views are. A great introduction might be “Against the Grain” by Yale Political Scientist and Anthropologist James C Scott, who was leading scientist on stateless socities and one of the most cited political scientists, until he passed away earlier this year. He was also a shepherd with a flock of sheep.
Which, itself, ignores the nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which are far from egalitarian, and are only decentralized in the sense that they're small, not in the sense that power is distributed equally amongst its members.
This has been a debate for the past century. The anthropological consensus seems to be something along the lines of “it really depends, but they are far more egalitarian on average than state based socities”. There had been a consensus that they were chiefly egalitarian in the 60-2000s, but since then our notion of egalitarianism has become stricter.
It’s a fascinating topic. I took two entire classes on this debate at the masters level. But there is no denying that state based societies are far more hierarchical than hunter gatherer ones.
And a lot of the hunter gatherer socities we are able to study in person, have had conflict or atleast interaction with state based socities, which may have influenced them too. Anyways it’s a fascinating topic with no strong conclusion, but the weak conclusion that they tend to be more egalitarian.
Insofar as there is less wealth that can be hoarded, yes, but insofar as division of power is concerned, which is what wealth inequality is a consequence of, hunter-gatherer societies remain extremely unequal.
And our studies of non-state societies more rigorous.
... well, you're probably more informed on the topic than I am, then. I only took a few anthro courses when studying for my Bach, lol.
I guess I was too hasty in calling them dumb, thanks for the recommendation, I'll have to check it out later.
Obviously they have their faults. As a heavily disabled person I’m very much against an anprim revolution because it would lead to my death. But at the same time, my disability would not have existed if it weren’t for modern society. I got disabled by a COVID infection. Viral pandemics at the scale of COVID just wouldn’t exist in a hunter gatherer world as the decentralised nomadic low population nature of it does not give it a sufficient viral resevoir to keep sustaining itself. (Hunter Gatherer groups are maybe 20-150 people large, and rarely, like once or twice year, come in contact with others, so the virus wouldn’t be able to survive).