'Primitive' anarcho-communism (among hunter-gatherers)

[African_Prince]

Food storage would run counter to the !Kung's habit of sharing food, particularly meat. Perhaps because it is a relatively rare commodity, meat is highly prized by the !Kung, as it is among most hunter-gatherers. When an animal is killed, the hunter (or rather the person whose arrow struck the prey- and that is not always the same person as he who shot the arrow) initiates an elaborate process of sharing the raw meat. The sharing runs along lines of kinship, alliances and obligations. Lorna Marshall, a pioneer in !Kung studies, once witnessed the butchering of an eland, the largest of te African antelopes, and she counted sixty acts of meat distribution within a short time of the initial sharing. The network of sharig nd obligation is very important among the !Kung. Richard Lee emphasizes the point strongly : 'Sharing deeply pervades the behaviour and values of !Kung foragers, within the family and between families, and it is extended to the boundaries of the social universe. Just as the principle of profit and rationality is central to the capitalist ethic, so is sharing central to the conduct of social life in foraging societies'.



This ethic is not confined to the !Kung : it is a feature of hunter-gatherers in general. Such behaviour, however, is not automatic; like most of human behaviour, it has to be taught from childhood. 'Every human infant is born with the capacity to share and the capacity to be selfish,' Richard Lee says. That which is nurtured and developed is that which each individual society regards as most valuable.



In the same vein as the sharing ethic comes a surprising degree of egalitarianism. The !Kung have no chiefs and no leaders. Problems in their society are mostly solved long befire they mature into anything that threatens social harmony. Although the !Kung are very thinly distributed overall - occupying on average about 4 square kilometres (1.5 square miles) per person - their camps, by contrast, are an intense compression of humanity. People's conversations are common property, and disputes are readily disfused through common bantering. No one gives orders or takes them. Richard Lee once asked /Twi !gum whether the !Kung have headmen. 'Of course we have headmen,' he replied, much to Richard lee's surprise. 'In fact, we are all headmen; each of us is headman over himself!' /Twi !gum considered the question and his witty answer to be a great joke.



The stress on equality demands that certain rituals are observed when a successful hunter returns to camp. The object of these rituals is to play down the event so as to discourage arrogance nd conceit. 'The correct demeanour for the successful hunter,' explains Richard Lee, 'is modesty and undertatement.' A !Kung man, /Gaugo, described it this way : 'Say that a man has been hunting. He must not come home andannounce like a braggart, "I have killed a big one in the bush!" He must first sit down in silence until I or someone else comes up to his fire and asks, "What did you see today?" He replies quietly, "Ah, I'm no good for hunting. I saw nothing at all..maybe just a tiny one." Then I smile to myself because I know he has killed something big.' The bigger the kill, the more it is played down.



The theme of modesty is continued when the butchering and carrying party goes to fetch the kill the following day,' Richard Lee explains. The helpers joke, complaining that surely a hunter did not need so many people to carry such a punky kill. And the hunter will agree, suggesting that they just cut out the liver and go look for something more worthwhile. The jesting and understatement is strictly followed, again not just by the !Kung but by many foraging people, and the result is that although some men are undoubtedly more proficient hunters than others, no one accrues unusual prestige or status because of his talents.



-Excerpt from The Making of Mankind, 1981, Richard E. Leakey

[Francois Tremblay]

I checked in People Without Government, and the !Kung aren't in there. So there seems to be some kind of disagreement on whether they are or are not without leaders.