Many people considering the SPGB’s case for the first time are staggered by the implication that when Socialist society is established there will no longer be private property or its manifestations. “Surely that’s absurd, everything free, no money, invoices, tax returns, banks. People would go mad taking things which they couldn’t afford—why would anyone work if not for wages? Everyone would rely on someone else to do things for them.” So goes the argument, and yet very often the same people who raise this objection also throw up the obstacle of “human nature” stopping the establishment of Socialism. We are all apparently too selfish, greedy, warlike and generally steeped in original sin to be capable of establishing Socialism (desirable though it sounds).
It comes as a shock, therefore, to people who react in this way to learn that for the most part in the development of human society the concept and consequences of private property did not exist. Capitalism itself (about 200 years old) conditions workers to regard it as permanent, unchanging and the only possible form of society, so that people are indeed jolted to hear about what anthropologists call “primitive communism”.
However, if we are to accept that nature, stars, planets, rocks, the atmosphere, life and man are all the products of evolution, then it is unreasonable to regard human society as being something immutable. L. H. Morgan was one anthropologist who discovered and described the workings of early society including the “communism in living” he observed among Iroquois Indians. One of the reasons for the violent academic backlash against Morgan’s theories was that they upset the notion of the permanence of private property. But Morgan was not the only one to note the lack of property relations among “primitive” peoples. A few illustrations are worth mentioning. G. Taplin talking of Australian tribes wrote: “In the clan there can be no personal property—all implements, weapons, etc., belong to members collectively, every individual regards them as possessions of his clan and to be employed for its welfare and defence as occasion may require. If he has a weapon, or a net, or canoe which is in some sense his own, he knows that his property in it is subject to the superior rights of the clan. Every man is interested in his neighbour’s property and cares for it because it is part of the wealth of the family collectively.”
Also writing of the Australian aborigines the Rev. W. Ridley said: “Real and personal property in individuals is rendered impossible by their systematic communism.” Darwin wrote of Fuegian tribes: “Even a piece of cloth given to one is torn in shreds and distributed, no one individual becomes richer than another.” Of the Eskimos H. W. Klutshak wrote: “In small things and in great, whatever is to be found in an Eskimo village in the way of provisions and tools is the common property of all. As long as there is a piece of meat in the camp it belongs to all.” L. A. de Bougainville wrote: “ . . . it seems that as regards the necessaries of life there is no private property, and everything belongs to everybody” (of Tahiti). Even Lowie, who was a vehement opponent of Morgan’s evolutionary view, had to grudgingly admit: “With respect to certain forms of property there is often what virtually comes to communism notably in connection with the procuring of food.”
The general Socialist argument about private property is that it gradually developed as man became more proficient at regularly producing surpluses which could then only be exchanged with other tribes for other produce. Concepts such as money, insurance, accounts, etc., could only arise from private property, which in turn depended on production surplus to the tribe’s needs. Property is a social phenomenon and not a biological one. It was Engels who pointed out that we must thank the ancient Greeks for that wonderful invention called the mortgage.
Those who object to Socialism on the grounds of “human nature” being incompatible with common ownership must explain why human nature changed. Or if it did not change then, what did change to give us the current situation?
Whilst human nature has not changed, man’s social organization and his behaviour have changed. These changes have occurred because man has continually improved his means of subsistence, i.e. of staying alive, and this has resulted in the development of property and wealth. The time is long due when man should use his means of production as a common instrument for all rather than for the benefit of a minority, the capitalist class.
Tony D'Arcy
Bolded paragraphs in the original article. It was a 1970s thing.
ReplyDelete