On Kings

* Book: On Kings. David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins.

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Argues that tribal societies lived under the spiritual despotism of their gods and spirits.

Discussion

Graeber is wrong on the lack of egalitarianism in Immediate Return Hunter-Gathering Societies

1. Chris Knight:

"In his recent writings he argued that, just as communism has always existed, so too has the principle of coercion which underlies the state. Something like the state must always be present in the sense that sovereignty—defined by Graeber as “the power of command”—is an intrinsic component of all human social interaction. In support of this claim, he cites linguistic evidence. “All human languages we know of have imperative forms, and in any society there will be situations where it is considered appropriate for some individuals to tell others what to do.”14 To me it seems astonishing that Graeber should conflate such very different things as imperative linguistic forms and the state. Imperatives are not necessarily top-down. Among immediate-return hunter-gatherers—the Hadza, for example—they frequently illustrate counter-dominance, as children make demands of their parents or women instruct men in how to behave. Graeber seems to be saying that the basic elements of state power are to be found everywhere, including among supposedly egalitarian hunter-gatherers. For example, he states that

- "hunter-gatherers cannot be genuine egalitarians because they have Kings".

I was thrown back when I first heard this assertion.

Hunter-gatherers, Graeber reasons, typically believe in powerful spirits who might suddenly produce a thunderstorm, torrential rain, or a whirlwind. In many cases, prey animals are believed to be protected by such a spirit ready to wreak punishment on any hunter who shows them disrespect. Associating all religion with sovereignty and state power, Graeber depicts hunter-gatherers as fearful people cowering in the face of hostile and incomprehensible forces no different in principle from those wielded by a divine king.

In his own words:

- "Most hunter-gatherers actually do see themselves as living under a state-like regime, even under terrifying despots; it’s just that since we see their rulers as imaginary creatures, as gods and spirits and not actual flesh-and-blood rulers, we do not recognize them as “real.” But they’re real enough for those who live under them.:

Hunter-gatherers, according to Graeber, differ only in that they deny their sovereigns any prospect of material embodiment.

As he explains,

- “Most hunter-gatherers we know of have plenty of kings, but they studiously avoid allowing sovereign powers to fall into the hands of mortal humans, at least on any sort of ongoing basis, and usually in any form at all.”

Although their Kings are immortal spirits, continues Graeber, they are real—just as real as corporeal Kings—since everyone believes in them. He concludes that because hunter-gatherers have kings, they cannot be considered genuinely egalitarian.

Of all Graeber’s provocative claims, this to me seems the most outlandish. Maybe he makes this claim because he is unfamiliar with hunter-gatherer systems of belief. Or maybe he just enjoys being provocative. In any event, had he been less dismissive of hunter-gatherer studies, he would never have made such an elementary mistake. He would have known that, far from living in abject fear of their spirits, the Kalahari Bushmen—like other egalitarian hunter-gatherers—party with them and joke with them, often gleefully making obscene jokes at their expense. When God is the Trickster, the whole idea of divine authority is essentially a belly-laugh. When Richard Lee asked a Bushman informant whether he and his people recognised a headman or King, he was told, “Of course we have headmen! … In fact we are all headmen…. Each one of us is headman over himself!” From this, we may conclude, with Lee, that the Bushmen are assertively egalitarian. When everyone is King, no one is King.

Being well aware of the dangers of despotism, contemporary hunter-gatherers do not imagine they can lie back and relax because egalitarianism has been achieved. There is always the danger that some individual might attempt to assert personal dominance, making people feel the need to establish and re-establish their egalitarian principles repeatedly and in highly sophisticated psychological and social ways. So freedom and despotism are constantly in conflict, although something like libertarian communism is what everyone recognises as the best way to live. To such people, private ownership seems undesirable and self-defeating because they can’t see the point of it. Where communism prevails, it is because everyone enjoys sharing their food, their songs, their laughter, their children, and, when conditions are right, also their bodies in tactile solidarity, including sex. Taboos against abuse of the human body or abuse of natural resources including game animals are certainly strong, but they emanate from below and have nothing to do with the state.

We may accept Graeber’s point that no society is ever rigidly organized according to a single principle. Invariably, there will be rhythms, periodicities, and a fluctuating mix of strategies and pressures, some generous and cooperative, some less so. In fact, the essence of the Trickster is precisely this alternation between opposite phases or states. Hunter-gatherers are well aware of the possibilities of cruelty, hierarchy, and despotism in human affairs. But they also know how to turn these dangers on their head. In view of all this, Graeber cannot be right when he denies the essentially egalitarian, communistic nature of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which not only shaped our uniquely human emotions and instincts, but was ultimately responsible for our evolutionary success as a species."

(https://brooklynrail.org/2021/06/field-notes/Did-communism-make-us-human)

2. Daniel Bitton:

"In 2017 Graeber published On Kings, co-written with Marshal Sahlins. And in it, Graeber and Sahlins try to argue that even the most supposedly egalitarian societies have hierarchical religions and cosmologies where the gods rule the humans who must obey or face their wrath…

And they go as far as to say that the true primordial state of humanity is authoritarianism not liberty or equality!

- "Even the so-called “egalitarian” or “acephalous” societies, including hunters such as the Inuit or Australian Aboriginals, are in structure and practice cosmic polities, ordered and governed by divinities, the dead, species-masters, and other such meta-persons endowed with life-and-death powers over the human population. There are kingly beings in heaven where there are no chiefs on earth. Although Chewong society is described as classically “egalitarian,” it is in practice coercively ruled by a host of cosmic authorities, themselves of human character and metahuman powers. So while, on one hand, Howell characterizes the Chewong as having “no social or political hierarchy” or “leaders of any kind,” on the other, she describesa human community encompassed and dominated by potent metapersons with powers to impose rules and render justice that would be the envy of kings. … basically similar cosmologies are found among basically similar societies .. . the Central Inuit; …, Highland New Guineans, Australian Aboriginals, native Amazonians, and other “egalitarian” peoples likewise dominated by metaper-son-others who vastly outnumber them."

and later on Graeber alone says

- In the first chapter of this volume, Marshall Sahlins makes the argument that insofar as there is a primordial political state, it is authoritarianism. Most hunter-gatherers actually do see themselves as living under a state-like regime, even under terrifying despots; it’s just that since we see their rulers as imaginary creatures, as gods and spirits and not actual flesh-and-blood rulers, we do not recognize them as “real.” But they’re real enough for those who live under them. We need to look for the origins of liberty, then, in a primal revolt against such authorities.

Again, not one of the societies discussed in this entire book are immediate return egalitarian societies. There are no immediate return societies in the amazon or in Papua New Guinea. All the societies he talks about have some sort of obvious hierarchy right here on earth, usually male domination. The Chewong and Highland New Guineans discussed above are not even hunter gatherers.

It’s like Graeber and Sahlins were writing in the 1970s when these societies would have been considered egalitarian, except this was 2017.

And more shocking, is that what they’re saying just isn’t true. If you look at the religions of actual egalitarian societies, central african foragers like the mbuti, aka, efe and mbendjele, the bush people of the kalahari desert, the Hadza in Tanzania, the Batek in Malaysia, or the Nayaka in the mountainous forests of India and various societies related to these societies, you’d see that their religions don’t fit Graeber and Sahlins’ narrative at all.

For example, the Mbuti and the Nayaka – these are two totally unrelated immediate return societies located more 4000 miles apart on different continents. They each have a very similar religion where they see their respective forests as a generous genderless loving mother father deity who provides everything for their children. Far from quaking in fear of it, Turnbull tells the story of one Mbuti man who was literally having sex with the forest bceause he loved it so much. And the forest never tells anyone what to do besides just respect and maintain the forest, don’t overhunt the animals, don’t use up more than you can replenish etc.

Meanwhile, the Hadza have been argued to not have a religion, which I don’t think is correct, but they certainly don’t have any Gods that they take very seriously. If you ask a Hadza what happens after you die they will say stuff like “we bury you and people cry” and if you keep pushing them they say things like “maybe you go to the sun, we don’t really know”. They see their gods as legends and stories not as any sort of authoritarian figures. It’s very modern in a weird way, which I don’t think is a coincidence, and we’ll talk about that another time

I’ll link to an article about Hadza religion, and also to a recent video by some safari bro dude who asks some Hadza philosophical questions and then gets the most material, unreligious answers you can imagine, and that’s a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, the Kalahari bush people have a trickster type of god that they often complain about but again it never tells them what to do, it just causes random bad luck, which they resent. And far from a hierarchical relationship to this god, they see themselves as equals to it, as they do to all their deiteies! l’ll link to a video of Helga Vierich telling a funny story about this, where they tell stories about their god like he’s some sort of mr magoo character getting himself into all sorts of goofs.

Now you can certainly make an argument that there’s no such thing as a truly egalitarian society, and that all societies have some elements of hierarchy in them. But if you’re going to make that argument properly and honestly, you would take the most egalitarian societies and then try to point out that inequalities of wealth and power and ideology that exist there.

And there are some arguable signs of potential inequalities worth looking into and debating about in immediate return hunter gatherer societies – and several anthropologists have done just that. But not Graeber. He acts like they’ve never existed.

If you’re familiar with hunter gatherer literature, It’s so conspicuous that it seems dishonest. What he does is the equivalent of arguing that there are no countries on earth where men and women have equal legal rights, and then citing Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, 17th century France and the old Testament as proof. It’s like he’s counting on the fact that his readers don’t know anything about immediate return societies so he can push his narrative."

(https://worldwidescrotes.wordpress.com/2021/10/26/10-1xcript/)