People Without Government

* Book: People without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy, rev. ed., Harold Barclay. Seattle: Left Bank Books, 1990. ISBN 0-939306-09-3.

Reviews

* 1. Top Amazon Review by Takis Tz. (top 1000 Reviewers)

"Barclay, a professor on anthropology, compiles a very interesting study here as he focuses on peoples throughout history who've lived in societal systems without a central leadership the way we'd understand it today.

I'm not aware of another book with such a subject matter, and allthough this is by no means heavy on detail or volume (the book runs a mere 150 pages) it still is succesfull in providing food for thought for the reader interesting on how human authority systems were, have evolved, and what they could possibly evolve into.

What does become apparent in Barclay's study is that many societies on a global basis, scattered through the realms of time have indeed without a central leadership for a period scanning over 1000s of years. Many of them, in one form or the other, still exist even if they are becoming rarer and rarer.

It is obvious that we humans are capable of more societal flexibility than the slow-moving and often overpowering and overwhelming systems we live under today (emphasis on "under"). As other folk have demonstrated we could indeed live in societies based more on consensus rather than those where a flimsy "majority" rules over the rest in heavily bureaucratic and (more importantly) constantly power-seeking democracies.

While the book makes clear that societies such as the ones it lists ans studies did have a "leader" or "leaders" they were by no means unshakable in their positions nor did they possess enough power to abuse. Which, by the way, is the main point about the dangers of authority and the leading cause (pun intended) for people seeking alternatives to systems that are burdening human evolution as a whole. Not to mention human existence.

Now, Barclay does a great job pointing out that the relatively headless societies he studies existed in particular historical frames and times but he does an even better job showing the capabilities of human societies. Sociological evolution as any evolution is a process that can go back and forth, adjusting itself until it can possibly find a format that serves the species' causes better.

The author doesn't come with a saw to grind, he's very cautious to point out the "mishaps" of the peoples he studies, points out readily their disadvantages and carefully analyses their advantages, while, where appropriate, projects into the possibilities of such systems in the future.

Immensely interesting even if it could have gone much deeper, this is a book that will intrigue those interested in the subject. "

* 2. Barry Seidman on Barclay's point of view:

"...While Fry and Hand offer sound liberal ideas of the good society, they do seem to miss a major point. Barclay argues that it's no accident that centralized authority, whether we're talking about chiefdoms, states (including representative democracies), or a world government, creates the problems in humanity which lead to violence and war. To this, he would add capitalism as well. Hierarchies, Barclay says, are indeed natural in human nature, but when hierarchies become more about domination and submission rather than about a division of labor and responsibility, we begin to have a problem.

Fry and Hand argue that aggression need not lead to wide scale violence or warfare; likewise, Barclay argues that natural human hierarchies need not lead to domination, which leads to violence and warfare on the personal and state level. Indeed it may be the advent of dominance-based hierarchies of chiefdoms or states, both being rather recent developments in human history, which puts humans into circumstances unnatural, or at least unhealthy for them, therefore creating stress and tension on many levels.

As for a solution, while Barclay would not prefer to return the entire species to nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles, even if that were possible, he would argue that adopting anarchist principles, or at least a more genuine practice of democratic principles, would certainly help us out of the mess we now find ourselves in. Along this line, one project which stands out is Takis Fotopoulos' Inclusive Democracy project which combines various Leftist ideologies along with a naturalistic viewpoint toward implementing a true, inclusive democracy which would replace statist and/or libertarian capitalist societies, statist socialist societies, social democracies, and hierarchal representative democracies.

So, at last, humanism. It seems to me that the principles of humanism, from scientific naturalism to the want for social justice, can be found in a clear, objective manor via biology, anthropology and a proper understanding of human nature as it is played out in the bulk of human history. Fry, Hand and Barclay, more than Hobbes, E.O. Wilson or Pinker, seem to move in such a direction. This then speaks more to where we can go in this new millennium as we begin to actually examine our species' real behaviors, without western bias based on supernatural myth or Hobbesian cynicism."

From "Imagine all the People: Human Nature, War, Peace & Humanism"

More Information

• Another book by Harold Barclay: The State. London: Freedom Press, 2003. ISBN 1904491006

"The state is neither an inevitable, nor natural, phenomenon, but the creation of despots. Its history is a history of power, wealth and tyranny. The immortality of the state is the greatest myth of our society. Anthropologist Harold Barclay explains how a powerful elite has hijacked control of society. Through control of agriculture, warfare, trade, labor and other resources the state has seized complete power. Do we really need the state or should we organize society ourselves?"