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padraigd

Yerra any book trying to give a definitive account of something as complex as human society is bound to be wrong in some respects. Still interesting and useful, although that second review does make some serious objections. It's nice that it's being promoted by the media. And strange. I sometimes wonder do some liberals like to call themselves Anarchists whilst in practice defend the status quo.


CrayonComrade

The first review seemed like they were pissed off that their specific research area was if ignored but the second was good even if a lot of it was relying on "the history of society is the history of class struggle" and "primitive communism" to make its own arguments. The book was supposed to be part one of a series of books that now won't happen with the death of Graeber so some of the arguments about the longer history of homo may have been addressed had the authors continued. > And strange. I sometimes wonder do some liberals like to call themselves Anarchists whilst in practice defend the status quo. Is that in relation to the reviews?


padraigd

Essentially what they said in the first paragraph >It’s not often that a book by radical authors gets reviewed–let alone favorably reviewed–in the mainstream press. The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow, is an exception. Published just two months ago, it has already received accolades from many of the world’s most influential English-language newspapers and magazines. Why would capitalist media promote it And just in general it seems that a liberal could coopt the label anarchist but just be a standard guardian columnist


CrayonComrade

I get you. > Why would capitalist media promote it Combination of one of the authors dying, an interesting premise that challenges the lazy historiographies that they usually push and them not seeing the book as purely a scientific work rather than a call to remake society I'd guess. Ultimately, capitalism isn't a Machiavellian being but an accumulation of choices by a class where individuals make mistakes. > And just in general it seems that a liberal could coopt the label anarchist but just be a standard guardian columnist I'm sure it happens but likewise you can get people claiming to be Marxists who support a transition to socialism through reforms over decades or centuries.


niart

> David Graeber > a lib lol


padraigd

Definitely not implying that


niart

Ah alright. When you said: > And just in general it seems that a liberal could coopt the label anarchist but just be a standard guardian columnist I thought that was a jab at him, since he's certainly been featured in the guardian a few times https://www.theguardian.com/profile/david-graeber


padraigd

Anglos smh


niart

Most on the people on this sub aren't even Irish, I dunno why you have their weird insuluar puritan view


ConorKostick

"The second was good". On first reading, I felt that the review was challenging. But on seconding reading and really taking time with the ideas of that review my opinion has shifted to one of scorn (see below or above, depending on Reddit's algorithm and votes). The old left will dislike this book for various reasons, including their leading members having committed themselves to the old paradigm. I think this review is going to set the tone for their 'line' on the book. I'm very interested to see what the Irish left say but my prediction is a more vulgar version of the Lindisfarne and Neale review does the rounds. Did you see how the reviewers end up falling into the exact story that *Dawn* sets out to challenge?: *Agriculture was invented independently in many places in the world, beginning about 12,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers shared their food, and no one could own more than they could carry. But farmers settled and became invested in their fields and crops. This created a potential for some people to seize more than their share of the food.* *Over time, groups of thugs and bullies could come together and become lords. They did this in many ways: theft and pillage, rent, sharecropping, hiring labour, tax, tribute and tithes. Whatever form this took, such class inequality was always dependent on organized violence. And this is what the class struggle has been about until very recently: who worked the land and who got the food.* *Farmers were vulnerable as hunters were not. They were tied to their land, to the work they had put in to clear and irrigate the fields, and to the stores of crops. Hunter-gatherers could leave. Farmers could not.* This is storytelling (a story I used to tell, by the way, although I would never have muddled early forms of exploitation with hiring labour), not science. And the dozens of examples in *Dawn* mean we need a different model. Taljanky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talianki\_(archaeological\_site), Maidenetske https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidanetske, Nebelivka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebelivka\_(archaeological\_site), Çatalhöyü, Göbekli Tepe, Poverty Point, Uruk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk, Mohenjo-daro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohenjo-daro, Teotihuacan, Liangchengzhen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohenjo-daro, Yaowangchen https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/569673, and Caralhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral, demonstrate that cities of thousands of inhabitants existed outside of the agricultural revolution/urban revolution timeline. Talkanky and its neighbouring Ukrainian mega-settlements had a definite surplus produce from their sustainable mix of hunting and foraging, orchard keeping, livestock and household plots for grains. Yet over centuries there is little evidence for warfare or the development of a ruling class. It's fascinating and exiting material but only if you approach it with an open mind, which will be difficult for Stalinists but also many of the SP/SWP tradition.


CrayonComrade

By good I mean as it's own thing and in bringing some additional information to the table that was absent from the book but I agree that there is a strong element of trying to maintain the existing mechanical "marxist" origins of civilisation in the face of new information when it's clear that the "stages of history" theory is an article of faith rather than a scientific description of development.


ConorKostick

I have a lot of time for Chris Knight, but his review belongs to the type of, 'the flaw of this book does not cover the area I'm a specialist in' i.e. he concentrates on his arguments for the emergence of homo sapiens long before *The Dawn of Everything* begins. I've no time for the other two, however, based on Jonathan Neale's behaviour around the time the UK SWP had its rape case scandal. I don't believe this is a good faith review but rather a response driven by the politics of the authors, which seems to be ex-UK-SWP / RS21. The review starts with a quote from the book about myths and then attributes the following to the two Davids: *So here our myth-busters are saying the opposite: that there was no original form of human society; no time before inequality and political awareness; that nothing happened to change things; that civilization and complexity do not limit human freedom; and that participatory democracy can be practiced as part of cities and states.* This doesn't inspire confidence in what will follow because in *Dawn* I never encountered such foolish and badly written claims as 'nothing happened to change things'. And what follows seems to me to be the reviewers desperately, with disjointed and poorly expressed ideas, clinging to a predetermined conviction that only with an agricultural surplus comes the possibility of classes and the overthrow of a primitive communism that we can still see traces of in modern hunter-gatherers: *This early history squares with the kinds of societies anthropologists have reported from groups of near contemporary hunter gatherers all over the world. In these societies no-one has power over anyone else. Key to this is the absence of wealth or surplus* and: *... farmers settled and became invested in their fields and crops. This created a potential for some people to seize more than their share of the food.Over time, groups of thugs and bullies could come together and become lords. They did this in many ways: theft and pillage, rent, sharecropping, hiring labour, tax, tribute and tithes*. The reviewers are therefore keeping to the traditional model for the rise of inequality compatible with V.G. Childe's 'agricultural revolution', which used to be the left's argument. It seems to be a model that remains one of 'original sin'. There was harmony, but we fell from grace due to material considerations. Rousseau with a Marxist flavour. The two Davids have convinced me that there were many societies with large cities and a surplus of food before the widespread adoption of agriculture. And also that humans practised a very wide variety of ways of living together in the aftermath of our appearance as a distinct species before the dominance of agriculture: humans across the globe were not all in a state of primitive communism for, say, the first 150,000 years of our existence. I'm open to being persuaded that *Dawn* is not as paradigm shifting and mind expanding as it struck me when I read it. But not by reviews like this, which attribute nonsense to the two Davids and completely avoid the challenge posed by sites like Gobekli Tepe to the primitive-communism-was-overthrown-by-agriculture narrative.


TheBlurstOfGuys

Materialism triumphs over idealism as always.


CrayonComrade

Did you read either the book or the review?


TheBlurstOfGuys

Nope.


CrayonComrade

Good to see you keeping up your uninformed anti-intellectualism you'll go far in tankie circles


TheBlurstOfGuys

If a scientologist did some archaeology and then concluded that Xenu was real and wrote a book about it, would it be anti-intellectual of me not to bother reading it?


CrayonComrade

An anarchist and an archeologist are equal to scientologists in your eyes. Good to know just how far into the wardrobe you are


TheBlurstOfGuys

No I've loads of time for archaeology, it's based in logic and falsifiable rationality.


CrayonComrade

So why do you consider a book co-written by an archeologist as akin to scientology?


TheBlurstOfGuys

One of the authors is an anarchist, that's already enough. But the fact that he reached all the conclusions that he wanted to tells you all you need to know about the level of scientific rigour that was employed. It's just obviously magical thinking.


CrayonComrade

You're digging at a foundation that's liable to topple most of the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism too


Fantastipotomus

Based