As a counterpoint to this argument:
https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/
David Graeber and David Wengrow argue that both oppression, and freedom, are present in every society from tiny to huge, the "egalitarian hunter gatherer" trope is a huge oversimplification, and really it's the cultural choices we make that determine whether we live in a free society or one full of domination and oppression. My favorite quote:
"Egalitarian cities, even regional confederacies, are historically quite commonplace. Egalitarian families and households are not. Once the historical verdict is in, we will see that the most painful loss of human freedoms began at the small scale – the level of gender relations, age groups, and domestic servitude – the kind of relationships that contain at once the greatest intimacy and the deepest forms of structural violence. If we really want to understand how it first became acceptable for some to turn wealth into power, and for others to end up being told their needs and lives don’t count, it is here that we should look. Here too, we predict, is where the most difficult work of creating a free society will have to take place."
Do note that the article talks about a point in time way before the agricultural revolution.
I winced a little on that part too, but he does give the caveat later that women and children weren't equal to men at all, which means that "egalitarian societies" means "something like 30% of the tribe was somewhat egalitarian" which really isn't saying much.
I also winced when later in the article there is what I consider to be an enormous leap of logic, when stating that a child staring at two puppets being rewarded differently means the child yearns for equality.
I've got to say that the older I get, the more effort it takes me not to dismiss social science commentary unless backed up with strong evidence. There is just so much bullshit.
This is an opinion piece to the NYT. It is based on a fanciful, imaginative interpretation of certain historical information while leaving out facts that are incongruous with the interpretation. For example, the hard facts of regular tribal conflicts where one tribe dominates or destroys another, male domination over women, or killing/ostracism of disabled or sick people, does not factor into the “egalitarian utopia” of 5000 BC envisioned and discussed by the authors.
We are living in the best and most egalitarian of times—-believe it.
Many Neolithic cultures had literal slavery, and they also have had very high levels of violence. There's nothing less egalitarian than owning another human being as a thing, as well as raping, killing and pillaging.
> I wouldn't be surprised if society will have a different again perspective to what we're doing now.
I would, because the things are completely opposite. One is about subjugating the weak, and the other is about freeing them. I'm surprised you can compare the two! We're not "enacting laws that favor some over others", but laws intended to help communities or groups that have, for centuries or millennia been put down. If you think for one second that women or minorities are somehow "favored" in modern Western society, then you're either blind or delusional. They are still very much disfavored, and some laws are trying to ever-so-lightly tilt the scales a little bit in their favor, and a lot less than they deserve.
>Recently Riane Eisler in her important revisioning of history, The Chalice and the Blade, has advanced the important notion of “partnership” models of society being in competition and oppressed by “dominator” forms of social organization. These latter are hierarchical, paternalistic, materialistic, and male dominated.
The funny thing is that this book was published in 1987, 8 years into Margaret Thatcher's rather violent domination of GB. But why let facts come in the way of fantasies rooted in the size of very old clay statues?
I don't find this particularly compelling as given the author's fundamental assumptions regarding inequity and sexism as natural outcroppings of agrarian society. For example the mongols were a largely non-agrarian society that was highly stratified, and deeply sexist that committed human rights violations on the global scale.
> The idea that women's liberation and the abolishment of slavery are "arbitrarily" positive things, and that we may like them exactly as likely as we may not via some senseless quirk of history, seems pretty asinine and lazy.
Its not exactly arbitrary, its more dependent on the current state of the world. Take the trolley problem, if killing one person would save billions does murder become moral?
Similarly, (and more contentiously) we might look at pre industrial agrarian societies as barbaric for favouring male children but when your society/family is absolutely dependent on human labour and men are capable of providing far more for roughly the same amount of resources consumed you can see how that moral position could emerge.
>For most of history, women were basically the property of their fathers, then traded for dowry to become the property of their husbands. They couldn't own property, they couldn't vote, they could be stoned to death for disobeying their husbands.
For most of history, both men and women in any society couldn't do any of the things you just described. The majority of people in any society, of both genders, have belonged to the lower classes. This is still true today, but you have far more rights as a lower class person today than you would have 200 years ago. You're viewing history solely from the perspective of the upper classes (which includes the middle class).
>Where could we be now if we hadn’t repressed half of our society throughout our entire history?
And where could we be now if we hand't repressed all of our society throughout our entire history? Men were repressed too, and in many cases more than women (hard labour, conscription etc). Men and women have gender roles which limit their lives.
The liberation of women has basically caused a diffusion of responsibility of communal tasks...Yeah, so maybe it was actually a bad idea.
Well, heck, you could say the same thing for Capitalism, which has also benefited billions materially. Liberation is bound to cause social disruption. The problem isn't the liberation. It's how society needs to (re)organize itself around change. It's ossification in how society views itself, which may exist in the older, traditional part, as well as in newer conceptions. The problem is ideological rigidity, which can be found in both the religious right and the secular left. You shouldn't be rigid when it's time to adjust.
> The culture was oppressive towards damned near everyone who wasn't of the highest class.
Yes, yes, "all lives matter". It doesn't change the fact that given a man and woman of the same class, it was generally more oppressive to the woman, Biblical queen exemptions notwithstanding.
> I actually find the notion of "patriarchy" incredibly sexist -- were not men the canaries in the coalmine -- the original victims -- for the dehumanization of capitalism?
"Patriarchy" is intertwined with the means of production but is also distinct therefrom. Women in Victorian England were not fully legally recognized as persons and did not have the same property rights as their husbands, and this is in a period during which capitalism obtained in England. This arrangement with men as the "patriarch" of the household, exercising control over subaltern women, predates capitalism by millenia (c.f. Roman "pater familias").
This "patriarchy" doesn't only consist of formal law, but may exist in tradition and social mores. For example adultery may be technically equally penalized for men and women but carry a vastly greater stigma and punishment in practice for women, as in feudal China. As another example, women may technically have recourse to the law if they are subjected to domestic violence but be prevented from doing this by the fear of social opprobrium and further mistreatment by family and community, as was again the case in Victorian England.
"Patriarchy" doesn't refer to any concerted effort or plot, but is a description of the outcome of social institutions and cultural attitudes which, AS A SYSTEM, disadvantage women.
> capitalism ... should be understood as an abstract, inhuman force
Capitalism, and patriarchy, are BOTH generally understood as being systemic: i.e. properties of human institutions. The concepts DO NOT inherently place blame on individuals, or even make judgments about the morality of the system.
Whether or not our society exhibits patriarchy is an empirical question, to be answered with reference to data. Arising from but separate from this, there is the ethical question of value-judgment about the society. But there is absolutely no basis to call the notion of patriarchy "sexist".
I’m seeing this framing a lot in this thread and I haven’t experienced it before, where does this “back in the day when women had less freedom it was better for humanity” come from? Seems like a negative feedback loop if you’re looking for a date...
Lots of things were/are found in many unrelated human societies, such as slavery, which was found all over the world for thousands of years and still exists in many places/forms today. Something being common isn’t an indication of whether or not it is intrinsic or “the only way”. We only make progress by challenging social structures and trying to improve them. Perhaps these kinds of commonalities exist all over because they are effective at controlling/enforcing oppression and power.
My point isn’t that men and women aren’t at all different, it’s that institutions use the “it’s human nature and it can’t be changed” argument to hide oppressive/coercive practices that are avoidable and able to be removed.
For almost all of history in almost every society both man and women have been ignored, oppressed, controlled. Things have drastically changed in Western world. Not sure we need to impose a Brave New World style "utopia".
"Egalitarian cities, even regional confederacies, are historically quite commonplace. Egalitarian families and households are not. Once the historical verdict is in, we will see that the most painful loss of human freedoms began at the small scale – the level of gender relations, age groups, and domestic servitude – the kind of relationships that contain at once the greatest intimacy and the deepest forms of structural violence. If we really want to understand how it first became acceptable for some to turn wealth into power, and for others to end up being told their needs and lives don’t count, it is here that we should look. Here too, we predict, is where the most difficult work of creating a free society will have to take place."
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