h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is something I emailed to somebody here that might be of interest to others who might be asking the question, "What's native communism and why does RAF Wing it never failed?" You'll have to do some homework, but an internet search on keywords like Henry Dawes, Cherokee, Inca, Aylla, or whatever should yield plenty of stuff to review.

So, you can start by researching the Dawes Act but especially Henry Dawes' report justifying the legislation. It's very revealing of the success of the Cherokee Nation's communism in Oklahoma after the Great Vacation aka Trail of Tears.

Dawes was convinced that as long as the Cherokee held their land in common they couldn't advance to the level of civilization he thought appropriate. Coincidentally, his act freed up thousands of acres of tribal land for homesteaders in the 1890s.

Unfortunately, the great state of Oklahoma which was thereby created didn't have any lawyers, doctors or other professional service providers so they had to rely on the Cherokee for those services. Makes you wonder who was really civilized huh?

After you're done with that, you can research the Southern Ute reservation around Ignacio, Colorado. They took allotments under the Dawes Act and advanced exactly nil until the alienated tribal lands which hadn't been patented under the Homestead Act were returned. Now they're one of the richest tribes in the country.

The Inca developed a system organized on the Aylla or extended family that inhabits a certain territory. The Ayllas were organized to provide surpluses of produce and labor to the Inca in return for allotments of food and other necessities during famines or other hard times. The system worked pretty good until the Spaniards showed up. Since then the region has been racked by abject poverty. The same is true in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or wherever.

Wherever the European economic systems were imposed, people started to starve big time. That's because the European system alienated the common lands, both in Europe and elsewhere, forcing many of the Europeans to seek their fortunes elsewhere, fortune being kind of a fantasy term because the reality was that very few made fortunes. They just got by mostly like they would have done if the nobility had been erradicated in Europe.

Not only that but many colonists couldn't make it with hired hands and had to resort to slave labor. While slavery wasn't unknown in the New World prior to contact, it was totally different from the type practiced in Europe and especially the Roman Empire. Rome's economy failed too which makes it all the more strange to see people admiring the Romans. What's to admire really?

Now, if you don't like bureaucrats, don't despair. Native communism doesn't need bureaucrats, just viable extended families. Just like maybe when you were a kid you didn't invite other kids to your dad's house. You probably invited them to your house or apartment because it was common property or at least you and your family had common use of it without the invention of a plodding bureaucracy. That's because you were family not strangers. You had common interests other than greed.

So imagine that concept extended to hundreds or even thousands of people and you might get how it works.

The reason it didn't work too well in Europe or the Soviet Union is because Marx didn't get it. He thought it was some abstract struggle of the proletariat or something, greedy little people taking on greedy big people. So of course it failed. It wasn't any different from what they had had already with the Czars and Boyars or whoever. Czars just became Commissars and the whole wretched system was just perpetuated.

The major difference between that form of communism and capitalism is that the capitalists are more quick to grant or utilize credit. They don't care if the loans ever get repaid as long as the interest is paid regularly. It ain't their money anyways. So they can expand stuff faster than the pay as you go communists because those guys didn't get any credit really. It was against somebody's religion to let them have it.

Which is also why even the Soviet weapons work better in the bush because they don't rely on a lot of expensive stuff. They just work on the cheap which is what you need really although a lot of people don't think that's what you should want.

That's why there's rusting tractors in East Africa. Because people can't afford to use them and when they can, they drive each other out of business and they all end up starving in a bunch of cardboard shacks around some filthy town. And the capitalists that lended them the money to buy those tractors end up with all the land and resources that those people need to feed themselves. End of story.

aye conagra used the same tactics to kill of a lot a family farms in the states mostly in the midwest

I thought this was interesting and fit into your thinking. It was an article in the New Y Times today.

The studies issued last week are the clearest example yet that the planning and public health fields are beginning to speak each other's language on suburban sprawl. After focusing for years on Americans' diets, health experts have turned to assess the degree to which Americans' four-wheel lives contribute to obesity, hypertension, coronary disease, diabetes, asthma, even mental disorders like anxiety and depression.


Thanks for the reminder on Dawes I do want to do that

no marx was not really wrong it was the way in which his ideas were implimented and the context within which they were experimented with that brought none of his proposals into realization.

that is not to disagree with the idea that caring for the other as we care for ourselves is a good basis for a just society in which each of us is able to realize what is best within us and share that with all who might benifit from that.

the idea that no one need be far better of than any other that to obtain a steady state may be preferable to constant endless expansion easy perhaps to state very difficult to practice.

the need to be ever alert to the perversion of or the losss of balance in or the institutionalization by the established order, in my opinion, has never been greater than it is now.

"the need to be ever alert to the perversion of or the losss of balance in or the institutionalization by the established order, in my opinion, has never been greater than it is now." by (?)

I feel a sense of urgency and wonder if every generationa has. Like what people say about having children in this day and age - it has occurred since day one.

I do not really know ; Have we have survived in spite of ourselves all this time?

logical, we did not get to this point in a day.
Analiese WMI proves that well.

It does not mean we were better before. It could just mean it has caught up with us and is beyond denial for some.
Although the world could not function without a certain amount of people in denial going about the routines of life.

It is a mathmatical equasion almost.
At some point there will have to be a change.
I doubt we (humans) will pick that time or reason much as we assume or hope it is so.

The ability to self destruct is very real.
I have always thought it will be by accident (are none) or by something yet unforseen.

Just because a few think they have total control (and temporarily maybe do have a lot , not total) does not mean it has eternal life of it's own or the sense of control is real.

The illusion of control never lasts for an individual, I have to believe it will not last for the populus or its leaders indefinitely.

logical, we did not get to this point in a day.
Analiese WMI proves that well.

It does not mean we were better before. It could just mean it has caught up with us and is beyond denial for some.
Although the world could not function without a certain amount of people in denial going about the routines of life.

It is a mathmatical equasion almost.
At some point there will have to be a change.
I doubt we (humans) will pick that time or reason much as we assume or hope it is so.

The ability to self destruct is very real.
I have always thought it will be by accident (are none) or by something yet unforseen.

Just because a few think they have total control (and temporarily maybe do have a lot , not total) does not mean it has eternal life of it's own or the sense of control is real.

The illusion of control never lasts for an individual, I have to believe it will not last for the populus or its leaders indefinitely.

since the advent of the age of exploitation and the ascendency of those who inhabit the western reaches of the largest of the land masses, it has been a terrible downward spiral mainly for the rest of us but even for those most responsible for the irresponsibility. what is different about the present is that we are in possession of the means to finish ourselves once and for all with finality; even if mere act of ignorantly living our lives - as we are encouraged (and coerced) to do by the constant barrage of advertising, peer pressure and other means of persuation (and torture) - we alter the delicate balance that allows us to exist. no, it is not the planet that needs saving, she (mama) will most assuredly go on, it is we who will be gone ... another experiment, sad foe her bear, gone awry ... next!

forgive me, I simply must proof the text better!

I meant to say: ...even if *it be the* mere act...
and ...another experiment, sad for her to have to bear, gone awry.

WMI for any system to work, you all have to play by rules.
It will NEVER be a world where ALL play by the rules.
That is the smallest and biggest problem to accept in every life.

Some catastrophic or magical shock will have to happen to the human phyche all at once, for me to even imagine it being possible.

Was that a simulpost?
*feels like I am sitting around the communal house discussing the worlds problems like in college days*

What's disturbing, Abbi, is that you assume that ALL have to follow the rules or do anything else. Of course that's never been true. So what?

Problems arise when people who don't follow the rules are rewarded for it. Bush steals the presidency and people let it go because they presume it gets a higher good of preserving the system which allowed him to steal the election in the first place. Does that really make sense?

Historians say that the creation of law curbed aristocratic privilege because it meant the aristocrats could no longer claim to be fulfilling the law just by saying so. Yet that's what the privileged are saying even now.

Bush's nominee for the federal bench was characterized as a poor Honduran immigrant who climbed the ladder of success like all good latinos are supposed to do when in fact he was a child of privilege from the start. Un gran mentira, the big lie. It's good the Democrats figured it out or there'd be another good minority person reinforcing the privileges of the elite.

Bush got into Yale because his dad and granddad did. That's how they play by the rules and that's how the rules are set up at Yale. The elitism in institutionalized.

Imagine a world then where las gran mentiras weren't credited but denounced, where privilege wasn't admired but despised as antisocial, even criminal behavior, where people who broke the rules weren't regarded as brilliant innovators but people who should find another community to live in, where loyalty to elders and children took precedence over loyalty to personal advancement, where leaders were judged on how they'd helped all the people not just themselves.

It would be a very volatile world sure, but it wouldn't be a world in which the same people keep dominating over and over, keep getting richer and more powerful while the rest get poorer or more disinfranchised. It wouldn't be a perfect world of perfect compliance but a dynamic world where any or all could question or be questioned, a world in which non-participation or non-support wasn't interpreted as agreement, just another gran mentira, but a world where merit really did merit attention.

This isn't beyond our means. It's been done before. We get glimmers of it in the archeological record, the histories or traditions. We even see it occasionally in those who resist the tides of modern domination. Instead of dismissing it as an idle dream, it should be seen as a practical solution as many dreams have often been seen.

But even discounting all of these arguments, doesn't it just make sense to oppose the monolithic implementation of the dominant culture merely to insure you won't put all your eggs in one basket, to have options instead of ultimatums?

Hi there RAF wing, abbi normal and all.

I've been lurking for a while, thought I'd better pop my head in.

Many thanks also for the high quality of the posts.

je pense cela peut-être l'amour pour toute l'humanité et, malheureusement, il n'y a pas d'amour heureaux. Mais, je pense aussi, certainement, la femme est l'avenir de l'amour ... mais ou est elle?!

i think the communication of varying points of view has never been greater but the push for globalisation under capitalism is getting increasingly threatening

"Of course that's never been true. So what?"

Systems are futile for those whose only rule is to break them. There are always enough around to do that and enough wimpy people to follow.
*negative night*

resistance is futile you will be assimilated

Seems to me that what you're calling native communism, RAF Wing, is what Marx called "primitive communism." Interesting Western European perspective, eh?

Marx actually saw this "primitive communism" and the earliest stage of sociopolitical development... "where [people] lived in small groups in virtual communism, in an agricultural society. Working together for the common good a necessary practice, for things such as defense, shelter, etc."

From there he saw movemen a slave economy, then feudalism, then capitalism, then his version of communism... "To each according to his need, from each according to his ability."

Now, being a Western European, Karl figured that the trend towards higher and higher concentrations of people into smaller and smaller areas was going to go on forever, and that his sort of communism would work out for the working stiff in the factories and that's what made it different from "primitive communism" - the idea that "primitive communism" was based on an agricultural society and that folks worked together as equals "way back then" because that was literally the only way of assuring their own physical survival.

Where Karl went wrong, to my way of thinking, was in not working out what the steps between capitalism and "modern" communism would be. He just kid of figured that the revolution would start *somewhere* and would spread across the entire world in pretty short order. His best bet for where that *somewhere* would be was Germany or France. Russia, still a feudal society, never crossed his mind as where it would all get started, really.

So, Marxist communism has never been tried, since it's based on the elimination of national borders and has to, by definition, be world-wide. Native communism, or primitive communism, has shown that it can and does work, as long as the rest of the world lets it. It's not based on a centralized buraucracy deciding what everybody needs instead of letting folks work that out for themselves. The problem comes with the words "as long as the rest of the world lets it."

Maybe one day...

0

i think true communism requires the abolition of money

It's not the rest of the world that's the problem, O. It's just a few people in those concentrations of humanity that are the problem.

Primitive in the context Marx was using presumes teleological evolution which was exactly what he was preaching with the dialectic materialism crap. Now primitive in more scientific terms actually means most of the time but not necessarily all the time predating derived stuff which by definition is derived from but not necessarily superior to the primitive. Notice we aren't using the term advanced here because again that would imply some overriding purpose that people just respond to, as in the ubiquitous human nature arguments we get into from time to time.

So primitive is the traditional way, the way that works. Derived includes all those isms you mentioned that were and in many cases still are experiments, many of them failed experiments, but heck we keep trying don't we?

Society doesn't stop being agricultural just because production gets controlled by a few lords of the manor or captains of industry. People still have to grow food or find it somehow. And the truth is humans don't really "produce" anything anymore than amoebas do. They find it, they gather it, they help it grow sometimes but the food does it's own thing according to the weather and seasons and so on.

So in "primitive" cultures that sort of thing is usually recognized. I mean that food doesn't have to do our thing. The food does its thing and if we're lucky and respectful and frugal, we just might get enough to eat.

What modern civilization and it's primitive precursors have failed to recognize is the community of the planet and how it works. It ain't just us and if we think it is, we're going to get a very rude awakening as has already happened a few times in the past when so-called civilizations have collapsed onto their concentrated rearends.

Now you can do sleight of hand or pull rabbits out of your thong, but nobody can cheat forever, especially when everybody tries to do it.

And that's what's wrong with internationalism or globalism. People think if everybody's alike, all the disputes just evaporate, but it doesn't happen because then people define their differences based on relative wealth or privileges or how much stuff they can horde instead of on their relationship to the band or tribe like uncle or aunt or mother or father or whoever as well as the just as important relationships with the rest of the community of living things.

I think the main point here is that nothing is done of necessity. You make choices because there's always more than one way of doing stuff. That's why the choices you make can have impacts that are generally good or bad depending on how balanced or unbalanced things get as a result.

Like if a cougar goes after a deer who fights him and the cougar gets wounded in the process it doesn't matter if he kills the deer or not because he's going to die, probably before he ever finishes that meal. So he thinks twice before taking on a deer who fights. But people seem to think they're immune to that sort of thing, that somehow they don't have to make that kind of choice. If they want something like food, well they just go get it however they want no matter who gets hurt, even if it's them.

But they don't even stop at "necessities" like food. No, they even do it for luxuries now, diamonds and stock options and God knows what else because they're taught from childhood that the world owes it to them.

Then people complain when communism doesn't work like why are you surprised? Marx said you were entitled to control the means of production just like the fatcats so here it is, run with it Sparky!

And one despot gets traded in on another and we're back to do not pass Go.

You're not entitled to control anything. You ask first and express your needs, not wants, but needs, and you make deals that make sense for everybody so we share, not shove. Get it?