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

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)