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Terry Leahy 2023
This book has been written to explain how system change to a liveable future could actually work. I have been outlining a feasible pathway to a gift economy post-capitalism. Showing how such a post-capitalism might be preferable to other options. But, of course, it would be fanciful to ignore the difficulties we might have in moving in this direction. Class society has been around for at least five thousand years of human history. It seems like a mad dream to imagine a sustainable society that is also a long-term victory over class and the state. While our environmental problems means that system change is inevitable, there is nothing to prevent a new class society rising from the ashes of capitalism. Pushing the vast bulk of humanity into impoverished slavery. A new feudalism as I have called it. Class society is a simple mechanism. Cereal agriculture permits an agricultural surplus. A ruling class takes control of the surplus. It pays an army, either in kind or with money. They manage the subordinate class and stave off attacks from other states. What is thoroughly depressing is this. It is unlikely that any of the key requirements of this mechanism will go away, however dire the crisis of current capitalism. We are unlikely to forget how to do cereal agriculture!
Doing without money is a huge part of the gift economy utopia that has been explained here. A new social mechanism to end class and live sustainably cannot use money. Money is not accidentally connected to class society. A class society may operate without money – like the Incas. But money is a useful tool of class societies. It is no accident that the class societies of Eurasia used money. Also, no accident that capitalism, a social order premised on money, is yet another version of class society. Continuing the use of money is guaranteed to re-start class society, whatever the good intentions of a revolution.
The usefulness of money and markets is premised on alienated labour. Money makes it easy to provision an army and raise taxes. An economy based on money sidelines other values – social and environmental. The failure of so many revolutions is partly down to the continuation of money into the post-revolutionary settlement. Monetary economies allowed aspiring elites to take control again, destroying attempts to do things differently.
In a market every player must make sure that they win monetary exchanges as often as possible. To fail in this is to fail to get the resources you need to make your operation work, to secure your standard of living, your place in market competition — within a hierarchical order defined by money. Money inevitably claims priority.
Money implies a state. A universal system of valuation requires a centralized enforcement — to make sure the value of money is protected and maintained.
Money creates inequality. The lesson of the Monopoly game. There are winners and losers in every monetary exchange. Winners are given leverage to win more.
The market and colonialism go hand in hand. Market competition tempts players to the easy leg up provided by primitive accumulation. Turning nonmarket resources into capital.
The earth cannot afford this system. Money looks past the environment. It cannot do otherwise. The gift economy is the way to combine autonomous creative work, distribution by the producers, high-tech production, care of the environment, gender equality, cultural diversity, and participatory governance.
One of the common objections to a project like this book is that we have had enough of utopias. Utopias make a mad assumption that all humans are basically the same and that a one size fits all solution can work. There is an implied imperialism, crushing diversity. I have a few comments on that.
One is that money imposes a uniformity on societies. Competition between producers tends to produce a universal price on commodities, as Amin points out. At the same time, as explained here, it creates inequality, a gradation of ownership and income, quantified in money.
This brings me to my second point. The gift economy is a global society that encourages and permits diversity. People are producing goods and services that fit their own cultural understandings and distributing them with a regard to need — in a way that makes sense to them.
My third point is that you cannot get away from ‘utopias’ by rejecting them as imperialist. Any set of ethical critiques adds up to a list of recommendations. Even when couched as not this, not that, not the other. It still ends up as – well instead this, well instead that and so on.
It is all very well to promise the world that you do not intend to impose your utopia on other people. But just having an ethical perspective is to contradict some other perspective, you cannot avoid that.
We are just being naïve if we think that we can tell people we need system change without explaining our utopia. You think the present system is a catastrophe. No argument with that. Well, what do you propose to replace it? A perfectly reasonable question.
A very unsatisfying answer is to say, we want diversity and different people will come up with different answers. Anti-utopianism masks what is a very real problem for those wanting to replace capitalism. We do not agree about what that replacement might be. This sends a message that we do not know what we are doing. And a lot of our suggested solutions are not very convincing.
This book has identified the gift economy as one approach and recommended that. I have identified two other left approaches. One is democratic socialism. Most everyday punters understand that idea perfectly well and do not like it. The other is radical reformism. The default for leftists who reject socialism. But hardly a popular solution for most people. If they liked it, they would be voting for the Greens parties. They see it as the nanny state. Life run by interfering, moralising middle class bullies — who cannot be trusted. In this book I have been more concerned with why it cannot possibly work, even if people wanted it.
I suppose my last point on this. I do not really take these anti-utopian relativist raves seriously. Do these critics of utopias really want a diverse global future with half of humanity living as serfs in a theocratic ethno-state? Well no. Scratch the surface and you will find one of three things.
- Anarcho-primitivism a la John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen. A diversity of horticultural egalitarian societies with a pre-class toolkit.
- The gift economy as metaphor. Moral ideologies about caring and looking after each other — but not much about how that looks as an economy. Money is not mentioned. Critical asides about exchange value and commodities that never get turned into anything you can get your teeth into.
- Or our old friend radical reformism, a la Herman Daly with a post-colonialist gloss tacked on.
I am sorry to be so caustic. These are lovely people. But really?
Population is the topic that you always get when you lay out an alternative economic system before an audience. Don’t we need to reduce population to relieve the pressure on the planet? How can you do that in a gift economy? I suppose the people raising these issues imagine that a strong central government with a police force and army is the only thing that can control population pressure. Yes and no.
Within current capitalism, some governments have done a much better job at this than others. Which points to the fact that it is a social and cultural problem. The governments that have done nothing are usually beholden to some mad version of religious fundamentalism. Posing as traditional. Backed up by a version of masculinity that sees offspring as a proof of manly vigour and economic status.
Social scientists know quite a lot about this issue. It is surprising that so many global North environmentalists are ignorant about it. First up, birth rates are in fact falling. With this, global population will peak and then start to fall later this century. Second, environmental problems are very much connected to one’s position in the global economy. Australian per capita consumption is four times what the earth can bear while the global average is 1.5 times. The old slogan I = PxAxT (Impact equals Population x Affluence x Technology) still applies. Third, even in poor countries today, the level of education of women is a key to population pressure. Increase the education and independence of women and you see a decline in fertility rates. This suggestion is not meant to let men off the hook where population is concerned. To treat it as ‘a woman’s problem’. It is more about tactics that may work in a social environment where patriarchy is well entrenched — and where men want children as a token of masculine achievement. Finally, the bleeding obvious. People have more children when they worry some will die, and they are depending on their children to look after them in their old age – because society won’t.
The gift economy is the ideal social structure to deal with all these issues at once. A safety net of community material support, security in all basic necessities, equality for women, a reduction in unnecessary consumption. A largely local bioregional economy — where people are very much aware of how they depend on adequate land and forests for future generations. And an economy where you do not have to destroy the environment to get access to basic necessities.
Whenever you introduce the idea of a gift economy, a typical reaction is to assume that you are talking about a low-tech Hobbit village society, with feudal technologies. I have explained why I do not make this assumption. A complex technological society could function without money. I envisage quite a bit of use of high tech. Nevertheless, I would make the following comments. We need to massively cut down our use of non-renewable resources. By using less high-tech things made from metals. By rigorously recycling everything we can’t grow. We need technologies that most well-informed people can understand and fix – Illich’s concept of convivial technology.
We could make do with a lot less high tech than we think. I go ballistic when I hear people say that the starving global South needs fossil fuels to rescue them from poverty. In my experience in African rural villages, a huge improvement could be made to people’s lives by composting toilets, and a local version of permaculture agriculture. The technological requirements are chicken wire, fencing wire, nails, garden tools, polypipe, a bit of cement, mosquito nets, some guttering and that is about it. The problems in those villages are not an absence of high tech. In fact, they are usually awash with mobile phones. Their problems are based in social structure, local politics, and the dominance of the capitalist imaginary. Yes, I would like to maintain a high-tech solution for serious medical problems and pandemics. I think good contraception and safe childbirth is essential to save us from patriarchy. But I would hate to think that we are scared of getting rid of class society — because we are worried about losing our high-tech capacity. There is too much at stake.
I would like to take a look at ‘anarcho-primitivism’. It is not a strong contender in the left at the present time. Nevertheless, I get the feeling that the more current postcolonial critiques of modernity end up with somewhat similar implications. Anarcho-primitivism starts from the recognition that societies throughout most of human history were stateless. Using an anthropological terminology, these were hunting and gathering societies. Even after the invention of agriculture, stateless polities remained in a very large part of the globe. Usually called ‘horticultural’ by anthropologists. Anarcho-primitivists suggest that we could do well by abandoning the technologies developed by class societies. Doing this, they argue, we could go back to this kind of stateless culture.
I am not entirely unsympathetic to this perspective. These societies were egalitarian, at least as far as men were concerned. Within the partially separate community of women, there was also a rough equality. Though some people had more influence, no one had the authority to command obedience. These societies looked after their environments and had an enviable connection to the natural world. They had a rich cultural and creative life. Their work, if you could call it that, was not alienated. They chose what to do with their time and how they might want to distribute what they produced. Much of this is identical to what I have described as the gift economy.
What could be wrong with the anarcho-primitivist solution? Maybe this is the end point of collapse anyway and not a bad thing at that. I would certainly like a gift economy to be set up that has the scope to enable this — for those who want it. But I have a few qualms if it is conceived as a one size fits all solution for post-capitalism.
One issue is that there is no way we can forget our agricultural knowledge. The whole process of class society would surely start up again as soon as one of these horticultural societies, the offspring of collapse, re-invented class. Using the agricultural stored surplus to back up a ruling elite.
I do not find this solution particularly utopian where gender is concerned. My reading of these societies — as they have been in the past —suggests the following unpleasant aspects. Patriarchy, competitive masculinity, raids and small wars, cruel initiations. More intense in horticultural societies, but also present in hunting and gathering societies. Personally, as a long-term defector from all this toxic rubbish, I would not want to live there. Also, as I will argue in more detail, all these patriarchal aspects provide a grounding for the next iteration of class society. I do not think an act of will — and a cultural resolve carried over from the present — could eliminate all this from an anarcho-primitivism in practice. This time it will be different is not a convincing program.
Then there is the low-tech aspiration of anarcho-primitivists. Technology got us into this mess so let’s abandon it. I can see why they think this, but my view is that this evil technology is a consequence of class, rather than the other way around.
In the community at large (north and south) there is really no appetite for this solution. Most people view collapse to a low-tech world as a disaster. We would lose much of our medical science, our understanding of the cosmos, our agricultural science, our chemistry, the many sciences of the natural world, including those telling us where we are going seriously wrong. Our complex digital archiving and communication of cultural products.
I use the ‘our’ here intentionally. I am of course perfectly well aware that we have this knowledge now, at least in part, as a by-product of vicious global exploitation. Also, that this knowledge is spread very thin in some quarters. And finally, that this knowledge is used to much ill effect in the context of capitalism. Nevertheless, our understanding of all this science is very much a global resource by now. Do we have to lose all this to get rid of class society?
I mean if this is truly the only answer that will save the planet, I am all for it. Modern science be gone. But is it? I think that this thinking is based on a false analysis of why we are in the present pickle. It is not modernity/colonialism/science/the enlightenment/humanism — as a de novo package of cultural invention from Europe — that have caused the disasters of class society and its latest capitalist version. Instead, I see it like this. The prime mover of the modern world is the ghost in the machine, the capitalist imaginary. That cultural invention has informed a social machine. The developments mentioned above have taken shape in the context of that social machine. Capitalism has made them serve it. On the other hand, a lot of these developments have their own sources, they are not just side effects of capitalism. Likewise, these cultural inventions are not necessarily and forever tied to the capitalist machine. What we might make of this flotsam and jetsam, washed up after the demise of capitalism, it is hard to tell.
What anarcho-primitivists overlook is the link between patriarchy and class. And the link between feminism and technology. It is no accident that anarcho-primitivism sounds like a very macho vision. A warrior fantasy.
Patriarchy is pretty well universal in human societies. It depends on the advantage men have in political conflicts with women. While it is a wonderful thing to be responsible for childbirth and wet nursing, the gendered division of labour coming out of this allows men to take control of political life. The first significant feminist movement, in the late Victorian period, comes about as the size of the family drops, as reliable contraception is introduced, as death in childbirth is reduced. It gets another boost in the seventies with even more reliable contraception.
It is not technological determinism to say this. Women mobilized to attack patriarchy. A choice, a cultural invention. Yet at the same time a cultural invention enabled by a change in the material conditions. To wrap this argument up. Some version of our current medical understanding and our low birth rate are the premises of a successful feminist movement.
So, what is the link between patriarchy and class? Class society depends on patriarchy as a necessary precondition. Patriarchy is not enough in itself to cause class. But it is a vital plank. In patriarchy, men are largely absent from the daily care of infants. They have other fish to fry. The emotional links that come out of caring for infants tie you down. Boys growing up are anxious and uncertain about what it is ‘to be a man’. They solve this problem by rejecting femininity and proving their masculinity in competition with other men – sorting the men from the boys, cutting the mother’s apron strings. Some version of ‘toxic’ masculinity is a central element of patriarchy, reinforcing that power structure as men deny their nurturing side. The other key effect of the patriarchal family is the way it trains us all in the psychology of hierarchy and willing subordination. Through the experience of early childhood in the patriarchal household.
These psychological characteristics are of great assistance to any class society. They inform the oppressive hierarchy of class and the wars that are necessary to maintain elite power. Without a technology that makes feminism possible, an anarcho-primitivism cannot remain egalitarian and horticultural for very long. The elements necessary to re-start class are all present – cereal agriculture and patriarchal masculinity. Looking at all this, we must ask how far we might want to push an anti-modernist agenda. At any rate, that is how I look at it.
I worry a bit that this book is like a fairy tale. An escapist romp. We are facing a collapse. We are likely to destroy a large part of biodiversity before things settle down. With a warming of two degrees, people could only live south of Melbourne or north of London. A superhuman effort in social reform and material construction would be necessary to re-locate the world’s people. Even if that was in fact possible. That we could feed this number on that amount of land. Surely, we need some solutions that are politically possible in the short run. What to say about this. This book does not reject the reformist initiatives that seem more feasible in current times. But I have also pointed to their problems. Working on blocking the worst effects of capitalism — while developing a program to get rid of it — makes sense. Capitalism is the root of our worries. Even as things collapse, and disasters pile up we can be aiming at the gift economy as the long-term solution.
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