Mutual aid is an important corollary. David Graeber refers to this as everyday communism in its broadest moral sense: if the need is great enough (you come across a child drowning whom you could save) or the cost small enough (bumming a cigarette, holding a door open), members of any society will give freely without expectation of reward.

Every society sets the expected level of mutual aid differently. In nonstate societies, that level of often quite high, deliberately, because it helps ensure that no member of that society will be subject to another by virtue of material need.

In writing about indigenous American societies, Wengrow and Graeber observe that

“it became clear to French observers that most indigenous Americans saw individual autonomy and freedom of action as consummate values – organizing their own lives in such a way as to minimize any possibility of one human being becoming subordinated to the will of another, and hence viewing French society as essentially one of fractious slaves.”

One French observer wrote:

“They reciprocate hospitality and give such assistance to one another that the necessities of all are provided for without there being any indigent beggar in their towns and villages; and they considered it a very bad thing when they heard it said that there were in France a great many of these needy beggars, and thought that this was for lack of charity in us, and blamed us for it severely.”

In this case, ensuring each other’s material equality was a way of ensuring each other’s political equality. To live among subordinates rather than equals was worse than distasteful; it was *boring.*

https://docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/The-Dawn-of-Everything-by-David-Graeber-David-Wengrow-z-lib.-zmbbo.pdf

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To close out this thread—at least for now—I’ll highlight the theoretical work of Alexander Wendt. Wendt is a major figure in the field of international relations and specifically the school of Constructivism. Constructivism posits that states behave not just according to mechanical rules, but also the ideas that they hold about themselves and each other. Although his work is explicitly about state behavior, I think it applies equally well to the individual and nonstate community.

According to realist and neorealist schools of IR, war happens, more or less, because there is nothing to stop it. In the absence of some global coercive authority, any state could attack any other at any time. As a result, states rely on “self-help” — they arm themselves, prepare for war, treat every other state as a potential adversary, and use violence to preempt and prevent threats. Wars happen, in other words, because states are afraid of war and want to hit first.

In his work “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” Wendt argues that empirically and theoretically, this just doesn’t work. Realism cannot explain the existence of unguarded borders, such as the one between the US and Canada; or enduring alliances, such as NATO in the absence of the Soviet Union; or the existence of weak states near strong ones.

Instead, Wendt argues, we interact based on identities that are themselves the product of ongoing interactions. Friend or foe, threat or ally—these are not unchangeable or inevitable categories.

Wendt asks to imagine two actors who encounter each other “in the wild.” Each *could* assume the other poses an intrinsic threat and act accordingly, but then they risk creating an unnecessary enemy. Instead, each will make a display of intent, which the other side will attempt to interpret and respond to, and so on forever.

If actor A does initiate violence against actor B, then actor B is going to be more likely to respond aggressively to actor C in pre-emotion, and so on until we have the security dilemma described by the realists.

But what happens if A encounters and is aggressive towards not just B, but a mature community of B, C, D, and so on?

“If collective security identity is high, however, the emergence of a predator may do much less damage. If the predator attacks any member of the collective, the latter will come to the victim's defense on the principle of ‘all for one, one for all,’ even if the predator is not presently a threat to other members of the collective. If the predator is not strong enough to withstand the collective, it will be defeated and collective security will obtain. But if it is strong enough, the logic of the two-actor case (now predator and collective) will activate, and balance-of-power politics will reestablish itself.”

https://people.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/migrated/Pol272/Wendt.Anarch.pdf

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@DavidM_yeg

Yes! Me too. I suspect these sorts of leveling rituals used to be much more pervasive—lots and lots of evidence of periodic “erasure” of social achievements and starting fresh.

https://michael-hudson.com/2017/01/the-land-belongs-to-god/