So...as you guys know, I'm trying to write a book about my ideas. And in order to really make the book work, I kind of need to, you know, craft a worldview. So my first topic in the book is really establishing that worldview. I spend the first chapter discussing the ideological divide between myself and, say, the fundamentalist christians on the right. I spend the second establishing a brief overview of history.
And my overview of history is based on Karl Widerquist's books, which discussed how income inequality, private property, and economic unfreedom came about. And the general gist is this. First, we had hunter gatherer societies where everyone was equal and free, then we shifted to farming where over time, as societies grew, they became more complex, required leaders to run the whole thing smoothly, and those leaders became increasingly authoritarian and divorced from the people they served. This is how we essentially got monarchies, feudalism, and those kinds of authoritarian systems. We had strong men who had this idea that they had a divine right to rule. They distributed property to their friends and allies. And then everyone else just kinda worked under them, paying tribute and taxes to the monarchy and the nobles. And out of that, we got capitalism, which mostly preserved the privileges of those who were wealthy under the old system, while functionally coercing the serf classes to work under "free market" principles. Land was privatized, people had to go get jobs, and that's how we got the system we got today.
It's a simple narrative. But is it too simple? Perhaps. I know a friend of mine recommended david wengrow and david graeber's book "the dawn of everything", which explicitly attempts to debunk these kinds of simplified "grand narratives" of history. It turns out that the narrative that widerquist put forward that I parrot tends to oversimplify to some degree (especially my own simplification, since I need to cut it very short in order to sum it up in just a few paragraphs). My friend said that my own narrative was "wrong" according to this book. I took the criticism under advisement, and left a note to myself to check into this book later when I came back to this topic, as I was writing on other topics at the time. Well, now the time has come to do that. And while I didnt want to read the book directly as it's quite long and I really only dwell on the issue for a couple of pages, I did read summaries of the book to get a gist of the main arguments, and read what others have said about it. One criticism really stands out to me, and I feel is very relevant to my own main book.
Basically, the guy's criticism is this. The book does point out that history is far more complex in practice, and there are exceptions to the rule for everything, but it doesn't mean that the rule itself is necessarily wrong. If anything, a core weakness of this book (and I've heard this criticism from multiple places) is that while it attempts to tear down the existing narrative, it doesn't replace it with anything. It just points out that complexity exists. For example, we might have the narrative "there are four seasons, summer, fall, winter, and spring." And then some guy comes out of nowhere and is like "well ackshully, nuance exists, it doesnt snow in Arizona, so do they really experience winter? Some locations it's always cold like in the poles, some places it's always hot like in the tropics, sometimes it rains in the summer, sometimes it doesn't snow in the winter, sometimes some places have the seasons reversed because of being in the southern hemisphere, some places like southeastern asia might only have two seasons, a wet one and a dry one, etc."
And in the grand scheme of things, it's like "yeah, you're technically right, but this doesn't really disprove the main thesis, complexity exists but it doesnt mean the general theory is wrong or inaccurate, and many anthropologists understand exceptions to the rule exist while still accepting the general rule." And that's kind of the core weakness of this book as I understand it. Yes, history is complex. It's hard to simplify history into a simple narrative. However, if you need to, you will end up with...well...the narrative that these guys are trying to debunk. That originally we had relatively little inequality and unfreedom, something happened with society to make it more in a more authoritarian direction, and we deal with the consequences of that today as social systems have evolved in ways to protect the privileged classes at the expense of everyone else.
The person above even pointed out that this book could be used as fodder for the right, as the counter examples could provide talking points for right wingers to muddy the water. And that this could kill and sabotage left wing political movements. And in thinking about my book, and its context, and what I'm trying to accomplish, I tend to agree with that.
What I'm trying to do here is establish a basic worldview. A frame of reference for the world in which we draw our sense of reality. My own worldview is set up in opposition to the conservative Christian worldview, which bases its own conception of reality on the bible, and tends to believe things like the world always operated under the principles of private property and what became capitalism, and that this was established by God, and deviations from it are immoral. Given 40% of the US give or take believes the world is 6000 years old or so, and that humans were created in their current form, this narrative has sway. And even among moderate christians, you still got people with one foot in that worldview, and another foot in the real worldview, where they're always reconciling religious doctrines with physical reality as we understand it.
I say, no, we need a narrative to explain how we got to where we are, so we can look at this system properly. So...I attempt to draw history from hunter gatherer societies through capitalism, but because my book isnt designed to focus on all of the details, and dwelling on the topic for too long will take away from the clarity of the book, I simplify. I point out that, "yeah, there are four seasons, summer, fall, winter, and spring", and I let the pieces fall from there.
Does it evade nuance? Yes. Is that bad? Not necessarily. The more time I spend on a topic the more detail I can give, but the more detail that I give, the more it bogs me down, distracting from the main topics which deviated to this one to focus on. The less detail I give, the more I oversimplify, but if I know I oversimplify, is that really bad?
Well, again, if anything, the oversimplification is a necessity. The comment above was written by a leftist. leftists are often aware of the same history I draw from, and use that general narrative to critique capitalism as just an evolution of a system that favors the wealthy at the expense of all else, and calls for its abolition. I dont quite call for its abolition, but for heavy reform, BUT...I deal with a lot of the same common history that these guys do and my own analysis is parallel to leftism. I do emphasize different things than they do. They focus on the means of production and alienation, I focus more on the protestant work ethic and economic coercion. They think the solution is a new system. I think the solution is a new new deal within the existing system. There are ideological differences.
But...again, imagine you try to point out a narrative and someone comes around complicating everything with a lot of details. And the right is a lot like this. To build on the weather ideology, we see this a lot with climate change. "Oh, its snowing in chicago, guess it still gets cold in winter, checkmate librul!"Or on evolution, I know I was taught creationism in high school and they focused on how various early transitional forms were found to be hoaxes, they emphasized microevolution over macroevolution (even though they're the same thing on different time scales), etc. And the point is, even if these small nuances exist, does that disprove the greater trends? And I would argue no.
And it's the same thing here. I think, as an author, well, if I had to replace this narrative based on this new work, what would I get? And the answer is that I would get...nothing. Just an overcomplicated picture bogged down in details that lacks any form of clarity on problem definition. And it probably misses the point. And that can sabotage political movements, because left wing political movements need a worldview, to compete with the right's worldview. We need a narrative of how we got here. And while I admit, we cant teach everything in a condensed format, we can at least teach the basics and general trends.
The problem with this book is that it complicates conventional narratives, without replacing it. it just bogs down the reader in unnecessary details. And when youre trying to build a worldview, it paralyzes you. it leads to nihilism. It can unravel political movements, like the one I'm trying to build.
So...to respond to this book, I'll say this. I acknowledge that complexity exists in the real world. it is very difficult to explain everything that has happened in human history in only a few paragraphs, or pages. And I dont want to dedicate entire books JUST to this topic. There are other people who have covered it, and I can assure you, rereading the prehistory of private property lately, that stuff is addressed somewhat. Similar counter examples are brought up, but they dont disprove the narrative widerquist puts forward.
For me, I have to simplify though. I have to boil it down to "there are four seasons" without worrying about whether it snows in arizona or whether india experiences them the same as the US does. Why? Because the point of this book is to build a political movement with a clear problem definition and solution, and quite frankly, the exact details of the past dont matter, as long as I have a narrative to get me to the more important parts, which is capitalism. because even if the ancient world is complex, well....in the end, capitalism won. It's the worldwide system now. THe authoritarians won. They beat out these other systems through never ending conquest and imposition of their systems on the whole world. And that's kind of the point of discussing things anyway. Ya know? I spend like, maybe a couple pages discussing the distant past, and then the rest of the chapter I dedicate to discussing the history of capitalism and political movement within it. And that's what defines modern history anyway. All I really need to show is that hey, these social structures we practice today aren't natural. Things werent always like this, AND WE CAN CHANGE THEM, AND SHOULD CHANGE THEM! Is that so hard? Apparently, to people who want to write 700 page books arguing 'well ackshully some group in the distant past defied the trend", it is, but for the rest of us looking to use history of the past to educate people on CURRENT realities, it really isn't. And that's the point I'm trying to make here.
