In a message dated 6/18/03 2:03:39 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >But does not the practice of the subordination of the individual to the >collective go back to ancient times, indeed to pre-historical tribal >practice and belief? >Fred Foldvar
in the ancient world we clearly have a good deal of subordination of the individual to the strongest individual or to the priest-king (the strongest individual?) but I'm not so clear about subordination of the individual to the collective. It became an article of faith in the 19th-century that pre-historic humans practiced primitive communism, but I'm not sure there's much evidence to support that faith. We do know that when Americans came to some of the pacific islands that theory said should be practicing primitive communism that they actually had a complex system of private property, and that Americans imposed primitive communism on them to force them into the "right stage of history." David
