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Primitive communism is an attempt to describe the gift economies of hunter-gatherers throughout history, where resources and property hunted or gathered are shared within the group as communism. In political sociology and anthropology, it is also a concept (often credited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership.[1] A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practised by the Haudenosaunee of North America.[2] In Marx's model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.[3]
The idea has been criticised by anthropologists as too ethnocentrically European a model to be applied to other societies, whilst also romanticising non European societies. Anthropologists such as Margaret Mead argue that private property exists in hunter-gatherer and other "primitive societies" and provide examples that Marx and subsequent theorists label as personal property, not private property.
- ^ Scott & Marshall (2007); Felluga (2011); Bealey (1999); Rozental & Judin (1955), pp. 697–698
- ^ Morgan, Lewis Henry (1881). Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
- ^ Lee, Richard; DeVore, Irven (1969). Man the Hunter. Aldine Transaction. ISBN 978-0-202-33032-7.