Here is why Donald Trump and Elon Musk are so afraid of communism.
The story starts in 1884 with the work of anthropologist Lewis H Morgan who spent seven years living with the Iroquois before publishing his book League of the Iroquois in 1851. Morgan wrote about their political structure where six distinct nations united under one great law. They formed a grand council of leaders that prevented absolute power and maintained peace across massive territories.
The Iroquois Confederacy was organized entirely through the mother. This matrilineal system dictated marriage rules and property laws. Children belonged to the clan of the mother and women held the political power to nominate male leaders and remove them from office. Multiple families shared large communal spaces and distributed their resources equally.
Karl Marx was fascinated with how the Iroquois organized their society without police or private property. He called this primitive communism. Frederick Engels argued that for most of human history people lived in egalitarian communities. Because everyone worked together just to survive they never produced excess wealth. Without excess wealth there was no division of society into classes.
But this all changed with the agricultural revolution. When human societies began farming land they started producing a surplus of food. This allowed certain individuals to hoard wealth which led to the creation of private property. To protect this new private property the wealthy created the state and the police.
I don’t know about you, but primitive communism sounds good to me.
If you want to learn more about indigenous history, join our growing substack community.
We are still accepting new members to our tribe.
The link is in the bio.
