The Point
May 28, 2017 - 19 min
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Why this idea is as seductive as it is wrong. Marx's notion of 'primitive communism', which states that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is, for Manvir Singh — an anthropologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulousewidely — clearly influential but also quite wrong. In this comprehensive essay, Singh studies why the things that make it appealing are also why it needs to be questioned.