Chronic. Do you know Cahokia, this brutal kingdom which prospered on the banks of the Mississippi between 1000 and 1200, and whose collapse gave birth to a myriad of egalitarian cities? Teotihuacan, this immense and multiethnic Mexican city, which, until the VIIe century, stood out for its collective governance and quality social housing?
In their work In the beginning was … A new history of humanity (The links which liberate, 752 p., 29.99 euros), archaeologist David Wengrow and anthropologist David Graeber, figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement who died in September 2020, look at the example of such forgotten cities. With one goal: to show that, in the history of humanity, multiple forms of social organizations have coexisted, unequal or egalitarian, small or large, or even monarchical and hierarchical for part of the year, then decentralized and horizontal the rest of the time. And that, even before the Neolithic revolution.
The finding is not exactly new. Despite everything, it has one merit: remembering that history is not a linear frieze, where the invention of agriculture and urban growth would have mechanically put an end to the supposed egalitarian utopia of hunter-gatherers. “Over the centuries, humanity has shown an incredible political inventiveness in the way of organizing collective life, too widely ignored”, explains David Wengrow.
This inventiveness has withered away since the Enlightenment and colonialism. Why ? How to revive it, when the climate challenge coupled with the imperative of social justice requires exploring creative solutions? “The aim of our book is not to provide ready-made answers, but to encourage readers to ask themselves these kinds of questions, adds Mr Wengrow. And, above all, not to be resigned by thinking that no social organization other than those we know is possible: history shows that this is false. “
Nihilistic pessimism
In a way, this approach echoes that of Thomas Piketty. The work of the economist establishes that solutions too often presented as inapplicable today have, in truth, already been tested in the not so distant past. Between the 1930s and 1980s, in the United States, the marginal income tax rate peaked at 70% -90% for the richest. The field of economic, social and fiscal possibilities is much wider than one might imagine, and it is wildly encouraging.
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