The doctrine of primitive communism represents a fusion of speculative social theory with anthropological understanding. In its classic form it imputes to early, and also some contemporary, primitive societies the complete sharing of economic goods, including food, and a concomitant absence of any private *property. In such a life the distinction between mine and thine has no significance. Sometimes the doctrine is extended beyond economics to sex, it being postulated that a state of †primitive promiscuity used to exist. Under this regime, vestiges of which have survived into modern times, a man mates indiscriminately with the women of his group and a woman with the men; consequently children belong to the mature adults of the group rather than to individual parents. The emergence of separate *families within an original larger and undifferentiated group causes the system to collapse by giving rise to economic and sexual exclusiveness, i.e. to an emphasis on what is mine, not yours.
Associated especially with such names as *Lewis Henry Morgan and †W.H.R.Rivers, the doctrine of primitive communism is a part of their legacy which most modern anthropologists have preferred to forget. It is interesting, however, that *A.R.Radcliffe-Brown (1922) felt its appeal when describing the Andaman Islanders. While land is the only thing they hold in common, all portable property being owned by individuals, a variety of their customs ‘result in an approach to communism’. Presents are constantly exchanged; it would be bad manners to refuse a request for an article; practically all food obtained is evenly distributed within the camp; and generosity is not only highly esteemed but ‘unremittingly practised by the majority’.
Radcliffe-Brown’s guarded acceptance of the ethnographic utility of the concept invites comparison with the more generalizing approach of his contemporary, G.H.L-F.Pitt Rivers (1927). Pitt Rivers admitted the prevalence of ‘preconceptions, false analogies, and widely speculative ideas’ on the subject of communism, but he wanted to keep the word to denominate a tendency which everywhere exists in inverse proportion to the *individualist tendency. In effect, there is a continuum on which all societies must be placed. At one pole resources are deployed to further the corporate purposes of a *community and to satisfy ‘instincts and impulses with which each member of the community is endowed’. At the other pole resources are appropriated by enterprising individuals for ‘personal use and gratification’.
Communism, on such a view, is not a state of affairs which has ever existed in its entirety, but nor is it a utopian dream projected on to the past (as by †Friedrich Engels and †Peter Kropotkin) or hoped for in the present or future (as by Kropotkin and some Israeli kibbutzniks). It belongs to a pair of terms which enable us to conceptualize permanent tension within human society. It is therefore as much a tool of moral criticism and political speculation as of social analysis. In the latter capacity its most sustained recent employment has been in debates over Kalahari Bushmen and other hunter-gatherers (Barnard 1993).
Barnard, A. (1993) ‘Primitive Communism and Mutual Aid: Kropotkin Visits the Bushmen’, in C.M.Hann (ed.) Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, London: Routledge
Piddington, R. (1950) An Introduction to Social Anthropology, vol. 1, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd
Pitt Rivers, G.H.L.-F. (1927) The Clash of Culture and the Contact of Races, London: George Routledge and Sons
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. (1922) The Andaman Islanders, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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