THE FEAST SYSTEM: THE GREATEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT?

Before There Was Money (Part 2)

This new morality will surely consist of a good but moderate blend of reality and the ideal. Thus we can and must return to archaic society and to elements in it. We shall find in this reasons for life and action that are still prevalent in certain societies and numerous social classes: the joy of public giving; the pleasure in generous expenditure on the arts, in hospitality, and in the private and public festival.

-Marcel Mauss, The Gift (1925)

A recognition of our ultimate interdependence… That is the ultimate substance of social peace.

-David Graeber

Hey Folks,

This is the second part of a series in which I am exploring the question “What is Money?” by exploring examples of how societies organized themselves prior to the invention of money.

The first instalment can be found here:

At the end of that article, I mentioned that I would be exploring what is called “The Egalitarian Origins Hypothesis”, which is the commonly-accepted view that human beings evolved over millions of years to be nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Due to the fact that human beings are pack animals, we evolved to share amongst our immediate kinship groups, because that’s what made sense under those circumstances. It would be difficult to see how anyone could really hoard much wealth back in the Stone Age. After all, people lived in small groups that would relocate regularly. Presumably individuals had a small number of personal possessions back then, but it simply made more sense to share most things.

I have decided to skip past the Egalitarian Origins Hypothesis for now, because I have already written about it here:

What is currently of more interest to me is not so much how humans lived back in the Paleolithic, but how indigenous societies met their needs without money in more recent times.

So, today, I will be exploring gift economies by studying the classic work which introduced the concept to Western anthropology, Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay The Gift.

Who was Marcel Mauss?

Marcel Mauss is known today as “the Father of French ethnology”

Marcel Mauss (1872–1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology. Today, he is perhaps better recognised for his influence on the latter discipline, particularly with respect to his analyses of topics such as magic, sacrifice and gift exchange in different cultures around the world. Mauss had a significant influence upon Claude Lévi-Strauss, the founder of structural anthropology. His most famous work is The Gift (1925).

These days, Mauss is also remembered for his profound influence on David Graeber, who made it his life’s work to pick up where Mauss had left off.

Graeber regarded Mauss as one of the greatest thinkers of all time, and wasn’t shy to say so.

He called The Gift a “universally recognized masterpiece… which has generated more debate, discussion, and ideas than any other work of anthropology.”

He went further still, saying:

I believe Mauss’ theoretical corpus is the single most important in the history of anthropology. He was a man with a remarkable knack for asking all the most interesting questions, even if he was also keenly aware in those early days of anthropological research, that he didn’t have the means to fully answer them.

WHAT IS A “GIFT ECONOMY”?

The Gift is the first comparative study of non-monetary economies ever published. It was partly written to answer questions that arose within the revolutionary socialist movement (which at that time included both anarchists and communists) following the failure of the Russian Revolution to do away with money.

It was written in the wake of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, announced in 1921, which abandoned earlier attempts at forced collectivitization, legalized commerce, and opened the country to foreign investment.

It was no coincidence that Mauss’ two most important published works of that decade were, on the one hand, his Sociological Assessment of Bolshevism, and on the other, “The Gift,” both published in the same year of 1925. They were clearly meant as two legs of the same intellectual project.

With the first great attempt to create a modern alternative to capitalism foundering, Mauss apparently decided it was time to bring the results of comparative ethnography—crude and undeveloped though he well knew them to be—to bear, in order to sketch out at least the outlines of what a more viable alternative might be like.

He was particularly concerned with the historical significance of the market. One thing the Russian experiment had proved was that it was not going to be possible to simply abolish buying and selling by writ. Lenin had tried. And even though Russia was the least monetarized society in Europe, he had failed. For the foreseeable future, Mauss concluded, we were stuck with a market of some sort or another.

Graeber explains:

What Mauss set out to do, then, was to try to get at the heart of precisely what it was about the logic of the market that did such violence to ordinary people’s sense of justice and humanity. To understand the popular appeal of socialist parties and social welfare programs, and by examining the ethnographic record, imagine what a society in accord with such popular standards of justice might look like: one in which the market could be relegated to its proper function, as a technique for decentralized decision-making, a kind of popular polling device on the relative appeal of different sorts of consumer goods, and in which an entirely different set of institutions preside over areas of really significant social value—for example, ones centered on “the joy of giving in public, the delight in generous artistic expenditure, the pleasure of hospitality in the public or private feast”.

THE MARKET IS NOT A HUMAN UNIVERSAL

The Gift presents itself as a study of “Archaic Forms of the Social Contract”. In it, Mauss looks to different indigenous societies for examples of how human beings meet their needs without markets.

If we define a market as “a place where buyers and sellers meet”, one must conclude that markets did not exist prior to the invention of money.

If the propensity to “truck, barter, and exchange” is a human universal, but markets are not, one must conclude that people must have exchanged goods and services before the invention of money.

First off, there are evolutionary arguments. For the vast majority of our existence as a species, human beings were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Like other pack animals, we surely must have shared meat, if only for the reason that there would presumably be no good reason to hoard the meat from large game animals.

Clearly, nature provides animals with instincts to provision its young with food, and this is likely the basis of human sociality. If we are genetically programmed to share with our offspring, that means we have the instinct to share. If one has more than one needs, that means that there is no good reason not to share with non-relatives as well.

It is worth pointing out at this point that there is no reason to believe that humans evolved to be sexually monogamous, so the paternity of children was likely unknown for the majority of our evolutionary history. In any case, all members of a tribe would have had been related to a greater or lesser degree. Humans evolved to share food because it made sense as a survival strategy for nomadic big-game hunters. One need look no further than wolves to understand the logic.

How, then, did the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” arise? Well, according to Helen E. Fisher, it has to do with the the “Sex Contract”, whereby protohominid females exchanged their sexual services for meat. Perhaps there is something to this, but it’s clearly not the whole picture.

In a 2010 essay called Exchange, David Graeber wrote:

[J]ust as economists argue that all economic life is founded on barter, many social scientists have held that social life in general is founded on exchange. This position was particularly popular in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1960s, for example, Claude Lévi-Strauss made a famous argument that not only was reciprocity the organizing principle of all social life, but that all societies could be said to be organized around three fundamental forms of exchange, each distinguished by its principle medium:

• the economy (the exchange of goods),

• kinship (the exchange of women), and

• language (the exchange of words).

Now, clearly, the exchange of human beings in societies where marriages are arranged are surely very different from the exchange of metal tools and foodstuffs, but it is hard to argue with the idea that families do exchange members. Why Levi-Strauss taught this boiled down to men exchanging women is a subject for another day. For now, the important thing is to understand that there are different “spheres of exchange”, ranging from the mundane (such as fruits, vegetables, and meat) to sacred (weddings, for instance).

The different spheres of exchange operated according to different rules, but one can presume that the three realms worked towards not only the accumulation of material goods, but also the production of social harmony with one’s neighbours.

Prior to the invention of money, people went to great lengths to produce goods for the purpose of exchange… but the form that exchange took bore little resemblance to what we tend to think of when we think of markets. The Gift shows that the base unit in pre-market economies was not the transaction, but the gift.

Here we encounter a linguistic problem. In English, a gift refers to something which is given without expectation of return, but in practice there is always a social obligation in gift economies to reciprocate gifts with counter-gifts, according to certain customs encoded within a myriad of different cultural manifestations.

Nevertheless, reciprocal gift-giving is still very different from quid-pro-quo trades. There are two main differences - price and time frame.

For one thing, gifts do not have a price. For another, reciprocal gift giving is characterized by an unspecified length of time between gift and its counter-gift. This has a peculiar effect on human psychology, which seems to be hard-wired for reciprocity. When one is given something for nothing, one feels one some kind of obligation to respond in kind. This appears to be the basis of human sociality.

This appears to be the basis for debt, which in turn is the basis for money. In a sense, the recipient of a gift is indebted to its giver until it is reciprocated. That debt is essentially a social obligation, which is ultimately what morality is all about.

Furthermore, gift-giving did not serve merely utilitarian functions, but social and political ones. Commonly, neighbouring tribes would meet at certain times of the years in gatherings which combined ritualized gift-giving with celebration and political discussions. In such cases, we can presume that gift-giving evolved as a way of maintaining good relations between two groups who might have conflicting self-interest.

Since the earliest times, trade served as a way to strengthen alliances and forestall hostilities. The purpose of trade, therefore, is not merely to acquire new items to consume. It is also the creation of peace and harmony with one’s neighbours.

When economists assume that trade is largely a matter of individuals competing to get the most for the least, they are assuming a very different set of material conditions than existed in traditional societies.

THE OBLIGATION TO RECIPROCATE IS THE BASIS FOR HUMAN MORALITY

Graeber explains:

[C]ontrary to the speculations of the likes of Hobbes, or Adam Smith, or modern economists, the first voluntary, contractual relations were not between individuals but between social groups: “clans, tribes, and families”. Neither were they essentially political, or for that matter economic, in nature; rather, they were, as he puts it, “total,” bringing together domains we would differentiate as “religious, legal, moral and economic.”

Gift-giving is a perfect example of this sort of thing: because it is a purely voluntary act (or, anyway, can be) that nonetheless creates a sense of obligation…

Rather than history moving from a social contract with the state, with its monopoly of force, to free contracts among individuals, we discover that the origin of the contract long predates the state—that these contracts had much more to do with what we would now consider economic than political concerns, but that, at the same time, they looked absolutely nothing like what free-market theorists would have imagined primitive economics to be like. The working assumption of economists had been—in fact, still is—that the original form of exchange was barter, motivated by material self-interest: two people meet and agree to exchange something one needs for something needed by the other; once the deal is struck, it’s over; the two need have nothing further to do with one another.

What Mauss is arguing, however, is that the first agreements that could be described as economic contracts were agreements not to act in accord with one’s economic self-interest, since if one is simply speaking of material gain, then obviously it is in the interest of the giver to demand an immediate return, and even more obviously, in the interest of the recipient to simply take the goods and keep them, rather than waiting for a discrete interval and making a dramatic counter-gift.

It has often been noted that when something resembling barter does occur in stateless societies it is almost always between strangers, people who would otherwise be enemies.

Rather than there being some fundamental contradiction between relations of violence and economic self-interest, the two are really just variations of the same thing: both reflect the way one acts with people towards whose fate one is indifferent. The moment one makes peace with others, one has to maintain at least the pretense that one is taking some consideration of their interests as well as one’s own.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM AS THE ETHOS OF STATELESS SOCIETIES

Marxists have long held that the origin form of human social organization was one of “primitive communism”, and this appears to be one of the things that he was right about.

Personally, I consider “anarchism” and “primitive communism” to be roughly synonymous terms. Before any market anarchists reading this throw their hands up, please allow me to clarify that to me “communism” simply means a society is which en ethos of voluntary sharing prevails, and where no one is allowed to monopolize the resources upon which others depend on for their survival.

I am absolutely NOT for the abolition of private property in the Marxist sense.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM IS NOT COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP

Graeber continues:

Mauss argued that it was a key mistake to assume that “primitive communism”—or any other sort—was a matter of collective ownership.

First, because personal possessions of some sort always exist; Mauss thought modern-day revolutionaries were being absurd when they imagined they could abolish them.

Second, even where property is owned by a group, it is rarely democratically administered: the difference between a private owner and a chiefly manager is often little more than legal formality.

One has to look not at titles, then, but principles of access and distribution. When someone has the right to take what she feels she needs without any direct payment or reciprocation, then this is communism.

But this means that it is perfectly possible to have a system of individualistic communism: in which specific individuals are bound together by such open-ended obligations, whether (as in the case of relations between affines) one-sided, or whether (as nowadays, he remarked, between husband and wife), both parties have equal rights to call on the other. These could then knit together across the society, creating “a collection of individual positions which constitute a system of total reciprocities.” The result would “correspond exactly to what we call communism, but it will still be a strictly individual thing”.

Over time, Mauss argued, reciprocity can also take on a more competitive cast as assertive individuals—first acting as representatives of clans or other social groups, later, in their own capacity —end up vying to see which can outgive the other. Such systems of “agonistic exchange” Mauss proposed to label “the potlatch,” after the particularly dramatic competitive exchanges that had been recently documented on the Northwest Coast of North America. Usually, such competition took mild forms, but in rare cases it could, much like the competitive games of capitalism, tend to suck everything else into a frantic struggle to outdo one’s rivals: even if they are based on opposite premises, since of course, the whole point here is not to accumulate possessions but rather to express one’s utter contempt for material possessions by giving as much as possible away.

The gift as contest continued to dominate in aristocratic societies like the ancient Celts or Germans, or in Vedic India, but gradually, unevenly, the rise of money and market exchange (involving definitive sale and, therefore, alienation of goods that were no longer seen as entangled in the giver) allowed it to be eclipsed by an ethos of accumulation for its own sake. Most of the societies of the ancient world lingered somewhere in between; it was possible to accumulate fortunes, but the rich were considered, as Mauss put it, “the treasurers of their communities,” expected—or, in the Greek liturgy system, compelled—to disburse their wealth again in civic projects.

THE SOCIETY OF THE GIFT AS A “SYSTEM OF TOTAL SERVICES”

In the economic and legal systems that have preceded our own, one hardly ever finds a simple exchange of goods, wealth, and products in transactions concluded by individuals. First, it is not individuals but collectivities that impose obligations of exchange and contract upon each other. The contracting parties are legal entities: clans, tribes, and families who confront and oppose one another either in groups who meet face to face in one spot, or through their chiefs, or in both these ways at once. Moreover, what they exchange is not solely property and wealth, movable and immovable goods, and things economically useful. In particular, such exchanges are acts of politeness: banquets, rituals, military services, women, children, dances, festivals, and fairs, in which economic transaction is only one element, and in which the passing on of wealth is only one feature of a much more general and enduring contract. Finally, these total services and counter-services are committed to in a somewhat voluntary form by presents and gifts, although in the final analysis they are strictly compulsory, on pain of private or public warfare. We propose to call all this the system of total services.

What Mauss called “the system of total services” has come to be known as a “gift economy”, or “potlatch system”.

Within the indigenous traditions of the Northwest Coast, the words “potlatch” and “feast system” are used interchangeably.

THE FEAST SYSTEM

The purest type of such institutions seems to us to be characterized by the alliance of two phratries in Pacific or North American tribes in general, where rituals, marriages, inheritance of goods, legal ties and those of self-interest, the ranks of the military and priests—in short everything, is complementary and presumes co-operation between the two halves of the tribe. For example, their games, in particular, are regulated by both halves. The Tlingit and the Haïda, two tribes of the American Northwest, express the nature of such practices forcefully by declaring that ‘the two tribal [clans] show respect to each other’.

But within these two tribes of the American Northwest and throughout this region there appears what is certainly a type of these ‘total services’, rare but highly developed. We propose to call this form the ‘potlatch’…

Here, some understanding of the clan system of Turtle Island is crucial.

Within in the Clan System of Turtle Island, people are eligible to marry only with members of different clans. Even if there was no blood relation between members of the same clan, it would be seen as incest if they were to marry. This encouraged exogamy, the practice of marrying outside one’s immediate ethnic group. This had multiple benefits. For one, it prevented excessive in-breeding. For another, it also served to maintain social peace by increasing the number of family ties between members of different tribes.

I think that if we want to imagine societies without money, we would do well to consider the example of the famous potlatch system of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Turtle Island.

These societies were complex and highly prosperous, and as Mauss suggests, the feast system surely has antecedents in the Old World as well.

This makes sense, if you think about it. If one family wished to make an alliance with another in the days before writing, one would need to have witnesses. Therefore, one would invite people to a feast at certain times of year. This was likely the original form of diplomatic relations in every part of the world. After all, if politics is all about decision-making in groups, then there must be a public dimension to anything political.

One can easily imagine that one chief who wished the favours of another would do his best to give his ally the most impressive gift possible. Likely, we can imagine that the giving of the gift would be accompanied by a fine speech, in which the good qualities of said chief would be praised. This type of diplomacy is a common feature to the different political and spiritual traditions of Turtle Island, and we can imagine that it existed in many other parts of the world as well.

Indeed, as Mauss shows, some version of the feast system was practiced by Melanesians and Polynesians. The Maori of New Zealand had their own version, but wrapping your mind around their system is quite challenging.

Personally, I find the example of the Pacific Northwest potlatch system the easiest example to understand, and I would suggest that people study it.

The Feast System has survived for many millennia, and it provides a clear example of how human societies could be organized without the use of money.

The ways in which different chiefs competed for prestige and status within the Feast System also gives us clues as to what truly motivates human behaviour.

Currently, rich people, most of whom are old, gain status by hoarding wealth. Objectively, this is dumb. What’s the point of having more stuff than you can use? Clearly, rich people hoard wealth to win status. But what if status was gained not through hoarding wealth, but by giving wealth away?

Wouldn’t that make more sense? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?

Below, I will include some passages from The Gift that I found particularly interesting. I hope that you find this as interesting as I do!

The American Northwest

From these observations on several Melanesian and Polynesian peoples, a clearly defined picture of this regime of the gift is taking shape. Material and moral life, and exchange, function there in a form that is both disinterested and obligatory at the same time.

Furthermore, this obligation is expressed in a mythical, fantastic, or, if we wish, symbolic and collective way; it assumes the aspect of the interest attached to the things exchanged. These are never completely detached from those exchanging them; the communion and partnerships that they establish are relatively indissoluble. In reality, this symbol of social life—the permanence of the influence of the things exchanged—serves only to reflect the manner in which the subgroups of these segmented societies, archaic in type, are constantly intertwined with one another and sense that they owe each other everything.

“The Indian societies of the American Northwest present the same institutions, except that here they are even more radical and more pronounced. First of all, one could say that barter is unknown there. Even after long contact with Europeans, it seems that none of the significant transfers of wealth that occur there constantly are made in any other way than the ceremonial form of the potlatch. We will describe this institution from our point of view.

NB. First of all, a short description of these societies is indispensable. The tribes, peoples, or rather groups of tribes whom we will mention all reside on the northwest coast of America: in Alaska, the Tlingit and Haïda; and in British Columbia, mainly Haïda, Tsimshian, and Kwakiutl. They also live off the sea, or the rivers, from fishing more than hunting; but unlike the Melanesians and the Polynesians, they have no agriculture. They are, however, very rich, and even now their fishing grounds, their hunting, and their furs leave them with considerable surpluses, especially when quantified in European terms. They have the most solid houses of all the American tribes, and a highly developed cedar industry.

Their canoes are of good quality, and even though they do not venture into the open sea, they know how to navigate between the islands and the coast. Their material arts are very advanced. In particular, even before the arrival of iron in the eighteenth century, they knew how to recover, smelt, mold, and beat the copper that one finds in its raw state in Tsimshian and Tlingit country. Certain kinds of these coppers, genuine emblazoned shields, serve them as a kind of money. Another sort of money must have been the fine blankets, so-called Chilkat, beautifully embellished and that still serve as decoration, some of them of considerable value. These peoples have excellent sculptors and designers. Pipes, maces, sticks, spoons of sculpted horn, etc., adorn our ethnographic collections. The whole of this civilization is remarkably uniform, within quite wide bounds. Evidently these societies interacted with each other from very ancient times, although they belong, at least in their languages, to at least three different families of peoples.

“Their winter life, even for the southernmost peoples, is very different from their summer one. The tribes have a double morphology: they disperse from the end of spring to go hunting, to gather the roots and succulent berries of the mountains, and to fish for salmon in the rivers; when winter comes they come together in what they call “towns.” It is then, throughout the time when they are concentrated in the same place, that they exist in a state of perpetual activity. Social life becomes extremely intense, even more intense than in the congregations of tribes that can occur in the summer, a sort of perpetual agitation. There are constant visits of one tribe to another, one clan to another, one family to another. There are repeated festivities, continually, with each occasion often lasting a very long time. In the event of a wedding, or of various rituals and initiations, they spend everything that has been amassed during summer and autumn with great industriousness along one of the richest coasts in the world, and all without counting the costs. “This occurs in domestic life too: when they invite the people of their clan; when they have killed a seal; when they open a chest of preserved berries or roots; when a whale is stranded; everyone is invited.

“Their moral civilization is also remarkably uniform, although tiered between the regime of the phratry (Tlingit and Haïda) of maternal descent and the clan of modified male descent of the Kwakiutl; the general characteristics of social organization, and particularly of totemism, are almost the same across the tribes.

They have brotherhoods, as in Melanesia, in the Banks Islands, erroneously called secret societies, which are often international, but where male society and, amongst the Kwakiutl certainly, female society merge with the organization of clans. One part of the gifts and [counter-gifts] that we will discuss is intended, as in Melanesia, to pay for the rank and the successive ascensions within these brotherhoods. The rituals, those of the brotherhoods and the clans, take place one after the other at the weddings of chiefs, at the “copper sales,” initiations, shamanistic ceremonies, and funeral ceremonies, the latter being more developed in Haïda and Tlingit country. All this transpires across an indefinitely extended series of “potlatches.” Potlatches happen everywhere, in response to other potlatches. As in Melanesia, there is a constant “give and take.”

…

Yet two notions are much more in evidence here than in the Melanesian potlatch or in the more evolved or more fragmented institutions of Polynesia: the notion of credit according to a time limit, and also the notion of honor.

“Gifts circulate, as we have seen in Melanesia and in Polynesia, with the certainty that they will be reciprocated, having as “guarantee” the virtue of the thing given, which is itself the “guarantee.” But, in every possible society, it is in the nature of the gift to impose a time limit. By its very definition, a common meal, a distribution of kava, or a talisman that one takes away cannot be reciprocated immediately. “Time” is necessary to fulfill every [counter-gift]. The notion of a time limit is therefore logically implied when it comes to paying visits, contracting marriages and alliances, brokering peace, attending games and organized combat, celebrating rotating festivals, rendering ritual services of honor, “displaying reciprocal respect,” all the things that one exchanges, at the same time as other more and more numerous and precious things, as these societies grow more wealthy.”

Here it is important to note that there is most definitely a competitive aspect to gift-giving, and that chiefs would seek to outdo each other in a constant game of one-upmanship. But there was also a obligation to repay gifts with interest, so to speak. The longer it took for one party to offer a counter-gift in response to a gift, the more valuable the counter-gift had to be.

Mauss explains:

The economic system of the Indians of the British colony is largely based on credit, much like that of civilized peoples. In all his undertakings, the Indian trusts to the aid of his friends. He promises to pay them for this assistance at a later date. If the aid provided consists of valuable things, which are measured by the Indians in blankets, just as we measure them in money, he promises to pay back the value of the loan with interest. The Indian has no system of writing, and consequently, to guarantee the transaction, the promise is made in public. To contract debts on the one hand, to pay them on the other, this constitutes the potlatch. This economic system is developed to such an extent that the capital possessed by all the individuals associated with the tribe far exceeds the quantity of available valuables that exist; in other words, the conditions are entirely analogous to that prevailing in our own society: if we desired to pay off all our debts, we would find that there was not nearly enough money, in fact, to settle them. The result of an attempt by all creditors to seek reimbursement of their loans is a disastrous panic that the community takes a long time to recover from.

One must indeed understand that an Indian who invites all his friends and neighbors to a great potlatch, which apparently squanders all the profits accumulated over long years of work, has two things in view that we can only acknowledge to be wise and praiseworthy. His first purpose is to pay off his debts. This is done publicly with much ceremony and is like a notarial act. His second purpose is to place the fruits of his labor so that he draws the greatest benefit from them for himself as well as for his children. Those who receive presents at this festival receive them as loans that they use in ongoing enterprises, but after a few years they must be given back with interest to the donor or his heir. Thus the potlatch ends up by being considered by the Indians as a means of ensuring the well-being of their children if they are left as orphans when they are young.

POTLATCH SOCIETIES ARE HEROIC SOCIETIES

Western anthropologists have often commented on the wastefulness of the potlatch, which sometimes escalated into contests involving the dramatic destruction of wealth.

Personally, I feel like the disapproval that Western anthropologists seem to have for this practice has prevented them from learning from the potlatch system. I don’t want to dwell too much on this aspect of potlatch, but it must be mentioned.

Nowhere is the individual prestige of a chief and the prestige of his clan so closely linked to expenditure and to the exacting return with interest on the gifts accepted, in a way that transforms those who had previously been obligated to you into the obligated themselves. Consumption and destruction are genuinely unlimited. In certain potlatches, one must spend all that one has, and keep nothing. It is a case of who is the richest and also the most madly profligate. Everything is based on the principle of antagonism and rivalry. The political status of individuals, in the brotherhoods and clans, and in ranks of all sorts, are obtained by “war of property,” as by real war, or by chance, inheritance, alliance, and marriage. But everything is conceived of as if it were a “contest of wealth.” The marriage of children and positions in brotherhoods are only won through potlatches exchanged and returned. One can lose them in the potlatch as one loses them in war, in gambling, racing, and wrestling matches.

CONTESTS OF WEALTH

One of the most famous thing about the potlatch is the “contest of wealth”, which would sometimes culminate in the dramatic, public destruction of property. This is the dark side of potlatch, as the purpose of gift-giving in such contests was to shame and belittle one’s rivals. Men being men, they will tend to make a contest out of everything, and male egotism often has negative social consequences.

In a certain number of cases, it is not even a matter of giving and reciprocating, but of destroying, to avoid even giving the impression of wanting your gift to be reciprocated. They burn whole casks of olachen (candle-fish) oil, or whale oil; they burn houses and thousands of blankets; they break the most valuable coppers and throw them into the water, in order to crush and “flatten” their rival. Thus one advances not only oneself, but one’s family too up the social scale. So we have here a system of law and economy wherein considerable wealth is being constantly spent and transferred. We could, if we wished, describe these transfers as exchange, or even trade and sale. But this trade is noble, full of etiquette and generosity; and in any case, when it is carried out in another spirit, with immediate gain as its goal, it then becomes the object of very marked scorn.

The Northwest American potlatch has been sufficiently studied with respect to everything that pertains to the form of the contract itself... For the potlatch is much more than a juridical phenomenon: it is one that we propose to term “total.” It is religious, mythological, and shamanistic, since the chiefs who engage in it represent and incarnate the ancestors and the gods whose names they bear, whose dances they dance, and whose spirits possess them. It is also economic, and one must measure the value, the importance, the reasons and effects of these, even today, enormous transactions, when calculated in European values. The potlatch is also a phenomenon of social morphology: the gathering of tribes, clans, and families, even of nations, produces a state of agitation, of remarkable excitement. They fraternize, all the while remaining strangers; they communicate and confront each other in a gigantic forum of trade and a constant tournament.

This is why peoples mounted a great festival when the son of a chief was born and was given a name, so that no one should not know who he was.' The potlatch, the distribution of goods, is the basic act of 'recognition', military, juridical, economic, and religious in every sense of the word. One 'recognizes' the chief or his son and becomes 'grateful' to him.

The ritual followed in the Kwakiutl festivals and those of other tribes in this group sometimes expresses this principle of obligatory invitation. It can happen that a part of the festival begins with the Ceremony of the Dogs. The latter are represented by masked men who leave one house and force an entrance into another. This commemorates the time when the people of the three other clans of the Kwakiutl tribe proper omitted to invite the most high-ranking clan among them, the Guetala. The latter did not wish to remain 'profane' and, entering the house where dances were going on, destroyed everything.

The obligation to accept is no less constraining. One has no right to refuse a gift or to refuse to attend the potlatch. To act in this way is to show that one is afraid of having to reciprocate, to fear being 'flattened' [i.e., losing one’s name] until one has reciprocated. In reality, this is already to be 'flattened'. It is to 'lose the weight' attached to one’s name. It is either to admit oneself beaten in advance or, on the contrary, in certain cases, to proclaim oneself the victor and invincible. Indeed, it seems, at least among the Kwakiutl, that an acknowledged position in the hierarchy, and victories in previous potlatches, allow one to refuse an invitation, or even, when present at a potlatch, to refuse a gift without war ensuing. Yet then the potlatch becomes obligatory for the one who has refused; in particular, he must make even richer the 'festival of fat' where this ritual of refusal can, in fact, be observed. The chief who believes himself to be superior spurns the spoonful of fat presented to him; he goes to fetch his 'copper object' and returns with it in order to 'put out the fire' (of the fat). There follows a succession of formalities that signify the challenge that binds the chief who has refused to give another potlatch, another 'festival of fat'. But in principle, every gift is always accepted and even praised. One must voice one’s appreciation of the food that has been prepared for one. But, by accepting it, one knows that one is committing oneself. A gift is received 'with a burden attached'. One does more than derive benefit from a thing or a festival: one has accepted a challenge and has been able to do so because of being certain to be able to reciprocate, to prove one is not unequal. By confronting one another in this way, chiefs can place themselves in a comic situation that is surely perceived as such.

As in ancient Gaul or Germany, or at our own banquets for students, soldiers, and peasants, one is committed to gulping down large quantities of food, in order to 'do honor', in a somewhat grotesque way, to one’s host. Even if one is only the heir of the person who has made the challenge, it is taken up. To refrain from giving, just as to refrain from accepting, is to lose rank—as is refraining from reciprocating.

The obligation to reciprocate constitutes the essence of the potlatch, insofar as it does not consist of pure destruction. These acts of destruction are very often sacrificial and beneficial to the spirits. It would seem they need not all be reciprocated unconditionally, particularly when they are the work of a chief recognized in the clan as being superior, or that of a chief of a clan that has itself already been recognized as superior. However, normally, the potlatch must be reciprocated with interest, as must indeed every gift. The rate of interest generally ranges from 30–100 per cent a year. Even if a subject receives a blanket from his chief for some service he has rendered, he will give two in return on the occasion of a marriage in the chief’s family, or the enthronement of the chief’s son, etc. It is true that the latter, in his turn, will give away all the goods that he obtains at future potlatches when the opposing clans will heap benefits upon him.

The obligation to reciprocate worthily is imperative. One loses face forever if one does not reciprocate, or if one does not carry out destruction of equivalent value. The punishment for failure to reciprocate is slavery for debt. At least, this functions among the Kwakiutl, the Haida, and the Tsimshian. It is an institution really comparable in nature and function to the Roman nexum. The individual unable to repay the loan or reciprocate the potlatch loses his rank and even his status as a free man. Among the Kwakiutl, when an individual whose credit is poor borrows, he is said to 'sell a slave'. There is no need to point out the identical nature of this and the Roman expression. The Haida even say—as if they had discovered the Latin expression independently—regarding a mother who gives a present to the mother of a young chief for a betrothal contracted as a minor, that she has: 'put a thread around him'.

The force of things

One can push the analysis further and demonstrate that in the things exchanged during the potlatch, a power is present that forces gifts to be passed around, to be given, and returned. First, at least among the Kwakiutl and Tsimshian, the same distinction is made between the various kinds of property as made by the Romans, the Trobriand peoples, and the Samoans. For these, there exist, on the one hand, the objects of consumption and for common sharing (I have found no trace of exchanges). And on the other hand, there are the precious things belonging to the family, the various talismans, emblazoned copper objects, blankets made of skins, or cloth bedecked with emblems. This latter type of object is passed on as solemnly as women hand over at marriage the 'privileges' to their sons-in-law, and names and ranks to children and sons-in-law. It is even incorrect to speak in their case of transfer. They are loans rather than sales or true abandonment of possession. Among the Kwakiutl, a certain number of objects, although they appear at the potlatch, cannot be disposed of. In reality, these pieces of 'property' are sacra that a family divests itself of only with great reluctance, and sometimes never.

More detailed observation among the Haida will reveal the same distinctions between things. The latter have, in fact, even made the notion of property and fortune divine, as did the Ancients. Through a mythological and religious effort, fairly infrequent in America, they have raised themselves to a level where they have personified an abstraction. English writers refer to the 'Property Woman' about whom there are myths and of whom we have descriptions. For the Haida, she is nothing less than the mother, the originating goddess of the dominant phratry, that of the Eagles. Yet on the other hand—and this is a strange fact that awakens very distant recollections of the Asiatic and Ancient world—she seems identical to the 'queen', the main protagonist in 'the game of sticks' ('tip-it'), the one who wins everything and whose name she bears in part. This goddess is to be found in the Tlingit lands, and the myth about her, if not the worship of her, among the Tsimshian and the Kwakiutl.

The sum total of these precious things constitutes the magical dower; this is often identical for both donor and recipient, and also for the spirit who has provided the clan with these talismans, or the hero who is the originator of the clan and to whom the spirit has given them. In any case, all these things are always, and in every tribe, spiritual in origin and of a spiritual nature. Moreover, they are contained in a box, or rather in a large emblazoned case that is itself endowed with a powerful personality, that can talk, that clings to its owner, that holds his soul, etc.

Each of these precious things, these signs of wealth, possesses—as in the Trobriand Islands—its individuality, its name, its qualities, its power. The large abalone shells, the shields that are covered with these shells, the belts and blankets that are decorated with them, the blankets themselves that also bear emblems, covered with faces, eyes, and animal and human figures that are woven and embroidered on them—all are living beings. The houses, the beams, and the decorated walls are also beings. Everything speaks—the roof, the fire, the carvings, the paintings—for the magical house is built, not only by the chief or his people, or the people of the opposing phratry, but also by one’s gods and ancestors. It is the house that both accepts and rejects the spirits and the youthful initiates.

Each one of these precious things possesses, moreover, productive power itself. It is not a mere sign and pledge; it is also a sign and a pledge of wealth, the magical and religious symbol of rank and plenty. The dishes and spoons used solemnly for eating, and decorated, carved, and emblazoned with the clan’s totem or the totem of rank, are animate things. They are replicas of the inexhaustible instruments, the creators of food, that the spirits gave to one’s ancestors. They are themselves deemed to have fairylike qualities. Thus things are mixed up with spirits, their originators, and eating instruments with food. The dishes of the Kwakiutl and the spoons of the Haida are essential items that circulate according to very strict rules and are meticulously shared out among the clans and the families of the chiefs.

The 'money of fame'

Yet above all it is the emblazoned copper objects that, as basic goods for the potlatch, are the focus of important beliefs and even of a cult. First, in every tribe there exists a cult and a myth regarding copper, which is regarded as a living thing. Copper, at least among the Haida and the Kwakiutl, is identified with the salmon, which is itself the object of a cult. Yet, besides this element of metaphysical and technical mythology, all these pieces of copper are, each one separately, the subject of individual and particular beliefs. Each important piece of copper in the families of the clan chiefs has its name, its own individuality, its own value, in the full sense of the word—magical, economic, permanent, and perpetual—despite the vicissitudes of the potlatch through which they pass, and even beyond the partial or complete acts of destruction they suffer.

Moreover, they have a power of attraction that is felt by other copper objects, just as wealth attracts wealth, or dignities bring honors in their train, as well as the possession of spirits and fruitful alliances—and vice versa. They are alive and move autonomously, and inspire other copper objects to do so. One of them is called among the Kwakiutl 'the attracter of copper objects', and the story depicts how the copper objects group around it. At the same time, the name of its owner is 'property that flows towards me'. Another frequent name for copper objects is: 'the bringer of property'. Among the Haida and the Tlingit, the copper objects form a 'strongpoint' around the princess who brings them; elsewhere the chief who has them in his possession is rendered invincible. They are 'the flat, divine things' of the household. Often the myth identifies them all, the spirits that have given the copper objects, their owners, and the copper objects themselves. It is impossible to distinguish what makes the strength of spirit in the one and wealth in the other: the copper object speaks, and grumbles. It demands to be given away, to be destroyed; it is covered with blankets to keep it warm, just as the chief is buried under the blankets that he is to share out.

Yet, on the other hand, at the same time as goods, it is wealth and good luck that are passed on. It is the initiate’s spirit, it is his attendant spirits, that give the initiate possession of copper objects, of talismans that themselves are the means of acquiring other things: other copper objects, wealth, rank, and finally spirits, all things that, moreover, are of equivalent value. All in all, when one considers both the copper objects and the other permanent forms of wealth that are likewise an object of hoarding and of alternating potlatches, masks, talismans, etc.—all are mingled together as regards use and effect. Through them one obtains rank; it is because one obtains wealth that one obtains a spirit. The latter, in its turn, takes possession of the hero who has overcome all obstacles. Then again, this hero has his Shaman trances, his ritual dances, and the services of his government [sic] paid for him. Everything holds together, everything is mixed up together. Things possess a personality, and the personalities are in some way the permanent things of the clan. Titles, talismans, copper objects, and the spirits of the chiefs are both homonyms and synonyms of the same nature and performing the same function. The circulation of goods follows that of men, women, and children, of feasts, rituals, ceremonies, and dances, and even that of jokes and insults. All in all, it is one and the same. If one gives things and returns them, it is because one is giving and returning 'respects'—we still say 'courtesies'. Yet it is also because by giving one is giving oneself, and if one gives oneself, it is because one 'owes' oneself—one’s person and one’s goods—to others.

Mauss then draws some initial conclusions:

Thus, in four important population groups we have discovered the following: first, in two or three groups, the potlatch; then the main reason for, and the normal form of the potlatch itself; and what is more, beyond the potlatch, and in all these groups, the archaic form of exchange—that of gifts presented and reciprocated. Moreover, we have identified the circulation of things in these societies with the circulation of rights and persons. We could, if we wanted, stop there. The number, extent, and importance of these facts justify fully our conception of a regime that must have been shared by a very large part of humanity during a very long transitional phase, one that, moreover, still subsists among the peoples we have described. These phenomena allow us to think that this principle of the exchange-gift must have been that of societies that have gone beyond the phase of 'total services' (from clan to clan, and from family to family) but have not yet reached that of purely individual contract, of the market where money circulates, of sale proper, and above all of the notion of price reckoned in coinage weighed and stamped with its value.

ANTECEDENTS IN EURASIA

Mauss strongly suggests that the Feast System was the original form of governance for Proto-Indo-Europeans in the Old World. At some point, presumably when the first city-states began developing rapacious bureaucracies with elaborate tax collection schemes, Western civilization apparently transitioned to a form of politics based on dominance, violence, and the centralization of power. If you think about it, this could only really have been made possible by organized plunder.

The law, morality, and economy of the Latins must have had these forms, but they were forgotten when their institutions entered the historical period. For it is precisely the Romans and Greeks, who, perhaps, following upon the Semites of the north and west, invented the distinction between personal and real law, separated sale from gift and exchange, isolated the moral obligation and contract, and in particular, conceived the difference that exists between rites, laws, and interests. It was they who, after a veritable, great, and admirable revolution, went beyond all the outmoded morality, and this economy of the gift. It was too dependent on chance, was overexpensive and too sumptuous, burdened with consideration for people, incompatible with the development of the market, commerce, and production, and, all in all, at that time was anti-economic.

GERMANIC LAW (THE PLEDGE AND THE GIFT)

Although Germanic societies have not preserved for us such ancient and complete vestiges of their theory of the gift, they nevertheless had a system of exchanges of gifts, given, received, and reciprocated either voluntarily or obligatorily, so clearly defined and well developed that there are few systems so typical.

Germanic civilization was itself a long time without markets. It remained an essentially feudal and peasant society, and the notions and even the terms ‘buying price’ and ‘selling price’ seem to be of recent origin. In earlier times it had developed to the extreme the entire system of potlatch, but in particular, the complete system of gifts. The clans within the tribes, the large undivided families within the clans, the tribes one with another, the chiefs among themselves, and even the kings among themselves—all lived to a fairly large extent morally and economically outside the closed confines of the family group. Thus, it was by the form of the gift and the alliance, by pledges and hostages, by feasts and presents that were as generous as possible, that they communicated, helped, and allied themselves to one another. We have seen earlier the whole range of presents borrowed from the Havamal. In addition to this beautiful landscape of the Edda saga, we shall point out three facts.

A detailed study of the very rich German vocabulary of the words derived from geben and gaben has not yet been made. They are extraordinarily numerous: Ausgabe, Abgabe, Hingabe, Liebesgabe, Morgengabe, the very curious Trostgabe (consolation prize), vorgeben, vergeben (to waste, and to forgive), widergeben and wiedergeben. The study of Gift, Mitgift, etc., and the study of the institutions that are designated by these words has also yet to be made. On the other hand, the whole system of presents and gifts, its importance in tradition and folklore, including the obligation to reciprocate, are admirably described by Richard Meyer in one of the most appealing works of folklore that we know. We can merely refer to it, for the time being drawing attention to the well-chosen remarks concerning the strength of the bond that imposes an obligation, the Angebinde that makes up exchange, the offer, the acceptance of that offer, and the obligation to reciprocate.

There is, moreover, an institution that only a short time ago persisted, that doubtless still persists in the morality and economic customs of German villages, and that has an extraordinary importance from the economic viewpoint: it is the Gaben, the exact equivalent of the Hindu adanam. At baptisms, first communions, engagement parties, and weddings, the guests— who often include the whole village—for example, after the wedding breakfast, or on the previous day, or the following day (Guldentag), present gifts whose value generally greatly exceeds the expense of the wedding. In certain areas of Germany, the Gaben constitutes the bride’s dowry, which is given to her on the wedding morning. This is known as the Morgengabe. In a few places the generosity of these gifts is proof of the fertility of the young couple. The contract made through an engagement, the various gifts that godfathers and godmothers make at different times in life to assist and help their grandchildren, are equally important. We recognize this theme, which is still well known in all our own customs, folk tales, and legends concerning the invitation, the curse of those not invited, and the blessing and generosity of those invited, particularly when they are fairies.

A second institution has the same origin. It is the need for a ‘pledge’ in all sorts of Germanic contracts. The very word gage (Fr.) comes from this, from wadium (cf. English, wage). Huvelin has already shown that the Germanic wadium provided a means of understanding the binding tie of contracts and compared it to the Roman nexum. Indeed, as Huvelin interpreted it, the pledge accepted allows the contracting parties in Germanic law to react with one another, since each possesses something of the other. The other, having been the owner of the thing, may have cast a spell upon it, and the pledge was frequently cut in two, half kept by one party and half by the other. Yet upon such an explanation it is possible to superimpose another more accurate one. The magic sanction can intervene. It is not the sole bond. The thing itself, given and committed in the pledge, is a bond by virtue of its own power. First, the pledge is compulsory. In Germanic law any contract, whether for sale or purchase, for loan or deposit, includes the constitution of a pledge. An object, generally of little value, is given to the other contracting party; a glove, a coin (Treugeld), a knife—or (as in France today) pins that will be returned when payment for the thing handed over has been made. Huvelin already notes that the thing is of little value, and normally is personal. He rightly compares this act with the theme of the ‘life-token’. The thing passed on in this way is indeed very much infused with the individuality of the donor. The fact that it is in the hands of the recipient stimulates the contracting party to carry out the contract, to redeem himself by redeeming the thing. Thus the nexum is in the thing, and not merely in the magical acts, or only the solemn forms of the contract, the words, the oaths, the rituals exchanged, or the shaking of hands. It is in it, as it is in the documents, the ‘acts’ of magical value, and the ‘tallies’ that each contracting party retains, the meals taken in common, in which everyone partakes of the substance of everybody else.

Two features of the wadiatio demonstrate, moreover, this power that is inherent in the thing. First, the pledge is not only a binding obligation, but also binds the honour, authority, and mana of the one who hands it over. The latter remains in a position of inferiority so long as he is not freed from his pledge-wager. For the word Wette, wetten, that the wadium of the laws translates, has as much the meaning of ‘wager’ as of ‘pledge’. It is the prize of a competition and the sanction of a challenge even more directly than it is a means of constraint upon the debtor. So long as the contract is not completed, he is, as it were, the loser of the wager, the one who comes second in the race. Thus he loses more than he commits himself to, more than he will have to pay. This is without taking into account that he runs the risk of losing what he has received, which the owner will claim back from him, so long as the pledge has not been redeemed.

The second characteristic shows the danger inherent in receiving the pledge, for it is not only the giver who commits himself: the recipient also binds himself. Just like the recipient in the Trobriand Islands, he is wary of the thing that has been given. Thus, it is thrown down at his feet when it is a festuca notata, ornamented with Runic characters and notches. When it is a tally of which he may keep a part or not, he receives it on the ground or in his lap (in laisum), and not in his hand. The whole ritual takes the form of a challenge and is full of mistrust, giving expression to both. Moreover, in English, at one time ‘to cast (down) the gage’ was equivalent to the phrase ‘to throw (down) the gauntlet’. This is because the pledge, the ‘gage’, like the thing that is given, holds danger for both parties.

There is a third fact. The danger represented by the thing given or handed on is doubtless nowhere better sensed than in the very ancient Germanic law and languages. This explains the double meaning of the word Gift in all these languages—on the one hand, a gift, on the other, poison. We have traced elsewhere the semantic history of this word. This theme of the fatal gift, the present or item of property that is changed into poison is fundamental in Germanic folklore. The Rhine gold is fatal to the one who conquers it, Hagen’s cup is mortal to the hero who drinks from it. A thousand stories and romances of this kind, both Germanic and Celtic, still haunt our sensibilities.

THE CURSE OF LOKI

Let us quote this stanza, in which Hreidmar, a hero of the Edda saga, replies to the curse of Loki:

“You have given gifts,

But you have not given gifts of love,

You have not given with a kindly heart.

You would already have been robbed of your life,

If I had known earlier of the danger.”

ARISTOCRATIC EXTRAVAGANCE

First of all, we return, as return we must, to habits of ‘aristocratic extravagance’. As is happening in English-speaking countries and so many other contemporary societies, whether made up of savages or the highly civilized, the rich must come back to considering themselves—freely and also by obligation—as the financial guardians of their fellow citizens. Among ancient civilizations, from which ours has sprung, some had a (debtors’) jubilee, others liturgies (of duty) such as choregies and trierarchies, and syussitia (meals in common), and the obligatory expenditure by the aedile and the consular dignitaries. We should return to laws of this kind. Then there must be more care for the individual, his life, his health, his education (which is, moreover, a profitable investment), his family, and their future. There must be more good faith, more sensitivity, more generosity in contracts dealing with the hiring of services, the letting of houses, the sale of vital foodstuffs. And it will indeed be necessary to find a way to limit the rewards of speculation and interest. However, the individual must work. He should be forced to rely upon himself rather than upon others. On the other hand, he must defend his interests, both personally and as a member of a group. Over-generosity, or communism, would be as harmful to himself and to society as the egoism of our contemporaries and the individualism of our laws. In the Mahabharata a malevolent genie of the woods explains to a Brahmin who gave away too much, and too injudiciously: ‘That is why you are thin and pale.’ The life of the monk, and the life of a Shylock are both equally to be shunned. This new morality will surely consist of a good but moderate blend of reality and the ideal. Thus we can and must return to archaic society and to elements in it. We shall find in this reasons for life and action that are still prevalent in certain societies and numerous social classes: the joy of public giving; the pleasure in generous expenditure on the arts, in hospitality, and in the private and public festival.

We must not desire the citizen to be either too good or too individualist nor too insensitive or too realist. He must have a keen sense of awareness of himself, but also of others, and of social reality (in moral matters is there even any other kind of reality?) He must act by taking into account his own interests, and those of society and its subgroups. This morality is eternal; it is common to the most advanced societies, to those of the immediate future, and to the lowest imaginable forms of society. We touch upon fundamentals. No longer are we talking in legal terms: we are speaking of men and groups of men, because it is they, it is society, it is the feelings of men, in their minds and in flesh and blood that at all times spring into action and that have acted everywhere.

THE SUPREME ART

Mauss concludes The Gift with some thoughts about the importance of ritualized exchange in the maintenance of social peace.

It is by opposing reason to feeling, by pitting the will to peace against sudden outbursts of insanity of this kind that peoples succeed in substituting alliance, gifts, and trade for war, isolation, and stagnation.

This is therefore what one may have found at the conclusion of this research. Societies have progressed in so far as they themselves, their subgroups, and lastly, the individuals in them, have succeeded in stabilizing relationships, giving, receiving, and finally, giving in return. To trade, the first condition was to be able to lay aside the spear. From then onwards they succeeded in exchanging goods and persons, no longer only between clans, but between tribes and nations, and, above all, between individuals. Only then did people learn how to create mutual interests, giving mutual satisfaction, and, in the end, to defend them without having to resort to arms. Thus the clan, the tribe, and peoples have learned how to oppose and to give to one another without sacrificing themselves to one another. This is what tomorrow, in our so-called civilized world, classes and nations and individuals also, must learn. This is one of the enduring secrets of their wisdom and solidarity.

There is no other morality, nor any other form of economy, nor any other social practices save these. The Bretons, and the Chronicles of Arthur tell how King Arthur, with the help of a Cornish carpenter, invented that wonder of his court, the miraculous Round Table, seated round which, the knights no longer fought. Formerly, ‘out of sordid envy’, in stupid struggles, duels and murders stained with blood the finest banquets. The carpenter said to Arthur: ‘I will make you a very beautiful table, around which sixteen hundred and more can sit, and move around, and from which no one will be excluded… No knight will be able to engage in fighting, for there the highest placed will be on the same level as the lowliest.’ There was no longer a ‘high table’, and consequently no more quarreling. Everywhere that Arthur took his table his noble company remained happy and unconquerable. In this way nations today can make themselves strong and rich, happy and good. Peoples, social classes, families, and individuals will be able to grow rich, and will only be happy when they have learnt to sit down, like the knights, around the common store of wealth. It is useless to seek goodness and happiness in distant places. It is there already, in peace that has been imposed, in well-organized work, alternately in common and separately, in wealth amassed and then redistributed, in the mutual respect and reciprocating generosity that is taught by education.

In certain cases, one can study the whole of human behavior, and social life in its entirety. One can also see how this concrete study can lead not only to a science of customs, to a partial social science but even to moral conclusions, or rather, to adopt once more the old word, ‘civility’, or ‘civics’, as it is called nowadays. Studies of this kind indeed allow us to perceive, measure, and weigh up the various aesthetic, moral, religious, and economic motivations, the diverse material and demographic factors, the sum total of which are the basis of society and constitute our common life, the conscious direction of which is the supreme art, Politics, in the Socratic sense of the word.

So there you have it, folks. Having parties is a crucial part of politics. Whodathunkit? It’s almost like God wants us to have fun or something.

AND YOU THOUGHT I WAS JOKING ABOUT JUGGALO THEOCRACY, DIDN’T YOU?