The Nomadic Alternative – Page 134

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Now the Society of Equals is synonymous with the mythical Golden Age, and the men of those happier times roamed the earth grabbing at the fruits of nature, careless of the future and mindless of the past. And since the idea persists that men have degenerated and become less human as a result of their advances in culture, this leads to the hope that obscure savages in exotic lands may still preserve the Adamic State of Innocence, from which lessons may be learned and morals drawn. Consequently much Utopian thought gravitates towards the idealization of the savage, as yet untainted by the corrupting influence of higher civilization.

But the problem is to pick the right savage, not to make the terrible mistake of Marx and Engels who avidly espoused Lewis Morgan's description of Iroquois society and imagined it to offer a primitive paradigm for the Communist State. Long before Morgan, the French Jesuit missions had applauded the social equality, the communally-held property and the well-disciplined village life of the Iroquois. In the eyes of the well-disciplined fathers it compared most favourably with the profligate wanderings of the local Algonkian hunters and gatherers. But though their martial spleen had toned down by Morgan's time, the Iroquois had been a bunch of extremely unpleasant war-lords, hell-bent on expansion against their neighbours, cannibals to boot, and torturers of exquisite finesse. Iroquois society was a sort of police state in which everyone was a policeman and which could only function smoothly if perpetually mobilized against all outsiders. The Iroquois were masters of psychological warfare, howling at their neighbours in the night, threatening massacres, raids and invasions. All in all a fine recipe for the Marxist Millennium!

The early explorers of America convinced themselves they had tumbled on Paradise and made a similar mistake. From the profusion