Collectivism isn’t a new, or “progressive” idea — it’s the oldest one in the world. Liberty is what’s new, only a couple hundred years old, but the reactionary Left wants to take us back to the past.
And read the whole thing, though it’s long. It’s quite interesting.
Not even.. a natural sense of property predates humanity.. even dogs get it.
You must be running with a really narrow definition of “liberty”, I’d have said that the globe was settled by Early Man who knew a type of liberty we never will.
Andrew,
You are exactly right. Socialism emerged during the Urban Revolution when it emerged as a by product of the construction of the extensive irrigation systems in the Middle East. Prior to that human organization was based around family groups with intermarriage among closely related families in the first villages. And all you need to be free was to move away.
Freedom is an illusion. You can be more free or less free. You can never be free.
I vote for more free.
Without reading the article, I came up with an entirely different angle. The caveman exists in, and the collectivist perceives, a world in which wealth is fixed. All economic activity is a form of scavenging. (Including hunting, which is scavenging that employs tools of deadly force.)
That was true until about 28,000 years ago. That’s when the earliest known cases of specialization of talent took place. Before then (so far as is known), everyone had to be able to do everything on their own, be it making arrowheads, baskets or clothing, hunting or scavaging for food, or anything else. With specialization, one person might make better arrowheads and trade those for a basket or piece of clothing. They were still living in caves at the time but they invented basic economic activity.
We get to enjoy a type of freedom that early man rarely got in the form of leisure time. It wasn’t that long ago in fact that most of the waking hours of the day were spent tilling fields, herding livestock, and cooking food. And what little leisure time people could afford was usually consumed in hours of worship. As prosperity increased and standards of living improved so too did the type of leisure activities we take for granted today: socializing in pubs, variety in games, and complexity of sports.
Early hunter gatherers were collectivists because they had a use it all and save nothing mentality. Not only because there were no adequate food storage methods for the time but also because hunter gathers were migratory and therefore had to travel light. One can hoard only so much before they have too much bring along with them as they move about the place. It was really when beer was discovered that humans first began to settle down to cultivate barley. Not only did beer make water safe to drink but it could be stored for some time because of it antibiotic properties. Those who hoarded the most beer were able to use it as a currency to boost their standing and influence within in society. So, really we have beer to thank for the transformation of human civilization and promulgation of liberty. That’s certainly something I’ll lift a pint to for a toast.