Dude, You Don’t Understand What ‘Egalitarian’ Means

Nearly all native cultures have strong egalitarian elements

I hear all of the time from guys who want to challenge the fact that patriarchy only arose about 6–9 thousand years ago and that prior to this time, humans overwhelmingly lived in largely egalitarian communities — as foragers, but also in many proto-agricultural communities such as Çatalhöyük. Besides the fact that this is the most widely accepted view of anthropologists (and it isn’t just me saying this), at least some of them don’t seem to really get what the term ‘egalitarian’ actually means, which is part of their quibble. So, let’s clear that up.

Modern hunter-gatherers around the world have some differences in their societies, but the main thing that they all have in common is egalitarianism. This doesn’t necessarily mean perfect equality or some type of Utopianism, it refers instead to a lack of centralized leadership, and a fundamental belief in personal autonomy. Family ties and the well-being of the group are also extremely important. Even in bands where men have more power than women, there is still typically a kind of balance between them.

Egalitarianism, among hunter-gatherers, goes far beyond the western notion of equal opportunity.

Even amongst Australian Aboriginals, who allow for more violence, and more social stratification than is typical of foragers, they are still widely considered to be egalitarians. “Aboriginal people had no chiefs or other centralized institutions of social or political control. In various measures, Aboriginal societies exhibited both hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies, but they were classless; an egalitarian ethos predominated, the subordinate status of women notwithstanding.”

Nearly all researchers who write about hunter-gatherer bands emphasize the extraordinarily high value they place on individual autonomy. Hunter-gatherers’ sense of autonomy is different from the individualism of modern Western capitalist cultures. Western individualism tends to pit each person against others in competition for resources and rewards. It includes the right to accumulate property and to use wealth to control the behavior of others. In contrast, as Tim Ingold (1999) has most explicitly emphasized, hunter-gathers’ sense of autonomy connects each person to others, in a way that does not create dependencies. Their autonomy does not include the right to accumulate property, to use power or threats to control others, or to make others indebted to oneself. It does, however, allow people to make their own day-to-day and moment-to-moment decisions about their own activities, as long as they do not violate the band’s implicit and explicit rules. For example, individual hunter-gatherers are free, on any day, to join a hunting or gathering party or to stay at camp and rest, depending on their own preference.

Intimately tied to hunter-gatherers’ sense of autonomy is what Richard Lee (1988) has called their “fierce egalitarianism.” Egalitarianism, among hunter-gatherers, goes far beyond the western notion of equal opportunity. It means that nobody has more material goods than anyone else, that everyone’s needs are equally important, and that nobody considers himself or herself superior to others. Such equality is part and parcel of hunter-gatherers’ autonomy, as inequalities could lead those who have more to dominate those who have less. Hunter-gatherers, of course, recognize that some people are better hunters or gatherers than others, some are wiser than others, and so on, and they value such abilities. However, they react strongly against any flaunting of abilities or overt expressions of pride.

There’s often a lot of “what about gender roles” that comes up in discussions about egalitarianism. Although gender roles certainly exist, in forager cultures at least, they aren’t necessarily adhered to all that strongly. For the most part, due to the strong sense of personal autonomy in forager bands, people do what they want to in order to contribute to the food and the general well-being of the tribe. In bands that hunt big game, this does tend to be more the purview of men, but otherwise, these roles are highly flexible.

(Amongst Australian Aboriginals) The major division of labour was sex-based. In general, men and youths mostly hunted large game, while women collected vegetable foods and hunted small game, such as lizards. However, adults of one sex could easily subsist for long periods without members of the other — for example, when men absented themselves from their bands to undertake journeys related to religious concerns. All adults of each sex normally possessed the full range of skills required for getting a living.

But, from the Native American perspective, women’s roles reflected their own cultural emphases on reciprocity, balance, and autonomy.”

Most American Indian tribes were egalitarian even though they had chiefs and more centralized authority than is typical for forager bands. Some of this may be due to the addition of agriculture or interactions with other tribes that were no longer nomadic hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Both of these things impact the rise of hierarchy in a given culture, but they nonetheless maintained a highly egalitarian ethos. “Indian women performed what Europeans considered to be men’s work. But, from the Native American perspective, women’s roles reflected their own cultural emphases on reciprocity, balance, and autonomy.”

“Kinship, extended family, and clan bound people together within a system of mutual obligation and respect. Lineage was central to determining status and responsibilities, consent held communities together, and concepts of reciprocity extended to gender roles and divisions of authority.

Men were generally responsible for hunting, warfare, and interacting with outsiders, therefore they had more visible, public roles. Women, on the other hand, managed the internal operations of the community. They usually owned the family’s housing and household goods, engaged in agricultural food production and gathering of foodstuffs, and reared the children.

Because women’s activities were central to the community’s welfare, they also held important political, social, and economic power. In many North American societies, clan membership and material goods descended through women. For example, the Five (later Six) Nations of the Iroquois Confederation all practiced matrilineal descent. Clan matrons selected men to serve as their chiefs, and they deposed chiefs with whom they were dissatisfied. Women’s life-giving roles also played a part in their political and social authority."

Another challenge to the egalitarianism of most indigenous tribes that I’ve heard has to do with arranged marriages for girls at a young age. Although there certainly are many cultures where girls are expected to marry soon after menarche and often these are unions long-planned by the families, this looks nothing at all like the “child marriages” of patriarchal cultures. For example, Australian Aboriginals envision marriage as being less about individuals and more about kin relationships including obligations to larger groups. This is the case to a greater or lesser extent in nearly all egalitarian cultures.

I could, and probably will at some point write an entire piece about the importance of cultivating and maintaining relationships in forager societies, but there is too much to say on the subject to go into it any further here beyond the statement that reciprocal relationships of all sorts are the bedrock of egalitarian cultures.

However, the fact that negotiations had taken place and promises made was no guarantee that a marriage would take place, or that a girl would consider herself obligated to remain married to her promised husband.

A young Aboriginal girl is typically matched with an older man, but marrying someone older is typical for a young man as well. He will marry slightly later, perhaps in his early 20s, but young men are often paired with an older widow for a first marriage. Subsequent marriages for both men and women are common, as partners die or the marriage breaks up, according to the Australian Government. Although marriages are arranged, these are not set in stone, and not only can the parties decline the arrangement, but in Aboriginal culture, divorce takes place, both by mutual agreement as well as unilateral decision. This may result in compensation for an “aggrieved” party, but the couple is not forced to stay together.

The promised relationship created a series of lifelong responsibilities and obligations between the young man and his promised wife’s relations. For example, the young man might be required to provide food for his future mother-in-law. While the girl was growing up she would normally have regular contact with her promised husband, so that when the marriage eventually took place he was no stranger to her. However, the fact that negotiations had taken place and promises made was no guarantee that a marriage would take place, or that a girl would consider herself obligated to remain married to her promised husband. Refusal to marry, or to perform obligations to family associated with marriage arrangements, would usually give rise to arguments, but if the prospective husband or wife persisted in refusal, renegotiation was possible.

This is quite a different dynamic than a young girl being given by her father to a man of his choosing — a contract which she often has almost no say in and little recourse once the marriage takes place. Although there are differences from culture to culture amongst egalitarian societies, a strong belief in personal autonomy means that girls are not treated as property in the same way that they are in patriarchal societies.

Egalitarianism is not about perfect equality. We say that foragers have an egalitarian society, not because men and women necessarily have equal rights and power (they don’t always in modern forager tribes — although sometimes they do), but because of the socio/political structure which does not favor a chief or other full-time or hereditary leader.

Amongst foragers, ad hoc leaders emerge for certain tasks, and decisions are made by the group for the good of the group. The absence of social classes, significant wealth disparity, ruling classes, and no hierarchy of traditional power that is maintained by intimidation — these are the things that make for an egalitarian culture — both for foragers and for other most other indigenous societies as well.

As the renowned primatologist, Frans de Waal points out in War, Peace, and Human Nature cooperation and fostering the wellbeing of the entire group is a strong evolutionary strategy — one that humans used for millions of years and still use in some cultures today. “Destabilization of the social resource network decreases group stability and efficiency and lowers the average fitness benefit derived from cooperation. When group stability is important for individual advantage, selection will favor active peacemaking and cooperation in our closest relatives and ourselves.”

Many anthropologists agree that suppression of our primate ancestor’s dominance hierarchies was a central adaptation of human behavior — one that allowed homo sapiens to survive in a harsh environment when many of our hominid cousins did not. This widespread social system that served us so well for 97% of human history only began to fall by the wayside around the advent of agriculture, something that I’ve written about extensively in other places.

Another thing that has impacted egalitarianism in many indigenous cultures is centuries of contact with Western patriarchal societies. As anthropologist Dr. Peter Grey points out when speaking of hunter-gatherer tribes:

Even today some people who should know better confuse primitive agricultural societies with hunter-gatherer societies and argue, from such confused evidence, that hunter-gatherers were violent and warlike. For example, one society often referred to in this mistaken way is that of the Yanomami, of South America’s Amazon, made famous by Napoleon Chagnon in his book subtitled The fierce people.

Chagnon tried to portray the Yanomami as representative of our pre-agricultural ancestors. But Chagnon knew well that the Yanomami were not hunter-gatherers and had not been for centuries. They did some hunting and gathering, but got the great majority of their calories from bananas and plantains, which they planted, cultivated, and harvested. Moreover, far from being untouched by modern cultures, these people had been repeatedly subjected to slave raids and genocide at the hands of truly vicious Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese invaders. No wonder they had become a bit “fierce” themselves.

If just one anthropologist had reported all this, we might assume that he or she was a starry-eyed romantic who was seeing things that weren’t really there, or was a liar. But many anthropologists, of all political stripes, regarding many different hunter-gatherer cultures, have told the same general story. There are some variations from culture to culture, of course, and not all of the cultures are quite as peaceful and fully egalitarian as others, but the generalities are the same.

One anthropologist after another has been amazed by the degree of equality, individual autonomy, indulgent treatment of children, cooperation, and sharing in the hunter-gatherer culture that he or she studied.When you read about “warlike primitive tribes,” or about indigenous people who held slaves, or about tribal cultures with gross inequalities between men and women, you are not reading about band hunter-gatherers.

As I’ve already noted, not all indigenous cultures have the exact same characteristics, particularly if they are no longer nomadic foragers, but I’ve yet to learn of one which hasn’t been corrupted by Western influence that isn’t overwhelmingly egalitarian. Egalitarianism is not about being a “noble savage” — it is a vital intentional strategy that was fundamental to human survival. It is not about Utopianism or some sort of “perfect culture” either and I’m not advocating that we try to become like indigenous cultures in every way, since that is hardly possible or even necessarily desirable in the modern Western world.

For most of human history, we lived in this way and then we changed to a more hierarchical, class-based system where violence and gross wealth disparity become exponentially more prevalent. Understanding more about how and why that happened gives us information that can be used to help create a more equitable modern world. Not having a good understanding of some of the relevant terms means that some people spend their time and effort arguing about them based on uninformed “everyone knows” kinds of suppositions rather than trying to help create a better society.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2022