5.1 Análisis de Componente Principal (ACP) productores
5.1.4 Fuente de Abastecimiento de Semillas que utilizan los Agricultores
they themselves were profoundly outraged by the cost in human lives and misery of the revolutions that were supposed to set things straight, and that only seemed to make man as much of a slave and a cipher as he was before, if not more so. In czarist times a political prisoner might bribe a jailer, but in Soviet Russia today no dissenter can bribe the white-frocked state psychiatrist out of plugging him into the wall.
If we shudder at the thought of the total determinism of modem tyranny, we must admit that the conservative case has weight, just as it had in the nineteenth century, especially since we today know fairly accurately how historical inequality came about-at least in a theoretical way. And we know that this process started long before the rise of the state: in fact, it was inherent in primitive societies themselves, as we saw in Chapter Three-even in the most egalitarian ones, in hunting and gathering societies, the simplest
known. These societies knew no distinctions of rank, little or no
authority of one individual over another; they had very simple possessions and so there was no real difference in wealth; property was distributed equally. Yet even on this level individual differences were recognized and already formed the germ of social differenti ation which would gradually lead to distinctions of rank, accumu lated wealth, hereditary privilege, and the eventual rise and en trenchment of the exploitative state.
To return to our discussion of Rousseau in Chapter Three, it would seem that, with its emphasis on differences in personal quali ties as the largest factor in inequality among men, his "Discourse''l
supports
the conservative argument-or would support it, rather,if
the essay were not filled with errors and fantastic conjectures. I am not going to burden the reader with an assessment of Rousseau's essay, picking out its brilliant insights or its ludicrous ones based on a fanciful anthropology, but will only cite two crucial points. First, the basic fallacy: that there was a time in early social evolu tion when men were not influenced by differences in personal qualities. Rousseau is able to maintain this because of a truly fan tastic sketch of social evolution, in which he sees man at first as an isolated animal, not even living in a family group. Gradually family life evolved, and then tribal life, and it was at that time that "eachone began to look at the others and to want to be looked at him self, and public esteem had a value."2 His famous idea on the "state of nature" begins, then, with the epoch of the "savage" who "lives within himself." It ends when man came out of this state into that of society; he became "sociable man, always outside him self," who "knows how to live only in the opinion of others." And so Rousseau can conclude that man's downfall does not begin in the "original state of man," but "that it is the spirit of society alone, and the inequality it engenders, which thus change and alter all our natural inclinations"3-that is, our "natural" solitariness, our "natural immunity" to the personal qualities of others. •
The second point of fantasy in Rousseau's essay is easier to under stand because it is based on fact : he saw no accumulation of goods in the primitive societies of his time, and so he thought that primitive man wanted "only to live and remain idle" and refused to work to build up an accumulation of goods. Accumulated goods in civilized society were a visible burden on those who slaved for them, and they were a direct cause of social injustice; and so Rous seau could say that the primitive state was one of delightful laziness and freedom! But we know this is the wrong conclusion : rather, hunters and gatherers cannot accumulate a surplus because of primitive technology and subsistence economy, not because they do not want the surplus. They are already eager to accumulate a surplus of wives and to gain special privileges for hunting lands,
• There is no point in this thesis with the data of evolution which show that man must have always in some kind of family group just like
his primate ancestors. Or with the data of social psychology which show that self-esteem is artificialized right from the maternal milk and the first words the child learns. Or in pointing out how conveniently blurred Rousseau's expo sition is : he uses the word "savage" for those at the first stage of the state of nature and those at the last, when they are already-by his analysis "sociable" men and hence corrupted. The Caribs that he lauds as "savages" were hardly in a state of nature, since they were already "sociable" men who knew full well about such things as "power and reputation." ( Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, 1755 [New York : St. Martin's,
19641, ed. R. D. Masters, p. 179. ) But by this elastic use of the word "savage" Rousseau could talk about an ideal man that predates society, and he could also use the primitive societies of his time as an ideal criticism of his own western society. So Rousseau could blame natural inequality for causing wealth and corruption, and he could decry inequality at the same time as an artificial creation of advanced social life. In this way, he moved imperceptibly from the psychology of inequality to the historical iniustice of it.
confronting lived