The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

Here, for example, is an extract purportedly from a manifesto written in 1776 which almost perfectly reproduces Rousseau’s fusion of evolutionism and critique of private property as leading directly to the origins of the state: As families multiplied, the means of subsistence began to fail; the nomad (or roaming) life ceased, and PROPERTY started into existence; men chose habitations; agriculture made them intermix. Language became universal; living together, one man began to measure his strength with another, and the weaker were distinguished from the stronger. This undoubtedly created the idea of mutual defence, of one individual governing diverse families reunited, and of thus defending their persons and their fields against the invasion of an enemy; but hence LIBERTY was ruined in its foundation, and EQUALITY disappeared.