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After all, imagine we framed the problem differently, the way it might have been fifty or 100 years ago: as the concentration of capital, or oligopoly, or class power. Compared to any of these, a word like ‘inequality’ sounds like it’s practically designed to encourage half-measures and compromise. It’s possible to imagine overthrowing capitalism or breaking the power of the state, but it’s not clear what eliminating inequality would even mean.
‘purely’ European notions of freedom, equality before the law, and human rights to the survivors.
one of the whole points of creating a ‘carnival king’ or ‘May queen’ is that they exist in order to be dethroned.
The idea of the ‘noble savage’ can be traced back to such estimations. Originally, it didn’t refer to nobility of character but simply to the fact that the Indian men concerned themselves with hunting and fighting, which back at home were largely the business of noblemen.
The French had more material possessions, the Mi’kmaq conceded; but they had other, greater assets: ease, comfort and time.
denying others the means to present their arguments, were acting in much the same way as those who grabbed the material means of subsistence and refused to share it;
Scholarship does not always advance. Sometimes it slips backwards. A hundred years ago, most social scientists understood that those who live mainly from wild resources were not normally restricted to tiny ‘bands’.
Wendat had play chiefs11 and real freedoms, while most of us today have to make do with real chiefs and play freedoms. Or to put the matter more technically:
Mutual aid – what contemporary European observers often referred to as ‘communism’ – was seen as the necessary condition for individual autonomy.
