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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
Humans in tribes or in clans or in families, do not constitute a civilization.

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Jensen defines civilization as he employs the meaning here.[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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I have read part way through his "definition" of civilization and have many thoughts upon it, and on he what is, and isn't saying, and perhaps misconstruing, or mis-representing...

However, am just posting this in response to start things off, to head off further derailment of initiating thread, and will be back later to say more, but I have to go for dinner shortly.

ETA the original thread link where this off shoot started from, for background info on what has been stated so far, which is here.

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: remind ]

Accordingly I, too, call for the "destruction" of civilization and its replacement with a classless society.

The classic materialist exposition of the stages of development of human society was Lewis Henry Morgan's book Ancient Society, published in 1877. Morgan divided human history into three main stages, which he called Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adopted those terms in their own writings on human history, including Engels's classic 1884 work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.

Here is part of what Engels had to say about the rise of Civilization:

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Civilization opens with a new advance in the division of labor. At the lowest stage of barbarism men produced only directly for their own needs; any acts of exchange were isolated occurrences, the object of exchange merely some fortuitous surplus. In the middle stage of barbarism we already find among the pastoral peoples a possession in the form of cattle which, once the herd has attained a certain size, regularly produces a surplus over and above the tribe's own requirements, leading to a division of labor between pastoral peoples and backward tribes without herds, and hence to the existence of two different levels of production side by side with one another and the conditions necessary for regular exchange. The upper stage of barbarism brings us the further division of labor between agriculture and handicrafts, hence the production of a continually increasing portion of the products of labor directly for exchange, so that exchange between individual producers assumes the importance of a vital social function. Civilization consolidates and intensifies all these existing divisions of labor, particularly by sharpening the opposition between town and country (the town may economically dominate the country, as in antiquity, or the country the town, as in the middle ages), and it adds a third division of labor, peculiar to itself and of decisive importance: it creates a class which no longer concerns itself with production, but only with the exchange of the products - the merchants. Hitherto whenever classes had begun to form, it had always been exclusively in the field of production; the persons engaged in production were separated into those who directed and those who executed, or else into large-scale and small-scale producers. Now for the first time a class appears which, without in any way participating in production, captures the direction of production as a whole and economically subjugates the producers; which makes itself into an indispensable middleman between any two producers and exploits them both. Under the pretext that they save the producers the trouble and risk of exchange, extend the sale of their products to distant markets and are therefore the most useful class of the population, a class of parasites comes into being, "genuine social ichneumons," who, as a reward for their actually very insignificant services, skim all the cream off production at home and abroad, rapidly amass enormous wealth and correspondingly social influence, and for that reason receive under civilization ever higher honors and ever greater control of production, until at last they also bring forth a product of their own - the periodical trade crises.

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For example, let's use, the Tobrianders, the Masai, and Zuni, who are/were tribal peoples and did not have to go outside of their units or systems, and were self sufficient. This autonomous cultural system they have/had does not mean, IMV, that they did not have a "civilization", which I take to mean; congregated peoples with a shared culture of traditions, language/words, art forms, purpose, actions and a common heritage that binds them together and separates them from others on the African continent, and indeed each other, though fairly close geographically. So, I would say, if speaking about them that they have/had an egalitarian civilization.

Closer to home, looking at the historical components of the Haida, Nuu Chah Nulth, and Songhees. They had what were determined as cities with large living structures made out of wood, vast trade networks, high art forms, and they too had autonomous cultural systems with egalitarian operations of it. They were and are distinctly different cultures, with their own distinct historical civilizations.

The examples I gave were, and some still are, most definitely their own "egalitarian civilizations".

Perhaps the word "civilization", as some apparently use it today, should fall away, too?

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]

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Originally posted by remind:
Have been thinking about this, and I would ask, who do you think, would benefit the most from our modern civilization collapse?

IMV, the way things are now, it would be more beneficial to men than women, by a long shot!

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Suffice to say, women are a long way from being equal, and if civilization collapsed, the plight of women would not improve, only worsen. Nor would the plight of children improve. Isloated pockets of peoples benefit patriarchy, exploitation and oppresion.

Moreover, while thinking about this today, out picking berries in the mountains, I came to realize that people who advocate a complete collapse of civlization, before equality rights are the entrenched norm, are very short sighted, perhaps even blind to every reality, except for their own.