Wolf's Excerpt Of Europe And The People Without History

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Wolf’s excerpt of Europe and the People Without History focuses on the discusses of two Marxian concepts: labor and Modes production. He understands the former as the social phenomena that bonds individuals who co-exist in a given society. He differentiates labor from work, by stating that according to Marx, work means individuals or groups expending energy to produce energy, whereas labor involves a set social relations, engagement among individuals and ‘information’ and ‘meaning’ which means that it is done with an intention, and previous knowledge of it and it is both material and ideational. The main goal is the production which he defines as engagement with material resources and reproduction of social ties. The second Marxian concept …show more content…

The CMP is mainly characterized by the division of classes, making them inherently differentiated. The TMP characterizes by the use of coercion to extract capital; elites or ruling classes are perceived as morally/religiously entitled to that wealth, in exchange for their mediation with supernatural entities. Wolf’s argument is that despite the differences on the Medieval West and the East, the dynamic are quite similar and he defends the concept of civilizations as social constructs who share similar mode of production characteristics but are culturally differentiated. Wealth is accumulated by what wolf coins as mercantilism in which surpluses are distributed after extraction; he mentions 3 ways of extracting wealth sale of tributary surpluses, exchange of goods with producers and slavery (expansion and perpetuation). The KMP is defined by ‘kinship’; Wolf highlight the importance on defining kinship, not exclusively by ‘descendance’, but by adscription, extension and affiliation and alliances. Foremost he states that kinship itself is important by what it unlocks, which is a regulated form of labor due to social ties. He disregards the idea that kinship-oriented societies are egalitarian, by saying that they are highly hierarchized and morally constrained able to extract tribute without economic pressures. Despite he argues that they are relatively peaceful, they are not able to tackle structural issues. since kin groups (chiefdoms) channel internal grievances towards