Age de pierre, âge d'abondance

What is the economy in primitive societies? À cette question fundamentale, la réponse classique de l'anthropologie économique est la suivante : The archaic economy is an economy of subsistence and poverty, it is the best way to ensure the survival of the group, which is incapable of being deprived of sub-development. The image of the savage, crushed by his ecological environment and never protected by famine and anguish, is the image that has traditionally been reserved.Travestising the theoretical and ideological facts, an anthropologist and American economist of international renown calmly describes them. Passant des chasseurs australiens et Bochimans aux sociétés néolithiques d'agriculteurs primitifs telles qu'on pouvait encore les observer en Afrique ou en Mélanésie, au Viêt-nam ou en Amérique du Sud, relisant sans parti pris les textes connus et y ajoutant des donnéMarshall Sahlins affirms, with as much esprit as tradition, that not only the primitive economy n'is not just an economy of misery, but that it is the first and, up to now, the only society of abondance.As Pierre Clastres said in his presentation: "If the primitive man does not make his activity profitable, it is not because he doesn't know how to do it, but because he doesn't want to. All the dossier of the question is up for grabs.