Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski.

  • Bronisław Malinowski
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    argument. It was demonstrated that freedom is an essential factor in the cultural process. Here on the other hand we are showing that slavery also contributes at certain levels of development, and under certain conditions of culture, towards human efficiency and progress. The contradiction is similar to the one which we find in discussing war as a type of human activity which in its time has contributed towards the advancement of humanity. It would be hardly necessary to prove that abstention from killing one’s neighbors is essential to the process of culture. A simple reflection shows that killing one’s neighbors in small primitive groups—and doing that as a legal, culturally implemented form of behavior—would have led to an early extermination of the whole of humanity. Hence war occurs only at fairly late stages of human development, and it occurs only as a sporadic, rare, and numerically insignificant affair. The principle of bellum omnium contra omnes used to describe the primitive state of man¬ kind is nonsense. At higher levels, however, serious wars occur occasionally. They levy a heavy toll in human lives, in substance, and in moral values. In conquest, however, they subserve an important function; that of forming larger human groups polit¬ ically united and culturally cross-fertilized. This constructive period of war occurred at a relatively early stage of human his¬ tory. The really important point to be remembered in such an argument is that in the phase of its cultural flourishing and rela¬ tive beneficence, war is not total. It is not a pursuit which leads to the abrogation of all other activities. It is an occasional affair. And it is destructive in its principle of mass murder but not in its consequences which play themselves out under conditions of peace. The same refers to slavery. Under primitive conditions it does not exist. It has no economic basis at a time when a pair of hands can produce only as much and no more than one mouth consumes.
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