Surplus

The purveyors of Progress tell us that there is no specialisation in primitive society, because all the available time was taken up in hunting and gathering, that specialization and surplus only come with authoritarian society, that co-operative societies are 'backward' and that exploitation is the motor that drives so-called 'Progress'.
It only takes a moment's thought to realize that this cannot possibly be true, that even from the beginning there must have been some surplus. Human beings are active by nature, and given time, people are creative both in play and in their crafts.
Yet, still, some maintain that surplus value came about only through Hierarchy and with the institutionalization of violence through taxation and the State, as if, without the whip people relapse into a state of indolence.
Again, a little thought and we would realize that this is not the case.
Indeed free communes and self governing villages have provided not just food and shelter, but craft and art , literature and music for nearly the whole of humanity's existence.
A non hierarchical society might lack the instruments of domination and enforced passivity, but there was plenty of surplus value, plenty of time for poetry, astronomy, religion, music, storytelling and the beautifying of objects, all those things that are so lacking in the instant-coffee, off-the-shelf society that we have today.
Indeed, the great art of the Middle Ages was produced by the free cities and boroughs of Europe.
It is when people need to get a licence simply to play a little music or put on a little performance, that creativity dies.
The passive can only be derivative and dead.
Only the free can create with love and beauty.