“THIS IS THE COMMUNITY’S WEALTH”
This story in the news a few weeks ago caught my attention, writes Professor Colin Talbot. The inscription on a Viking-age arm band found as part of the Galloway Hoard, unearthed in 2014, had finally been deciphered. And the words, “This is the community’s wealth”, are intriguing.
The hoard (part of which is pictured above, © National Museums Scotland) – the largest ever found in the UK – dates to about 900 AD. The idea that more than 1,000 years ago a community held such wealth collectively or co-operatively raises questions about the origins of human cooperation – and the scope of studying co-ops.
In his seminal book Co-op – the people’s business (1994) the late Johnston Birchall confined himself to the specific origins of the modern co-operative in 19th century Britain and its spread around the world. Thirty years later Ted Rau, a prolific writer about sociocracy (a form of collective decision making) goes much further back into human history. In his Collective Power – patterns for a self-organised future (2023) Rau discusses the origins of human co-operation in what is called evolutionary “group selection” – more on this later.
Why does it matter? For several reasons. One is foundational: understanding that co-operation is a fundamental element in human nature, of which modern co-operatives are merely one expression, is obviously important. Especially in an age when the idea of individualistic rational self-interest has come to dominate a lot of political thinking.
Another is practical. Understanding the specific origins and nature of human co-operation, its possibilities and its limitations, is important for creating co-operatives that work and are sustainable.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
The proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” is an important clue to understanding the evolution of human co-operation. Humans are social animals; as the Australian ethicist Peter Singer once put it, “we were social before we were human”.
More specifically, “Homo Sapiens is what biologists call ‘eusocial’, meaning group members containing multiple generations and prone to perform altruistic acts as part of their division of labour.” (Edward Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth, 2012).
Wilson goes on to say that “human groups are formed of highly flexible alliances, not just among family members but between families, genders, classes, and tribes. The bonding is based on co-operation among individuals or groups who know one another and are capable of distributing ownership and status on a personal basis.”
The “it takes a village” saying is a key part of the explanation of why we evolved as we have. Human children take an extraordinary length of time to mature to the point where they can reproduce compared to other species. And during that time they need support, protection and education, that can only be provided effectively by a “village”.
GROUP SELECTION
It was Charles Darwin who first introduced the idea that evolutionary selection might act at the level of groups or species, as well as individuals, to explain the emergence of traits like altruistic (or what we might now call prosocial) behaviour.
But this fell out of favour in the early 20th century in line with the ‘new synthesis’ of Darwinian evolution with genetics, an approach best summed up in the title of the highly successful book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins’ explanation of gene-level selection, first published in 1976, fitted perfectly with the rising tide of political and economic thinking embodied in Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s new right thinking.
Group selection has, however, come back into acceptable company over the last three decades or so. This is partly because evolutionary scientists have discovered what is now called multi-level selection – which includes changes in individual genes, groups of genetic mutations and, for eusocial animals, the viability of their social arrangements.
My own thinking on the subject is contained in a little book I wrote – The Paradoxical Primate (2005), which explored how humans developed contradictory traits like being both co-operative and competitive.
DUNBAR’S NUMBER
One of the strands of research that has emerged recently has been around the specific nature of human groups and co-operation, such as Dunbar’s Number: 150 (which I mentioned in my previous column on leadership).
Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist who became convinced that the size of human groups and number and quality of relationships was determined by the size of the neo-cortex – the part of the brain that processes relationships.
A good description appears on the BBC website: “According to Dunbar and many researchers he influenced, this rule of 150 remains true for early hunter-gatherer societies as well as a surprising array of modern groupings: offices, communes, factories, residential campsites, military organisations, 11th century English villages, even Christmas card lists. Exceed 150, and a network is unlikely to last long or cohere well.”
And, we might add, co-operatives? Many privately owned businesses, and some public agencies, already use something like Dunbar’s Number as an organising principles – explicitly or in merely practice. Some co-operatives – especially worker co-ops – have found that growing beyond 150, or even 50, without sub-dividing is problematic.
THE ROBINSON CRUSOE MYTH
The antithesis of the “it takes a village” saying is what I would call the Robinson Crusoe myth. The core bit of the Crusoe story which most will recall is about how our (white, European) hero survives alone on a desert island. Written by Daniel Defoe in 1719, the book fitted perfectly with the emerging individualistic and imperialistic zeitgeist of 18th and 19th century Europe, which is why it was, and remains, so successful.
The key implied message is about how an individual human can survive against all the odds. But this is, of course, nonsense; Crusoe had a hoard of material possessions saved from his wrecked ship, without which he’d almost certainly have died. Those possessions had been manufactured by his “village” – and had a wealth of knowledge from having grown up in his English “village”. Far from vindicating individualism the Crusoe story merely proves the importance of human sociality and co-operation. (We’ll leave aside the other troubling aspects of Defoe’s book).
Understanding the emergence, benefits and limitations of human co-operation are, I would argue, an essential hinterland to understanding modern co-operatives in all their variety. And it is also an essential component for appreciating human social co-operation as against, or even alongside, overly individualistic competition.
