DOMESTIC MODE OF PRODUCTION - CH 2

What do you mean by Domestic Mode of Production?

Domestic mode of production refers to production and consumption at the domestic level. It
is motivated by the subsistence needs of the household. The resources are often underused
because the focus is on self-sufficiency.
In this chapter of Stone Age economics, Sahlins tries to understand the structure of
underproduction. He begins by stating that this chapter is based on the observed contrast
between primitive and “affluent” societies. He states that these societies do not seem to
realise their economic capacities, and therefore things like labour-power, technologies and
resources are underused. He says that the economy in these societies is running below
capacity. The output of the economies doesn’t exceed the level that is required to satisfy their
existing material needs and livelihood.

The three dimensions of Domestic Mode of Production

a) Underuse of Resources
The first thing he tries to explain is the underuse of resources in these societies. The major
evidence for underproduction comes from agricultural societies practising slash and burn
cultivation. In this type of cultivation, a plot of land is slashed and the debris is burned
resulting in a layer of ash fertilizer. After cultivation, it is left to restore its fertility. This
period of fallow is longer than a period of use and therefore a reserve is maintained. Sahlins
admits that there are some inevitable uncertainties like the productive capacity (maximum
limit of an economy) of this kind of economy is partial and derivative. Partial because, it's
only limited to agriculture and derivative because, capacity takes the form of “population
maximum”, the optimum number of people that can be supported by the economy. He also
talks about “critical carrying capacity” which is the theoretical limit to which the population
could be taken without compromising the agricultural future.
He then refers to W. Allan, who was the first to devise a general index of population capacity
for slash and burn agriculture. Variants of this formula have been used by Conklin, Carneiro
etc. According to this formula, the existing population is always less than the calculable
maximum. In this index, there are several groups but two of these groups, which are Chimbu
and Kuikuru, merit special comments. In Chimbu the mean population was at 60% of
capacity, meaning it has the potential maximum of 453 but the actual size is just 288
people/square mile. The same could be observed in Kuikuru which has only 7% of the
calculable maximum population, meaning the actual population is 145 people but it has a
capacity of 2041 people. Therefore, it can be concluded that agriculture in these
communities/societies has the potential to support almost double the people or more than it
already does. There are other places having similar situations according to Carneiro and Allan
such as the Congo forest and South American tropical forests, JE Spencer had a similar
opinion about the shifting agriculture in Southeast Asia, he states that the “most shifting
cultivator societies are operating at less than maximum potential...”. It can be said that slash
and burn is a major form of production in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America and the
land occupied by them (swidden cultivators) is underexploited.
The other production type that he talks about is Hunting and Gathering. One thing that makes
labelling them as underproducing difficult is the unpredictability of the future. According to
Sahlins, it's not possible to tell whether an apparent underproduction of the moment can help
in long term adaptation. This was influenced by Richard Lee‘s remarks on the Kung bushman
subsistence which witnessed a prolonged drought. Sahlins also refers to an argument given by
Clark and Haswell, based on the work of Pirie in East Africa. According to them, the annual
natural yield of meat is forty times greater than necessary to support a hunting population.
There was a further implication that the natural yield per area per capita of natural grazing is
higher than the output of pastoral nomadism meaning that though they are able to exploit land
more than the hunters, they still are not using it to its full potential. One of the reasons for this
can be lack of technical means, still, Clark and Haswell’s conclusion found some support
from Allan, who thought that the east African pastoralists know a “critical population
density” on the order of 7 persons per square mile, but it may not be true in reality. It can be
concluded that Sahlins was able to plant a seed of doubt about the efficiency of resources in
primitive societies.
b) Underuse of Labour Power
Along with the underuse of resources, the labour forces of primitive communities are also
underused. Ethnographers such as Mary Douglas have documented Lele and Bushong
economies and concluded that in some societies people work for a much greater part of their
lifetime than in others. Sahlins then provided the reasons for the same, First, Lele practices
polygyny, which is a privilege of elders, entails postponement of the marriage of younger
men, and hence the adult responsibilities. Moving on to the political domain, Douglas
elucidates that it is not the differences in the political scale, but the relations of systems and
the process of production that makes them more efficient. The scant use of young adult
labour is not a characteristic of Lele alone. This contrast between the indolence of youth and
the industry of elders may appear also in a developed political setting such as Bemba, an
African chiefdom. Audrey Richards proposes an explanation, that for a variety of cultural
reasons their lifetime working span may be curtailed, resulting in unbalanced economic
obligations. An imbalance to the same effect may obtain in the division of labour by sex as
observed in the Fijiland of Moala, where women show much slighter interest in production
than men do. Sahlins makes a point that we have to do with the organized withdrawal of
important social energies from the economic process.
Another problem is how much the others, the effective producers, actually do work. Most
anthropologists testify that people are capable of sustained labour however the motivation to
do so isn’t constant. Among the Bemba, Kuikure, Kung and Lele, the working hours for
subsistence are lower than 6. They have a conception of work-life balance, if they work one
day, they rest the next. Kapauku men are also more concerned with politicking and exchange.
This makes dubious the claim that the native cultivation methods are wasteful,
time-consuming and economically inadequate. Agricultural off-seasons are given as much to
relaxation and diversion, as they are to work. These modes of livelihood only make fractional
demands on the available labour-power, as evidenced by Audrey Richard’s diaries for the two
Bemba villages. In Kasaka village only half of the men’s workdays could be classed as
productive, while women’s time was more equally divided between working days, days of
part-time and days of little or no work. For both men and women, the work becomes more
strenuous during busier agricultural seasons.
A January study on Kampamba village attests to the periodic intensification of periodic
tempo. Their work schedules and their work-ritual defection, also seen among Tikopians or
Fijians, must be made without prejudice, for their linguistic categories know no such
distinction, but conceive both activities seriously. In the way production is organized, there is
an intrinsic discontinuity. In conclusion, in primitive communities, an important fraction of
existing labour resources may be rendered excessive by the mode of production.
c) Household Failure
A fair percentage of domestic groups persistently fail to produce their own livelihood,
although organized to do so. They occupy the lower end of a very large range of variation in
household production. This is a constituted condition of a primitive economy. For instance,
· C. Daryll Forde’s investigation of yam staple cultivation among 97 families in the
Yako family of husband, one or two wives, and three of four children estimated
one and one-half acres of yams under cultivation each year, yet 10 per cent were
cultivating less than half an acre and 40 per cent between a half and one acre, and
consequently the same kind of deficit occurred in output as well.

· Derek Freeman’s classic study of rice production among the Iban is yet more
serious, covering 25 families of Rumah Nyala village. By Freeman’s estimate,
only a quarter was able to harvest a normal consumption quota.

· Thayer Scudder’s study of cereal cultivation among the 25 families of Mazulu

village revealed half of the Mazulu households failed to reach a sufficient level (1
acre per capita).
Thus, a third apparent dimension of primitive underproduction: an interesting percentage of
households chronically fail to provide their own customary livelihood. Sahlin’s generalized
domestic groups in primitive societies, as families in some form of underproduction
instituting the tribal economy like corporations institute capitalism.

Elements of DMP
a) Division of Labor: - At the minimum a woman and husband, both adults, make a
household with a petite economy. Marriage, among other things, establishes a generalized
economic group. Therefore ‘division of labour’ in primitive societies is simple, on the basis
of age and sex. However ‘division of labour’ by sex is not only the economic specialization
known to primitive societies but it is the dominant form, transcending all other specialization.
b) Primitive relations between man and tools: - Even technology is of similar dimensions
(i.e. atomized and small scale). Handled easily by household groups as the production process
is unitary where man is the most malleable as well as the most important side of the primitive
man-tool relationship, labour being more significant than tools. The primitive relationship
between man and tool is balanced in favour of man, the instrument being an artificial
extension of the person, increasing the body’s mechanical advantage, unlike the latest
technology that inverted this relationship between man and tool.
c) Production for livelihood: - Agriculture in the primitive societies revolved around DMP,
the economic system was of determinate and finite objectives, accordingly work was
un-intensive. Production revolved around the pursuit of use-value, related always to exchange
with an interest in consumption and provisioning a moderate quota of good things satisfying
the consumer’s customary requirement. The DMP is oriented to livelihood. Economics is
only a part-time activity and there is an anti-surplus principle that makes it anti-society, as
unless the economy exceeds itself the primitive society can’t survive. Boeke and Pirenne talk
of the economic clash between west and east, with issues revolving around production for
exchange and production for use-value.

Significance of Chayanov’s rule.

The domestic system sets norms of livelihood limited not only absolutely but in relation to
the society’s potential- that in the community of domestic producing groups, the greater the
relative working capacity of the household the less its members work. This is Chayanov's
rule. If any of these three elements develop, the internal contradictions of the system restore
the status quo as the incompatibility of the other elements pulls it back to norm-negative
feedback. Only with the addition of external contradictions would the system transform-
over-determination. The norm of domestic livelihood cannot move above a certain level
(inert), without threatening the existing family organization. The Absolute limit is set by the
internal restraint on technology and relations of production. The external contradictions hold
a low level, relative to the pre-capitalist economy. The customary norm of welfare is fixed at
a level attainable by the majority, bringing down the work rate of even the efficient minority.
Several households could vary greatly in per capita output because they vary in their ratio of
effective producers to dependents.
Due to internal and external contradictions, revolution, war, or continuous sedition, the
customary economic targets of the DMP have to be constrained. A. V. Chayanov in 1966
wrote, “rates of labour intensity are considerably lower... farm families possess considerable
unused time” on Russian agriculture in the pre-revolutionary period. Despite Chayanov’s
theory of pre-capitalist domestic economy being based on a fragmented peasant economy, it
conceptually clears up DMP. In primitive societies, these tendencies are muddied by the
social effect of solidarity, kinship and authority. His intensive work on peasant domestic
economy and market manifests the deep structure of DMP, showing underuse of
labour-power in great detail. His study on 25 Volokolamsk farm families plots the ratio of
household size to effective manpower which is essentially an index of consumers to
producers. Although this seems like a statistical example of the expected logical outcome, in
a comparative study with other economies, Chayanov’s rule seems magnified: Intensity of
labour in DMP varies inversely with the relative working capacity of the producing unit.
Productive intensity is inversely related to productive capacity. The norm of livelihood settles
at a level within reach of the majority, wasting labour potential among the most effective.
Surplus output is not possible in the DMP. The least effective domestic groups are left in
poverty without aid from households of greater labour capacity. Nothing in the organization
of production systematically compensates for its own systematic defects.

Characteristics of the Domestic Mode of Production.

What characterizes the DMP is a certain autonomy in property that strengthens each
household's devotion to its own interests. Anthropologists have learned to separate various
rights of property—income, use, controls—as much as can be differentiated. We recognize
the power of one holder to override decisions of the other: ranked over rights- between a
chief and his followers; segmentary over rights- between a corporate lineage and its
constituent households. The issue of present concern is the privileged position of domestic
groups, in accordance with coexisting tenures or overlapping ownership. This overlapping
ownership is placed on top of the family such as in primitive, pre-capitalist society; rather
than on the means of production as in the capitalist system. In the former, the higher
co-proprietors of primitive societies—chiefs, lineages, clans— assert leverage on domestic
groups and through them the production, such as in Fiji. This derived claim on the product is
on the basis of socio-political power over the producers. In the Latter, the bourgeois in
Capitalist society asserts right on production means, placing itself between the domestic
group and production. A chieftainship’s right to things is realized through a hold on persons,
a bourgeois' hold on persons is realized through a right to things. While the household in
tribal societies is perhaps not the exclusive owner of its resources: farmlands, pastures,
hunting or fishing territories, the family still enjoys the usufruct or use-right, entailing: The
appropriate day-to-day use of land; The access, extraction and disposal of the product; The
undeniable right of the family, as a member of the proprietary community to independently
exploit for its own support a due share of the social resources.
Expropriation and Pauperization are accidental to DMP, such as due to external consequences
such as war or Famine and not a systematic condition of the economy. Stratification and
formation of an exclusive economic elite are impossible since producers have certain access
and certain rights to their own economic means and thus cannot become dependent. The
political elites leverage revenue from protection; founding their power on tribute and gifts
such as expansion or grant of property, giving away finished goods rather than disturbing the
access between primary producers and means of production. This keeps the system of DMP
stable.
Pooling
Domestic segregation is completed through the circulation of the household product but this
production leads to a bifurcation between the domestic economy and public economy without
compromising the group’s internal solidarity. Pooling refers to an arrangement of goods and
services, indispensable to the household members. It not only transcends the reciprocity of
functions between men and women but also distinguishes between various households
characterised by reciprocal relations along with the perpetuation of separate economic
identities of those who enter into an exchange. Householding is also referred to as
“communism in living” since it is the highest form of economic sociability including
individual needs and abilities, adults involved in Division of Labour and, children and adults.
Thus, it can be said that pooling closes the domestic circle, with social and economic
demarcations marking the circumference.
Anarchy and Dispersion
Domestic Mode of Production is a species of anarchy, having no social or material relations
between households and characterized by disorganization and mechanical solidarity. Instead
of unifying the society, the Division of Labor divides it by sacrificing the unity of society to
the autonomy of its producing groups. Politically, the Domestic Mode of Production is a
natural state, which neither makes it obligatory for the households to enter into a compact nor
cede some part of its autonomy. In primitive societies, however, it politically undermines its
situation since each household retains its own interest and powers in the absence of a
sovereign which leads to functional disco-ordination. In appearance, they are left being a
poor likeness of primordial incoherence since they have to compete with structured
organization, large forces and institutions of social and economic order. According to Sahlins,
anarchy will continue to exist as long as the household remains in charge of the production.
He then moves ahead to discuss maximum dispersion as a settlement pattern of the state of
nature and argues that most political philosophers considered man as a natural being.
According to Hobbes, the life of the man was solitary, poor and nasty; the idea of isolation
was emphasized by Herodotus and according to Rousseau, the only society was the family,
the only laws were the laws of nature and the Domestic Mode of Production was the only
mediator. This was a result of the opposition between nature and culture which further
conceptualized scattered distribution by justifying the deployment of men as natural rather
than a political effect, where rights to proceed by force was held generally rather than
monopolized politically. Domestic Mode of Production is inclined towards maximum
dispersion because, during the absence of authority and inter-dependence, the production is
organized. He provides an ethnographic instance through the work of Carneiro and his study
of the Amazon Tropical Forest. According to Carneiro, as soon as the population of the
Amazon villages reaches between 500-600, fission occurs leading to hiving off of a dissident
faction. Here, Sahlins points out that disputes in primitive societies is resolved by fission in
the absence of political mechanisms.
Conclusion
Domestic Mode of Production is discontinuous in both time and space wherein the former
discontinuity accounts for underuse of labour, while the latter accounts for under-exploitation
of resources. Owing to the uncertain household base, restrained in material objectives and
labour power and cloistered in relation to other groups, the Domestic Mode of Production is
not organized so as to deliver a brilliant performance.

DOMESTIC MODE OF PRODUCTION - CH 3

1. The DMP is continuous in time; as well as in space. Almost every family under the
DMP realizes that it does not has not the means to live. The household is constantly
trying to save itself and hence cannot contribute towards public economy say for
instance for the support of other social institutions beyond the family. Its inherent
underproduction and underpopulation make it an economically defective process.
Sahlins is of the view that unless the economic defects of the domestic system are
overcome, society is going to overcome them.

2. The total empirical process of production is organized then as a hierarchy of

contradictions. This is so because domestic control acts as a hindrance to the
development of productive means. In this chapter, Sahlins analyzes what happens to
the DMP when its production intensifies. In specific, he analyzes the play of kinship
and politics on the production process. Kinship relations prevailing between
households must affect their economic behaviour. Kinship relations determine the
extent to which the DMP is going to be exploitative of local resources. For instance,
Hawaiian kinship will generate a greater surplus tendency than the Eskimos. This is
so because the Hawaiian system has a greater degree of classification. Where
Eskimo kinship categorically isolates the immediate family, the Hawaiian system
extends familial relations indefinitely. The greater the solidarity among kin
groupings, the greater is its productive ability. The Hawaiian system will be able to
sustain a higher norm of domestic welfare for the community as a whole. All these
characteristics point to the fact that kinship is opposed to the underproduction of the
DMP.

3. However, the position of the household in these primitive societies is in a constant

dilemma as they have to think about domestic welfare on the one hand and broader
obligations towards kinsmen on the other. Despite the contradiction between the
household and the larger kindred, instances of structural breakdown that reveal the
conflict are few in primitive societies. Raymond Firth’s study on the Tikopia
revealed how during terrible famines the DMP operated with the household on the
one hand and the kindred on the other. Despite hardships, the Tikopians remained
polite. Manners continued even though morals degenerated. Sahlins then asserts that
 the DMP has to be counteracted and transcended. This should happen not simply for
technical reasons of cooperation, but because the domestic economy is as unreliable
as it is apparently functional. True, the greater kinship system is one way in which
the DMP is counteracted, but the continuing hold of the domestic economy then
leaves its mark on the whole society: a contradiction between the infrastructure and
the superstructure of kinship may put the whole economy in a state of segmentary
collapse.

4. Just as the kinship relations influence the DMP, so also the economic intensity of the
political order. In the course of primitive social evolution, main control over the
domestic economy seems to pass from the formal solidarity of the kinship structure
to its political aspect. As the structure is politicized, especially as it is centralized in
ruling chiefs, the household economy is mobilized in a larger social cause. Even
though the primitive headman or chief may be himself driven by personal ambition,
he respects the collective finalities, he personifies a public economic principle in
opposition to the private ends and petty self concerns of the household economy.
Power encroaches upon the domestic system to undermine its autonomy, to curb its
anarchy and unleash its productivity.

5. Mary Douglas in her study on the Lele asserts how lack of authority among the Lele
explains their poverty. With no political structure prevailing among them, the
community leads a dispersed life and there exists no centralized authority which
could check the fission and effect an economic system more appropriate to the
society’s technical capacity. The point to note however is that the impact of the
political system upon domestic production is not unlike the impact of the kinship
system. But then, the organization of authority is not differentiated from the kinship
order and its economic effect is best understood as a radicalization of the kinship
function. Leadership is here a higher form of kinship and hence a facilitator of
reciprocity and liberality.

6. Political life is a stimulus to production but it is so to varying degrees. The

chief/political authority is supposed to deploy his resources carefully. He uses wealth
to place others in his debt. Moving beyond his household, he constructs a following
whose production may be harnessed to his ambition. The process of intensification
in production is thus coupled with reciprocity to exchange.

7. Sahlins concludes by stating that the political cycles under the DMP had an economic
base. Both operated as a system of checks and balances. The chief’s power was not
absolute and had a moral limit consistent with the kinship configuration of the
society. The system defined and maintained a ceiling on the intensification of
domestic production by political means and for public purposes.