Abstract

In The Dawn of Everything Graeber and Wengrow criticize the thesis according to which the «Neolithic Revolution» triggered an «evolutionary trap» that channeled the subsequent course of human history, above all in what regards the development of structures and institutions of political domination, towards its current state. More generally, they propose a rethinking of social theory in the direction of a greater focus on the role of human freedom, creativity and imagination in orienting historical processes, which should balance the current determinist emphasis on ecological and economic factors. However, the authors’ project of building an alternative theory in which these capacities are placed in the right light suffers from important argumentative weaknesses. Their reference to abstract notions of freedom, human subjectivity and «humanity» too often remains historically, socioeconomically and politically decontextualized. In this sense, it is one thing to argue that the political domination did not arise as a simple by-product of the first historical development of economic inequalities, it is another matter not to delve into the understanding of their variable and complex interconnections throughout human history from the Neolithic to the present day.