INTRODUCTION
Traditionalism is a fringe, but increasingly popular ‘ideology’ in online right-wing circles. I put ideology in quotation marks because the word seems to mean wildly different things to different people making it hard to define in simple terms. Generally speaking, the ideas and politics commonly associated with traditionalism can include social conservatism, monarchism, Christianity, localism, traditional (pedestrian-centric, local materials and styles) urban planning, anti-consumerism, ethnocentrism, pro-natalism and patriarchy. Other ideas sometimes associated with the movement include integralism, environmentalism, anarcho-primitivism, feudalism and accelerationism. Aside from these I also suspect many self-identified traditionalists are really just mainstream conservatives or fascists who found the term traditionalist more vogue.
Though traditionalism encompasses are broad variety of often conflicting ideas the one thing all traditionalists seem to agree on is their strong opposition to modernism. This opposition or disillusionment with modernity, vaguely defined, is the one universal belief all self-professed traditionalists can agree on. In that sense traditionalism is better viewed as a reactionary sentiment instead of a singular cohesive ideology. This would put it in the same box as the most recent wave of populism throughout the West which was defined more by what it opposed (immigration, free trade, fourth wave feminism etc.) than what it stood for which was a mash-up of right-wing, centrist and left-wing policies that varied greatly from country to country.
There have been multiple attempts to better define tradition from modernity, with one of the most popular ones being the concept of ‘lindy’ whose origins are in Classical Studies. Other attempts are rooted in historical, political, post-colonial and Christian theological studies. Rather than view them as competing it might be better to view them as complementary or at least overlapping.
The purpose of this article is to suggest a new distinction between traditional and modern societies based on their relationship with the resources around them. To further explain this distinction I will be referring to an anthropological case study by James C. Scott in his book on the Southeast Asian peasantry entitled The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1976).
TRADITIONAL SOCIETY V. MODERN SOCIETY, A NOT SO CLEAR DISTINCTION
I think it’s safe to say that modernity began with the industrial revolution and thus encompasses all industrial and post-industrial societies which would mean that traditional societies are pre-industrial. However, industrial and post-industrial societies themselves are extremely heterogeneous when it comes to their institutions, ideologies and cultures. North Korea, Saudi Arabia and the United States are all modern countries. Their institutions, cultures and lifestyles are all miles apart but make no doubt these countries are products of modern technology, economies and institutions and would collapse and become unrecognizable if any of these post-industrial systems vanished.
Likewise traditional societies are also extremely heterogeneous in terms of their values making it pretty much impossible to authoritatively assign them any defining cultural qualities. For example, we might say that traditional cultures are communal while modern cultures are individualistic. But many authoritarian post-industrial states (communist or fascist) demanded a great deal of conformity of belief, action and behavior on a nationwide scale. Even our own Western society, though it is extremely individualistic and atomized in some ways, also demands a great deal of conformity. It is true compared to most societies Westerners face little pressure to conform from their families and even less from their communities. But one could argue that a great deal of Western individualism is limited to areas of consumption. Yes, you can dress however you like (when you’re not at work) but the local housing authority will shoot down your request to build a granny flat in the backyard to rent out. Yes, teenagers can express themselves with music and go through phases and join cliques but everyone must receive the same standardized education for the first 18 years of their life and failure to do so can make workforce integration a major challenge. Likewise anthropologists have reported many tribal communities so individualistic that even mutually beneficial cooperation among related persons can be a major challenge for people who seem unable to tolerate anyone telling them what to do. One example of a hyper-individualistic traditional society are the Matsigenka people of the Peruvian Amazon who have been described by anthropologists as hard working, peaceful, soft-spoken and fiercely independent rejecting orders from village elders, outsiders (government officials, school teachers etc.) and the broader community in general. The Roman Catholic missionary Padre Andres Ferrero, on observing the Matsigenka culture, remarked “I believe that if our philosophers had lived among the Matsigenkas they would have greatly doubted the concept of Man as a social animal”.
The reason I highlight these examples is to make it clear that modern, defined as industrial and post-industrial, and traditional, defined as pre-industrial, societies are extremely heterogeneous and many of the claims on traditional societies are either cherry-picked or based on a narrow selection of historic cultures from a specific time period. This does not mean traditional societies have nothing in common though. Anthropology has identified many cross-cultural ‘universal’ markers that consistently pop-up regardless of time period or geographic location. The cultural heterogeneity of traditional societies at least appears to stem mainly from ecological and technological differences, with technological differences being significantly influenced by ecology and geography.
TRADITIONAL SURVIVAL V. MODERN MAXIMIZATION
So if most of the distinctions we generally associate with traditional v. modern societies (ex. individualism) are untrue when we take a cross-cultural approach then is there anything that does distinguish them? Obviously we have the dichotomy of pre-industrial v. industrial and post-industrial, but what is it about industrialization that causes human psychology and social institutions to shift? One psychological difference I do think exists at a cross-cultural level is the survival emphasis of traditional societies v. the maximization preference of modern societies. In short what this means is…
Traditional Society Survival Emphasis: How do I avoid the worst case scenario which would likely result in my death and the death of my kin?
Modern Society Maximization Emphasis: How can I maximize outcomes and utility now that I have the confidence that even the worst case scenario, however bad it may be, won’t result in me or my kin from starving to death?
Resource scarcity is a major concern for all traditional societies that leads to high mortality rates among infants and adults alike. I am definitely not suggesting that all people in traditional societies led threadbare existences, never sure of where their next meal is coming from, rather that the risk of starvation was, even in good times, a real possibility. Though it is true, even in modern first world societies, poverty and hunger are still experienced by tens of millions what’s also true is that extreme hunger to the point of starvation has been mostly eliminated. It’s been a long, long time since any first world nation experienced a famine or witnessed its poor literally starve to death. This is in stark contrast to the past where most generations might be expected to live through at least one, likely more, famine years.
It is this preoccupation with avoiding starvation that would have major impacts on the decision making processes of individuals and thus the broader institutional and social organization of traditional societies as a whole. When technological shifts, at the economic and political changes they spur, make starving to death a distant memory rather than a very real, however slim, possibility it can trigger significant social change among people who realize many of the cultural and institutional arrangements they had been in for centuries no longer provide utility for the sacrifices or subordination they demand and begin to reject them. The newfound security allows humans to orient themselves towards maximizing outcomes, a practice that generally requires a certain level of risk taking and innovation that more often than not leads to failure. The relationship between resource security and innovation is something that’s long since been noted by anthropologists and historians alike. For example, cultures located in cold weather climates often show a strong aversion to cultural innovation or experimentation in favour of rigid adherence to existing cultural practices. The reason is ecological, cold climates are uniquely resource scarce. Inhabitants cannot risk experimenting because potential failures could leave to starvation or death in an environment with few alternatives. In contrast more resource rich environments were able to produce surplus resources that allowed for the creation of a narrow class of elites who could now focus issues other than subsistence level survival. This is what led to civilization as we know it. What happens with modernization is eventually technology means that security once known only to a narrow elite is now known to a growing proportion of the entire society, who is now free to focus on maximization as well.
Such economic and technological factors can often be overlooked by traditionalists who tend to view things solely through ideological perspectives and thus often view culture and social organization as existing independent of environmental and technological factors. To better understand this phenomenon and how shifts take place let’s look at a case study.
THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN PEASANTRY, FROM SURVIVAL TO MAXIMIZATION
Anthropologist James C. Scott, whose work has focussed mainly on the peasantry and highland communities of Southeast Asia, writes:
The peasant cultivator of rice will always find himself at the mercy of a capricious nature. From among the array of techniques available to him, he can choose that routine which minimizes the chance of a failure but, as his margin is small, even the best technique leaves him vulnerable. Where water supply is assured, the variation in the harvest is modest but tangible; in rain-fed areas or flood-prone regions, the risk is enormous. Even after the wisest technical precautions, the peasant family must somehow survive those years when the net yield or resources fall below basic needs. How do they make do? In part, they may tighten their belts further by eating only one meal each day and switching to poorer foods. Peasant belts have precious little slack, however, and if the crisis is an extended one this is not a viable strategy. Second, at the family level, there are a variety of subsistence alternatives which we may group under the heading “self-help.” This may include petty trade, small crafts, asual wage labor, or even migration. For many Southeast Asian peasants whose net yields (after rent and interest) are below subsistence, these “sidelines” have now become a regular and necessary part of the subsistence package
From this we can ascertain the situation peasant rice cultivators are in, and recognize, their precarious situation. Even those farming in the best of circumstances must recognize that despite the best of planning they may encounter a famine situation. This fundamental difference here is not that they encounter precarity in their lives, as many people living in modern societies may face this to an extent as well in the forms of unemployment or business failure. The difference is failure leads to starvation that can lead to death. Something even most food insecure people in first world nations are not at risk off. To get a sense of what this looks like see the chart below:
Line A: The total grain yield from a single peasant family in any given year
Line B: The hypothetical post-tribute grain yield available to the peasant family once his patron (ex. landlord) claims his share
Unlabeled Horizontal Line: The subsistence crisis line, if a peasant’s total yield or post-tribute yield falls below this line the peasant is now facing a famine scenario.
Line C: The subsidy line, tribute will be suspended in bad years to ensure the peasant remains five units of grain above the subsistence crisis line. In years where even the total grain yield falls below Line C a subsidy may be provided to the peasant from the patron, for example food-aid or work opportunities to earn wages that can be used to buy additional food.
In circumstances such as this a peasant, whose decision making is oriented to towards the traditional survival (avoid the worst case scenario) emphasis, would likely opt to pay tribute to a patron rather than go tax-free as the valuable subsidy provided during the famine years (Year 20) could mean the difference between life and death and help them avoid some extremely unwanted decisions like selling a child into indentured servitude. The failure to recognize such risk-mitigation strategies can often lead some to falsely conclude that such social arrangements are a result of peasants enjoying their subservient position out of some deference to paternalistic hierarchy. However, peasants may not at all view this situation as desirable, only more desirable than starving to death. After all, does an American paying a high health insurance fee do it because he loves insurance companies? The impact of this survival emphasis was apparent in colonial era Southeast Asia where it was observed that…
In the commercializing economies of colonial Southeast Asia, a secure claim to the product of the land had another critical advantage. The direct consumption of food crops insulated a peasant from the fluctuations of market prices. Again, the smallholder or subsistence tenant might live more frugally than a laborer in a boom market, but his living was steadier; he preferred “the long-run stability of land derived income compared with the uncertainties of the labor market.” The wisdom of this course was only too evident to the peasantry of Southeast Asia in the Great Depression when the Vietnamese, Javanese, Burmese, and Filipino peasants who had been forced onto the labor market had to retreat in disarray back to the subsistence economy. Similar considerations of subsistence security impel peasants generally to choose a bare subsistence as a tenant over wage labor. A tenant not only avoided the full impact of market fluctuations but he often gained.
Once again it becomes clear when we take into account, the survival emphasis of people living in traditional societies, why they prefer arrangements that put them in a position of subservience over wage earning which had the potential to see them earn more money. Tenancy farming protected both against the risk of starvation and the inflated costs of food during famine times. Maybe at this point you’re wondering about the state, surely it would provide some sort of support during a famine wouldn’t it?
Patron-client ties, a ubiquitous form of social insurance among Southeast Asian peasants, represents yet another large step in social and often moral distance, particularly if the patron is not a villager. Whether a landowner, petty official, or trader, the patron is by definition a man who is in a position to help his clients. Although clients often do what they can to cast the relationship in moral terms — since their sheer bargaining power is often minimal — patronage is more to be recommended for its resources than for its reliability. The last social unit, the state, fits strangely in this company. It is often distinguished more by what it takes from peasants than what it gives, and its social distance from the peasantry, especially in the colonial era, was measured in light years. Nevertheless, both the traditional state — through regional granaries, public works employment paid in kind, famine relief — and the modern state, through employment, welfare, and relief, may help peasants survive. The state’s assistance, if it arrives at all, however, is hardly reliable.
State support was not very reliable though it was theoretically available. Had formalized state support been more robust and reliable, as it is in many first world nations, then it would be a major incentive for peasants to reject their patron-client relationships as the insurance they provided during a subsistence crisis (famine) would no longer be as valuable. Interestingly enough, the quote mentions how these relationships are often cast in moral terms. It’s also worth noting, is that colonial states may have been less reliable in providing support to the peasants and more extractive and this may have worked to further solidify the patron-client relationship.
The impact of this survival emphasis extends into the realm of agricultural innovation as well. Let’s take the scenario below:
T Line: A traditionally planted grain variety.
N Line: A new grain variety
Subsistence Crisis Zone: Below this point a peasant and his family are now facing famine.
Here we see the N Line grain variety has significantly higher yields than the T Line grain variety. But it is also prone to worse yields in bad years and plunges below the subsistence line on multiple occasions while the T Line grain variety only does so once. For a survival oriented peasant the choice between crops would be obvious. Significantly higher yields on some years will not protect them from famine in the worst years, hence they would stick with the T Line grain variety.
The most careful formulation of the principle of decision-making involved, however, is that of Leonard Joy: We might postulate that farmers’ willingness to innovate for an increase in long-run average net return is subject to the condition that the risk of reducing the net return in any one year not exceed some given value. Further, we might postulate that the degree of risk that farmers are willing to incur is related to their nearness, in some sense, to “biological subsistence.” . . . We thus have a hypothesis that subsistence farmers may resist innovation because it means departing from a system that is efficient in minimizing the risk of a catastrophe for one that significantly increases this risk. Even with the steadiest traditional technique, as in [the figure above], there is an irreducible element of risk each year. The peasant who has managed with this technique in the past will not ordinarily exchange it for a substantially more risky technique whose average returns may be much higher. What the peasant seeks, as Chayanov notes, are those crops and cultivation techniques “which will give the highest and most stable payment for labor.” Where these twin goals clash he will normally prefer the less risky crops and techniques if he is close to the margin.
Insights like these can often explain why people in developing nations can often work in seemingly irrational manners that we end up misconstruing as a sign of backwardness, unintelligence or a lack of ambition. We come at life with a deeply internalized sense of maximization. With our basic needs cared for and the comfort of knowing even at our rock bottom we probably won’t starve to death in the streets we can focus of maximizing outcomes via risk-taking, innovation and strategies with a long-term pay off (ex. starting a business, going to university). However the emphasis on innovation, upward mobility, independence and self-actualization can only take place because we take for granted our most basic needs like food, water, shelter and healthcare will be covered. This however is a relatively recent phenomenon that only became mainstream for the non-elite of a society with industrialization.
CONCLUSION
The survival emphasis (avoiding the worst case scenario) of traditional societies versus the maximization emphasis (aiming for the best possible outcome) of modern societies is not the only difference between traditional pre-industrial cultures and modern industrial and post-industrial ones. But I do feel it is a big one. It can help explain why so many social institutions like the client-patron system that protected peasants from famines were able to exist for 1000s of years only to be rejected in the last few centuries in industrializing cultures. This understanding of the underlying technological limitations of traditional societies also helps explain that such practices were rooted in pragmatic risk-management and not a moralizing-ideological basis, despite what the participants in the system may insist. I also recognize that famine was present even in many modernizing states including in North Korea, a society I listed as modern. However the origins of these famines have more to do with centralized planning failures as opposed to purely ecological and climatic ones.
This also provides an important takeaway for traditionalists, especially those who base their outlook solely on ideological grounds that are divorced from environmental considerations. Many pre-industrial traditional institutions were the result of an environment where resource scarcity and the risk of subsistence crisis was the norm for the majority of society. In a world where resource scarcity is a thing of the past it would be unlikely such institutions and values would ever make a comeback because they offer little to no utility. And since returning to an era of resource scarcity would be seen as highly undesirable by even the most reactionary of traditionalists it may be better to devote one’s attention to seeing if new institutions can be formed that aim to provide a buffer to the negative social impacts (alienation, atomization, commodification etc.) of rapid technological advancement and consumer-capitalism rather than taking an unfeasible and undesirable RETVRN approach.
