Darwin and Inequality

Charles Darwin during his travels on the Beagle noted the wretched primitive state of natives from Tierra del Fuego. He attributed it to their being egalitarians and to the absence of a leader among them. The Gini Economic Index suggests strong inequality today even among the richest, more developed countries. This paper discusses whether equality and civilization are really incompatible, as Darwin seemed to imply.

Charles Darwin during his 1831-1836 circumnavigation of the Globe on the British Navy brig "Beagle" had a chance to interact with the native inhabitants of the eastern and northern shores of Tierra del Fuego (Figure 1).
Darwin dedicated several pages of his "The Voyage of the Beagle" to the Fuegians, and already from the first encounter with the natives he expressed his amazement at their wretched primitive state ( Figure 2). Here are a few citations: "I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man…it is greater than between a wild and a domesticated animal…"… "While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island we pulled along side a canoe with six Fuegians. They were the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld …These Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily and the fresh water together with the spray, trickled down her body….In another harbour not far distant a woman who was suckling a recently born child, came alongside the vessel and remained there while the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom and on the skin of her naked baby…these poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy…."…Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world…." Later on in his narrative Darwin offers an explanation of the wretched state of the Fuegians: "…… the perfect equality among the individuals composing the Fuegian tribes must for a long time retard their civilization. As we see, those animals, whose instinct compels them to live in society and obey a Chief, are most capable of improvement, so is it with the races of humankind. Whether we look at it as a cause or a consequence, the more civilized always have the most artificial governments. For instance, the inhabitants of Tahiti, who when first discovered were governed by hereditary kings, had arrived at a far higher grade (of civilization) than another branch of the same people, the New Zealanders, -who, although benefited by being compelled to turn their attention to agriculture, were republicans in the most absolute sense. In Tierra del Fuego, until some Chief shall arise with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantage, such as ownership of domesticated animals, it seems scarcely possible that the political state of the country can be improved. At present even a piece of cloth given to one is torn into shreds and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a Chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he might manifest his superiority and increase his power." (Darwin, 1962 edition, pages 205-231).
That Darwin would hold this opinion is quite understandable: after all, he was a member of the pre-Victorian England's higher classes. Still, we ask: ARE EQUAL-ITY AND CIVILIZATION REALLY INCOMPATIBLE? ******* The issue of inequality among individuals, social classes and nations has been debated widely in recent years (see Chien and Culotta, 2014). Economists use a "Gini Index" (Gini, 1912) to measure the level of inequality among the individuals of a group or a country. The Gini Index is a measure of the distribution of income across a population. It was devised early last century by Corrado Gini (1883Gini ( -1965, an Italian statistician and economist who thought at the University of Roma. The Gini Index ranges from zero if all individuals of the group own and earn the same amount; to one if one individual owns and earns everything and everybody else owns and earns nothing. The Gini index estimated for various countries reveals strong variations in degree of inequality ( Figure 3). We go from a relative equality in the Scandinavian countries (Norway and Sweden have a Gini index around 0.25) to a strong inequality in countries such as South Africa (index close to 0.7). European countries such as Great Britain; France, Germany and Italy have indices ranging between 0.28 and 0.35 while the US suffers from a rather high inequality (index ~ 0.45), as do China and Russia. Figure 3 suggests that some of the richest countries on Earth suffer from high degrees of inequality. High levels of inequality (i.e., high Gini Indices) generally go together with a number of negative indices: for instance, they correlate with the percentage of children living in poverty (Atkinson, 2015) as shown by Figure 4. Inequality in a society predicts a higher degree of violence (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009;Starness et al., 2017).  Areas in the US with high income inequality tend to have higher divorce, bankruptcy and homicide rates than areas with more egalitarian distribution (Frank et al.,2014;Daly et al., 2001). In the United States people in the low-income bracket are plagued by mortality risk and rates of infant mortality higher than the general population (Underwood, 2014). ******* Are there in today's Earth societies where inequality is negligible? Shostak (1981) and Pennisi (2014) describe the !Kung people of the Kalahary Desert in Africa. They are nomadic hunter-gatherers; they share their very few possessions (mostly food and hunting weapons): so nobody is "richer" than anybody else. Another group of nomadic hunter-gatherers are the Hadza people who live at the margins of the Rift Valley in Tanzania (Gibbons, 2018). They have been studied by several teams of anthropologists for over 50 years. They also were egalitarians; however, their way of life has been heavily infringed in the last several years by the encroachment of farmers and pastoralists but also of tourists and of the same anthropologists who studied them (Gibbons, 2018).
Before the invention of agriculture over 10,000 years ago, humans were mostly nomadic "hunter gatherers"; anthropologists believe their societies were generally rather egalitarian, as are today's !Kung. The average Gini index for pre-agriculture "hunter-gatherers groups" has been estimated at 0.17; that for agricultural societies at 0.35 (Kohler et al., 2017). In his book "The Anatomy of Inequality" (2016), the Swedish social philosopher Per Molander suggests that the prevalence of egalitarianism among nomadic "hunter-gatherers" is mostly a consequence of their economy being close to subsistence level: no significant surplus is there to be grabbed by an individual or group. However, archaeologists are finding traces of early inequality already in some "hunter-gatherers" groups, where a few individuals were able to take possession of patches of wild food and transmit them to their descendant, in what can be viewed as the BIRTH OF PRIVATE PROPERTY.
For instance, Price and Bar-Joseph (2000) found archaeological traces of inequality already in Natufian tribes, eastern Mediterranean hunter-gatherers that from 14,000 to 10,000 years ago gradually were converted to agriculture. The richness of a few of their graves and the ornaments on a few of their dead indicate that disparities existed early on, before the Natufians settled down in a society based on agriculture. Accumulation of wealth by a few, and consequent inequality, became  (Sheidel and Friesen, 2009) reveals an inequality comparable to that of modern US. Also shown is the Index for pre-agriculture hunters-gatherers estimated by Kohler et al. (2017). "normal" in societies based on agriculture. Molander (2014) cites 4,000 years old Sumerian and Egyptian texts that lament inequality in their society.
The transition from nomadic hunter/gatherers to stable societies based on agriculture has been regarded generally as a major positive step in the evolution of humans towards higher civilization. A dissenting viewpoint, voiced by Jared Diamond (1987) in an essay entitled "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", argued that the advantages derived from this transition were more than balanced by negative effects. Diamond cited studies on the few remaining hunter/ gatherers communities, as well as on fossil and archeological records of ancient communities, showing that the "quality of life ", including nutrition and health, did not necessarily improuve as a result of the transition, except for a small elite group. With the advent of agriculture population density increased: quality was traded for quantity….an elite became better off but most people became worse off, with the result of developing deep class divisions. Descriptions of nomadic egalitarian societies such as the !Kung of southwest Africa (Shostak, 1981) and archaelogical records from neolithic sites (Patou-Mathis, 2020), suggest that women were freer and less unequal than in later societies based on agriculture and private property.
According to Canadian archaeologist Brian Hajdess, the transition from egalitarian societies to societies rife with economic competition and inequality was "the single most critical watershed in the 2.5 million years of human history". Since that watershed transition, stratified societies have prevailed among humans, although the extent and type of inequality changed in time and space and was different in different societies. In Europe and the Middle East we had strong inequality in the Persian and Egyptian Empires and even in the 400 BC quasi-democracies of Athens and Sparta, that allowed slavery. We had a strongly unequal society also in the Roman Imperial period. A Gini index of 43 was estimated for imperial Rome (Sheidel and Friesen, 2009), with a degree of inequality similar to that of today's US. A few super rich Romans thrived: triumvir Marcus Crassus had an income roughly equivalent to one billion dollars per year, not far from that of Bill Gates! Non-egalitarian societies continued to prevail in the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, sometime favoured by "holy" (or, better, "unholy") alliances between religious (The Pope) and lay (The Emperor) leaders. Throughout Humanism, The French Revolution, The Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the bourgeoisie, the degree of inequality oscillated but overall did not decrease. A concrete modern attempt to create something approaching an egalitarian society, i.e., the 1917 Russian revolution, ended badly due both to internal failures and to external pressure from capitalistic powers. Scholars such as A. Bergson (1984) have attempted to estimate the degree of equality in the Soviet Union before and after the death of Stalin. The results of these inquiries are ambiguous, in part because it is not simple to calculate a Gini Index for a Soviet Union-type economy. Even so, it appears the Soviet Union had a slightly higher equality than western countries. Cuba in the early eighties enjoyed a relatively high equality (Gini index 22 to 24), that however decreased more recently. It's worth noting that the Gini index of modern post-socialist countries such as Russia and China is not very different from that of the foremost capitalistic country, i.e., the US (Figure 3). Chairman Mao would turn in his grave if he knew that many billionaires sit in today's Chinese Parliament (NY Times, March 17, 2017). ******* Given that we are all born with different intelligence, physical strength and so on, and that most of us want the best for ourselves even at the expense of others, Pennisi (2014) asks: How has it been possible for egalitarian societies to survive among our ancestors? A widespread opinion is that inequality is an inescapable consequence of human nature: Homo sapiens basic instincts lead him/her to be competitive and possessive. How to reconcile this hypothesis with the evidence that pre-agriculture hunter-gatherers societies were mostly egalitarian? Studies of the few remaining hunter-gatherers egalitarian groups (they are disappearing fast!) hint at some sort of "non-aggressive" code promulgated in those societies: for instance in the !Kung (Shostak, 1981) and Hazda (Woodburn, 1983) people. Behaviour fostering inequality (boasting, self-aggrandizing, competitiveness) is discouraged even in young children while humility, downplaying one's accomplishments and cooperation (for instance in hunting) were the accepted ways of behaviour. It is interesting that in most aspects of our western societies, for instance our school systems, exactly the opposite behaviour is encouraged. Then perhaps the drive towards inequality may not be due solely to our genes or to "human nature", but rather to which aspect of human nature is being reinforced and encouraged, and which aspect neglected and discouraged. The degree of inequality has varied through time: for instance, it decreased in European countries during the years of the second world war but increased in the post-1970 period (Atkinson, 2015). It has varied from place to place depending on the social organization of each country. Moreover, small communities exist with little or no inequality (Israeli kibutz, monasteries of various religions…). All this supports the idea that inequality is not an inescapable consequence of human nature. ******* French economist Thomas Piketty suggested that, once even a small inequality has surfaced in a society (that is, once an individual or group have acquired wealth and power slightly over and above the rest of society), inequality is bound to increase with time. The simple reason, hinted at not only by mathematical models but also by common sense, is that in a competitive society who starts with more is likely to win the competition to acquire more. Modern "liberal" societies have introduced devices to avoid being overwhelmed by extreme inequality. Constitutions proclaim equal dignity and rights for all individuals. Graded taxation requires the richest to pay higher taxes. Social security and healthcare attempt to keep the weakest protected. Tax on inheritance and universal education attempt to avoid excessive accumulation of wealth and to approach equal opportunity for youngsters. On this last point: a strong correlation between income of parents versus income of their children (calculated when the children have become adults) indicates a low social mobility and a low degree of "equal opportunity". Italy tops this ladder (Figure 5), followed closely by Great Britain and US, a sign of a relatively low "equal opportunity" for youngsters from those countries. Canadian economist M, Corak (2013) found that countries with high correlation between parents/children income tend to have a high Gini index of inequality ( Figure 5).
According to Piketty, we are facing a sharp rise in inequality in the capitalist west. In fact, the trend in recent years in the western nations, particularly the US, seems to move even further away from egalitarianism: for instance, if it is true that new tax laws will shift wealth to the wealthiest (New York Times), the US Gini Index would be pushed even further up. In recent years, some of the guarantees against excessive inequality have been slackened in various countries of the west. Even "virtuous" Sweden has abolished its tax on inheritance and has seen its index of inequality go up in the last several years (Molander, 2016). On the other hand, studies summarized by Starmans et al. (2017) suggest that people are bothered non so much by economic inequality as by economic unfairness. They argue that people favour "fair distribution" over "equal distribution", and prefer "fair inequality" over "unfair equality". However, much depends on the definition of what is "fair", that varies in different places and in different social classes.
In a review published by the New Yorker (March 31, 2014) of Piketty book "Capital in The Twenty-First Century", J. Cassidy cites extreme examples of inequality in US corporations. The Chief Executive of Walmart Corporation earned more than 23 million dollars in 2012, while a typical Walmart worker earned less than 25,000 dollars a year. The Chief executive of Apple earned 378 million dollars in 2011, about 6,250 times more than the average Apple employee. The British organization Oxfan reports that the 85 richest people in the world own more wealth than the 3,5 billion people who make up the poorest half of world's population! ******* Let's go back to Darwin. Let's imagine him sailing today on a modern cruise ship back to Tierra del Fuego: he would see the descendants of his ancient Fuegians, having abandoned their egalitarianism, working dutifully as janitors and dishwashers in the basements of Ushuaia luxury hotels owned by US or Argentinian tycoons. Perhaps Darwin would ask himself whether or not this can be construed as "progress".