Money Wisdom #67

"Adherents of the classical economic doctrine of laisser-faire present the unspoilt savage as the true personifier of the type of Economic Man. ....Yet the study of our ethnological evidence, and even to some extent of our historical evidence, clearly indicates that this picture is entirely false.

.....Another extreme misinterpretation of the primitive character and the primitive system is represented by the theory put forward by Socialist writers, according to whom the original system of mankind was Communism... .....what is often loosely described as original Communism very often in amounted in reality to ownership by the chief of the tribe and not common ownership by members of tribe. Indeed, while in many instances the prevailing system is distinctly Communistic, in other instances private ownership is carried to extremes unknown in the most highly individualistic modern communities."

Paul Einzig Primitive Money (1948) p.28 & 29