It can only survive in a trusting, close relationship. Therefore, I think small kinship groups are necessarily communist while larger groups can never be purely communist.

As groups get larger, competing interests become increasingly important. Heck, its even important among squabbling children. But small groups tend to develop unit cohesion, that magic property scientifically pursued by military trainers everywhere and for ll time. Military units are not divided into decreasing sizes just for fun, psychologists from pre-history yo the present day know that a unit of more than a hundred men begins to lose bonding and intimacy.

The romans had centuries (led by a centurian) and nowadays we have a platoon. So I'll bet that Z's initial somewhat arbitrary number of 50 is probably about right to upper range for a huntr-gatherer clan to be cohesive and effective. That's too small to maintain genetic viability so several times a year clans must meet to allow courtships.

Where my primitive society's analogy with military breaks down completely is here: the military must be hierarchical or it will never successfully complete ny mission, even self-defense. Whereas, our family/clan group wouldn't need a rigid hierarchy. It would have eladership dependent upon the goals of the clan. Making pots? Head potter takes over. Childbirth, midwife takes over. Etc. This is more purely "from each according to his abilities" than any modern society could possibly achieve.



Bot