Page 8 RAIN Winter/Spring 1991 To loQk at the sparse, scattered independent villages of Laos today is to see what life without high-level political or economic domination might be like. The biggest worries in a natural economy are variations in the weather. These villages experience almost no crime, and actually define for themselves what is criminal. They have a highly developed sense of fairness and community. Inflation is of little concern, since few use cash. Most villages are not subject to direct taxation. There are no powerful elites. Everyone works hard, eats adequately, and gets along well together. Since they have little experience with domination, they are not very good at following orders. Because they have never been squeezed hard by Lords or Merchants, they tend to work at a steady pace, rather than at the ulcerous speeds demanded in many other Asian cultures. In a typical village in Laos up to a hundred families live on high ground and farm the surrounding lowlands. No one is in charge-although sometimes there is a village elder who helps make decisions, and who must work just as hard as everyone else. The women work longer hours than the men, but there is no misogynist crime, objectification or patriarchy. Relations among the villagers may seem strikingly egalitarian, but this is not due to explicit ideology. It can be traced to a simple village ethic: the right to survival. For the Lao, no one's survival should be put at risk by someone else in the community: instability could endanger the survival of the entire village. In a natural economy barely providing sustenance, everyone knows this primary rule, so no one pushes. Older families can sometimes gain influence in a village, but only if the villagers see it as enhancing their chance of survival. Clientage of this sort does not last for long since the environment is not stable. Influence eventually disappears as a family's branches fade, move elsewhere, or experience bad weather. Despite the excellent relations in a village, many Westerners would not find the life idyllic. The Lao don't read much, even though the socialist government has ensured that most everyone receives a short, basic literacy course. Their localized natural economy never developed reading and writing, often found in larger economies where those skills help to centralize operations. In Thailand, China and Vietnam poor people read a great deal, a benefit that trickled down after hundreds of generations of domination. Above: Khmu girl carrying water in bamboo cylinders. Below: Lao Lue woman washing mushrooms foraged in the early morning. Luang Prabang province. As a substitute for literacy the Lao can, when motivated, learn very quickly just by watching. In a subsistence culture this is one way to pass on skills - something of a lost art in Modern Civilization. Another reason behind the reluctance of the Lao to read, though, is the lack of anything to read, or the lack of anything anyone finds important. This is unfortunate since many independent cultures have been destroyed without knowing what was coming. Lao villages are rather isolated, making it difficult for them to enlist international support. They are vulnerable to intervention by gove~ments and development projects supported by commercial systems that care little for natural economies. More th.orough literacy must come before developing, say, an Internationalist league to assure common security among self-sufficient village democracies. Literacy is not the only skill needing develop-
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