All societal systems that have existed since humans became sedentary roughly 10,000 years ago are fascist. Before that, for nearly 95 percent of our species’ 300,000-year history, humanity lived in hunter-gatherer or forager societies. These communities had no permanent hierarchies, no inherited positions of power, no state institutions and no ruling class at all: decisions were made through collective consensus, and people with particular experience or skill held only temporary authority rooted in mutual respect, never the power to coerce others. They were entirely classless and egalitarian, with land, tools and hunting grounds held as common property, food distributed according to need, and no exploitation of one group’s labour by another. There was no organised state violence, no standing armies and no large-scale warfare between communities; internal conflicts were resolved through mediation rather than repression. Gender relations were broadly equitable too, as women’s foraging work supplied 60 to 80 percent of most groups’ food supply, earning them equal social standing. Groups were small and flexible, usually made up of 20 to 50 related people. This form of organisation is known as primitive communism: the default way humans lived for almost all of our history, before sedentism gave rise to the fascist systems that have defined every society ever since.