"If what is called history is a dynamic and open social reality, in a state of functional disequilibrium, or an oscillating equilibrium, unstable and always compensated, comprising not only institutionlized conflicts but conflicts that generate changes, revolts, ruptures, and scissions, then primitive societies are fully inside history, and far distant from the stability, or even from the harmony, attributed to them in the name of a primacy of a unanimous group. The presence of history in every social machine plainly appears in the disharmonies that, as Levi-Strauss says, “bear the unmistakable stamp of time elapsed.” It is true that there are several ways to interpret such disharmonies: ideally,by the gap between the real institution and the assumed ideal model; morally, by invoking a structural bond between law and transgression; physically, as though it were a question of attrition that would cause the social machine to lose its capacity to wield its materials. But here too it seems that the correct interpretation would be, above all, actual and functional: it is in order to function that a social machine must not function well. This has been shown precisely with regard to the segmentary system, which is always destined to reconstitute itself on its own ruins; and likewise for the organization of the political function in these systems, which in effect is exercised only by indicating its own impotence."