The beginnings of heirachy

[Buttress]

I am not entirely certain of the history of human social interaction but from what I understand we sort of began communistically, everyone had a part to play for the group to function (and thrive). But within these groups formed social inequalities, brought on by capability (or lack thereof) and opportunity. This may have been through physical divisions of sex, or mental divides.

What I am confused about, is how did these social inequalities come to exist, especially in communities where life had always been quite communistic? Was it perhaps because we lived in smaller groups and therefore the physical/mental prowess over others would be able to outweigh that of the (relatively small) mob's? Or perhaps it was more than simply totalitarianism but the mob actually allowing themselves to be ruled out of some kind of respect for assumed superiority?

What are your thoughts?

[Agent Equality]

Well it was Primitive Communism, not full communism. It was small scaled and within tribes.

As people began to advance and money became involved along with civilization and all other things that come with it, that's most likely where the inequalities started forming. Government and Religion also contributed heavily to this, as they still do today.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Hierarchy and institutionalized authority developed when lots of people saw problems with personalistic shouting matches in the then-existing tyrannies of structurelessness.

[Manic Impressive]

In my understanding gender roles were one of the first to be formed and for a time they were necessary for the survival of the species. Obviously men can't have babies so it was logical for men to do dangerous things like hunting. So if a few of the men were killed it wasn't as big a deal as if a few of the women had been killed especially if they were pregnant. So women took on roles less dangerous gathering and preparing food, making tools, and having and looking after kids, which in itself was just as dangerous. People started to settle in one place when better methods of food production became available meaning that populations started to grow. They started to erect small forts in order to protect against other nearby populations who might try to steal their food. Battles were common between these different communities over resources, food and territory. Out of this need to compete grew a warrior class in most cases comprised of men. I say most as this was not a universal rule there are examples in some parts of Europe of women warriors but generally it was the men, as population growth was still an issue. The greatest warriors got more than their share as they were responsible for protecting the entire community. Kind of like how the star player on a sports team is admired and held up as a hero today. Some societies developed quicker than others and the idea of civilisation was born, they then spread out expanding their control over other communities through force or necessity.

[tfb]

I'm guessing that the first example of hierarchy was parents/children.

[Smyg]

Obviously men can't have babies so it was logical for men to do dangerous things like hunting
I believe there is a somewhat higher birth rate for men than for women, which I've - without any scientific basis - as always taken as nature's own "you guys are more expendable".

[bcbm]

Hierarchy and institutionalized authority developed when lots of people saw problems with personalistic shouting matches in the then-existing tyrannies of structurelessness.

pretty sure this isn't what happened

[Manic Impressive]

I believe there is a somewhat higher birth rate for men than for women, which I've - without any scientific basis - as always taken as nature's own "you guys are more expendable".
I have no idea about historically in the time period which is being discussed I doubt those records could be found. But today it's the other way around 51% of the population is female and that's with all the murdered or aborted female babies in Asia.

The reason men were more expendable is because 1 woman and 10 men only produce 1 child every 9 months whereas 1 man and 10 women can produce 10 children every 9 months. And with the rate that people died through all manner of terrible conditions they needed to reproduce to sustain the population and receive the benefits of population growth.

[robbo203]

I think you need to distinguish between 2 different kinds of hunter gatherer societies - Simple HG societies and complex HG societies. When we talk about primitive communism its is more typically the former we have in mind - highly mobile bands of individuals - whereas complex HG societies tend to be associated with chiefdoms and such like - i.e. the beginnings of hierarchy

Stephen Pinkers' controversial claim that early human societies were much more prone to violence, relatively speaking, than contemporary mass societies - depending on how you interpret the evidence - is highly misleading firstly because it fails to make this distinction and secondly because no contemporary HG society has remained unaffected by the spread of capitalism. Many anthropologists take the view that simple HG soceities have historically been far less prone to violence than sedentary agricultural societies. The violent reputation attributed to HG societies, if deserved (which is questionable), would relate instead to complex HG societies. This may be due to the strong association between violence and hierarchy which, as said, began to emerge in complex HG societies. Such societies tend to be transitional to full scale sedentarry societies and may involve some types of agricultural practices such as "slash and burn" cultivation.

In sedentary societies a new pattern of allegiances and affiilations develops arround the principle of terriitory. In nomadic HG societies by contrast you have is what is called a "segmentary lineage" kinship structure which basically means that there is an inherent tendency towards fission within the group into separate kin related segments. This is a highly signifcant reason as to why such societies tend to be non hierarchical - namely the comparative ease with which people can "vote with their feet". If someone is trying to act the assertive alpha male and you dont like it, well then the solution is simple - you just walk away with your nearest and dearest and leave him to it. The ability and ease with which one could do this would presumably have had a significant dampening effect on the emergence of hierarchy.

Relatedly , this would also explain - contra Pinker - the low levels of violence among some HG groups. They didnt need to fight other groups if there was plenty of land / game they could move on to. Why fight to the death over a some strip of land and typically they didnt. Typically, the response to superior fighting power was flight and the desire to avoid a sticky end over something that was not really worth fighting over

Therein lies a possible clue as to the development of complex HG societies and a more hierarchical social structure - external environmental factors. If you haven't read the book or seen the series of films made around the book called "The Future Eaters" by Tim Flannery., I seriuously recommend you do. Heres the link http://www.abc.net.au/science/future/ (http://www.abc.net.au/science/future/). Particularly relevant here is the second film in the series which traces the evolution of Maori culture. The polynesian forebears of the Maoris who settled in New Zealand overhunted the wildlife to such an extent that serious food shortages appeared and, with it, competition , the militarisation of maroi culture and the building of fortresses called pas across the landscape. Any rugby fans here will recognise traces of this in the ritual "haka" ceremony that the All Blacks engage in before proceeding to thrash their opponents.

So the argument that Im putting forward here is that hierarchy may have had its origins in environmental factors but, once it emerged, it took on a momenum of its own . It exists with us today despite , or perhaps because of , the fact that scarcity today is artifically contrived and maintained by capitalism. Once we realise a society of potential abundance in the form of communism, hierarchy will lose its appeal.

If anyone is interested there are some relevant links I posted on the "For Genuine Free Access communism" group page (see my sig below)

[Die Neue Zeit]

pretty sure this isn't what happened

Other people here mentioned the social division of labour, so I didn't want to repeat their point.

[robbo203]

Other people here mentioned the social division of labour, so I didn't want to repeat their point.

Not too sure how the social division of labour in itself would have led to hierarchy in a food sharing egalitarian hunter gather band. It would have first expressed itself in the different but complementary roles of males and females in the group but even so would have been fairly muted. Its also difficult to generalise because there are HG groups where females take part in hunting as well

I still think the most plausible explanation is environmental as per my previous post. The tendency towards fission is endemic in socieities with a segmentary lineage social structure and this, as I suggested, would have exerted a powerful dampening effect on any hierarchical tendencies. So the key to understanding why hierarchy emerged in my view lies outside the HG group itsellf - in external environmental developments that put a premium on groups staying together and indeed consolidating in the struggle over increasingly scarce food sources - as per my example of the Maoris

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hierarchy - do you mean class divisions and hierarchy?

I think fixed hierarchies in society need to be seen along with the advent of surplus. In earlier societies before agriculture, production was done for more or less immediate use because a moving band following food supplies would not be able to preserve or keep that much with them.

In settled, agricultural, societies more planning was needed and since agriculture produces potentially more than what is needed for immediate use, there were some positions for people who did not produce but became book keepers or settled trades etc. In some ways this was a social advance because it made larger populations and longer lives possible, more stability and wealth in life was probably attractive, and even though it was unequal, it did free some portion of the population from having to work just for immediate use. People could dedicate their time to developing art or written records etc.

But freeing some people from subsistence work also created class and these new positions in society probably became aware of their hold on social surplus and became somewhat conscious of their class role. These societies were still much much more equal than modern societies where class is really entrenched. So with a lot of native American societies, you see chiefdoms or classes, but the rulers had very little ability to force their will unilaterally - it would have just caused people to get rid of or ignore that person. But with increased wealth, there was more room for soldiers to be created to protect the surplus and then probably the people who controlled the surplus - these more defined class societies could have much more of a division.

[Marxaveli]

This thread touches on a really interesting topic that I have given some thought before. I could be totally wrong, but I think our history is going to end up being circular, assuming the material conditions reach the point that capitalism breaks down, and we transfer into socialism and then finally communism. What I mean by circular of course, is that we will end where we started. Except instead of tribal communism, we will have full blown civil communism with the most advanced science, technology, medicine, intellect, and general humanity. Pretty funny, almost ironic if you think about it. But I think it will take centuries, and none of us will certainly live to see it. I do think it will happen though.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I'm guessing that the first example of hierarchy was parents/children.
This hierarchy is not illegitimate though. Parents are the greatest socializing force in the development in a human being, who instill understanding in the world around them and a sense of self. Even if these understandings are flawed, parents are neccesry. The family as it exists in capitalist society will likely not exist forever, but there will always be this sort of socializaton process as long as there is humanity as it exists today.

[Jose Gracchus]

Hierarchy and institutionalized authority developed when lots of people saw problems with personalistic shouting matches in the then-existing tyrannies of structurelessness.

:rolleyes:

God, do you ever feel the most momentary pause to think, to check to see if there is any support for your claims, before shooting your mouth off?

Yes, of course--the hunter-gatherer band-society was a 'tyranny of structurelessness.' You sound like an imbecile bluffing their way though discussions where you obviously haven't a clue.

To answer the question, I highly recommend Bookchin's The Ecology of Freedom, though with a very Marxian grain-of-salt. It has to do with the changing means of reproducing material life, namely the development of intensively-worked fixed long-term settlements and cultivated, fixed food sources.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm guessing that the first example of hierarchy was parents/children.There's evidence that in native American, bands, for example, that children were not seen as the subjects of their direct parents. All adults were seen as mentors of all the children - as everyone in the band needed to work together to produce what they all needed, children may have been important in gathering and hunting when they were able, but they were subject to the needs of the whole band, not just to their biological parents.

Children as workers and subjects of their individual parents more likely came about as individual production by families rather than the band as a whole became the dominant way things crops were grown or materials made. If one family made their living from trading fish they caught, rather than their fish being added to the group and them also getting some of what other people in the band produced, then their children needed to be adding to the fish being caught, not doing other tasks that would not help that individual family.

In fact, Spanish and French missionaries to the Americas spent a lot of time trying to teach people how to conceive of families as individual production units where wives and children all worked for the father in the family. Hmm, good old family values.

[Manic Impressive]

This thread touches on a really interesting topic that I have given some thought before. I could be totally wrong, but I think our history is going to end up being circular, assuming the material conditions reach the point that capitalism breaks down, and we transfer into socialism and then finally communism. What I mean by circular of course, is that we will end where we started. Except instead of tribal communism, we will have full blown civil communism with the most advanced science, technology, medicine, intellect, and general humanity. Pretty funny, almost ironic if you think about it. But I think it will take centuries, and none of us will certainly live to see it. I do think it will happen though.
It's certainly not impossible. But the key as to why communities had to fight over resources is because they lacked the technology to mass produce vital commodities. Today we don't have that problem. Right now we can feed, clothe and house every person on the planet so that would eliminate the need to compete for resources. At the moment capitalism produces a false scarcity, which means they either don't produce enough of a commodity to meet demand or they sabotage their own production in order to keep prices high.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The development of Polygamy may have had something to do with it too. The young men die in war, and older patriarchs take the young women who would have gone with those young men as wives. This increases their social power, and probably having a large number of sons and daughters by one man increased his social standing.

[Zav]

Hierarchy began with resource wars. If we're lucky, it will end with them too.
It perpetuated because of a lack of communication. The day the Congo has Wi-Fi and we all speak one of five languages, I doubt hierarchy would last a further century.

[bcbm]

Other people here mentioned the social division of labour, so I didn't want to repeat their point.

gatherer-hunter groups had a 'structure'

[Die Neue Zeit]

Not too sure how the social division of labour in itself would have led to hierarchy in a food sharing egalitarian hunter gather band. It would have first expressed itself in the different but complementary roles of males and females in the group but even so would have been fairly muted.

That's not what I had in mind. Forgive me, but I was making the distinction between "technical" and/or "functional" divisions of labour, on the one hand, and "social" divisions of labour on the other.

Hierarchy arose from the latter.