This Is What You Get: The Origins Of Hierarchy

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET

THE ORIGINS OF HIERARCHY

For millions of years humans lived in bands (and, much later, tribes) and both kinds of societies had governments that were much more egalitarian than the class-based hierarchies we are familiar with. But, eventually, some tribes grew in size until their members could be numbered not in the hundreds but in the thousands or tens of thousands. Those numbers resulted in another evolution of human society, with tribes developing into chiefdoms.

The very word 'chiefdom' should clue you up as to the different organisational structure of the chiefdom compared to the band or tribe. It contains within its title a recognised authority figure, a chief. Indeed, it is in chiefdoms that we find the first definite signs of a recognised office, filled with hereditary right. Moreover, whereas with bands and tribes one can barely tell the big-man apart from fellow tribe members, archaeologists can easily recognise chiefdoms by the fact that some graves contain far more personal possessions than others. Presumably those rich men were buried according to the lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed.

So how did this come about? Probably the most important factor in increased population size was food production. Unless they happened to occupy especially fertile and productive lands, chiefdoms would have had to discover farming and methods for storing produce. Since farming is obviously very seasonal work and given that sufficient quantities of food could have been stored, for the first time people's labour became freed up to be put to some purpose other than food production. Also, because farming requires a more sedentary life compared to the nomadic life of the hunter-gatherer, folk had more incentive to discover technological specialisation. An accumulation of possessions is not much use to a nomadic person who can only take as much as he or she can easily carry. But once people settled down, the human ability to invent new things could be turned to the task of creating all kinds of stuff.

(Image from wikimedia commons)

But that doesn't quite explain how or why that stuff became concentrated into some hands more than others. Humans had lived in egalitarian societies for millions of years, so how come they didn't carry on distributing goods in a communal way?

Well, while the sedentary life of agricultural societies made invention possible, the large numbers in chiefdoms made communal decision-making almost impossible. It's possible in a small village for news and information to spread quickly among members. When one person speaks up in a small group, everyone else can hear. And when a group is small enough, anyone who wishes to speak has the opportunity to do so. But all that becomes increasingly infeasible as the population grows in size.

Also, as societies grow to consist of tens of thousands of individuals, it becomes increasingly likely that people you encounter will be strangers not related to you by either blood or marriage. Whereas in a clan or tribe people were usually related to both parties in a dispute and didn't take sides in mediating quarrels, in much larger societies onlookers were more likely to be friends or relatives of only one combatant and would tend to side with that individual. What began as a two-person dispute could therefore escalate into a brawl, meaning that any large society that left decision-making up to all its members was prone to blowing up and splitting into smaller tribes or bands.

Those larger societies that discovered conflict resolution other than the now ineffectual communal intervention were able to hold together. What kind of conflict resolution would that have been? It must have been some kind of centralised authority figure, someone who made all the significant decisions and who in all probability enjoyed a monopoly on information.

None of this happened in any formal sense. It's not as if people thought, "hey, this communal living just isn't working any more, so let's elect a leader and leave the decisions up to him". Instead, those societies that had members naturally possessing the qualities of leadership as well as being able to overcome other difficulties with holding large groups together had survival advantage.

What other difficulties? Well, for one thing, establishing a sense of belonging that went beyond that of immediate family. Clans and tribes did have something that could have been adapted to such a purpose, namely superstitious beliefs. Those chiefdoms and larger societies that turned superstitious belief into organised religions provided their people with a shared sense of identity that went beyond kinship-based bonds.

Another difficulty that had to be resolved was the problem of economic redistribution. In an earlier essay, we saw how bands and tribes had a reciprocal economy comprised of gift-exchanges and credit. That is, individuals and families exchanged goods and services with the caveat that this generosity would be returned at a later date. The act of gift-giving was also undertaken as a means of demonstrating that one was sorry for having done wrong. Even today, we say criminals should 'pay' their 'debt' to society and words like 'appease' and 'pacify' come from the same root as 'to pay'.

But at what point is generosity and wrongdoing adequately repaid? Such questions lead to obligations becoming quantified and rules and regulations becoming established in order to determine when debts were paid in full as well as in order to keep track of the increasing diversity of credit networks. Money became commodified (that is, evolving from an abstract thing like 'trust' into something that could be physically transferred from person to person or group to group). As chiefdoms by definition had authority figures that made all the significant decisions, it's not all that surprising if they also evolved new economic systems based on redistribution rather than reciprocity. The increased specialisation made possible by increased food production also meant the chief's orders were sometimes transmitted through one or two levels of bureaucracy, although they would have had far more general roles compared with today's state bureaucrats.

As well as establishing the conditions that lead to the emergence of an upper class, chiefdoms also allowed for the establishment of a lower class. Whenever bands and tribes fought each other, the victor had very little use for the vanquished foe. But, since chiefdoms had made economic specialisation a possibility, whenever they were vanquished the victors had a couple of options for exploitation. One option was to turn the vanquished into slaves and set them to work doing menial jobs like labouring away in fields. A second option would have been to allow the vanquished to stay in place but remove any political autonomy by amalgamating their society into a larger state and making them pay regular tributes from surplus goods.

The existence of both a governing minority and slave labour within chiefdoms and larger societies meant that these were now very much nonegalitarian, centrally-governed societies. Increasingly, people were no longer self-sufficient but instead dependent on others to produce means of living. This is particularly true of states, where we find economic specialisation pushed to such an extreme that not even farmers can realistically be said to be self-sufficient. The further one is removed from self-sufficiency, and the more economic specialisation there is, the greater one's chances of being pushed toward labour that seems far removed from anything directly beneficial to oneself.

This is particularly true of those nonegalitarian, centrally-governed societies that give into the temptation all such societies are subject to: Namely, that of turning a redistributive economy into a kleptocratic one that transfers net wealth from the many to the few. This obviously does happen from time to time. As we have seen, some graves contained more private possessions than others. Not only that, but chiefdoms and states often show other signs of marked material inequality. Increasingly lavish homes available only to a privileged few get built; temples and other physical representations of minority prestige get erected. All this work is undertaken by a populace who mostly don't get to enjoy the fruits of their labour. When that is the case, redistribution becomes tribute, a precursor to taxes.

Tribute and taxes are not necessarily a bad thing. They can do good if they provide services most people approve of. But on the other hand, they can exist so that the society may function as a kleptocracy, transforming the hard work of the many into the lavish lifestyles of the few. Whenever a minority does enjoy a disproportionate share of collectively-produced wealth, the challenge then arises: How to keep the masses from rising up against this net transfer of wealth.

One way is to leave the masses with little choice, say by having a minority that is far more well-armed compared to the rest. That's hard to do when weapons are limited to clubs and stuff anyone can fashion from readily-available materials, but once economic specialisation kicks into high gear a minority may acquire a monopoly on violence and use it to their advantage.

Another method would be to ensure that the population as a whole approves of the way tribute gets distributed. Many a kleptocracy has been brought down by rebels rousing the downtrodden masses with promises of a more just future. But those rebels may be nothing more than wannabe kleptocrats who only pretend to be on the commoner's side.

Perhaps the most effective method for maintaining a kleptocracy involves the construction of some kind of ideology that justifies the way things happen to be in society. We saw earlier how chiefdoms and larger societies can turn superstitious beliefs into organised religions that give a sense of community to distantly-related individuals. They can also be used to justify such things as central authority and the transfer of wealth from the many to the few. It is for this reason that such societies devote so many resources to the building of monuments and temples, from the pyramids of Egypt to the vast glass and steel skyscrapers and mansions of the modern corporatocracy.

When you play the game 'Monopoly', every player begins on a blank board and is subject to the same rules as everyone else. Libertarians would have us believe that this is much like the free market. This walk through history shows nothing could be further from the truth. Imagine instead a board with all the choice property already spoken for, and with the rules rewritten to favour some while disadvantaging others. That would be a more realistic analogy for the historical situation from which capitalism arose. What is more, it contained within its very premises the mechanisms that would greatly enhance the exploitative nature of previous societies.

REFERENCES

'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond

'Zeitgeist Movement Defined'.