Why did Humans create States?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

My guess is we pass all governmental power over to one big supercomputer that deals with all issues of security, law and infrastructure, while we all go off and play all day.

Become the Eloi?

[Eggegg]

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Become the Eloi?

Well right now we are basically the Morlocks.. so yes.

[Seli]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

...

He then talks about the agricultural revolution and the creation of a surplus he assigned agricultural societies a ration of 10-1.  He noted that this surplus was created by exploiting human and animal labor in rather difficult conditions.  He postulated that this is where law comes from.  The need to keep people in particular roles in life (roles that they may not particularly enjoy) and as such fairly harsh measures were required to keep people working the land.  Thus, States and law arises ("Phase II"). 
...

That seems to be a weird interpretation, shaped by a view that a state is a system imposed more than a result of self-organization. Laws are how the population keep the people in power in check, as much as the other way around.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Seli said:

That seems to be a weird interpretation, shaped by a view that a state is a system imposed more than a result of self-organization. Laws are how the population keep the people in power in check, as much as the other way around.

How did laws keep early rulers in check?  

[Seli]

53 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How did laws keep early rulers in check?  

Before law, there is only power. With law there are rules even those who claim to rule are bound to. Rules that everyone can point to, examine.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Seli said:

Before law, there is only power. With law there are rules even those who claim to rule are bound to. Rules that everyone can point to, examine.

 

Seli,

I think you're putting the cart before the horse.  People used power to exert control over others and that became known as law.  In early states I don't think there was much limitation upon what the State could and could not do.

 

[maarsen]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Rippounet,

That is where I'd like this discussion to go.  Can human's move past the State?

I met my wife in a class my third year in Law School called "Law and Cultural Evolution".  The professor, an attorney who was teaching as an ad junct, had an interesting thesis.  He tied human cultural evolution to caloric production and expenditure.  He postulated that Hunter/Gatherer societies had a 1-1 caloric production and expenditure ratio.  Those societies were governed by tradition and custom, to our knowledge nothing was particularly formalized ("Phase I"). 

He then talks about the agricultural revolution and the creation of a surplus he assigned agricultural societies a ration of 10-1.  He noted that this surplus was created by exploiting human and animal labor in rather difficult conditions.  He postulated that this is where law comes from.  The need to keep people in particular roles in life (roles that they may not particularly enjoy) and as such fairly harsh measures were required to keep people working the land.  Thus, States and law arises ("Phase II"). 

Finally, he talks about the mechanical revolution and postulates a ratio of 100-1 for production and caloric intake.  The surplus has increased by an order of magnitude and doesn't require human or animal work to maintain that ratio.  

The question he asked of the class was if we have Phase I governed by tradition and custom.  Phase II governed by States and Law.  What was coming for Phase III?  I really don't know.  One student of his called Phase III "the Artificial Garden" and speculated a return to tradition and custom.  I doubt that.  There are far too many people for that to work and the State will fight to preserve its own power.  It is a fascinating question. 

Scot, your law professor was not an anthropologist. When I studied  cultural anthropology back in the 70's, we were told that there were just as many restrictions on behaviour in hunter/gatherer society as there were in our modern society. The rules were not written down but they were rigid and they were followed. My professor's area of study was the Inuit of northern Canada. Up until the 1950's there was little interaction with the outside world so they were as an uncontaminated sample as one could find. The cultural rules were strict and enforced. For instance, when a  male child was born, he was brought to all the other young children and they were then assigned different parts of a seal that they would kill when they became hunters. One would be assigned a flipper, another would be assigned the liver, and so on. Every time a hunter killed a seal, the seal would be divided according to these rules. A hunter could not hunt for a seal for himself or for his family but only for a larger group.

Likewise, every band also had a shaman who did wield a huge amount of power. The band members were too scared to point out the shaman to an outsider and the only way to find one was to find the only person who was not scared by the mention of the shaman. There were rules and structures even in the most basic human societies. As outsiders we are not just privy to all of it.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Scot, your law professor was not an anthropologist. When I studied  cultural anthropology back in the 70's, we were told that there were just as many restrictions on behaviour in hunter/gatherer society as there were in our modern society. The rules were not written down but they were rigid and they were followed. My professor's area of study was the Inuit of northern Canada. Up until the 1950's there was little interaction with the outside world so they were as an uncontaminated sample as one could find. The cultural rules were strict and enforced. For instance, when a  male child was born, he was brought to all the other young children and they were then assigned different parts of a seal that they would kill when they became hunters. One would be assigned a flipper, another would be assigned the liver, and so on. Every time a hunter killed a seal, the seal would be divided according to these rules. A hunter could not hunt for a seal for himself or for his family but only for a larger group.

Likewise, every band also had a shaman who did wield a huge amount of power. The band members were too scared to point out the shaman to an outsider and the only way to find one was to find the only person who was not scared by the mention of the shaman. There were rules and structures even in the most basic human societies. As outsiders we are not just privy to all of it.

Is using a tribe in an are where survival is difficult and the climate is particularly harsh really a good example when talking about humans who were living in areas where resources were abundant and the climate was easy to live in?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

And for the record my professor was Halcott P. Green.  He is an Anthropologist as well as a retired attorney.  He made the comment he would have preferred to call the class "Cultural Evolution and Law" but they made him call it "Law and Cultural Evolution".

[Isalie]

Scott

1) On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is Stalin and 10 is Hitler, how evil would you say the state is?

2) If you could go back in time, would you kill the state as an infant (you or the state can be the infant, doesn't matter)

[Isalie]

A serious question. Why wouldn't the Inuit people be a good example? Most HG societies have probably struggled to some degree, aren't we all descended from just 13 females? If every other early gene pool has died out, that should tell us something about how lucky the 13 strains that made it have been.

Any and every group have norms that you have to abide by, and I'd say that the smaller the group, the stricter those norms are, and I don't think we have to go back to prehistory to see that. 

Another question, am I just misinformed, or are societies with strong states more equal than societies with weaker states and a higher focus on community and family?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Mikael said:

A serious question. Why wouldn't the Inuit people be a good example? Most HG societies have probably struggled to some degree, aren't we all descended from just 13 females? If every other early gene pool has died out, that should tell us something about how lucky the 13 strains that made it have been.

Any and every group have norms that you have to abide by, and I'd say that the smaller the group, the stricter those norms are, and I don't think we have to go back to prehistory to see that. 

Another question, am I just misinformed, or are societies with strong states more equal than societies with weaker states and a higher focus on community and family?

Serious answer because the climatic conditions in which their society exists is very different from the environment that HG peoples living in fertile lowland temperate river valleys would experience.  Therefore, it follows that their culture would be quite different as well.  The only commonality between the two groups is that the groups are small.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 minutes ago, Mikael said:

Scott

1) On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is Stalin and 10 is Hitler, how evil would you say the state is?

2) If you could go back in time, would you kill the state as an infant (you or the state can be the infant, doesn't matter)

In all seriousness, I'm not damning the State.  It serves important functions today.  I just wonder if it is here to stay or if we will evolve beyond it.  Heck, even Marx postulated a Stateless society in the end.  

[Isalie]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Serious answer because the climatic conditions in which their society exists is very different from the environment that HG peoples living in fertile lowland temperate river valleys would experience.  Therefore, it follows that their culture would be quite different as well.  The only commonality between the two groups is that the groups are small.

The last sentence seems to ignore everything except climate though..

Anyway, from what I've read about HGs in more fertile land, a great deal of emphasis was put on putting the group ahead of the individual and also what we in Sweden call Jante, to not think of yourself as worth more than your peers. There was this great example of how they would make it seem everyone was equally good at hunting prey, but I'm fuzzy on the details so I can't really tell you about it

I doubt there has ever been a society where the individual has had more freedom than current Scandinavia though.

As for what comes next, I don't have the imagination for it, all I know is that if the choice is between trusting private citizens with power or a state with power, I'll prefer the state.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Mikael said:

The last sentence seems to ignore everything except climate though..

Anyway, from what I've read about HGs in more fertile land, a great deal of emphasis was put on putting the group ahead of the individual and also what we in Sweden call Jante, to not think of yourself as worth more than your peers. There was this great example of how they would make it seem everyone was equally good at hunting prey, but I'm fuzzy on the details so I can't really tell you about it

I doubt there has ever been a society where the individual has had more freedom than current Scandinavia though.

As for what comes next, I don't have the imagination for it, all I know is that if the choice is between trusting private citizens with power or a state with power, I'll prefer the state.

You should read Rule of the Clan by Mark S. Wiener.  He makes a great case that individual rights, as a concept, can only exist in a fairly strong state.  That where the State is week we do not fall into a libertarian utopia but back into Clans that seek to protect the collective at the expense of individual rights.  

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I think you're putting the cart before the horse.  People used power to exert control over others and that became known as law.  In early states I don't think there was much limitation upon what the State could and could not do.

It rather depends on who is exerting control over whom, doesn't it? The state is composed of individual human beings and in the early ones ultimate authority often sat with just a single person (the king, emperor, czar, etc.). There were undoubtedly many now-forgotten laws which limited the actions of ordinary citizens, but many of the ones which are remembered (e.g. the Magna Carta) limited the authority of the state.

[maarsen]

Let's go back in history again. Ghengis Kan lived and was raised in a stateless society. The clan or tribe was the main unit of society. Did his uniting the tribes of Mongolia create a state? I would say so. A state was certainly created when his son built Karakorum to administer the conquered lands. 

A state seems to be a response to creating any society that has differing substructures within it. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

Let's go back in history again. Ghengis Kan lived and was raised in a stateless society. The clan or tribe was the main unit of society. Did his uniting the tribes of Mongolia create a state? I would say so. A state was certainly created when his son built Karakorum to administer the conquered lands. 

A state seems to be a response to creating any society that has differing substructures within it. 

Maarsen,

You actually raise an interesting question. The answer depends entirely upon how a “State” is defined.  It is not always consistent.

[FalagarV2]

 

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

Let's go back in history again. Ghengis Kan lived and was raised in a stateless society. The clan or tribe was the main unit of society. Did his uniting the tribes of Mongolia create a state? I would say so. A state was certainly created when his son built Karakorum to administer the conquered lands. 

A state seems to be a response to creating any society that has differing substructures within it. 

Well, the definition of 'state' is basically a society with a relatively high degree of task differentiation and specialization (more useful for the early period than Weber's ideal-type of 'monopoly on legitimate violence').

Re state power: early states were highly ritualized institutions, and the king arguably one of the most ritualized figures (often doubling as high-priests), with strict regimes regulating his behavior down to how he was to get dressed. The concept of 'divine kingship' did not (necessarily) mean that kings had unlimited god-like powers, but that their powers were tied to the divine order and thus that their behavior affected crop yield, epidemics, etc. Thus they too had to be scrutinied. Kings still did excercise wide-ranging powers, elites of course benefited, and there were certainly draconian laws pertaining to commoners, but on the other hand the states were much weaker and unstable than their modern counterpart, so the actual assertion of power (as opposed to idealized self-presentation) was also much more precarious, and collapse could turn things on their heads. Bad years for instance often resulted in the delegitimation and overthrow of the king.

 

17 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Serious answer because the climatic conditions in which their society exists is very different from the environment that HG peoples living in fertile lowland temperate river valleys would experience.  Therefore, it follows that their culture would be quite different as well.  The only commonality between the two groups is that the groups are small.

We could equally look to the highly rigid family and clan-structures, regulating marriage, food production etc., in many other non-state societies. Historically, families have arguably been more 'totalitarian' in their regulation of individuals than states can ever hope to be.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Maarsen,

You actually raise an interesting question. The answer depends entirely upon how a “State” is defined.  It is not always consistent.

I would think collecting taxes for infrastructure, as Ghengis  Khan did to construct roads and waystations for his couriers, marks the delineation.