Stateless society

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Map of the world in 1000 BCE, color-coded by type of society. At this time, stateless societies were the norm. .mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{} hunter-gatherers nomadic pastoralism simple farming societies complex farming societies/chiefdoms state societies uninhabited Area of iron working, c. 1000 BCE Area of bronze working, c. 1000 BCE World in 1000 BCE.png
Map of the world in 1000 BCE, color-coded by type of society. At this time, stateless societies were the norm.
  simple farming societies
  complex farming societies/chiefdoms
  uninhabited
  Area of iron working, c. 1000 BCE
  Area of bronze working, c. 1000 BCE

A stateless society is a society that is not governed by a state. [1] In stateless societies, there is little concentration of authority. Most positions of authority that do exist are very limited in power, and they are generally not permanent positions, and social bodies that resolve disputes through predefined rules tend to be small. [2] Different stateless societies feature highly variable economic systems and cultural practices. [3]

Contents

While stateless societies were the norm in human prehistory, few stateless societies exist today; almost the entire global population resides within the jurisdiction of a sovereign state, though in some regions nominal state authorities may be very weak and may wield little or no actual power.

Over the course of history most stateless peoples have become integrated into external state-based societies. [4]

Some political philosophies, particularly anarchism, regard the state as an unwelcome institution and stateless societies as the ideal, while Marxism considers that in a post-capitalist society, the state would become unnecessary and would wither away.

Prehistoric peoples

In archaeology, cultural anthropology and history, a stateless society denotes a less complex human community without a state, such as a tribe, a clan, a band society or a chiefdom. The main criterion of "complexity" used is the extent to which a division of labor has occurred such that many people are permanently specialized in particular forms of production or other activity, and depend on others for goods and services through trade or sophisticated reciprocal obligations governed by custom and laws. An additional criterion is population size. The bigger the population, the more relationships have to be reckoned with. [5] [6]

Evidence of the earliest known city-states has been found in ancient Mesopotamia around 3700 BCE, suggesting that the history of the state is less than 6,000 years old; thus, for most of human prehistory the state did not exist.

For 99.8 percent of human history people lived exclusively in autonomous bands and villages. At the beginning of the Paleolithic [i.e. the Stone Age], the number of these autonomous political units must have been small, but by 1000 BCE it had increased to some 600,000. Then supra-village aggregation began in earnest, and in barely three millennia the autonomous political units of the world dropped from 600,000 to 157.

— Robert L. Carneiro, 1978 [7]

Generally speaking, the archaeological evidence suggests that the state emerged from stateless communities only when a fairly large population (at least tens of thousands of people) was more or less settled together in a particular territory, and practiced agriculture. Indeed, one of the typical functions of the state is the defense of territory. Nevertheless, there are exceptions: Lawrence Krader for example describes the case of the Tatar state, a political authority arising among confederations of clans of nomadic or semi-nomadic herdsmen. [8]

Characteristically the state functionaries (royal dynasties, soldiers, scribes, servants, administrators, lawyers, tax collectors, religious authorities etc.) are mainly not self-supporting, but rather materially supported and financed by taxes and tributes contributed by the rest of the working population. This assumes a sufficient level of labor-productivity per capita which at least makes possible a permanent surplus product (principally foodstuffs) appropriated by the state authority to sustain the activities of state functionaries. Such permanent surpluses were generally not produced on a significant scale in smaller tribal or clan societies. [9]

The archaeologist Gregory Possehl has argued that there is no evidence that the relatively sophisticated, urbanized Harappan civilization, which flourished from about 2,500 to 1,900 BCE in the Indus region, featured anything like a centralized state apparatus. No evidence has yet been excavated locally of palaces, temples, a ruling sovereign or royal graves, a centralized administrative bureaucracy keeping records, or a state religion—all of which are elsewhere usually associated with the existence of a state apparatus. [10] However, there is no recent scholarly consensus agreeing with that perspective, as more recent literature has suggested that there may have been less conspicuous forms of centralisation, as Harappan cities were centred around public ceremonial places and large spaces interpreted as ritual complexes. [11] Additionally, recent interpretations of the Indus Script and Harappan stamps indicate that there was a somewhat centralised system of economic record keeping. [12] It remains impossible to judge for now as the Harappan civilization's writing system remains undeciphered. One study summarised it as, “Many sites have been excavated that belong to the Indus Valley civilization, but it remains unresolved whether it was a state, a number of kingdoms, or a stateless commonwealth. So few written documents on this early civilization have been preserved that it seems unlikely that this and other questions will ever be answered.” [13]  

In the earliest large-scale human settlements of the Stone Age which have been discovered, such as Çatalhöyük and Jericho, no evidence was found of the existence of a state authority. The Çatalhöyük settlement of a farming community (7,300 BCE to c. 6,200 BCE) spanned circa 13 hectares (32 acres) and probably had about 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. [14]

Modern state-based societies regularly pushed out stateless indigenous populations as their settlements expanded, [15] or attempted to make those populations come under the control of a state structure. This was particularly the case on the African continent during European colonisation, where there was much confusion among the colonisers about the best way to govern societies who, prior to European arrival, had been stateless. Tribal societies, on first glance appearing to be chaotic to the Europeans, often had well-organised societal structures that were based on multiple undefined cultural factors – including the ownership of cattle and arable land, patrilineal descent structures, honour gained from success in conflict etc. [16]

Uncontacted peoples may be considered remnants of prehistoric stateless societies. To varying extents they may be unaware of and unaffected by the states that have nominal authority over their territory.

As a political ideal

Some political philosophies consider the state undesirable, and thus consider the formation of a stateless society a goal to be achieved.

A central tenet of anarchism is the advocacy of society without states. [1] [17] The type of society sought for varies significantly between anarchist schools of thought, ranging from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. [18] Anarcho-capitalism opposes the state while supporting private institutions. [19]

In Marxism, Marx's theory of the state considers that in a post-capitalist society the state, an undesirable institution, would be unnecessary and wither away. [20] A related concept is that of stateless communism, a phrase sometimes used to describe Marx's anticipated post-capitalist society.

Social and economic organization

Anthropologists have found that social stratification is not the standard among all societies. John Gowdy writes, "Assumptions about human behaviour that members of market societies believe to be universal, that humans are naturally competitive and acquisitive, and that social stratification is natural, do not apply to many hunter-gatherer peoples." [21]

The economies of stateless agricultural societies tend to focus and organize subsistence agriculture at the community level, and tend to diversify their production rather than specializing in a particular crop. [22]

In many stateless societies, conflicts between families or individuals are resolved by appealing to the community. Each of the sides of the dispute will voice their concerns, and the community, often voicing its will through village elders, will reach a judgment on the situation. Even when there is no legal or coercive authority to enforce these community decisions, people tend to adhere to them, due to a desire to be held in esteem by the community. [23]

See also

Related Research Articles

Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anarcho-capitalism</span> Political philosophy and economic theory

Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society a system of private property would still exist, and would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that voluntary slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.

Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. Although usually contrasted with social anarchism, both individualist and social anarchism have influenced each other. Some anarcho-capitalists claim anarcho-capitalism is part of the individualist anarchist tradition, while others disagree and claim individualist anarchism is only part of the socialist movement and part of the libertarian socialist tradition. Economically, while European individualist anarchists are pluralists who advocate anarchism without adjectives and synthesis anarchism, ranging from anarcho-communist to mutualist economic types, most American individualist anarchists of the 19th century advocated mutualism, a libertarian socialist form of market socialism, or a free-market socialist form of classical economics. Individualist anarchists are opposed to property that violates the entitlement theory of justice, that is, gives privilege due to unjust acquisition or exchange, and thus is exploitative, seeking to "destroy the tyranny of capital,—that is, of property" by mutual credit.

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and advocating that the interests of the individual should gain precedence over the state or a social group, while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government. Individualism makes the individual its focus, and so starts "with the fundamental premise that the human individual is of primary importance in the struggle for liberation".

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is considered the standard left wing ideology in most countries of the world. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State (polity)</span> Type of political organization

A state is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory. Government is considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indus Valley Civilisation</span> Bronze Age civilisation in South Asia

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area including much of modern day Pakistan, northwestern India and northeast Afghanistan. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. It is an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian form of radical environmentalism, which emphasises social organization, freedom and self-fulfillment.

Anarchism and violence have been linked together by events in anarchist history such as violent revolution, terrorism, and assassination attempts. Leading late 19th century anarchists espoused propaganda by deed, or attentáts, and was associated with a number of incidents of political violence. Anarchist thought, however, is quite diverse on the question of violence. Where some anarchists have opposed coercive means on the basis of coherence, others have supported acts of violent revolution as a path toward anarchy. Anarcho-pacifism is a school of thought within anarchism which rejects all violence.

The nature of capitalism is criticized by left-wing anarchists, who reject hierarchy and advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. Anarchism is generally defined as the libertarian philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful as well as opposing authoritarianism, illegitimate authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Capitalism is generally considered by scholars to be an economic system that includes private ownership of the means of production, creation of goods or services for profit or income, the accumulation of capital, competitive markets, voluntary exchange and wage labor, which have generally been opposed by most anarchists historically. Since capitalism is variously defined by sources and there is no general consensus among scholars on the definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category, the designation is applied to a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics and culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Chartier</span> American theologian, philosopher, legal scholar, and political theorist

Gary William Chartier is a legal scholar, philosopher, political theorist, and theologian. His work addresses anarchism and ethics. Chartier is a professor and serves as associate dean of La Sierra University's business school.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pre-Marxist communism</span> Overview of communist-oriented ideologies and practices prior to the works of Karl Marx

While Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined communism as a political movement, there were already similar ideas in the past which one could call communist experiments. Marx himself saw primitive communism as the original hunter-gatherer state of humankind. Marx theorized that only after humanity was capable of producing surplus did private property develop.

Anarchy is a form of society without rulers. As a type of stateless society, it is commonly contrasted with states, which are centralised polities that claim a monopoly on violence over a permanent territory. Beyond a lack of government, it can more precisely refer to societies that lack any form of authority or hierarchy. While viewed positively by anarchists, the primary advocates of anarchy, it is viewed negatively by advocates of statism, who see it in terms of social disorder.

Primitive communism is a way of describing the gift economies of hunter-gatherers throughout history, where resources and property hunted or gathered are shared with all members of a group in accordance with individual needs. In political sociology and anthropology, it is also a concept, that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership. A primary inspiration for both Marx and Engels were Lewis H. Morgan's descriptions of "communism in living" as practised by the Haudenosaunee of North America. In Marx's model of socioeconomic structures, societies with primitive communism had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation.

Social anarchism, also known as left-wing anarchism or socialist anarchism, is the branch of anarchism that sees liberty and social equality as interrelated.

Prior to the rise of anarchism as an anti-authoritarian political philosophy in the 19th century, both individuals and groups expressed some principles of anarchism in their lives and writings.

Anarchism and libertarianism, as broad political ideologies with manifold historical and contemporary meanings, have contested definitions. Their adherents have a pluralistic and overlapping tradition that makes precise definition of the political ideology difficult or impossible, compounded by a lack of common features, differing priorities of subgroups, lack of academic acceptance, and contentious historical usage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religion of the Indus Valley Civilisation</span> Religious practices of Indus valley civilization

The religion and belief system of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) people have received considerable attention, with many writers concerned with identifying precursors to the religious practices and deities of much later Indian religions. However, due to the sparsity of evidence, which is open to varying interpretations, and the fact that the Indus script remains undeciphered, the conclusions are partly speculative and many are largely based on a retrospective view from a much later Hindu perspective.

References

  1. 1 2 "Anarchism". The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2005. p. 14. Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable.
  2. ↑ Ellis, Stephen (2001). The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. NYU Press. p. 198. ISBN   978-0-8147-2219-0 – via Google Books.
  3. ↑ Béteille, André (2002). "Inequality and Equality". In Ingold, Tim (ed.). Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Taylor & Francis. pp. 1042–1043. ISBN   978-0-415-28604-6 – via Google Books.
  4. ↑ Faulks, Keith (2000). Political Sociology: A Critical Introduction. NYU Press. p. 23. ISBN   978-0-8147-2709-6 – via Google Books.
  5. ↑ Francisconi, Michael Joseph. "Political Anthropology." Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by H. James Birx, vol. 4, Sage Reference, 2006, pp. 1868–1872.
  6. ↑ "complex society". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 2022-02-19.
  7. ↑ Carneiro, Robert L. (1978). "Political Expansion as an Expression of the Principle of Competitive Exclusion". In Cohen, Ronald & Service, Elman R. (eds.). Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. p. 219.
  8. ↑ Krader (1968). Formation of the State . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hallm. ch. 6.
  9. ↑ Claessen, Henri J.M. & Skalnik, Peter, eds. (1978). The Early State. The Hague: Mouton. ISBN   978-9027979049 – via Google Books.
  10. ↑ Possehl, Gregory L. (1998). "Sociocultural Complexity Without the State: The Indus civilization". In Feinman, Gary M. & Marcus, Joyce (eds.). Archaic States. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. pp. 261–291.
  11. ↑ Sinopoli, Carla (2015). "Ancient South Asian Cities in their Regions.". In Yoffee, Norman (ed.). Early cities in comparative perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 319–342.
  12. ↑ Pao, Rajesh P.N. (2017). "The Indus Script and Economics. A Role for Indus Seals and Tablets in Rationing and Administration of Labor". In Frenez, Dennys & Jamison, Gregg M. (eds.). Walking with the Unicorn. Social Organization and Material Culture in Ancient South Asia. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. pp. 518–525.
  13. ↑ Trigger, Bruce G. (2003). Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 31–33.
  14. ↑ Scarre, Chris, ed. (2009). The Human Past (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. p. 222.
  15. ↑ Richards, John F. (2004). The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. University of California Press. pp. 4–5. ISBN   978-0-520-24678-2 – via Google Books.
  16. ↑ Tosh, John (1973). "Colonial Chiefs in a Stateless Society: A Case-Study from Northern Uganda". The Journal of African History. 14 (3). Cambridge University Press: 473–490. doi:10.1017/S0021853700012834. S2CID   163037517.
  17. ↑ Sheehan, Sean (2004). Anarchism. London: Reaktion Books. p. 85.
  18. ↑ Slevin, Carl (2003). "Anarchism". In McLean, Iain & McMillan, Alistair (eds.). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics . Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-280276-7.
  19. ↑ Morriss, Andrew P. (2008-08-15). "Anarcho-Capitalism". Libertarianism.org. Retrieved 2022-08-21. Although most anarchists oppose all large institutions, public or private, anarcho-capitalists oppose the state, but not private actors with significant market power.
  20. ↑ Engels, Frederick (1880). "Part III: Historical Materialism". Socialism: Utopian and Scientific – via Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org). State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out...Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master—free.
  21. ↑ Gowdy, John (2006). "Hunter-Gatherers and the Mythology of the Market". In Lee, Richard B. & Daly, Richard H. (eds.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 391. ISBN   978-0-521-60919-7.
  22. ↑ Chase, Diane Z. & Chase, Arlen F. (2003). Mesoamerican Elites: An Archaeological Assessment. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 23. ISBN   978-0-8061-3542-7 – via Google Books.
  23. ↑ Fleming, Thomas (1993). The Politics of Human Nature. Transaction Publishers. pp. 165–166. ISBN   978-1-56000-693-0.

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