Re: population and stratification

Richard,

There is another work that is of a piece with your argument and that is 
Michael Taylor's Community, Anarchy, and Liberty (I think Cambridge 
sometimein the 1980s). He is a political scientist whose general 
orientation is toward rational choice theory; he uses empirical 
literature on egalitarian communities to argue for the anarchist thesis 
that decentralized, non-state control is possible only in small 
face-to-face settings, that size alone accounts for the necessity for a 
state. He too relies on Ronald Cohen's idea that fissioning of social 
groups is a central way that small societies deal with conflict and when 
population size becomes sufficiently large and/or the group is 
circumscribed in a way that makes fissioning impossible, the development 
of a state becomes inevitable as a mechanism for resolving conflict.

I believe that this essentially anarchist argument is profoundly wrong 
and is not supported by the data. What it fails to take account of are 
social mechanisms for conflict resolution in larger groups that involve 
legal centralization and decentalized enforcement. Typically Big Man 
systems and what some call egalitarlian chiefdoms but are better called 
village headmen societies (to 
distinguish them from complex chiefdoms, which 
are semi-states) and societies led by a council of elders resolve conflicts 
that arise in larger groups through a 
known and recognized central authority.  But there is no concentration 
of organized force under central control and hence the enforcement is 
by popular concensus on the authority figure(s).

The key difference is not population size but the rise of exploitation, 
which begins to emerge in chiefdoms. This creates alienation. The 
dispossessed will not enforce the norms of the central authority. So 
even in chiefdoms social order depends on armed thugs (followers) of the 
chief; they can ensure order. But chiefdoms, because their military 
power is not fully organized and consolidated, are extremely violent, 
harboring lots of civil strife, battles between competing chiefs, 
rebellions by usurpers, etc. The constant strife puts limits on the 
power of a chief to exploit the peasantry (extract more and more 
tribute) as a competing chief is waiting in the wings to organize the 
commoners for an overthrow, promising "I will go easier on you; he 
oppresses too much." So, these wars are like elections, except with 
weapons. Power changes hands but the system of semi-exploitaiton 
continues but is limited. 

The consolidiation of state power in a professional military and police 
can cross those limits, greatly intensify exploitation, and lead to a 
population growth and greater cultural complexity because that 
centralized force can subdue and control large alienated subgroups. 

So here is an alternative to the anarchist, population size centered 
theory of the state that derives from Taylor, Cohen, and Carneiro, and 
one better supported by the evidence. It is this exploitation-centered 
theory that 
grounds communist optimism that large scale societies can eliminate 
inequality and resolve conflict without centralized coercion and 
exploitation is replaced by communist cooperation.

The exploitation-centered theory is to be preferred because it better 
accords with anthropological data.

Paul

On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, 
Richard N Hutchinson wrote:

> Here is a response to Andy's question about population (size and density)
> and stratification.
> 
> 1)
> One model of the relationship is found in:
> 
> Chase-Dunn and Hall.  1997.  Rise and Demise: Comparing World Systems.
>       Westview.
> 
> In Chapter 6, they lay out a synthesis of the material I presented earlier
> from Sanderson, their "theory of world-systems evolution."
> 
> Central to this "Population Pressure/Intensification/Hierarchy Formation
> Model" is what they call the Harris/Carneiro/Cohen model, which should
> sound familiar from my earlier post.  They diagram the model on page 102.
> The variables in the model are intensification, population growth,
> environmental degradation, population pressure, emigration,
> circumscription, conflict, and hierarchy formation.
> 
> I don't like long posts, so I'm not going to be a hypocrite and post one
> myself.  You get the basic idea, but go read the book, or at least the
> chapter.  You should have it on your shelf if you're a serious
> world-system scholar, it's a core text (oops, a crucial text).  
> If not, get it.  Or check it out of the library.
> 
> It should be clear enough that Chase-Dunn and Hall are no more committed
> to an orthodox marxist view of the role of population (ie, there is no 
> such problem) than I am. And they make clear that it is still operating in
> the world today.  Here is a brief quote from page 198-9:
> 
> "...global population is rising, and this is leading to many of the same
> consequences that population growth has led to in the past -- pressure on
> natural resources, pressures for migration, and circumscription.  The
> rapid increases in agricultural productivity over the past 100 years have
> allowed food production more or less to keep pace with rapid population
> expansion, but many observers doubt that the rate of increase of
> agricultural producivity can be sustained for many more decades.  Thus the
> classical force of population pressure on food supplies is likely to visit
> the modern world-system with the same general pattern that earlier systems
> experienced -- conflict and pressure for a new form of hierarchy
> formation."
> 
> Of course, you should know enough about Chris Chase-Dunn by now to know
> that he thinks this means the formation of a world state.
> 
> 
> 2)
> Another fascinating line of work on the relationship of population size
> (not density) to stratification, is the work of the late Bruce Mayhew.
> 
> Here are two citations everyone should read:
> 
> Mayhew, Bruce H. and Roger L. Levinger.  1976.  "On the Emergence of
>       Oligarchy in Human Interaction."  AJS 81/5: 1017-1049.
> 
> Mayhew, Bruce H. and Paul T. Schollaert.  1980.  "The Concentration of
>       Wealth: A Sociological Model."  Sociological Focus 13/1: 1-35.
> 
> The 76 piece is a mathematical simulation showing that limits of human
> information processing in interaction leads to polarization of power as
> group size increases, *by chance alone.*
> 
> The 80 piece presents a "Marx-Rousseau" model of wealth distribution,
> again showing that by chance alone, polarization occurs as population
> size increases, but tending from 0 toward .5 in a "closed system" (with
> income support), and from 1 toward .5 in an "open system" (laissez 
>faire).  
> 
> Of course I haven't done Mayhew justice -- read for yourself!
> 
> 
> * * * * *
> 
> 
> The conclusion I reach, any way I cut it, is that true, pure
> egalitarianism is a utopian dream in anything but a small face-to-face
> group (probably no larger than 150 people or so, the size of a typical
> gathering & hunting band).  But after I got over being depressed about
> that, I bounced back with the realization that we can fight and win the
> battle to reduce inequality and its massively negative consequences
> dramatically from the levels and trend of today.  Clearly levelling off
> and reducing the size of human society would be a tremendous positive
> factor in this goal, not to mention its benefits to the ecosystem.
> 
> RH
> 
> 
>