How did despotism arise?

An anthropological explanation

I've wanted to discuss The Origins of Democracy in Tribes, City-States and Nation-States by Ronald Glassman, which was briefly summarized in an earlier post.

In the first two sections, Glassman traces the prehistoric development of human societies from bands to tribes¹.

In band societies, there were no formal offices. Roles were task-oriented and generally given to the most competent person for the job. There were indeed leaders—almost always men—but no one could issue binding orders that had to obeyed and instead operated through example and persuasion. Status differentiation was minimal, and there were no slaves.

The major political institutions were the hunting council, comprised of male hunters who had undergone the puberty ritual; and the general assembly, which consisted of all adult band members. Consensus was required for any final decisions. In case of irreconcilable conflict, bands split apart and moved away.

Based on this, Glassman argues that the primordial form of human political organization was democracy—rational deliberation in groups. This, he says, is what makes our politics different from other animals—the ability to rationally discuss and choose different options among ourselves. By contrast, animal "politics" is based primarily on instinct and biology where the strongest rule and there is no self-conscious choice involved.

Tribal societies are those which adopted clan structures based on kinship². Glassman concurs with Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything that as human societies grew larger and more complex they adopted a wide variety of political structures. But, he says, from an evolutionary standpoint, most of those structures disappeared, while only the tribal form of social organization was successfully able to scale up without fragmenting. The tribal form of social organization engendered new social roles and new forms of political organization than those found in bands.

Democracy, he says, persisted in the form of the tribal council, which was comprised of clan elders. While clan representatives were male, Glassman argues that clans themselves were matrilineal, based on descent through the the mother's line. This was an outgrowth of women's sacred role as as life-givers and the fact that they produced most of the tribe's food as humans pivoted away from big-game hunting toward more plant-based diets. Clan mothers played an important role in the politics of early tribal societies.

Men's roles as hunters diminished in this new paradigm, so they focused their efforts instead on politics and religion. Two key roles emerged that were not found in band societies: the warrior chief and the shaman. The warrior chief led the warrior fraternities in battle, which were often based on age cohorts—groups of men and boys born at the same time. The shaman's job was to communicate with the spirit world and maintain knowledge of things like stories, sacred rituals, and herbal medicines.

The war chief was male, but shamans could be either male or female. Shamanism was not hereditary, since shamans had to be "called" to the role and demonstrate certain aptitudes such as the ability to go into trances. The potential despotism of the war chief was strictly curtailed by limiting his time in office. Wealth was still meager, and the demands of leadership usually outstripped any potential rewards that could be gained limiting the incentive to seek power.

In the next two chapters, Glassman outlines the evolution of tribes from the hunting mode of production to the herding-horticultural mode of production. Horticulture was an outgrowth of the gathering activities of women, while herding was an outgrowth of the hunting activities of men. In both societies, these new methods of food production greatly increased the amount of wealth available to human societies around the world providing an incentive for some to seek power over others.

In horticultural societies, sedentary village communities cultivated plant foods in garden plots. This produced a lot more food, which led to population growth. Population growth meant that villages increasingly rubbed up against each another leading to intravillage conflict and clan feuds. This required new political institutions and new methods of pacification since villagers could no longer flee from conflicts as could band members.

Horticulture was also a more precarious existence than hunting and gathering with more uncertainty due to things like bad weather, pests, epidemic diseases, bandits, and so forth. This led to more sophisticated and complex religious belief systems, and as a result, those who could convince others that they had some degree of control over the forces of chance and nature increasingly gained power and influence.

Nomadic pastoralists practiced transhumance—moving flocks between lowlands in winter and highlands in summer. Although they retained their freedom of movement, this meant that their societies were much smaller and less materially sophisticated than horticulturalists. However, frequent raiding meant that they became very skilled at warfare out of necessity, giving them a military advantage. Men's central role as herders, along with persistent tribal warfare, led to male-dominated societies, which in turn led to patrilineal clans—with descent reckoned through the father's line—supplanting matrilineal clans. This was already recognized by anthropologists as far back as a hundred years ago:

...among some matrilineal agricultural peoples (Trobriand Islanders) and among some hunting, trapping, or rootgathering tribes (Australians) the definite connection between cohabitation and conception does not yet seem to have been recognized even to-day. At any rate it is ignored. Consequently we have even more reason to suppose that in earlier times this lack of knowledge existed.

Observers of animal life, such as herdsmen, would naturally draw their own conclusions sooner or later and reason out the connexion [sic] between the two. Among hunting peoples the tendency, already present, to emphasize the father’s authority was probably strengthened by the fact that the care of the animals was the man’s province. Moreover, the constant wanderings kept the woman’s activities in the background.

Where, on the contrary, hoe-cultivation existed, the plenteous and certain supply of food which the woman was capable of supplying to the hunter strengthened female influence, and as it entailed a more or less fixed place of residence it made woman’s existence easier.

Richard Thurnwald, Economics in Primitive Communities (1932)

It is in these societies where despotism first arises. We can define despotism as opposed to democracy where one individual or group issues commands and the rest—the majority—don't have a say. Most people acquiesce, even if it's contrary to their own best interest. Obedience is backed by violence or the threat of violence and often justified by appeals to supernatural authority. Moreover, power is often permanent and absolute rather than temporary and conditional as it is in hunting societies. In despotic societies, a small subgroup controls a disproportionate share of the collectively-produced wealth, while the social structure comes to resemble a pyramid with power flowing downward from the ruler or ruling class through a series of intermediaries to an impoverished underclass, often including slaves.

None of this was possible in hunting societies, whether organized into bands or tribes.

It is this change which is the subject of Glassman's book. How did it happen?

In Glassman's scenario, power centers in hunting societies were initially balanced against each other in the kind of "separation of powers" we learn about in U.S. government civics classes, except in these societies it emerged without plan or design. Everyone had a say and no single group could impose its will on everyone else.

Despotism emerged when one power center was able to overcome all the others and permanently alter the social logic to institutionalize its control—whether it be males, the elderly, a clan, a warlord, foreign conquerors, or religious officials (or the rich). Methods such as initiation rites, secret societies, sacred geography (e.g. dolmens and tumuli), hereditary offices, and religious practices such as sacrifice—including of other humans—gradually transformed the social logic from one favoring democracy to one rationalizing despotism.

We can discern four major factors at play. I'm taking these from this Aeon Magazine article which echoes many of the same basic themes as Glassman’s book: How Equality Slipped Away.

First, the tribal form of social organization is comprised of clans or lineages rather than pairing families as are band societies. This allowed certain lineages to be ranked higher than others according to criteria such as bloodlines, permitting certain clans or lineages to monopolize resources and/or ritual authority³. It also allowed some clan members to assert a degree of control over lower-ranked members. Ramages (or “conical clans”) presaged the development of later feudal societies, with a paramount chief ruling over multiple levels of “subchiefs” and village headmen, often based on descent from an apical ancestor.

Clans allowed some societies to grow much larger than bands, but the cost was more hierarchy and inequality as Blair Fix describes:

In simple terms, [intensive kinship: i.e. clans] takes the nested structure of an extended lineage and turns it into a hierarchy. When you trace bloodlines, you inevitably get a family tree that has a nested structure: one founding ancestor gives rise to a tree of descendants. Intensive kinship takes this tree structure and uses it to create power relations. Within the clan, status depends on proximity to the ‘maximal lineage’ (the founding ancestor). By ritualizing bloodlines, intensive kinship unifies sub-groups who might otherwise be enemies.

When this ritualization of kin structure first emerged, the hierarchical bonds were likely loose. However, we know from history that these bonds eventually tightened into a strict chain of command. The result was kin-based dictatorships (i.e. monarchies).

Weird Consilience: A Review of Joseph Henrich’s ‘The WEIRDest People in the World’ (Economics from the Top Down)

The second factor was the control and monopolization of information—especially of ritual or sacred knowledge—in the hands of certain specific individuals or groups, whether they be they males, clans, elders, shamans, or priests and scribes. This could be used to consolidate power and authority by gatekeeping who had access to such information. As Graeber and Wengrow point out, the earliest information processing and tabulation appears to have been for ritual and divination purposes rather than facilitating economic and political transactions in groups larger than “Dunbar's number.”

A third factor was the surplus enabled by more technologically advanced methods of food and craft production in tribal societies. Surplus wealth and storable foodstuffs undermined the sharing ethos of hunting societies and permitted the hoarding of resources. The ability to pass down wealth and other material and social advantages to one’s offspring also exacerbated inequality. None of this was possible in hunting societies where cooperation was critical, formal roles were nonexistent, and there was little stored food or material wealth to inherit.

A final factor was increasing conflict, both within and between groups. Headmen in horticultural societies acquired power and influence both by conducting war and negotiating peace between villages. Flocks and herds provided tempting targets for raiding in herding societies, as did the stockpiled wealth of sedentary communities. Head-to-head military conflict favored societies with more authoritarian and less egalitarian political structures. As conflict between groups intensified, egalitarian societies were either wiped out or pushed to the margins.

Glassman borrows Max Weber's distinction between rational and irrational authority, both of which played a role in despotism. Electing the best hunter to lead an expedition is an example of the former type of authority, while a cult leader is an example of the latter. Irrational authority is often based upon charisma—another Weberian concept. Village headmen, for example, were often especially charismatic individuals, as were war leaders and shamans:

Now, crises, among humans, usually occur around certain problematical spheres of life. Because of this, charismatic leaders tend to be located in certain specific leadership roles centering around these problematic life spheres. That is, the war leader and the religious leader tend often to be charismatic leaders simply because in those two areas fear and anxiety are very great and morale and cohesion need to be raised. Hunt leaders, healing leaders—these also are often charismatic.

Glassman reviews the ethnographic literature of herding and horticultural societies from around the world to come up with a general picture of how despotism arose. In summary:

In planting societies, elders manipulated the puberty ritual to create a system of age grades in which political power and ritual authority gradually increased with age. These age grades were accompanied by painful initiation rites such as bloodletting, scarification, and tattooing to strictly limit who had access. Power in tribal societies was thus excluded from women and the young—including the warrior fraternities—resulting in what Glassman refers to as a gerontocracy—rule by elders.

At the same time, shamans, witch doctors, medicine men, and other assorted spiritual practitioners began pooling their knowledge and eventually formed a priesthood which terrorized the rest of the tribe by donning masks and wielding poisons and magical paraphernalia in order to terrorize the rest of the tribe. Glassman refers to this as a theocracy. These power centers merged in what Glassman calls the cult state—basically a system of organized terror based on purported mastery of supernatural forces often featuring a high priest who becomes the de-facto ruler of the cult state.

In herding societies, the war chief used raiding and the threat of raiding to usurp the authority of clan elders and the tribal council. Captured herds could be easily integrated into existing wealth stocks without much effort, which was not the case for the perishable wealth of horticulturalists which needed to be renewed every season. As a result, warfare became increasingly genocidal between rival herding societies with the goal of wiping out the enemy tribe completely.

Wealth acquired in raids was under the control of the war chief and his retinue and not the clans or the elders, unlike in planting societies. Booty could thus be used to reward followers and recruit allies and, as a result, warrior fraternities became increasingly loyal to their chief rather than to their own clan. As the warrior fraternities became more and more powerful relative to the rest of the tribe, male coalitional violence became the cornerstone of these types of societies. Warriors gradually emerged as the ruling class, with the war chief becoming a tribal chief, and later, a king, based on his military prowess, personal wealth, and the ability to lead warriors in battle. Glassman refers to these as pastoral-military societies, as opposed to clan-tribal societies.

That's the Cliff's Notes version, anyway. This generally corresponds with Graeber & Wengrow's three different methods of wielding power—control of knowledge, control of violence, and exceptional charisma—which they argue combined in different ways to form what scholars inaccurately refer to as the State.

It also agrees with Graeber and Wengrow's assertion that early planting communities tended to be peaceful, gynocentric and egalitarian, while the hill peoples were the aggressive, hierarchical invaders—an inversion of the usual scenario which ties inequality, patriarchy, and despotism directly to the practice of agriculture. The problem is that they claim that this "debunks" what we know about social development, when, in fact it is entirely consistent with what we know from mainstream anthropology⁴.

Note also that this also helps resolve the debate over so-called "primitive warfare." Was tribal warfare mainly small-scale ambushes and tit-for-tat raids? Or was it large-scale organized violence and "deadly serious?" The answer was most likely both, depending whether it was a herding society or a horticultural society, as well as the time and place. Gardening cultures would have little to gain from wiping out or enslaving their neighbors except more land to cultivate and more mouths to feed, so conflicts tended to be more “ceremonial” in nature—usually disputes over property or women. Herding cultures, on the other hand, could easily expand their territory and acquire more wealth by exterminating their rivals and seizing their women and animal herds. The discovery of new and better weapons (bronze, iron, armor, horses, chariots) increased the intensity of this existential competition as time went on.

The conflict between these two different types of cultures influenced the form despotism would take as civilization dawned⁵. The tension between secular and spiritual authority was resolved in different ways in different societies which drove them down varying political paths. In some tribal societies, these roles were combined in the office of the sacred king (e.g. various Germanic & African tribes). In others, the priesthood became attached to the ruler's household, becoming what Glassman calls the Kingly-Bureaucratic State (e.g. Egypt, Babylonia, China). In yet other cases, it became a theocracy where the priestly class wielded political power directly (e.g. early Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley and some North American cultures). Much of the rest of the book is devoted to exploring these various cultural trajectories and how they led to the world we live in today.

1. No one knows exactly how far back the tribal form of social organization developed. Some anthropologists argue that it goes very far back indeed—hundreds of thousands of years, in fact—and that most people in prehistory lived in hierarchical tribal societies rather than band societies (even if bands were more widespread, they were far smaller).

In their view, modern band societies studied by anthropologists are products of either displacement or catastrophe; the remnants of earlier tribal societies; or outcasts—and thus not representative of deep history.

2. A note on that term tribe: English unfortunately uses this word in two different senses. The word "tribe" can refer to what's often referred to as an "ethno-linguistic group" as distinguished from its neighbors—i.e. the Hadza tribe or the Navajo tribe. It's also used to denote societies which possessed intensive kinship structures (i.e clans) , which are referred to as tribal societies. Even professional anthropologists tend to use these terms interchangeably, as does Glassman. I will use "tribe" and "tribal" only in the latter sense here for clarity.

3. This was more pronounced in societies which practiced ancestral veneration—the closer your clan was to a revered ancestor, the more powerful it could become. This probably helped societies to scale up and overwhelm their neighbors—both ancient Chinese and Roman societies, for example, had religious traditions which revered ancestors and were very large, patriarchal, and warlike (and eventually formed huge empires). By contrast, cultures which don't keep track of ancestors at all (in some cultures, even speaking the name of the dead is forbidden) tend to have flatter social hierarchies (e.g. many Australian and South American tribes).

Incidentally, in Hawaii, only the chiefly elite was allowed to keep track of their ancestors—commoners were strictly forbidden keeping genealogies, further confirming the link between ancestral veneration and the rise of chiefs/monarchs.

4. The Davids point out that there is no 1:1 correspondence between the absolute size of a society and how despotic it is—for example, herding societies were generally smaller and less materially complex, yet also more hierarchical and aggressive than their agricultural neighbors. However, as we saw, this can be easily explained by materialist factors which they they otherwise dismiss in favor of explaining social forms as arising from some sort of voluntary collective "free choice."

5. There's a lot of literature arguing that societies along steppe frontiers became more socially complex earlier in history, either in an attempt to fight off marauders or as a result of sociocultural exchanges between agriculturalists and pastoralists, and that it was is in these locations where civilizations first developed.