Heterarchy vs Homoarchy in State and Societal Formation

Discussion

the state is not the only possible post-‘primitive’ evolutionary form.

("The state is understood throughout as ‘…a sufficiently stable political unit characterized by the organization of power and administration which is separated from the population, and claims a supreme right to govern certain territory and population, i. e. to demand from it certain actions irrespective of its agreement or disagreement to do this, and possessing resources and forces to achieve these claims’ (Grinin 1997: 20; see also Grinin 2000c: 190).")

Dimitri Bondarenko et al. :

"When we have a system of elements which ‘possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways’, it seems impossible to speak about the absence of hierarchy. In this case we rather deal with a system of heterarchically arranged hierarchies. Hence, it does not appear reasonable to denote the heterarchy alternative as ‘hierarchy’. We would rather suggest to designate it as ‘homoarchy’ which could be defined as ‘…the relation of elements to one another when they possess the potential for being ranked in one way only’. Totalitarian regimes of any time give us plenty of examples of such a sociocultural situation when the ruled have no chances to get ranked above the rulers in any possible contexts. This stands in a sharp contrast with, say, an archetypal example of a complex heterarchical system – the civil community (polis) of Athens (the 5th – 4th centuries B.C.) where the citizens ranked lower within one hierarchy (e.g., the military one) could well be ranked higher in many other possible respects (e.g., economically, or within the subsystem of civil/religious magistrates). Consequently, it was impossible to say that one citizen was higher than any other in any absolute sense.

On the other hand, it seems necessary to stress that it appears impossible to find not only any human (including informal ones), but also any totally homoarchical cultures. Hence, though in order to simplify our analysis in this paper we speak about heterarchical and homoarchical evolutionary pathways, in fact we are dealing here with heterarchy–homoarchy axis along which one could range all the known human cultures. Within this range there does not seem to be any distinct border between homoarchical and heterarchical cultures; hence, in reality it might be more appropriate to speak not about just two evolutionary pathways (heterarchical and homoarchical), but about a potentially infinite number of such pathways, and, thus, finally not about evolutionary pathways, but rather about evolutionary probability field cultures totally lacking any hierarchies.

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Until recently it was considered self-evident that just the formation of the state2 marked the end of the ‘Primitive Epoch’ and alternatives to the state did not actually exist. All the stateless societies were considered pre-state ones, standing on the single evolutionary staircase squarely below the states. Nowadays postulates about the state as the only possible form of political and sociocultural organization of the post-primitive society, about a priori higher level of development of a state society in comparison with any non-state one do not seem so undeniable as a few years ago. It has become evident that the non-state societies are not necessarily less complex and less efficient. The problem of existence of non-state but not primitive (i.e. principally non- and not pre-state) societies, alternatives to the state (as the allegedly inevitable post-primitive form of the sociopolitical organization) deserves attention. Of course, in no way do we reject the fact of existence and importance of the states in world history. What we argue, is that the state is not the only possible post-‘primitive’ evolutionary form. From our point of view, the state is nothing more than one of many forms of the post-primitive sociopolitical organization; these forms are alternative to each other and are able to transform to one another without any loss in the general level of complexity. Hence, the degree of sociopolitical centralization and ‘homoarchization’ is not a perfect criterion for evaluating a society's evolutionary level, though it is regarded as such within unilinear concepts of social evolution.

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Let us consider now in more detail one of the most influential and widespread unilinear evolutionary schemes, the one proposed by Service (1962/1971; its outline is, however, already contained in Sahlins 1960: 37): band – tribe – chiefdom – state. The scheme implies that the growth of the political complexity (at least up to the stage of the agrarian state) is inevitably accompanied by the growth of the inequality, stratification, the social distance between the rulers and the ruled, the ‘authoritarianism’ and hierarchization of the political system, decrease of the political participation of the main mass of population etc.

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It is very important to stress that on each level of the growing political complexity one could find easily evident alternatives to this evolutionary line.

Let us start with the human societies of the simplest level of sociocultural complexity. Indeed, one can easily observe that acephalous egalitarian bands are found among most of the unspecialized hunter-gatherers. However, as has been shown by Woodburn (1972, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1988a, 1988b) and Artemova (1987, 1991, 1993, 2000a, 2000b; Chudinova 1981, see also Whyte 1978: 49–94), some of such hunter-gatherers (the inegalitarian ones, first of all most of the Australian aborigines) display a significantly different type of sociopolitical organization with much more structured political leadership concentrated in the hands of relatively hierarchically organized elders, with a pronounced degree of inequality both between the men and women, and among the men themselves.

On the next level of the political complexity we can also find communities with both homoarchical and heterarchical political organization. One can mention e.g., the well-known contrast between the Indians of the Californian North-West and South-East.

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We have argued elsewhere (Korotayev 1995b) that in general there is an evident evolutionary alternative to the development of the rigid supra-communal political structures (chiefdom – complex chiefdom – state) constituted by the development of internal communal structures together with soft supra-communal systems not alienating communal sovereignty (various confederations, amphictyonies etc.). One of the most impressive results of the sociopolitical development along this evolutionary line is the Greek poleis (see [Berent 1994, 1996, 2000a, 2000b] regarding the statelessness of this type of political systems) some of which reached overall levels of complexity quite comparable not only with the ones of chiefdoms, but also with the one of states. The same can be said about its Roman analogue, the civitas (Shtaerman 1989). Note that polis/civitas as a form of sociopolitical organization was known far beyond the Classical world, both in geographical and chronological sense (Korotayev 1995b; Bondarenko 1998b), though quite a number of scholars still insist on its uniqueness.

The ‘tribal’ and ‘polis’ series seem to constitute separate evolutionary lines, with some distinctive features: the ‘polis’ forms imply the power of the ‘magistrates’ elected in one or another way for fixed periods and controlled by the people in the absence (or near-absence) of any formal bureaucracy. Within the tribal systems we observe the absence of any offices whose holders would be obeyed simply because they hold posts of a certain type, and the order is sustained by elaborate mechanisms of mediation and search for consensus.

There is also a considerable number of other complex stateless polities (like the ones of the Cossacks of Ukraine and Southern Russia till the end of the 17th century [Chirkin 1955; Rozner 1970; Nikitin 1987; etc.], the Celts of the 5th – 1st centuries B.C. [Grinin 1997: 32–33; Kradin 2001: 149], or the Icelandic polity of the ‘Age of Democracy’ till the middle of the 13th century [Olgeirsson 1957; Gurevich 1972; Steblin-Kamenskij 1984]) which could not yet be denoted with any commonly accepted terms, and whose own self-designations are often too complex (like Kazach'e Vojsko) to have any chance to get transformed into general terms. Such examples can of course be further multiplied.

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The same overall level of complexity could be achieved both through the development of a single polity and through the development of a politically uncentralized interpolity network. This alternative was already noticed by Wallerstein (1974, 1979, 1987) who viewed it as a dichotomy: world-economy – world-empire. Note that according to Wallerstein these are considered precisely as alternatives, and not two stages of social evolution. As one would expect, we agree with Wallerstein whole-heartedly at this point. However, we also find here a certain oversimplification. In general, we would like to stress that we are dealing here with a particular case of a much more general set of evolutionary alternatives.

The development of a politically uncentralized interpolity network became an effective alternative to the development of a single polity long before the rise of the first empires. As an example, we could mention the interpolity communication network of the Mesopotamian civil-temple communities of the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C. which sustained a much higher level of technological development than that of the politically unified Egyptian state, contemporary to it. Note that the intercommunal communication networks already constitute an effective evolutionary alternative to the chiefdom. E.g., the sociopolitical system of the Apa Tanis should be better described as an intercommunal network of a few communities (incidentally, in turn acting as a core for another wider network including the neighboring less developed polities [chiefdoms and sovereign communities] – see Führer-Haimendorf 1962).

We also do not find it productive to describe this alternative type of cultural integration as a world-economy. The point is that such a designation tends to downplay the political and cultural dimension of such systems. Take for example, the Classical Greek inter-polis system. The level of complexity of many Greek poleis was rather low even in comparison with a complex chiefdom. However, they were parts of a much larger and much more complex entity constituted by numerous economic, political and cultural links and shared political and cultural norms.

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The polis with a level of complexity lower than the one of the complex chiefdom, turned out to be part of a system whose complexity was quite comparable with that of the state (and not only the early one).

The same can be said about the intersocietal communication network of Medieval Europe (comparing its complexity in this case with an average world-empire). Note that in both cases some parts of the respective systems could be treated as elements of wider world-economies. On the other hand, not all the parts of such communication networks were quite integrated economically. This shows that the world-economies were not the only possible type of politically decentralized intersocietal networks. Actually, in both cases we are dealing with the politically decentralized civilization, which for most of human history over the last few millennia, constituted the most effective alternative to the world-empire. Of course, many of such civilizations could be treated as parts of larger world-economies. Wallerstein suggests that in the age of complex societies only the world-economies and world-empires (‘historical systems’, i.e. the largest units of social evolution) could be treated as units of social evolution in general. Yet we believe that both politically centralized and decentralized civilizations should also be treated as such. One should stress again the importance of the cultural dimension of such systems.

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Thus, it is possible to contrast societies that followed the pathway of political centralization and ‘authoritarianization’ with cultures that further elaborated and perfected democratic communal backgrounds and corresponding self-government institutions. However, such a culture as the Benin Kingdom of the 13th – 19th centuries can make the picture of sociopolitical evolution even more versatile. In particular, it reveals that not only heterarchical but also homoarchical societies can reach a very high (incomparably higher than that of complex chiefdoms) level of sociocultural complexity and political centralization still never transforming into a state during the whole long period of existence. The Benin evidence also testifies that local community's autonomy is not a guarantee of complex society's advancement along the heterarchical pathway. We have suggested elsewhere to define this form of sociopolitical organization as ‘megacommunity’.

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Another evident alternative to the state seems to be represented by the supercomplex chiefdoms created by some nomads of Eurasia – the number of the structural levels within such chiefdoms appear to be equal, or even to exceed those within the average state, but they have an entirely different type of political organization and political leadership; such type of political entities do not appear to have been ever created by the agriculturists.

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Within the upper range of complexity and integrativity of the sociopolitical organization the state (at least in the pre-industrial world) ‘competes’ with not only heterarchical systems of institutions (e. g., with polis) but also with some forms of sociopolitical organization not less homoarchical than the state.

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The notion of ‘Politogenesis’ was elaborated in the 1970s and 80s by Kubbel (e. g., 1988) who employed it to define the process of state formation. But it has become evident by today that processes of archaic societies' political evolution should not be reduced to the rise of the state exclusively because this is rather just one particular version of those processes. We suggest to use this term in order to denote the formation of any types of complex political organization, which also looks more justifiable from the etymological point of view: in ancient Greece the word politeia meant the political order of any type, and not ‘state’.

We believe that among the students of politogenesis one can observe a tendency to narrow the analysis to the study of the state formation process only. This entirely legitimate intention to restrict and define the study field still leads to the underestimation of the fact that for long periods of time the state formation process was inseparably linked with other evolutionary processes (e. g., processes of religious evolution), and this seems to hinder any really profound explanation of the state formation processes themselves. We believe that such explanations may be only achieved if the state formation processes are studied against background of all the other contemporary evolutionary processes.

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One of the causes of this situation can be defined as ‘polito-centrism’. Volens-nolens the state formation starts to be regarded as a central process of the evolution of medium complexity cultures not just because of initial definition of the research objective (which seems to be entirely legitimate); it starts to be regarded as an objectively central process, whereas this is not always true, because in many cases other processes (e. g., socio-structural or religious) could be more important."

(https://www.socionauki.ru/book/files/early_state/1_alternatives_of_social_evolution.doc)