The Deep Biosocial Roots of Egalitarian Politics
Orientation:
Anthropological confirmation of primitive communism
When Marx and Engels proclaimed that the first human societies practiced ”primitive communism” they hardly had much company. In the first half of the 20th century two exceptions were the archeologist V. Gordon Childe and later on the anthropologist Leslie White. It was only in the 1960s and 1970s that empirical confirmation of hunter-gatherers came forth to be seen in the works of Marshall Sahlins’ Stone Age Economics, Morton Fried’s The Evolution of Political Society and Elman Service’s Primitive Social Organization.
Evolutionary psychology’s use of the term hierarchy is overstated
In the 1980s evolutionary psychology was born as a discipline devoted to not throwing the Darwinian baby out with the Social Darwinian and Sociobiology bath water. However, all too often Darwinian evolutionary psychologists played fast and loose with the term “hierarchy”. They find hierarchies among the apes, breezily survey different types of human societies and then conclude that hierarchy is a cross-species and universal phenomenon.
Some provocative questions
We normally think of hierarchies as starting from the top and proceeding down. But in Christopher Boehm’s book Hierarchy in the Forest he argues that among chimps and humans, hierarchies proceeded from the bottom up, what he calls “inverted hierarchies.” Boehm claims that in both chimp and human societies there is a range of egalitarian and hierarchical structures but he points out that humans have both more extreme forms of egalitarian and more extreme forms of hierarchical relations. Why is this? What kind of pre-adaption inventions did proto-humans acquire that made humans both more egalitarian and more hierarchical than other great apes? Are humans carrying around something like a Lockean blank slate with respect to their political behavior? Or there might be something like what Morton Fried called a universal drive to parity. How might the much discredited but now acceptable “group selection” process have to do with this?
If hunter-gatherers really are egalitarian how do they deal with upstarts and leaders? Even in egalitarian societies there are leaders, but what are the qualities of leaders in these societies that make them “first among equals”. Can we predict the conditions under which stable hierarchies will emerge among hunter-gatherers and conversely the circumstances hierarchies are less likely to emerge? Which among the apes are more likely to be hierarchical and which are more egalitarian? How far back in biological evolution does egalitarianism go? What are the similarities and differences between chimp societies and human hunter-gatherers?
Where are we going?
In the first part of my article I discuss how both human hunter-gatherers, bonobos and chimps maintained egalitarianism with the use of techniques designed to invert hierarchies and keep upstarts and leaders in line. I also discuss the difference between simple and complex hierarchies as well as moderate and extreme forms of dominance. The second part of my article compares egalitarian political relations between gorillas, chimps and bonobos. How are they different from each other in size of the group, mating practices, male and female mobility, coalition building, sexual availability, dominance patterns in male and females and willingness to defend resources? Is there a break between the ape line and our common ancestors or is there a continuation of egalitarianism going back millions of years?
The third part of my article identifies five techniques proto-humans used to make us both more egalitarian. These include the invention of hunting weapons, the advent of cooperative hunting, adaptation to cold and rapid climate changes, the increase in cognitive and linguistic abilities that allowed us to set up generalized reciprocal relations beyond a single generation as well as to set up strategic alliances with other groups. In my last section how the rise of a new kind of group selection theory helps to explain the cooperative and egalitarian nature of the first human societies. I close this article by pointing out that humans have a conflicted human nature. We would prefer to be dominant more than being egalitarian but prefer egalitarian relations to being subjugated. Given that most people do not have the time, patience, social psychological skills or assertiveness it takes to dominant most work very hard at the second option, to be egalitarian rather than be subjugated.
My purpose in this article
For a Marxist’s dialectical view of history, it is comforting to know that for 95% of our history we were egalitarian hunter-gatherers and that the last 5000 years of caste and class alienation is minuscule in the larger scheme of things. Our hope is that communist societies will be a return of primitive communism on a higher level, having incorporated the material wealth of class societies. This article is designed to show how the preference for egalitarianism goes way back to bonobo and chimp lines and possibly all the way back to a common ancestor. Those who imagine human nature as being hierarchical don’t have a leg to stand on, not only in social evolution but in Darwinian biological evolution as well.
I Political Terminology
Inverted hierarchies in human societies and among chimps
Boehm steers a middle ground between claiming there are hierarchies in nature on one hand or leveling egalitarianism on the other. On one hand, he is critical of socio-culturists in thinking that egalitarian politics of hunter-gatherers means that these societies had no hierarchies. Neither is he claiming that human hunter gatherers invented egalitarian politics in spite of a sea of hierarchies among the great apes. For him, egalitarianism is not the absence of hierarchy, but it involves an inverted type of hierarchy. An egalitarian hierarchy is one where those subordinate on an individual level in comparison to more dominant males, by uniting together and using mechanisms of social control to reverse the flow of power so that the rank-and-file as a group has power over those who are dominant on a one-on-one basis. Egalitarian society is a product of large, well-united coalitions of subordinates who assertively deny political power to would-be alphas. Boehm’s hypothesis could be falsified if numerous instances were found of domination episodes that were successful in converting a reverse dominance hierarchy into an orthodox one.
Boehm contends that If the repeated actions of people could speak the principles which guide their egalitarianism it would be: “All humans seek to rule, but if they cannot rule they prefer to be equal to than risk being subordinate”. Each main political actor will give up his modest chances of becoming alpha in order to be certain that no one will ever be alpha over him. Spoken more rationally, we all agree to give up our statistically small chance of becoming ascendant in order to avoid the very high probability that we will be subordinated. This reasoning explains how the political attitude keeps egalitarian ethos in place, be it foragers or even in simple horticultural societies. In short, this theory of human nature combines Hobbes’ contention that humans have a competitive predisposition for domination which leads to conflict and the need for governance with Rousseau’s claim that humans have a need for autonomy and serenity.
Boehm’s focus is not on egalitarian human hunter-gatherers but on the political system of chimps. He writes that “inverted hierarchies of egalitarianism are not unique to humans”. Boehm argues that among chimps and other species of the great apes, many forms of proto-egalitarianism existed alongside and in interaction with competition and its consequent hierarchy. In fact, the earliest precursor for egalitarian politics existed among African apes living 5-7 million years ago. They formed political coalitions which enabled rank and file to whittle away at power of alpha individuals.
Primitive and complex hierarchies
A primitive hierarchy is a rank ordering of who has access to mates, resources, creature comforts based on appearance, age, gender, size, verbal range and physical skills. There is no attempt of those at the top to coordinate, systematize, regulate and expand these relations. These are primarily biosocial hierarchies. In complex hierarchies, rank ordering in access to mates, resources, creature comforts and the recruitment of those lower down in the hierarchy to coordinate, systematize, regulate and expand these hierarchical relations. Complex hierarchies are more likely to be socio-cultural. Evolutionary psychologists tend to confuse primitive with complex hierarchies.
Moderate and extreme dominance
Dominance is the capacity to intimidate, take something away from someone and force them to do something. This can occur in both primitive and complex hierarchies. The degree of individual dominance can be selected more readily if reproductively disadvantaged subordinates have difficulty in leaving the group to seek better success elsewhere.
There are at least two ways in which dominance can be achieved, despotically or in a more moderate way. A despot, dictator or tyrant hoards power, ignores feedback and rules without feedback from others. They are arbitrary in what they decide and there is no social plan about how to keep enacting an authoritarian way in the future. A moderate dominator will pay attention to the needs of the lower group and allow feedback from others. Their decisions about what to do will be subject to common procedures rather than whim and future policies are organized as part of a plan. Despots are more likely to exist in non-human societies, though we could all point to rulers in human societies who behaved as despots. Below is a little table which summarizes this.
Two Types of Domination
| Category | Moderate dominator | Extreme dominator: Despot, Dictator, Tyrant |
| Degree of power shared | Some sharing of power, open to feedback | Hoarding of power: ignores needs of lower groups and proceeds without feedback |
| Degree of predictability about a given policy | Some predictability based on common procedures | No predictability – arbitrary |
| Degree of foresight about future polity | Regulated according to a plan | No long-term projection: focused on the present |
| Prevalence in societies | Some human societies | Prevalent in non-human societies |
II Political Economy of Egalitarian Foragers
Balancing cooperation and aggression
Hunter-gatherers and tribesman have to walk a delicate balance between supporting both cooperation and aggression in hunting but at the same time minimizing aggression in non-warfare settings. In some societies men whose aggression are stirred by participation in warfare sometimes are deliberately avoided as chiefs. What they try to avoid is an upstart who competes with other men for their women’s sexual favors, is quick to take offense, is slow to defer to others and expects obedience. An upstart is motivated to dominate, is brittle and cannot tolerate opposition.
Qualities of good leaders
The qualities of a good leader, on the other hand, according to Boehm include the following: The negative traits include arrogance, overbearingness, boastfulness, personal aloofness and the absence of hostile feelings and stinginess. The positive qualities of good leaders include care in not surpassing one’s pears, guidance – not micromanagement, self-assertiveness, emotional self-control, generosity and hospitality, shrewdness, drive, a touch of ruthlessness, wisdom, being fair-minded, tactful and reliable, having oratory skills and mediating disputes. Other skills include making euphemistic arguments so that differences of opinion do not engender personal conflict, detachment, being past the age of intense sexual desire and a solid warrior reputation and supernational power. With the rise of agricultural states and industrial capitalist societies human hierarchies become far more severe than in any other hominid line. Paradoxically, some human hunter gatherers are represented as more egalitarianism than chimp societies and some settled hunter gatherers possess far more highly developed, relatively permanent hierarchies.
How the rank-and-file deal with upstarts and leaders
Among humans, egalitarianism is not about gender relations within the family but about the relationships between families of a band. Egalitarian rules do not pertain to intrafamilial use of authority. Cross-culturally within domestic households dynamics is understood as “none of the band’s business”. There are degrees of variation across societies. Among nomadic hunter-gatherers and tribes these techniques of wielding political power for the rank-and-file include the following. In dealing with upstarts the rank-and-file uses techniques include a cool manner of greeting; using the silent treatment while the rank-and-file pretends to not hear the upstart or intentionally misunderstanding what the upstart says. The silent treatment is unanimously agreed on ahead of time. More intense techniques include public ridicule for being overly pushy or shunning – denying any social contact at all. The more intense form of techniques include ostracism which is a form of long-term social distancing. If all else fails, assassination.
As for the more established leaders, a low-grade method of undermining a leader is by gossiping to attacking their reputation. A more intense form of confrontation is disobedience. Because the organization of hunter-gatherers is more porous, a leader’s authority can be undermined by members of the rank-and-file moving in together to another band.
Five conditions where hierarchies might emerge among hunter-gatherers
First are the conditions which will undermine hierarchy. To begin with the open nature of a group’s composition will make group withdrawal from a hierarchy more likely than a direct show-down. Second, the changing composition of a band undermines the stability of the development of deep-seated hierarchies. Third, the nomadic nature of most hunter-gatherers makes the accumulation of resources, that is the spoils over which hierarchies might develop, not possible. Fourth, under cold conditions, the sharing of meat supports practices of intense cooperation, sharing and egalitarianism. Lastly, non-specialized economic production acts as a brake on the development of hierarchy.
What is implied for the conditions of hierarchy that might emerge include:
- Closed nature of the group where people do not leave and new people are not easily invited in.
- Stable composition of a band as opposed to strangers moving in and out.
- A concentration of resources as among the fishing tribes of the Northwest United States where sedentary nature makes accumulation possible.
- Warm climatic conditions where sharing and cooperation is not a necessity and they do not share meat beyond the family.
- Specialized economic production.
What is most surprising is the counter-intuitive results of variation of climate. It would seem that warm conditions would invite families to spread out and make hierarchies difficult to sustain. While the cold conditions would definitely intensify cooperation it would also invite the formation of hierarchies as in the caves of France and Spain because there was a little choice of an alternative band to join or freeze to death. In addition to these skills, there are oral tradition of a band that will preserve stories about serious domination episodes.
III Commonalities and Differences in Political Patterns of Hunter-Gathers and Chimps
First, the leader of a band, like an alpha chimp male, cannot impose force and a personally chosen strategy on the entire group. Secondly, the intervention of the leader in group conflicts is essential and is done by the leaders of both species. Lastly, leaders of both species always face the threat of withdrawing from one group to another.
Differences in political patterns of hunter gatherers and chimps include the following:
- Male human foragers do not exhibit frequent competitive displays aimed at political domination of other males.
- There is less overt competition for food among human hunter-gathers. There is an unconscious randomization system to defuse a sense of ownership where large amounts of meat are involved.
- Among human hunter-gatherers access to females and natural resources is not decided routinely on the basis of threats backed by the possibility of attack.
- Surprisingly, given the last three differences, there are higher homicide rates in human foraging societies.
IV Proto-Political Economy of Pre-human Apes
Gorillas, chimps and bonobos
How deeply do egalitarian political relations go into the ape line? Boehme compares bonobos, chimps and gorillas across a number of categories. Gorillas are the most hierarchical or “right wing” of the three. There is a relationship between the differences in size between males and females and the degree to which males and females are egalitarian. When males are considerably larger than females this “sexual dimorphism” displays result in fierce competition between males for mates. Dominant males have harems, which means there is a sexual double standard. Contrary to gorillas chimps and bonobos are promiscuous. The more the size between males and females of a species is similar, the less promiscuous males are and the more they invest in females.
Once the competition of dominance among gorillas is established dominance is not continuously tested, as it is among chimps. Subordinate males are free to leave to where they can seek to displace a silverback male elsewhere. Interestingly, male chimps cannot leave the group, but because of this political tension is not resolved by withdrawal but by developing strategies whereby these subordinates might reverse the hierarchy.
Both chimps and bonobos are closer to egalitarian political relations than gorillas. They share a number of characteristics in common. First, each live in a community of roughly 80 individuals which is open to both fission and fusion. They travel in smaller groups (in search of food) within a community range. In both species females are allowed to emigrate. But the differences between them are significant:
- Bonobos have female coalitions, chimps do not.
- Bonobo males do not have male coalitions, chimp males do.
- Bonobo females have concealed ovulation which makes face-to-face lovemaking possible.
- Concealed ovulation leads to reduced male competition for mating.
- Within bonobo sexual hierarchies, the top male and females are equal. Among chimps the top male is higher than the female.
- Bonobos are less obsessed with status rivalry.
- Bonobos are less systemic than chimps in defending resources.
Here is a table that summarizes their differences:
Great Ape Spectrum
Most Egalitarian Most Dominant
| Category | Bonobos | Chimps | Gorillas |
| Mating practices | Promiscuous fission-fusion | Promiscuous fission-fusion | Harems |
| Male mobility | Males of both species essentially stay in their natal group | Male subordinates cannot leave the group Can stay and subvert the dominance hierarchy | Subordinate males can leave and seek to displace a silverback elsewhere |
| Female mobility | Females tend to emigrate | Female subordinates can leave if reproductively available Males can bully females into going away | |
| Female hierarchies/ coalitions | Significant female coalitions | Females have dominance ranking in access to food, not mates No significant female coalitions | |
| Crudeness or subtleness of sexual availability | Conceal ovulation Different placement of the vagina makes ventral-ventral copulation easier | Cannot conceal ovulation Moderate sexual dimorphism | Extreme sexual dimorphism |
| Impact of availability on male competition coalitions | Less competition between males no significant male coalitions | More competition between males. Significant male coalitions | |
| Dominance patterns between males | Less obsessed with status rivalry | Dominance manifested continuously | Dominance not manifested continuously |
| Dominance patterns between males and females | Top male and top female are equal | Chimp male is higher than chimp female | |
| Defending resources | Less systematic about defending resources | More systematic about defending resources | |
| Group integration | Live in communities | Live in communities | |
| Size of group | Sharing a range with 80 or more others | Sharing a range with 80 or more others | |
| Mobility patterns | Traveling in various size parties within the community range | Traveling in various sized parties within the community range | |
| Male coalitions | Rare | Common | Rare |
The ricketiness of hierarchies among chimps
In 1984 Boehm traveled to Gombe Research Center in Tanzania under the tutelage of Jane Goodall to study the political behavior of wild chimpanzees. What he found was that every young male becomes driven by political aspirations to dominate all the females. He will display at lower ranking adult males as he works his way up the hierarchy. In female hierarchies structure of dominance is less linear and the use of appeasement in greeting less regular. Female dominance comes into play more in displacing subordinates at feeding sites. Signs of domination include stares, bristle, charge, display or attack. One way of communicating a political challenge is to ignore the display of a superior.
Submissive behavior can occur in vocalizations, gestures, postures or facial expressions. Examples include pant-grunt greeting, crouching, bobbling while presenting one’s rump, sleeking the hair and displaying a fear-grin. Grooming is a good strategy for the pursuit of coalition partners. For both sexes, a dominant position leads to better access to food resources, better mating opportunities and position in the group when traveling.
Submission has evolutionary adaptiveness. Fear is useful to individual reproductive success so the loser of a fight won’t be wounded or killed. Submitters would prefer to dominate and are likely to be ambivalent when they submit. This conflicted nature shows itself in graded call system which means certain calls can and do mutate into other calls along an acoustical continuum. In other words, at close range a subordinate will use fear-call within close range of the alpha, but in the trees the call turns defiant.
The dominance orders in chimps are heavily improvised. This means that dominance roles can be reversed under certain conditions such as when a) lower ranking adult male hunter possesses prey he caught himself, b) when male has taken a female on an extended courtship and a higher ranking male intrudes. There are few contexts in which the male actually controls the group, acting as its governor. Every chimp decides autonomously where to forage and whether or not to join the hunt. Dominant chimps are more like a bully than a despotic ruler or strong governor who possesses decisive authority. When dyadic conflicts begin, the alpha can exert definitive control over such behavior and his actions amount to governance with authority. But when it comes to controlling larger groups, alpha possibilities are limited to merely influencing the group decision. An alpha can only impose his will on the entire group momentarily and temporarily, by terrorizing its members with his displays. He is a tyrant, not a dictator.
Portrait of our common ancestor
Does egalitarianism go further back than bonobos and chimps? Boehm builds a political portrait of a common ancestor to make speculation more educated. Common ancestors lived approximately 7 million years ago. Boehm bases his portrait on conservative behavioral features all four species share today. About seven million years ago, the gorilla link went one way and chimps, bonobos and humans went another. About 1 ½ -3 million years ago bonobos and chimps diverged and became two separate species. Given that decisive individual leadership is prominent in gorillas, noteworthy among chimps, present in moderate form in bonobos and very prominent in some human societies Boehm concludes that leadership in these societies must have been prevalent at least to a moderate degree.
How common were coalitions? He concludes that there must have been small political coalitions. On one hand, female small alliances with other females are rare in gorillas, chimps and humans but prominent in bonobos. Male alliances were rare in gorillas and bonobos but common in humans and chimps. It is likely that this common ancestor defended territory. Even adult male bonobos stick together and appear antagonistic when different groups meet. Humans show a variable but widespread pattern of raiding, feuding and warfare.
Lastly, how likely are rebellious actions to reverse hierarchies in the common ancestor? Collective subordinate rebellion is present in chimps and in all four species of individuals who combine forces to neutralize the power of their superiors. Seven million years ago the common ancestor had the potential to cope collectively with conspecific interlopers and to gang up on powerful individuals within the group. Five million years ago all males of a group hunted together, attacked predators together and protected natural resources together. Within the group very large coalitions of males and females had the potential to work effectively to control power at the top. In sum, egalitarianism seems to go a very long way back!
V) The Emergence of Radical Egalitarianism Among Humans: Pre-adaptations
How do we explain at the level of phenotype of how a species could have reversed hierarchies and become egalitarian? Pre-adaptations include:
- invention of hunting weapons;
- advent of large game cooperative hunting;
- cold and rapid climatic changes;
- cognitive and Linguistic abilities;
- strategizing about forming political alliances
- imagining future scenarios
- gossiping and
- sharing beyond reciprocal altruism
Why weaponry is democratic
Darwin pointed out that jaws, jaw muscles and teeth diminished in size after weapons were introduced to human life. Weapons reduced the natural selection pressures that had been keeping in place apelike canines. But don’t chimps and gorillas throw things that are like weapons? Chimps throw missiles but they are used in conjunction with display and bluffing behavior or in the very early stages of attack, rather than as tools for disabling or killing. Jumping around on the ground and bristling one’s hair merely telegraphs an attack that is often avoidable through flight. But brandishing a spear conveys either an immediate and lethal threat or one that can be carried out at a distance.
What does this have to do with egalitarianism? When killing becomes both easy and rapid the balance of power between two combatants becomes more a matter of skill in tool use rather than a matter of canine size, jaw strength, body size and strength. A larger individual may be stronger but he is also a larger target. The combined weaponry of a group of rebellious subordinates could easily be directed at a single alpha male who is too aggressive. It also makes fighting less predictable. But if weapons work to democratize social life what keeps the alpha males from organizing subordinates to keep themselves in power? The answer is that if inverted hierarchies are possible why would any rank-and-file member choose to be subjugated by a single dominant male? It would only be under more complex societies such as chiefdoms or agricultural states where inverted hierarchies are not an option that a commoner would accept subjugation by a leader as opposed to being driven into exile or killed.
How far back in time do weapons go? Brace wrote that a hafted spear point was present as far back as the Middle Pleistocene in Africa. Thrown hunting spears were much more powerful as opposed to spears used just for jabbing. This could have radically changed the forces of natural selection whereas previously, natural selection worked more on bodily robustness. Weapons were in a position to transform political behavior as far back as 500,000 years ago. This allowed plenty of time for weapons to affect the genetic selection of body size and build. On the whole, Boehm’s claim is that weapons appeared early enough to have affected:
- dentition;
- display loss;
- body size and
- hair loss on the body
Sharing of large-game meat
Chimps have been known to share large packets of meat. However, it is not systematic but at the whim of an adult male who controls it aggressively. The most meat usually goes to the actual hunter and to those of higher rank. Human hunter-gathers are different because the amount of large game meat individuals receive is only moderately contingent on hunting ability. The extent of sharing is positively correlated with the average package sized of resources and the unpredictability of securing them. The more unpredictable the resource the more sharing will take place. But what could drive hunter-gatherers to share meat more frequently?
Drawing on the work of Richard Potts book Humanity’s Descent: The Consequences of Ecological instability, Boehm claims that dramatic climatic fluctuations occurred between 128,000 to 72,000 BCE which were both unusually extreme and frequent. The results were that hunting or the active or passive scavenging of large game would have periodically caused meat to become dominant in the human diet. Periodic tundra-like conditions may well have skewed the subsistence division of labor from mixed forging to periods of heavy dependency of large game hunting. Since large game hunting requires cooperation, this would suppress alpha male behavior and would have effectively equalized the redistribution of meat.
Cognitive and Linguistic Abilities
Evolutionary psychologists argue that most human behavior is motivated by maximizing one’s genes. This means individuals will invest in their sexual partners, their children and their relatives before they will invest in strangers. But we know that strangers do give and take in all societies in a cooperative way. This is explained by something called reciprocal altruism. People will give to strangers in exchange for receiving something later. But this does not account for the institutionalized general reciprocity Marshall Sahlins found existed in his book Stone Age Economics that occurs among hunter-gatherers. Institutionalized means that the expectations to share built into society go beyond the lifetime of an individual. The person I am helping now may not be living when my turn comes. Foragers often cooperate with nonskin spontaneously and with a spirit of generosity rather than distributing their contribution in a calculated way. This shows that humans can develop economic systems that include strangers as if they were kin.
The ability to share is not the only use of more generous cognitive skills. To reverse a dominance hierarchy requires the skill to strategize politically in the context of alliance formation, a type of calculation that involves complicated assessments of power situations. This skill also allows subordinates to keep potential upstarts in line by gossiping about them and other techniques we discussed earlier. For example, gossiping provides an information network that enables an entire group to respond to transgressions. This ability requires cognitive displacement over an issue that does not exist in the here and now.
VI) Egalitarian Polity Pressures on Natural Selection by Group Selection
Natural selection takes place either by individuals competing genetically on an indirect basis as Darwin postulated or sometimes competing on a direct basis – as when one hunter successfully steals another’s wife. For three decades evolutionary psychology has assumed that the expected behavioral result within group selection is selfishness and nepotism, never altruism.
So the gene selfishness theory goes like this. In order for altruism to be advantageous, groups practicing altruism with each other could not compete those groups who were selfish. The inclusive fitness-reciprocal altruism’s model of Wrangham and Peterson, Tooby and Cosmides, Cronin and Masters assumed that selection arising from competition between groups is feeble compared to competition withina group. Selection between individuals within the group is high because we exhibit a higher rate of genetic variation. On the contrary, groups are likely to be much less genetically variable than individuals because groups are composed of many individuals and averaging effects make variation between nearby groups much less than variation among individuals within those groups. What the selfish gene theory denies is that natural conditions could ever lead to between-group selection approaching the power of within-group selection. Yet realistic possibilities for group selection were first raised by Darwin himself. Over the last thirty years a new group selection theory has been developed by David Sloan Wilson.
Following Sloan Wilson, Boehm’s hypothesis is that the advent of egalitarianism was built up among pre-human and proto-human primates. That has shifted the balance of forces within natural selection so that between-group selection was amplified while group selection was substantially debilitated. Egalitarianism made altruism pay off among groups that practiced it in competition with groups that were more selfish. Inclusive fitness theorists might claim that in order for group selection to work, groups must be rigidly demarcated and must exist for a very long time. Sloan Wilson denies that either of these conditions are necessary.
Edward Osborne Wilson points out that that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than one hundred generations. A human generation is 25 years so q,000 generations is 25,000 years ago and 2,000 generations is 50,000 years. This is the approximate date usually given by archeologists as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. This is more than sufficient time for human nature to have been transformed in the direction of egalitarianism.
The behaviors that weaken within group selection among hunter gatherers are the very leveling strategies we discussed earlier: the elimination of pronounced dominance hierarchies and coalitions to keep alpha male types from dominating along with consensus decision making. As a result of this, together with in-group conformity pressures, reduce phenotypic variation among individuals. Opponents of group selection theory often argue that altruism wouldn’t work because of those who would take advantage and get a free ride while doing nothing. They would reap the benefits without absorbing the costs. But hunter-gatherers control the free rider problem though gossip, ridicule or ostracism or criticism. Secondly, while sharing is spontaneous, Boehm claims it is vigilant sharing, not blind sharing.
At the same time, consensus decision-making may invite different hunting strategies such as hunting different types of large game. These varying commitments may lead to differential reproductive success between groups. One group may survive while another suffers decimation.
Boehm sums up the relationship between within-group and between-group variations in the following way:
The former favors individual selfishness and helping of kin (nepotism) and I deem it likely that selection at that level has remained by far the predominant mode of selection for egalitarian bands. This is because the egalitarian syndrome has little effect on the high extinction rates that prevail at the individual level. With variation, however, things are quite different. I judge that with egalitarians variation between groups has approached…but surely not equaled…variation within groups. (217)
VII The Conflicted Legacy of Human Nature
Boehm closes by reminding us that Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau had pessimistic and optimistic theories about human nature respectively. Where they both agreed is that human beings were blank slates. Whereas the evolutionary biologics would argue we are not blank slates, many think a choice between the selfishness of Hobbes and the altruism of Rousseau must be made. Sociobiology claims that innate dispositions such as selfishness and nepotism fit with entire web of social life. The early E.O. Wilson claims this for human nature, while Richard Alexander and James Wilson argue that it is the basis of morals. Mainstream analysis streamlined description of chimp social behavior and portray dominance vs submission as binary with nothing in between. Wrangham and Peterson go so far as to claim there are two human natures, a Hobbesian “Demonic Male” and Rousseauian females.
A few thinkers, beginning with William James, considered human nature as inherently contradictory including Tiger and Fox, Roger Masters, Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and recently, Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Sober and David Sloan Wilson, in their book Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior argue for multilevel selection which includes both selfishness and altruism. For David Sloan Wilson there is a conflict between what I do for myself vs what I do for my children and relatives vs what I do for strangers. The later E.O. Wilson has come over to multi-level selection.
For Boehm, people want to dominate others more than they prefer egalitarian relations. Yet they prefer egalitarian relations to being dominated. The three tendencies are dominance, resentment of domination and submission. Egalitarian politics is the uneasy cross-fire between dominance and submission. We humans will never be able to live in relaxed egalitarian societies. Yet it takes a significantly altruistic species to come up with a strongly positive blueprint for group life beyond family social life. However, humans have lived in reversed dominance hierarchies for at least several thousand generations.
The extremes of the conflict are shown in more complex societies where we are on the verge of being ant-like in the division of labor and organic cooperation in material reproduction and our unusual capacity to go to war. Yet the potential for intensive, genocidal warfare would not have arisen had we not invented both morality and egalitarian syndrome which preceded it. It is morality that enables us to shame our males into putting their lives on the line for the group, while it is innate altruistic propensities that help to motivate those males to suffer and die in the interest of the rest of the group.
Politically, visionary communists failed to see that human hierarchical tendencies are too strong to allow dominant competition to evaporate and the state to wither away on its own. The social engineering was inept. The blueprint was not laid out with an accurate view of human political nature. So too, capitalist ideology that selfishness is the essence of human nature is continually surprised by the capacities of people to join unions and form movements for reasons that cannot be reduced to individual selfishness, at least in the narrow sense of the term.
VIII Conclusion
Anthropologically it has been shown that egalitarian political relations constitute 95% of human political history. My purpose in this article is to provide scientific evidence that this preference for egalitarianism goes back millions of years to the social life of bonobos, chimps and perhaps all the way back to our common ancestors. The first part of my article discusses how hunter-gatherers maintained egalitarianism with the use of inverted hierarchies which constrain both leaders and upstarts. The second third of my article compares egalitarian tendencies among gorillas, chimps and bonobos. The next part of my article examines the five techniques protohumans invented to develop and enhance both egalitarianism and cooperation. I closed this article by defending multi-level Darwinian selective processes which allow a great deal time for cooperative and egalitarian group selection that can be the biological foundation for both cooperation and egalitarianism among human hunter-gatherers. Support for group selection came initially from the work of David Sloan Wilson. Those who imagine that top-down hierarchies have always existed have several million years to explain away egalitarianism.
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