Evolutionism and Its Critics: Deconstructing and Reconstructing an Evolutionary Interpretation of Human Society 9781315634753

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Evolutionism and Its Critics

More Praise for Social Evolutionism “Sanderson’s Social Evolutionism is everything graduate students want to prepare for their generals: a succinct, clear presentation of over a century of evolutionary thinking in the social sciences, with incisive criticisms. The main strands of social evolutionism are skillfully disentangled and related to biological evolutionism. I can think of no better text to use in any course on sociological theory.” —Pierre van den Berghe, University of Washington “A gifted expositor, … Sanderson provides more than explication and critique. He turns from social-scientific treatments of evolution to a thoughtful exploration of what evolutionary biology (as it actually exists) can contribute to social analysis, and then returns to answer standard grounds for rejecting evolutionary thinking in all its guises. He shows that the standard objections apply only to some sorts of evolutionary models, and leave others virtually untouched. Sanderson commends those unscathed others to the attention of everyone who cares about the study of long-term, large-scale social change.” —Charles Tilly, Columbia University “Historians interested in theories of social evolution will find Stephen K. Sanderson’s book a spirited, fair-minded, and useful survey and critique of these works, written variously by sociologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists, from the time of Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Edward Burnett Tylor to the present. … Without question one will come away from it with a good grasp of major contributions to social evolutionary theory and of the arguments for and against each of them, illustrated in many cases with specific historical examples.” —John C. Greene, University of Connecticut “Social Evolutionism is the best available single volume examination of this complex and contentious theoretical tradition. Its numerous strengths are impressive … [and it is] written with clarity and coherence that is rare in scholarly treatments of evolutionary theory. … Scholars interested in social evolutionary theory will want it on their shelves as a standard reference work.” —Mark A. Shields, Georgia Institute of Technology “At a time when social and historical thinking on the grand scale is very much on the defensive, it is encouraging to read this fine, boldly stated, but reflective account of the rich tradition of social evolutionism.” —Ted Benton, University of Essex “Sanderson writes with admirable clarity, and with a relaxed, easy-going (yet unpatronizing) style. There is none of the jargon and intellectual pomposity that afflict so much writing in sociological and anthropological theory. Indeed, the book would be readily comprehensible to a virtual beginner with little or no previous knowledge of the field.” —London Times Higher Education Supplement “A masterpiece.” —Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, Indiana University–Purdue University at Fort Wayne

Evolutionism and Its Critics Deconstructing and Reconstructing an Evolutionary Interpretation of Human Society

Stephen K. Sanderson

To the memory of my father and mother, Waller Eugene Sanderson (1920–1987) and Marjorie King Sanderson (1921–1995) First published 2007 by Paradigm Publishers Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2007 , Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sanderson, Stephen K. Evolutionism and its critics: deconstructing and reconstructing an evolutionary interpretation of human society/Stephen K. Sanderson. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-59451-301-5 ISBN-10: 1-59451-301-5 1. Social evolution. I. Title. GN360.S263 2006 303.4—dc22 2006021987 edite2005004917 ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-301-5 (hbk) ISBN 13 : 978-1-59451-302-2 (pbk) Designed and Typeset in New Baskerville by Straight Creek Bookmakers.

Contents vii

Prologue Chapter 1

The Nature of Social Evolutionism

1

Chapter 2

Classical Evolutionism: I 10 Herbert Spencer, 10฀•฀Lewis฀Henry฀Morgan,฀12฀•฀ Edward Burnett Tylor, 14฀•฀The฀Epistemologies฀of฀the฀ Classical Evolutionists, 16฀•฀Ordinary Causal Explanation in the Classical Evolutionists, 21฀•฀The฀Classical฀ Evolutionists and Darwinism, 27฀•฀Classical฀Evolutionism฀ and the Doctrine of Progress, 30฀•฀Notes, 33

Chapter 3

The Antievolutionary Reaction Classical Evolutionism and the Comparative Method, 36฀•฀Were฀the฀Classical฀Evolutionists฀Unilinearists?฀ 40฀•฀Classical฀Evolutionism฀and฀Diffusion,฀42฀•฀The฀ Contributions of the Classical Evolutionists, 44฀•฀Notes, 45

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Chapter 4

Marxism as Evolutionism Cohen’s Interpretation of Marx, 50฀•฀Was฀Marx฀ a฀Technological฀Determinist?฀52฀•฀Was฀Marx฀a฀ Developmentalist?฀53฀•฀An฀Alternative฀Conception฀of฀ Marx’s Theory of History, 58฀•฀Marx’s฀Periodization฀of฀ History, 60฀•฀Engels’s Evolutionism, 62฀•฀Marx,฀Engels,฀ and Morgan, 66฀•฀The฀Darwinian฀Connection,฀68฀•฀ Conclusions, 69฀•฀Notes, 71

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Chapter 5

Classical Evolutionism: II L. T. Hobhouse, 74฀•฀William฀Graham฀Sumner฀and฀ Albert Galloway Keller, 83฀•฀Edward฀Westermarck,฀94฀•฀ Comparisons and Conclusions, 99฀•฀Notes, 102

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Chapter 6

The Evolutionary Revival 105 V. Gordon Childe, 105฀•฀Leslie฀White,฀113฀•฀Julian฀ Steward, 120฀•฀Some฀Comparisons฀and฀Conclusions,฀125฀•฀ Notes, 129 v

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Chapter 7

Sociological Evolutionism: I 132 Parsons’s Theory of Social Evolution, 133฀•฀The฀Logical฀ Structure of Parsonian Evolutionism, 137฀•฀Parsons’s฀ Theory of Social Evolution: A Critique, 143฀•฀Talcott฀ Parsons: The American Hegel, 148฀•฀Conclusion,฀150฀•฀ Notes, 152

Chapter 8

Anthropological Evolutionism Since 1960 154 The Evolutionism of the Young Marshall Sahlins, 154 •฀Elman฀Service’s฀Functionalist฀Evolutionism,฀157฀•฀ Robert Carneiro’s Spencerian Evolutionism, 161฀•฀Marvin฀ Harris’s Materialist Evolutionism, 172฀•฀Coda:฀Marxian฀ Alternatives to Anthropological Evolutionism, 183฀•฀ Notes, 188

Chapter 9

Sociological Evolutionism: II 192 Gerhard Lenski’s Ecological-Evolutionary Theory, 192 •฀Jonathan฀Turner’s฀Institutional฀Selectionism,฀206฀•฀ Maryanski and Turner’s Normative Evolutionism, 212฀•฀ World-System Theory and Social Evolutionism, 214฀•฀In฀ the Parsonian Tradition, 218฀•฀Notes, 221

Chapter 10 Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism The Concept of Adaptation in Biological and Social Evolutionism, 223฀•฀Biological฀and฀Social฀Evolution฀as฀ Processes of Differentiation, 235฀•฀Evolutionary฀Progress,฀ 246฀•฀A฀Note฀on฀Darwinian฀Theories฀of฀Social฀Evolution,฀ 258฀•฀Notes, 260

223

Chapter 11 Contemporary Antievolutionism Evolutionism and External Influences, 264฀•฀ Evolutionism and the Comparative Method, 267฀•฀ Evolutionism and Human Agency, 268฀•฀Evolutionism฀ and Human Psychology, 272฀•฀Evolutionism฀and฀ Directionality, 273฀•฀Notes, 276

263

Chapter 12 Evolutionary Materialism: A General Theory of Social Evolution The Theoretical Strategy of Evolutionary Materialism, 282฀•฀In฀What฀Way฀and฀When฀May฀Social฀Evolution฀Be฀ Progressive?฀307฀•฀Conclusion:฀The฀Quality฀of฀Life฀in฀ Different Social Systems, 321 Epilogue References Index About the Author

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326 331 355 374

Prologue

Evolutionary theories in the social sciences have a long history. They

date back to at least the middle of the nineteenth century, although there were precursors in the thinking of various French and Scottish Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth century. These theories have ebbed and flowed over this entire time, being extremely popular and influential in some periods and avoided like the plague in others. Currently, evolutionary theories exist but they are not popular. In sociology, there was a rebirth of historical sociology in the 1970s, but for the most part this revival did not include evolutionary thinking. Indeed, many historical sociologists reject evolutionary theories of society, often emphatically. Evolutionism is still widely influential in archaeology, but in the rest of anthropology it seems to have reached a genuine nadir. This book is a critical history of evolutionary theories in sociology and anthropology, and it seeks to defend evolutionism against its many and varied critics. It seeks to show that evolutionism has been much misunderstood, and thus unfairly criticized. Not all of the criticisms are unfair, but even those that are on target apply only to certain versions of evolutionary theorizing, to specific evolutionary theories rather than to evolutionism as a whole or to evolutionism in principle. This is what is intended by the term deconstructing in the book’s subtitle: I seek to deconstruct not only the wide array of social evolutionary theories, but the criticisms of the antievolutionists as well. Deconstructing evolutionary theories means laying bare their fundamental epistemological, methodological, conceptual, and theoretical assumptions and principles. Deconstructing antievolutionism means showing just where and how the critics have, for the most part, gone wrong. But the book aims to reconstruct as well as deconstruct. This takes the form of building, on the shoulders of the evolutionary giants, a comprehensive evolutionary interpretation of human society and setting forth as much evidence as space permits to support such an interpretation. My serious interest in evolutionary theories in the social sciences was first kindled when I read, in late 1976, Marvin Harris’s magisterial The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), one of the greatest books ever written in the vii

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Prologue

entire history of the social sciences ( it came to be known to two generations of anthropology students as “the RAT”). I had never paid any particular attention to such theories before that, except for the kind of evolutionary approach taken by Gerhard Lenski in his excellent Power and Privilege (1966) and Human Societies (1970). I was well aware that evolutionary theories had been severely criticized, but Lenski’s work impressed me as an exemplary way of doing sociology. I was sufficiently impressed with it to contemplate using Human Societies as a textbook for one of my courses. When I read the RAT, the affinities between Harris’s materialist evolutionary approach and Lenski’s brand of evolutionism struck me. As a result, I began to study Human Societies more thoroughly and eventually started teaching from it. (Later I would write a similar book of my own, Macrosociology: An Introduction to Human Societies, published originally in 1988, with successive editions in 1991, 1995, and 1999, and a successor, World Societies: The Evolution of Human Social Life [Sanderson and Alderson, 2005].) About the same time (early 1977) the philosopher of history Maurice Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University invited me to study with him in a summer postdoctoral seminar. During that seminar I pursued what I was then calling “evolutionary theory,” which I thought was a relatively homogeneous approach to the study of social life. My work in the seminar concentrated mainly on the work of those anthropological evolutionists who, since the 1930s, had been insisting on the legitimacy and importance of an evolutionary approach to human society: Gordon Childe, Leslie White, Julian Steward, Marshall Sahlins, Elman Service, Marvin Harris, Morton Fried, Robert Carneiro, Gerhard Lenski, and a few others. I paid no real attention to the classical evolutionists, to any contemporary Marxian evolutionists, or to the evolutionary approach developed by Talcott Parsons and others who followed his version of functionalism. For me, evolutionism was basically coterminous with the ideas promoted by the above-named thinkers (Parsons excepted). Fortunately, I was soon to disabuse myself of this very naïve notion. As I thought more about these issues after the seminar ended, I began to realize that evolutionism was a global term used to describe a wide array of theories that often differed dramatically. Indeed, it became obvious that some of these theories had almost nothing in common except for a commitment to identifying and explaining sequences of directional social change. And thus the original idea for this book was born. Someone needed, I thought, to write a book surveying the variety of evolutionary theories in the social sciences and showing that the word “evolutionism” was a vague omnibus term that meant little unless it was specified much more carefully. My interest in writing such a book was also sparked by reading, during Mandelbaum’s seminar, his History, Man, and Reason (1971). In this book Mandelbaum attacked evolutionary theories by arguing that they were based upon an illegitimate notion that he termed a directional law: a law positing that sequences of historical change represented the unfolding of

Prologue ✻ ix latent potentialities toward some end state. Societies evolved because it was somehow inherent in their nature to do so, and the stages through which they evolved were essential to their reaching the goal for which they were striving. Mandelbaum thought that whatever directional sequences might be identified in history had to be explained in terms of functional laws, or laws relating specific variables at specific times and in specific places. Mandelbaum concentrated his attack on the classical evolutionists of the second half of the nineteenth century, but it was obvious that he thought modern evolutionary theories suffered from the same defect. At the time I thought that he may well have been right for the classical evolutionists, but it seemed to me that he was quite wrong for many modern evolutionists. And thus I identified one of the major themes of the book: In the history of social evolutionism there had been a general abandonment of conceptions of social evolution based on directional laws and a shift toward the kinds of explanatory models of evolutionary change that Mandelbaum thought were epistemologically unobjectionable. Evolutionism and Its Critics is a successor to my Social Evolutionism: A Critical History, originally published by Blackwell in 1990. The former started out as a second edition of the latter, but as the revision neared completion it appeared that something like half of the book was new. At that point my publisher, Dean Birkenkamp, and I decided that we really had a new book. Hence the new title and subtitle. Evolutionism and Its Critics reflects a major change in my thinking on several key points, in particular the relationship between social evolution and human progress. Social Evolutionism was resolutely antiprogressivist, arguing that the concept of progress was too subjective and value-laden to be meaningfully employed. I now regard this view as mistaken. I go on to identify a number of criteria that can be used as objective indicators of human progress and employ them to show that over the past 10,000 years the relationship between social evolution and progress has been for the most part curvilinear. There was a long and steady decline after the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and the increasing intensification of agriculture, but then a dramatic upturn with the rise and expansion of industrial capitalism in the past two centuries. Another feature of Social Evolutionism that I have now reconsidered is the rather severe critique of Gerhard Lenski’s evolutionism. I went overboard in this critique. In Evolutionism and Its Critics I still indicate disagreements with some aspects of Lenski’s evolutionism, but I think my treatment is now fairer and more balanced. I know it is not as harsh. Lenski’s contribution to modern social evolutionism, and to sociological theory more generally, has been a major and important one, and it is very important to me to hereby explicitly acknowledge that. Among the scholars who have helped in the preparation of this book, I am grateful to Pierre van den Berghe for his excellent advice that the book

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Prologue

would benefit greatly by having a chapter comparing and contrasting various themes in evolutionary biology and social evolutionism. With respect to the same chapter, I also thank Steven Gaulin for reminding me of the importance of George Williams’s definitive work Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966). I have also benefited from the Dutch social theorist Dik Betlem’s penetrating criticisms of the original manuscript. Betlem doubted that Marx was a developmentalist, and thought it impossible that G. A. Cohen himself could be. In response to this claim, in Chapter 4 I call attention to several crucial passages in Cohen’s book that show beyond any real doubt that he is clearly a developmentalist, quoting two of them at length. Also, in Chapter 10 I have improved my discussion of the likely reasons for growing complexity in biological evolution (Betlem was severely critical of a major part of that discussion). I also try to explain why a “drive for mastery,” although itself not a universal human motive, may be rooted in, and thus an extension of, human drives that are universal. I am grateful to Betlem for forcing me to rethink and clarify these issues. Discussions with other social evolutionists over the years have helped me to clarify and, I hope, sharpen my thinking on a number of matters. I am especially indebted to fellow evolutionists Chris Chase-Dunn, Tom Hall, Bob Carneiro, Bruce Lerro, Jon Turner, Sandy Maryanski, and the late Andre Gunder Frank for numerous stimulating conversations, both face-to-face at conferences and through correspondence. I have also benefited from a fairly extensive correspondence with Randy Collins for the better part of two decades. He is not a devotee of social evolutionism, but is an excellent comparative-historical sociologist nonetheless, a subfield of sociology that evolutionists must draw on heavily in building their theories. The trouble with thanking people in prefaces is that there is always a great risk of inadvertently leaving someone out and making them feel unappreciated. It is virtually impossible to avoid this if you have any sizable intellectual network at all. So, to anyone who feels left out, my apologies in advance. I am pleased that Dean Birkenkamp of Paradigm Publishers enthusiastically agreed to publish this book and for the suggestions he made regarding its final form. Counting the two books he published when he was with Rowman and Littlefield, this makes the fourth book of mine that he has published (with a fifth soon to appear and a strong likelihood that there will be more). Stephen K. Sanderson

Chapter One

The Nature of Social Evolutionism

T

his is a book about evolutionary theories in the social sciences over the past century and a half: their history, their diversity, their underlying intellectual assumptions, and their adequacy as modes of explaining social life. Social scientists have long had a love-hate relationship with these sorts of theories. The disciplines of sociology and anthropology were virtually born evolutionary, for most of the leading founders of these fields embraced evolutionism of one type or another, some of them strongly so. The person who is usually credited with being the “father” of sociology, Auguste Comte, had a thoroughly evolutionary conception of the development of modern industrial society, one that was based on a view of the expansion of the powers of the human mind. Emile Durkheim carried on some of Comte’s basic evolutionary ideas. Although he did so in modified form, and although his evolutionary ideas are generally regarded as less significant than many of his other notions, he had an evolutionary perspective nonetheless. Even markedly different thinkers like Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer were very much evolutionists. Marx’s theory of history makes no real sense except as a type of evolutionism, and Spencer was so much an evolutionist that he attempted to formulate a law of evolutionary change that applied not only to societies but to the totality of phenomena in the universe. Although the evolutionary doctrines of Marx and Spencer were fundamentally different, both rested on similar intellectual assumptions implicit in nineteenth-century thought. To a large extent, these assumptions, which were actually heritages of the Enlightenment, were shared as well by both Comte and Durkheim. In anthropology, the story is much the same. The individual whom anthropologists generally regard as the “father” of their discipline, Edward Burnett Tylor, was famous for his evolutionary outlook. Tylor’s American contemporary, Lewis Henry Morgan, was even more thoroughly imbued 1

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with evolutionism. His greatest work was a massive attempt to trace the major outlines of cultural evolution from simplest prehistoric times to the present. But Morgan and Tylor were only the most prominent of a range of evolutionary thinkers in the second half of the nineteenth century whom modern anthropologists regard as their intellectual ancestors. The heyday of evolutionism was the second half of the nineteenth century, for it was then that the doctrines of Morgan, Tylor, Spencer, Marx, and others were being produced. This “golden age” of evolutionary social science came rather suddenly to an end shortly after the turn of the century, however, and the first few decades of the twentieth century represented a sort of “dark age” for evolutionism. During this time evolutionism was severely criticized and came to be regarded as an outmoded approach that self-respecting scholars should no longer take seriously. Evolutionary theories did not die out completely, but they were seldom seen, and even the word “evolution” came to be uttered at serious risk to one’s intellectual reputation. Antievolutionism, rather than evolutionism, was the watchword of the day. Yet the reign of antievolutionism was itself to last no longer than had the evolutionism that preceded it. By the 1930s some scholars were beginning to take evolutionism seriously again, and by the 1940s an “evolutionary revival” was well under way. By the 196os an evolutionary perspective was advocated by many anthropologists. The anthropology of the 1960s and 1970s was not dominated by evolutionism as was the anthropology of a century earlier, but a whole new generation of evolutionary thinkers built their formulations on the new foundations that had been established in the 1940s and 1950s. This revival of evolutionism was more an anthropological than a sociological phenomenon, but sociologists were significantly involved nevertheless. Sociology’s best-known theorist, Talcott Parsons, extended his own thinking along distinctly evolutionary lines, and the sociologist Gerhard Lenski was developing a different sort of evolutionary theory at almost exactly the same time. It turns out, though, that contemporary social science has its own antievolutionists. In the late 1960s Robert Nisbet published a major attack against evolutionary theories of all types, both classical and contemporary. That Nisbet’s book was very well received indicated that many sociologists were still skeptical about evolutionary interpretations, or that the new wave of sociological interest in evolutionism had already begun to turn sour. About the same time Maurice Mandelbaum, a philosopher well acquainted with the social sciences, published a critique of evolutionary theories that replicated many of Nisbet’s objections. One of the most recent all-out attacks on social evolutionism has been made by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens, who declares that evolutionary theories are so multiply deficient that social theory must rid itself of them entirely. Giddens makes some of the same criticisms that preoccupied Nisbet and Mandelbaum, but he has added quite a few others as well.

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Unfortunately, what has been obscured in this thumbnail sketch of the fate of evolutionary theories in the history of social science is an extremely important fact: the terms “evolutionary theory” or “evolutionism” are extraordinarily general ones for characterizing a range of ideas that do share certain basic assumptions but that otherwise are often radically different. The employment of such terms without further specification as to the particular type of evolutionary theory that is intended results in extremely misleading and, quite frequently, useless talk. Along these lines the philosopher Stephen Toulmin has suggested that social scientists have created enormous confusion for themselves by persistently failing to distinguish between evolutionist and evolutionary formulations. Toulmin argues that this conflation was especially characteristic of the nineteenth century, but that these separate notions have not been completely disentangled even in contemporary social science. For Toulmin, evolutionist formulations are those that account for long-term societal changes “in some mysterious way, as the ‘conclusions’ of a Cosmic Argument, which unfolds ‘logical implications’ operative throughout the whole History of Society” (Toulmin, 1972:329). Evolutionary formulations, on the other hand, are those that, like Darwin’s account of biological evolution, attempt to explain changes as responses to the particular requirements imbedded in specific historical situations. This conflation of evolutionist and evolutionary theories is perhaps the most serious problem currently facing intelligent critical discussion of theories of social evolution. But other serious difficulties arise as well from the casual use of terminology, for theories that have been labeled evolutionist or evolutionary have differed in several other major respects. For example, although the terminology of evolution in one way or another has been used to characterize the theories of the sociologist Talcott Parsons and the anthropologist Marvin Harris, these theories actually have very little in common. Parsons’s more evolutionist account (in Toulmin’s sense of evolutionist) is a version of cultural idealism that sets forth entirely different mechanisms from those proposed in Harris’s materialist and evolutionary (again, in Toulmin’s sense) account. About all Harris and Parsons agree on is that history reveals important patterns of change and that it is important to formulate a general theory to explain those patterns. Nevertheless, the fact that the common label “evolutionary” (in the loose sense) or its equivalent persistently attaches to such theories in spite of their differences suggests that there is a basic core of elements that they share. What, then, do evolutionary theories have in common even when all their differences฀are฀ignored?฀What฀would฀be฀a฀set฀of฀minimal฀criteria฀for฀identifying฀such฀theories?฀Anthony฀Giddens฀(1984) has proposed several basic characteristics by which we can recognize any sort of evolutionary account of social life. He suggests that many evolutionary theories are based on an endogenous or “unfolding” model of change. That is, they assume that social changes occur as the result of the internal development of the latent

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potentialities originally built into a society. As he notes, the word evolution itself was originally derived from the Latin evolutia, meaning an “unrolling,” and that it was first used to speak about the unrolling of parchments (cf. Service, 1971b). In addition to this criterion, which he apparently believes is not a foolproof identifying mark of an evolutionary theory, Giddens lists four traits that he believes are such marks. First, there must be at least some conceptual continuity with biological evolution: “To use the term ‘evolution’ in the social sciences is rather gratuitous if it does not have at least some connections with the conceptual vocabulary which has become established in biology” (1984:231). An evolutionary theory must also postulate a sequence of stages through which some phenomenon progresses from “lower” to “higher” forms, and the criteria for this progression must be identified independently of a notion of “moral progress” (although Giddens adds that evolutionary theories are prone to conflate progression and progress). In addition, a genuinely evolutionary theory must also specify a mechanism or set of mechanisms that will explain the postulated sequence of stages, and it must show how the explanatory mechanism produces the displacement of one stage by another. Finally, Giddens claims that evolutionary theories presume that the entire spectrum of changes in human history can be accounted for in terms of the adaptive character of these changes. Indeed, “the notion of adaptation is so important in evolutionary theories that without it they lose most of their cogency” (1984:233). Giddens’s delineation of the basic features of evolutionary theories is not without its merits, but it does contain certain errors and overstatements. In the first place, he greatly overestimates the extent to which evolutionary theories rely on endogenous and unfolding models. It is true that evolutionary theories do tend to give pride of place to internal factors in societal change, but even the most endogenist of them never fail to take external factors (e.g., diffusion, war) into account at some point, and in many evolutionary theories external factors play a substantial role. As for the notion that unfolding models are typical of evolutionary theories, this is simply untrue. The nineteenth-century evolutionists were most prone toward this kind of model, but it has been gradually abandoned in the development of evolutionary theories in the twentieth century, with the exception of Parsonian evolutionism and other forms of evolutionism that draw upon Parsons. Rather than explaining historical changes in terms of the grand unfolding of latent potentialities toward some endpoint, most contemporary evolutionary theories explain them “as responses to the particular requirements imbedded in specific historical situations.” Giddens’s suggestions that evolutionary theories must specify a progression of stages and a mechanism designed to explain the sequence are well argued, and he is correct to note that there is often a tendency for evolutionary thinkers to convert progression into “progress.” However, there is no

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inherent connection between an evolutionary theory and a belief in steady human progress. We can have one without the other. Indeed, as we shall see, certain contemporary evolutionary thinkers have explicitly argued against equating evolution with progress, even to the point of tracing out the actual retrogressive aspects of social evolution. Giddens’s other two criteria are open to serious objection. A number of social evolutionary theorists have stressed a conceptual concordance between their theories and bioevolutionary theories, some even attempting to build theories of social evolution along Darwinian lines. But this feature is a secondary aspect of many theories, and in any event social evolutionary theories can be formulated and judged on their own terms. Contrary to Giddens, the terms “evolution” and “evolutionary” have meaning quite apart from their usage in evolutionary biology. Giddens’s claim that the concept of adaptation is vital to evolutionary theories is entirely correct. However, he fails to appreciate that this concept is a complex and subtle one that has several different dimensions, and thus it can be put to quite varied uses. Giddens thinks that the concept implies a transhistorical human drive for “mastery,” and that it is closely linked to a conception of progress—that evolutionary theories postulate improved adaptation with social evolution. It must be admitted that such a conception of adaptation has been characteristic of a number of different evolutionary theories. However, the concept of adaptation is often used in a quite different way. In the evolutionism of Marvin Harris, for example, the concept implies neither a basic human tendency toward “mastery” nor a belief that adaptation is somehow a quality that increases throughout social evolution. For Harris, adaptation is a concept that principally relates to how individuals make choices under particular kinds of material constraints. Thus, while the concept of adaptation may be basic to most evolutionary theories, it is so in a more complicated and problematic way than Giddens recognizes. Erik Olin Wright (1983) has offered a very different set of criteria for identifying an evolutionary theory, being prompted to develop them because of his own dissatisfaction with Giddens’s criteria. He suggests that for a theory to be considered evolutionary it must have three features: 1. It must propose a typology of social forms with potential directionality. 2. It must order these social forms in the way it does on the assumption that the probability of remaining at the same stage in the typology is greater than the probability of regressing. 3. It must assert a probability of transition from one stage of the typology to another.

It therefore claims the existence of a tendency toward directionality, no matter how weak, in social change. It is also clear that Wright demands the presence of a mechanism that would explain such a directional tendency,

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for he goes on to say that his definition of an evolutionary theory does not imply a universal mechanism that would explain every single evolutionary transition, but recognizes that “the actual mechanisms which might explain movement between adjacent forms on the typology need not be the same at every stage of the typology” (Wright, 1983:26–27). Wright’s characterization of an evolutionary theory is admirably free of the kinds of dubious and gratuitous assumptions that plague Giddens’s definitional effort. As Wright is at pains to point out, his way of identifying an evolutionary theory makes no claim that the typology of social forms represents a teleological unfolding of latent potentialities, nor does it claim that such a typology represents a rigid sequence of stages through which all societies must move. Wright does not even assume that all (or even most) societies necessarily evolve. Retrogression is entirely permitted, and it is fully acknowledged that in most societies “long-term steady states may be more likely than any systematic tendency for movement” (Wright, 1983:26). Wright thus seems much closer than Giddens to pinpointing the genuinely irreducible elements of evolutionary theories in the social sciences. Indeed, he sets forth perhaps the best characterization of an evolutionary theory available. Accordingly, I shall adopt his formulation as a rough guide for selecting the theories to be included in this book.1 That brings us, then, to the aims of the book, which are basically twofold. In the first instance, the book attempts a systematic survey of the historical ebb and flow of evolutionary theories in the social sciences from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. More importantly, it attempts a detailed critical analysis of the theories presented, with special attention being given to the explanatory logic underlying the evolutionary formulations they promote. Especially close attention will be paid to whether or not a particular theory is evolutionist or evolutionary (in Toulmin’s sense)2 in character, but other crucial aspects of the structure of evolutionary theories will also be explored. These include, but are by no means limited to, such things as the scope of their application, the particular conception of adaptation upon which they rest, whatever tendency they might have to merge progression with progress, the extent to which they admit of exogenous influences on societal change, and their implicit or explicit conceptual linkage with bioevolutionary theories. It is crucial that it be understood what this book is not. Despite a concern with the historical fate of evolutionary theories, the book’s aims are more properly characterized as analytical and critical than as historical. Moreover, even as history it makes no pretense to being an exhaustive account of all the theories that have at one time or another been called evolutionary. No account is given, for example, of those theories of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that have often been thought of as evolutionary—the theories emanating from the Scottish and French Enlightenments, or those of Saint-Simon and Comte. And for the late nineteenth and early twentieth

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centuries, only the most important thinkers of that period are treated, many others being ignored altogether. The entire social and cultural context of the theories treated is also ignored. The book therefore makes no claim to be an exercise in the sociology of knowledge: an account of the social and cultural conditions that have helped shape the reception of evolutionary theories by social scientists. This is not because I deem such an exercise to be unworthy. On the contrary, a book written along such lines is badly needed, and one that was judiciously done would constitute a major contribution to social theory and sociological analysis more generally. But this is not such a book, and the reader expecting such will only be disappointed. The plan of the book is essentially as follows. Chapter 2 discusses the three most important of the nineteenth-century evolutionists: Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Edward Burnett Tylor. It explores several aspects of the theories of these thinkers, but its most important contribution is its argument that these evolutionists indiscriminately merged evolutionist and evolutionary conceptions, with the former being dominant. Chapter 3 takes a look at the sharp reaction against evolutionary theories that began toward the end of the nineteenth century and that lasted until the 1950s. It delineates the major criticisms made during this time against evolutionary theories and attempts to show that these criticisms were largely misdirected. Chapter 4 examines the evolutionary foundations of classical Marxism, emphasis being placed on the epistemological character of the works of both Marx and Engels. It is claimed that Marx did not have a teleological or unfolding model of historical change and, more contentiously, that Engels very likely did not either. The chapter also explores several other concerns pertinent to the social evolutionism of Marx and Engels, such as the intellectual relationship between Marx, Engels, and Morgan, and Marx’s admiration for Darwin. Chapter 5 examines the work of three other classical evolutionists, L. T. Hobhouse, William Graham Sumner (and his disciple Albert Galloway Keller), and Edward Westermarck. In Hobhouse and Sumner we have two diametrically opposed evolutionary approaches, and in Westermarck we have yet a completely different kind of evolutionist. Like Sumner and Keller, Westermarck drew on Darwin, but in a completely different way; Westermarck was not a Darwinian selectionist, but rather the first real sociobiologist. Chapter 6 pursues the revival of evolutionary theories in the 1930s and 1940s in the works of the anthropologists V. Gordon Childe, Leslie White, and Julian Steward. Although careful scrutiny of the ideas of these thinkers reveals a number of serious difficulties, they made many significant intellectual gains over most earlier evolutionary theorists and laid the foundations for a solid materialist theory of social evolution. Chapter 7 begins the discussion of the revival of evolutionary theorizing in sociology by looking at the functionalist and idealist evolutionism of Talcott

8

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Parsons, a version of evolutionism strikingly different from the materialist approaches of Childe, White, and Steward. The chapter seeks to show that Parsons’s extension of his more general functionalist model of society to longterm social evolution produced a particularly extreme version of evolutionism highly vulnerable to the leading criticisms of the antievolutionists. Chapter 8 switches back to anthropology by looking at the next generation of anthropological evolutionists to follow in the footsteps of Childe, White, and Steward beginning in the 1960s: Marshall Sahlins, Elman Service, Robert Carneiro, and Marvin Harris. With the exception of Service, who was theoretically eclectic, all were materialists. Harris’s evolutionism, despite certain flaws, constitutes the most promising of these versions of evolutionism and is the best foundation on which to build. A coda to the chapter considers efforts on the part of Marxian anthropologists to develop alternatives to these more mainstream anthropological theories of social evolution. Chapter 9 then returns to sociology. Most of the chapter considers versions of sociological evolutionism very different from Parsonian evolutionism, especially Gerhard Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory, Jonathan Turner’s institutional selectionism, and Turner’s and Alexandra Maryanski’s provocative normative interpretation of long-term social evolution. I also look at Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall’s attempt to formulate a theory of long-term social evolution based on world-system theory. The chapter concludes by looking at two German evolutionists who have followed in the Parsonian tradition, Jürgen Habermas, and his disciple (and later critic) Klaus Eder. Chapter 10 explores various dimensions of the relationship between evolutionary biology and theories of social evolution. The concepts of adaptation and differentiation (increasing complexity) are discussed as they are employed in biological and social evolutionism. The concept of progress has also been a critical one in evolutionary thinking in both disciplines, and it is explored in some detail. As the chapter will show, all three of these concepts are hotly debated in evolutionary biology just as they are in social evolutionism. I also consider very briefly three kinds of attempts to formulate theories of social evolution in Darwinian terms. Chapter 11 examines some of the leading objections to evolutionary theorizing still made by social scientists. It recapitulates the major objections to evolutionary theorizing touched on in earlier chapters, and it explores some additional criticisms as well. Because these critics fail to distinguish among markedly different versions of evolutionary theory, their criticisms apply only to some theories and leave others relatively untouched. Therefore, I vigorously defend certain evolutionary theories against these critical attacks. Chapter 12, the book’s final chapter, gives me a chance to present in full the most recent version of my general theory of social evolution, evolutionary materialism, along with evidence to illustrate and support it. The chapter also discusses how and why social evolution is sometimes a retrogressive

The Nature of Social Evolutionism

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and at other times a progressive social force. I conclude the chapter with an analysis of the overall quality of life in the main types of social systems that history has revealed to us thus far. Finally, in an epilogue, I try to explain why the history of evolutionary theorizing shows an interesting pattern of periods of strong endorsement interspersed with periods of strong criticism and aversion. Here I draw on the concepts of Kondratieff waves and hegemony cycles to show that periods of economic boom in which there is a true hegemon in the world-economy are likely to be particularly fervent periods of evolutionism.

Notes 1. Most of the thinkers and theories discussed in the book meet Wright’s criteria quite well; a few, though, are perhaps a bit marginal, being evolutionary in a somewhat weaker and more limited way. If one wanted to reduce Wright’s definition to an even simpler form, it might be said that the absolutely vital defining characteristic of an evolutionary theory is the provision of a general mechanism or set of mechanisms to account for what are presumed to be at least some general directional sequences of societal change. All of the thinkers discussed in this book meet this weaker criterion. 2. In Chapter 2 different terms will be suggested for this distinction, and after this point the terms evolutionist and evolutionary will be used simply as general descriptive terms having no reference to the technical meanings assigned them by Toulmin.

C h a p t e r Tw o

Classical Evolutionism: I

T

he systematic emergence of evolutionary theories of human society began essentially with the Enlightenment, especially with the works of the Scottish thinkers Millar and Ferguson and the French philosophers Condorcet and Turgot (cf. Harris, 1968). Rather different sorts of evolutionary theories were also quite popular during the early nineteenth-century reaction against the Enlightenment, as the works of Saint-Simon and Comte demonstrate. But, as was pointed out in the preceding chapter, the heyday of evolutionary thought came in the second half of the nineteenth century. After 1850 evolutionary theories of human social life dominated the social sciences. Such thinkers as Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Burnett Tylor, L. T. Hobhouse, William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller, and Edward Westermarck, among numerous others, wrote tomes in which elaborate evolutionary schemes were set forth accompanied by massive compilations of data designed to support them. This chapter examines the theories of those three thinkers generally regarded as the most significant of the nineteenth-century evolutionists: Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor. It overviews their leading evolutionary doctrines and endeavors to explicate their views in regard to four major themes: their underlying epistemological assumptions, their notions of the basic causes of evolutionary transitions, their relation to Darwinism, and their views regarding human progress. In Chapter 5 I return to the classical evolutionary tradition and examine the formulations of Hobhouse, Sumner and Keller, and Westermarck.1

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer’s (1820–1903) commitment to an evolutionary interpretation of social life is readily apparent when one considers his view of history as a discipline. As J. D. Y. Peel (1971:158) has noted, “Spencer’s attitude to history was 10

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 11 mostly dismissive and to historians nearly always dismissive and contemptuous.” Spencer objected to traditional historical investigation because of its emphasis on the uniqueness of historical events and the causal role it gave to individuals. Spencer thought that traditional historical study had to be replaced by, or at least supplemented with, a kind of comparative sociology that could organize the facts of history so as to allow “for the subsequent determination of the ultimate laws to which social phenomena conform” (Spencer, 1972:89). Spencer formulated a general law of evolutionary change in his famous essay, “Progress: Its law and cause,” originally published in 1857. This law asserted a tendency for all phenomena to change from a state of incoherent homogeneity to one of coherent heterogeneity. The law applied to all features of the universe: to the earth, to life on the earth, and to the character of human society. It thus had the status of a universal, indeed cosmological, principle. The evolution of human social life was merely one manifestation of a generic process inherent in nature itself. This great universal tendency toward increasing differentiation was exemplified in the social realm particularly by societies’ political and religious institutions and by the development of social stratification. As Spencer puts it (1972[1857]:42–44): As we see in existing barbarous tribes, society in its first and lowest form is a homogeneous aggregation of individuals having like powers and like functions: the only marked difference of function being that which accompanies difference of sex. Every man is a warrior, hunter, fisherman, tool-maker, builder; every woman performs the same drudgeries; every family is self-sufficing, and save for purposes of aggression and defence, might as well live apart from the rest. Very early, however, in the process of social evolution, we find an incipient differentiation between the governing and the governed. Some kind of chieftainship seems coeval with the first advance from the state of separate wandering families to that of a nomadic tribe . . . . At the same time there has been arising a coordinate species of government—that of Religion. For a long time these connate forms of government—civil and religious—continue closely associated. For many generations the king continues to be the chief priest, and the priesthood to be members of the royal race. . . . [N]o sooner does the originally homogeneous social mass differentiate into the governed and the governing parts, than this last exhibits an incipient differentiation into religious and secular—Church and State . . . . Simultaneously, there has been going on a second differentiation of a more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has been segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers.

Closely associated with his general law of evolution was Spencer’s classification of societies into four levels of differentiation, which he referred to as simple, compound, doubly compound, and trebly compound.

12 ✻ Chapter 2 Simple societies are politically headless or have only rudimentary forms of headship. Compound societies have achieved a form of differentiation in which their various political heads are subordinated under one general head. Compound societies that have acquired a completely settled residential pattern are characterized as well by a clear division in social ranks, well-developed ecclesiastical organizations, an advancing division of labor, and relatively permanent buildings. Doubly compound societies involve a recompounding of the groups found in compound societies. They are characterized by a still higher government and thus greater political integration, a developed ecclesiastical hierarchy, a complex division of labor, a system of laws, towns and roads, and substantial progress in knowledge and technology. The trebly compound level is that of the great civilized nations. Spencer’s examples of this stage of social evolution include, inter alia, ancient Mexico, the Egyptian Empire, the Roman Empire, Great Britain, and France. Spencer also developed a distinctly different typology of societies that he was never able to integrate completely with his typology based on the level of social differentiation. This was his dichotomy of militancy and industrialism. Military societies are those that are highly characterized by warfare and the preparation for warfare. The crucial feature of the military society, though, is the fact that the individual is highly subordinated to the social whole and compelled to obey its dictates. Coercion rather than individual freedom is the hallmark of everyday social life. The industrial society, by contrast, is one in which military organization and warfare are much less significant, and thus individuals are less restrained by the social whole. This type of society is characterized by a dominance of agricultural, commercial, or industrial activities over military ones, and by the voluntary cooperation of individuals in the maintenance of the larger society. Although Spencer recognized that simpler societies were sometimes characterized more by the industrial type, and that complex societies were sometimes highly militant in character, he perceived a general evolution from the one to the other. He noted that (1972[1876]:159), “From the primitive predatory conditions under which the master maintains slaves to work for him, there is a transition through stages of increasing freedom to a condition like our own, in which all who work and employ, buy and sell, are entirely independent.”

Lewis Henry Morgan Perhaps the most significant and controversial of the classical evolutionists was Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), whose contributions to evolutionary theory were set forth primarily in his book Ancient Society (1974[1877]). In the opening chapters of Ancient Society Morgan develops his general evolutionary scheme, which is an effort to trace the development of several “ethnical periods” in

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 13 human prehistory. Each of these periods represents a particular type of society arranged in an evolutionary sequence and identified primarily by its level of technological development. Morgan considers three major ethnical periods, the first two of which are subdivided into three subperiods. The oldest stage of human society is savagery. The Lower Status of savagery marks the very beginnings of human social life, and little is known of it. It ends with the development of a fish subsistence and the acquisition of an understanding of the use of fire. The Middle Status of savagery runs from the acquisition of fish subsistence and use of fire to the invention of the bow and arrow. The Upper Status of savagery begins with the bow and arrow and ends with the development of pottery-making, at which point the Lower Status of barbarism begins. The Middle Status of barbarism begins in the Eastern hemisphere with the domestication of animals and in the Western hemisphere with the development of irrigation and the architectural use of adobe brick and stone. This level ends with the development of iron, and the Upper Status of barbarism lasts from this point until the invention of the phonetic alphabet and writing. The emergence of these last inventions marks the transition to the final ethnical period, that of civilization. The remainder of Ancient Society is taken up with a discussion of the evolution of government, the family, and of property, or, as Morgan puts it, of “the idea of government,” “the idea of the family,” and “the idea of property.” Roughly two-thirds of the book focuses on the development of governmental institutions. According to Morgan, human societies evidence two main plans of government. The earliest is based on the existence of gentes, phratries, and tribes. This stage of political evolution, to which Morgan gave the name societas, is one in which kinship is the central organizing principle of social life and in which social relations are relatively egalitarian and democratic. The other main type of government, civitas, rests upon the principles of property and territory as organizing devices. Here civilization and the state have evolved and the gens has greatly declined in importance. Inequalities based upon differential property ownership have emerged, and the democracy of earlier times has decayed in favor of various types of despotism. The basic social and political unit at the level of societas is the gens, that kinship unit that anthropologists today call the clan or sib. Morgan spends several hundred pages tracing the worldwide existence of the gens and its ultimate breakdown as the basic principle of political organization. Most of his discussion focuses on the gens among the Iroquois and in ancient Greece and Rome. In all three societies Morgan notes that gentes combined together to form higher forms of government. Several gentes would combine into a phratry, and several phratries joined together constituted a tribe. These higher organizational forms are viewed as natural evolutionary growths out of the gentes themselves. As already noted, the emergence of political society or civitas undermined the equality and democracy of the gentes and substituted the rule of property and governments whose main purpose was the protection of property. As

14 ✻ Chapter 2 Morgan says in regard to the transition to political society in ancient Rome (1974[1877]:348): The Romans were now carried fairly out of gentile society into and under the second great plan of government, founded upon territory and upon property. They had left gentilism and barbarism behind them, and entered upon a new career of civilization. Henceforth the creation and protection of property became the primary objects of government, with a superadded career of conquest for domination over distant tribes and nations.

In his treatment of the family, Morgan distinguishes five major stages in its evolution, each of which is essentially a form of marriage. The oldest form of the family is the consanguine, which involved the union of all brothers and sisters in a kind of group marriage. This existed in the lowest stage of savagery and is no longer found among remaining savages. Next there occurred the punaluan family. This also was a type of group marriage, but it added a prohibition on incestuous unions. It was widespread in savagery and occasionally found in the Lower Status of barbarism. This form of the family was followed by the syndyasmian or pairing family, a widespread feature of barbarism. In the syndyasmian family monogamous marriage is practiced, but in the context of larger kinship groups (gentes) to which the marital pair is subordinated. Another form of the family is the patriarchal, which Morgan thinks of as a highly specialized type limited mainly to the Semitic tribes and the Romans. In this form of the family, several persons, both free and unfree, were bound into a family unit under the control of a strong patriarch. Finally, the monogamian family emerged with the transition to civilization. It involved the marriage of single pairs who exclusively cohabited. In the final two chapters of Ancient Society, Morgan discusses the evolution of property or systems of inheritance. During the stage of savagery the idea of property was little developed, and little emotion was attached to it. In the Lower Status of barbarism communal ownership still prevailed, but with some movement in the direction of a possessory right by the individual. By the Middle Status of barbarism there had occurred a substantial increase in personal property, yet ownership of land by the whole tribe was still the dominant principle. By the end of the Upper Status of barbarism communal ownership of land had been strongly undermined, and with the transition to civilization land came to be owned primarily by private individuals or by the state. It is clear, then, that for Morgan there is an overall evolution toward increasingly private forms of property ownership.

Edward Burnett Tylor Even a superficial familiarity with Edward Burnett Tylor’s (1832–1917) evolutionism, especially as it is represented in his major work Primitive Culture

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 15 (1924 [1st ed., 1871]), will show that it is strikingly different from Spencer’s and Morgan’s. Indeed, as Robert Carneiro (1973a:61) has suggested, “Tylor showed himself to be a good deal more of a cultural historian than an evolutionist. His concern was largely with tracing the history of myths, riddles, customs, games, rituals, artifacts, and the like, rather than with laying bare the general process or stages in the evolution of culture as a whole.” Nonetheless, Tylor’s commitment to a general evolutionary perspective is apparent. In Primitive Culture (1924, I:33) he says, “That the tendency of culture has been similar throughout the existence of human society, and that we may fairly judge from its known historic course what its prehistoric course may have been, is a theory clearly entitled to precedence as a fundamental principle of ethnographic research.” Moreover, in his general textbook of anthropology his commitment to a general evolutionism is stated even more explicitly (1916:20 [1st ed., 1881]): On the whole it appears that wherever there are found elaborate arts, abstruse knowledge, complex institutions, these are results of gradual development from an earlier, simpler, and ruder state of life. No stage of civilization comes into existence spontaneously, but grows or is developed out of the stage before it. This is the great principle which every scholar must lay firm hold of, if he intends to understand either the world he lives in or the history of the past.

Tylor is also famous for his use of the concept of survivals as a means of demonstrating evolutionary sequences. These he defined as items of culture that had been carried by the force of custom into stages of social development beyond the one in which they originated. For Tylor they proved that presently observed states of culture had evolved from older ones. In the second chapter of Primitive Culture, Tylor engages in much discussion of the well-known nineteenth-century theory of degeneration: the view that more primitive and simpler cultures were vestiges of older elaborate civilizations. He actually grants considerable credence to this theory, admitting that a number of elements of culture have to be explained by it. Yet he thought of degeneration as clearly a secondary phenomenon to evolution. Like Morgan and earlier thinkers, Tylor divided the prehistory of human societies into three great stages, those of savagery, barbarism, and civilization. In savagery humans subsisted by hunting and gathering and had an extremely limited technology. The stage of barbarism was reached when agriculture became available. This development led to settled villages and town life and great improvements in knowledge, manners, and government. Civilization began with the development of writing. Although this scheme is less elaborate than Morgan’s, it is basically the same. The evolution of technology, though, was not an overriding concern for Tylor, and his evolutionism was applied mainly to the development of language, myth, and religion, especially to the last of these. Indeed, virtually

16 ✻ Chapter 2 the entire second volume of Primitive Culture, and part of the first as well, is taken up with a discussion of the evolution of animism through its various stages. Here the contrast with Morgan is striking, for Morgan thought that religion was especially unsuitable for evolutionary treatment because of the “grotesque” and “unintelligible” character of primitive religion. For Tylor, though, primitive religion had a certain rationality about it, given the conditions that primitive peoples faced, and the evolution of religion demonstrated an increasingly rational understanding of the world. In general, this evolution was from a belief in souls to that of spirits, then on to a polytheistic pantheon of gods, and then finally to monotheism.

The Epistemologies of the Classical Evolutionists These bare sketches of these three classical evolutionists can scarcely begin to do justice to the complexity and elaborateness of their ideas, and they are intended only to give something of the flavor of their most basic notions. The really interesting and most theoretically germane aspects of their thinking are yet to be considered. Let us begin with their epistemological conceptions—with the assumptions they made about the basic character of social evolution and of the “laws” that could be formulated to explain it. In recent years much attention has been given to the epistemological character of evolutionary theories, classical evolutionism in particular. In Chapter 1 we noted Toulmin’s distinction between evolutionist and evolutionary models of historical change, a distinction between those models that explain history as the logical unfolding of a preordained plan and those that explain it as a series of specific responses to particular conditions and requirements. A very similar distinction has been drawn by Maurice Mandelbaum (1971). Mandelbaum has attempted to situate the early evolutionists within the pervasive nineteenth-century doctrine that he has termed historicism. As Mandelbaum defines this much-used term, historicism refers to “the belief that an adequate understanding of the nature of any phenomenon and an adequate assessment of its value are to be gained through considering it in terms of the place which it occupied and the role which it played within a process of development” (1971:42; emphasis Mandelbaum’s). According to Mandelbaum, the doctrine of historicism usually implies an epistemological conception that he calls a directional law. A directional law assumes that historical change is to be represented as a process of natural development or unfolding, one in which the historical transformation of an entity occurs as the result of the actualization of the potentialities inherent in that entity from the very beginning. Mandelbaum contrasts directional laws with functional laws, which he assumes to be the classic type of law in scientific formulations. Functional laws postulate no inherent scheme of unfolding, no actualization of inherent potentialities,

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 17 but rather attempt to explain historical changes as the result of particular factors operating in particular ways within the context of a particular set of constraints.2 Mandelbaum holds that directional laws are epistemologically illegitimate constructions that have no place in historical explanation, and that any presumed directional tendency can be explained only by reducing it to a complex set of functional relationships. Mandelbaum does not deny that there may be orderly sequences of historical change, but he insists that such sequences have to be understood as the cumulative effect of a whole series of functional relationships operating over time. He illustrates explanation in terms of a directional law and the functional law alternative to it as follows (1971:121, 126): If there were a directional law defining a sequence of stages in the forms of marriage, then, in order to explain the existence of a particular form of marriage, one would relate that form to its necessary antecedents, and one would know what subsequent form of marriage might be expected to replace it: one would not account for these changes in terms of specific historical conditions, appealing to the ways in which (under these specific conditions) changes were brought about through the operation of psychological, ecological, or functional factors, or by the effects of external contacts. An explanation by means of a law of developmental stages would be analagous to an explanation of why a particular planet follows a particular trajectory over one section of its course through appealing directly to the fact that this trajectory constitutes a segment of the planet’s elliptical orbit. . . . We have seen, however, that in order to understand an actual pattern of development, we cannot view it as a single process formed in accordance with a directional law; if we are to explain it by means of a reference to laws, we must do so by showing how particular functional relationships, operating on specific initial conditions, shape each of the successive steps of change. Once completed, these successive steps may be regarded as having defined some definite pattern, but that pattern would be a consequence of other forces, and would not itself represent a directional tendency. Thus, insofar as we wish to use models of explanation which are derived from scientifically acceptable modes of explanation, we shall not seek to explain any phenomenon by placing it within the context of a developmental series: we shall, on the contrary, explain every phenomenon in terms of the specific conditions and the functional laws which, at each moment in time, were responsible for its being precisely what it was.

Mandelbaum believes that the basic explanatory logic of the nineteenth-century evolutionists involved the historicist’s employment of directional laws. He gives little credence to the possibility that they formulated functional-law explanations of evolutionary sequences. A very similar view of the epistemological grounding of the classical evolutionists has been offered by Robert Nisbet in his highly influential book Social Change and History (1969). Nisbet has claimed that the classical evolutionists rooted

18 ✻ Chapter 2 their understanding of evolution in the notions that change is natural, directional, immanent, continuous, and necessary. Nisbet regards the idea of immanent change as the very essence of classical evolutionism, and it is this idea that closely parallels Mandelbaum’s emphasis on the explanatory logic of directional laws. As is well known, Nisbet has been a major critic of evolutionary theories of all sorts, and his view that they rest upon an inadmissible conception of immanent change has been perhaps the strongest basis of his rejection of them. I agree with Nisbet’s rejection of immanence, and as well with Mandelbaum’s denouncement of directional laws, as an appropriate grounding for a theory of societal change.3 But the overriding question at the moment is whether Mandelbaum and Nisbet are correct to claim that classical evolutionism was epistemologically of this sort. Indeed, Robert Carneiro (1973a), a well-known contemporary student of the classical evolutionists (actually a leading expert on Spencer) and a contemporary evolutionist himself, has challenged this argument. He believes that the notion of evolutionary change as an unfolding of immanences is a very old idea that had been largely abandoned by the time the classical evolutionists began to produce their works. He alleges that the nineteenth-century evolutionists basically espoused a model of functional-law causation, and he goes on to suggest many candidates as causes of evolutionary change registered by Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor. I want to claim that Mandelbaum and Nisbet are closer to the truth, but that Carneiro certainly has an important point to make. To a very large extent, the classical evolutionists had a confused and philosophically weak understanding of causation, one that led them to formulate intellectual systems that were rather unwieldy mixtures of developmentalist and ordinary causal explanation.4 Let me develop the evidence to support this claim by first attempting to show the extent to which a developmentalist model was fundamental to the classical evolutionists, and then considering the kinds of ordinary causes that these thinkers advanced to account for some aspects of social evolution. Spencer is a good place to begin, since he was the most explicit about his evolutionary propositions. Paul Hirst (1976) has asserted that Spencer’s conception of evolution was a fundamentally developmentalist one, and that although he identified proximate causes of evolution, his system rested on the postulation of one big ultimate cause: the tendency toward differentiation inherent in the cosmos. Thus Hirst argues that the sociological Spencer was dependent upon the philosophical one. There is every reason to believe that Hirst is correct. In “Progress: Its law and cause” Spencer sets forth nearly as developmentalist a conception of evolution as one can find. It is in this essay, of course, that he states his general cosmological law of the tendency of all things toward increasing differentiation (1972[1857]:40): This law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 19 development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists.

The developmentalism implied by this law of evolution is even more obvious when we realize that Spencer regarded the process of differentiation as an inherent tendency of all things, and as implying a fundamental necessity. Valerie Haines (1988) and Carneiro (1981b) have challenged this interpretation of Spencer. Haines claims that Spencer’s abstract developmentalist statements were intended only as descriptions of the course of evolution, not as actual explanations of it. He explained evolution, she claims, by invoking the notion of adaptation to environmental conditions. Carneiro claims that, although Spencer may have started out as a developmentalist, he eventually abandoned such a doctrine in favor of a conception of ordinary causal explanation. Against the developmentalist interpretation, Carneiro produces a seemingly damaging quote from the sixth edition of Spencer’s First Principles (Spencer, 1937; cf. Carneiro, 1981b:159–160). Here Spencer denies that social evolution is inevitable or that it implies some sort of intrinsic tendency toward the development of higher forms. It is not a necessary process, Spencer says, but “depends on conditions.” I do not find these arguments compelling. Spencer’s writings are filled with inconsistent statements, so one denial that evolution is an immanent and inevitable process really means little. The fact remains that throughout his life Spencer continued to revise his First Principles (first published in 1862), an extremely abstract metaphysical work that formed the foundation for the remainder of his work. The developmentalism of the early essay, “Progress: Its law and cause,” is retained and greatly elaborated in First Principles and is never abandoned. As Hirst has suggested, it seems that the developmentalism of this work is the ultimate mode of explanation on which Spencer depends, and thus the basis for his ordinary causal explanations. Upon turning to Morgan, we also find a strong commitment to developmentalism, Ancient Society being filled with statements that are grist for the mill of Mandelbaum and Nisbet. Here is an especially pregnant passage (1974[1877]:4): As we reascend along the several lines of progress toward the primitive ages of mankind, and eliminate one after the other, in the order in which they appeared, inventions and discoveries on the one hand, and institutions on the other, we are enabled to perceive that the former stand to each other in progressive, and the latter in unfolding relations. While the former class have had a connection, more or less direct, the latter have been developed from a few primary germs of thought. Modern institutions plant their roots in the

20 ✻ Chapter 2 period of barbarism, into which their germs were transmitted from the previous period of savagery. They have had a lineal descent through the ages, with the streams of the blood, as well as a logical development.

There are three striking earmarks of developmentalism in this passage: the notion that social institutions exist in “unfolding relations”; the idea that these institutions evolved from “a few germs”; and the view that the whole sequence of evolution is a process of “logical development.” Another passage from Ancient Society is even more revealing. In speaking of the sequence of evolutionary development constituted by the family, Morgan says that it (1974[1877]:515) “affords both a rational and a satisfactory explanation of the facts of human experience, so far as they are known, and of the course of human progress.” In other words, an evolutionary sequence requires no particular explanation, but is its own explanation. One would be hard-pressed to find a more exemplary passage in any of the writings of the classical evolutionists of Mandelbaum’s notion of explanation in terms of a directional law. A sequence of changes can constitute its own explanation only to the extent that these changes are assumed to have unfolded as the result of the potentialities inherent in the entity from the very beginning of its existence. Mandelbaum does not cite the passages quoted above in support of his argument, but he easily could have. Moreover, although these passages are especially revealing ones, the idea they express is stated repeatedly throughout Ancient Society. Morgan again and again refers to the “germs of thought” from which later institutions have been developed, and this notion seems to be the guiding philosophical basis of the entire work. Although Tylor’s work is more resistant to clear interpretation on this issue, it seems that even here historicism, if not developmentalism, is a guiding theme, as the following passage from Primitive Culture suggests (1924, I:37): “The principle of development in culture has become so ingrained in our philosophy that ethnologists, of whatever school, hardly doubt but that, whether by progress or degradation, savagery and civilization are connected as lower and higher stages of one formation.” Yet despite Tylor’s apparent commitment to historicism, his evolutionism is really of a different sort than Spencer’s and Morgan’s, for it does not appear that his historicism was actually accompanied by a developmentalism. Passages clearly denoting a commitment to an epistemology of directional laws are difficult, if not impossible, to locate in Tylor’s work. In fact, Mandelbaum excludes Tylor from an identification with such an epistemology, claiming that (1971:107): Tylor did not assume that the general laws which could presumably explain cultural change were laws regulating or governing the successive steps in the processes to which they applied. . . . [I]n most cases in which Tylor made concrete suggestions concerning the types of laws which explain cultural

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 21 phenomena, these did not define and summarize a necessary direction in which change proceeded; instead, he attempted to show how facts concerning language, myth, magic, and the like, depend upon general principles governing the processes of human thought.

This interpretation of Tylor closely corresponds to that of Carneiro (1973a), who has claimed that Tylor’s preoccupation with cultural minutiae prevented him from developing a broad theoretical conception of evolutionary change.

Ordinary Causal Explanation in the Classical Evolutionists Despite their historicism, and in the case of Spencer and Morgan their developmentalism, each of the classical evolutionists advanced ordinary causes to explain specific aspects of evolutionary change. As suggested earlier, the classical evolutionists did not have a carefully worked out understanding of the need for a model of causation that could be philosophically defended, and therefore they saw no difficulty in relying on two fundamentally different models of evolutionary causation. One might be more charitable, as Paul Hirst (1976) has been in the case of Spencer, and regard their ordinary causes as proximate causes and their developmentalist formulations as ultimate causes. Yet to do so would seem to stretch the general meaning of these terms too far and give the nineteenth-century evolutionists more credit than they deserve.5 In฀any฀event,฀what฀kinds฀of฀ordinary฀causes฀did฀they฀propose?฀Let฀us฀begin฀ in this case with Morgan and first recount the huge debate that has centered around whether he was a materialist or an idealist. Until recently, the overwhelming tendency was to see Morgan as a materialist. This interpretation has been especially closely associated with the Marxist tradition, and Marx and Engels regarded Morgan as having independently discovered the materialist conception of history. Later thinkers in the Marxist tradition, such as Eleanor Burke Leacock, the French anthropologist Emmanuel Terray, and, more loosely, Leslie White, are perhaps the most prominent defenders of a materialist Morgan. In her introduction to the republication of Ancient Society, Leacock maintains that Morgan’s (1963, I:vi) “materialistic theory of history so closely paralleled that of Marx and Engels that Ancient Society was used as the foundation for Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.” Leacock’s interpretation stresses Morgan’s emphasis on the determining role of technology and property. Terray (1972) has declared that the concepts that are the essence of Morgan’s theoretical system are the concepts of Marxism. Moreover, he has claimed that what earned Morgan the admiration of Marx and Engels was his view that “the determinant sphere is that of the arts of

22 ✻ Chapter 2 subsistence” (1972:52). For Terray, “Morgan’s arts of subsistence are, in fact, no different from Marx’s productive forces; the ethnic period is the mode of production together with the juridical and political superstructures it has called forth. Both Morgan and Marx see the economy as determinant in the final analysis” (1972:66). Leslie White (1948, 1949a) has done as much as anyone to champion the materialist interpretation of Morgan. He believes that for Morgan the principal determinants of social evolution were technology and systems of property. Actually, White holds that Morgan had both a materialist and an idealist theory of social evolution, but that the former was clearly dominant. He concedes that Morgan regularly referred to the development of social institutions out of a few germs of thought, but maintains that Morgan held the growth of these ideas to be dependent on prior changes in material conditions. Idealist interpretations of Morgan have been advanced by, inter alia, Morris Opler (1965), Fred Voget (1975), and, to some extent, Elman Service (1981). Opler’s idealist Morgan is perhaps the most celebrated. Opler argues for an idealist interpretation along a number of lines, two of which are most prominent. First, he plays down the fact that Morgan’s classification of evolutionary stages rests on technology, denying that by such a classification system Morgan wished to give any particular causal significance to technology (cf. Ingold, 1986:62). He says that (1965:89) “Morgan does not say that human progress has been due to increased subsistence; he says it has been ‘identified’ with it. In fact Morgan takes pains to disassociate himself from those who have used technology too exclusively as a criterion of progress.” Second, Opler places considerable emphasis on Morgan’s frequent references to the importance of the “germs of thought” and to the mind or brain in the development of culture, and he is able to quote copiously from Morgan in this regard. As Opler notes (1965:90), “Time and again Morgan subordinates both the institutional and the technological to intellect.” Some scholars have held that Morgan advocated an eclectic combination of materialism and idealism. Carneiro (1973a) has suggested that Morgan was an especially good example of a thinker in whom both idealism and materialism were unselfconsciously intertwined. He also believes that during his career Morgan moved increasingly in the direction of emphasizing material factors. Harris (1968) has suggested that Morgan was philosophically and theoretically an eclectic who failed to develop a consistent theory of the causes of cultural evolution. Of these three positions, the first is clearly the weakest. To regard Morgan as a consistent and unadulterated materialist requires an extraordinary ability to ignore the much larger context in which Morgan’s statements about technology and property are made. There are just too many remarks about the importance of germs of thought, the logic of the human brain or mind, or the development of intelligence to be ignored. And these statements clearly

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 23 outweigh the number of references made to the importance of material conditions. One can go through Ancient Society and extract numerous references to ideas and their causal role in social evolution. Here is a sampling: An attempt will be made in the following pages to bring forward additional evidence of the rudeness of the early condition of mankind, of the gradual evolution of their mental and moral powers through experience, and of their protracted struggle with opposing obstacles while winning their way to civilization (1974[1877]:3). The principal institutions of mankind have been developed from a few primary germs of thought; and . . . the course and manner of their development was predetermined, as well as restricted within narrow limits of divergence, by the natural logic of the human mind and the necessary limitations of its powers (1974[1877]:18). The work of society in its totality, by means of which all progress occurs, is ascribed far too much to individual men, and far too little to the public intelligence. It will be recognized generally that the substance of human history is bound up in the growth of ideas, which are wrought out by the people and expressed in their institutions, usages, inventions and discoveries (1974[1877]:311).

The obvious importance given to ideas by Morgan lends considerable credence to the idealist position. The fact that Morgan also made statements of an apparently materialist sort might be reconciled by arguing that, within the realm of his limited ordinary causal epistemology, Morgan regarded material conditions as proximate causes that are themselves brought into existence by deeper ultimate causes, and that these ultimate causes are always ideas. But although I believe this is an interpretation that can be supported by most of the text of Ancient Society, there are some passages that appear to ride roughshod over it. Here are two that may be especially brought to light: Around the simple ideas relating to marriage and the family, to subsistence and to government, the earliest social organizations were formed; and with them an exposition of the structure and principle of ancient society must commence. Adopting the theory of a progressive development of mankind through the experience of the ages, the insulation of the inhabitants of Oceania, their limited local areas, and their restricted means of subsistence predetermined a slow rate of progress (1974[1877]:387). When field agriculture had demonstrated that the whole surface of the earth could be made the subject of property owned by individuals in severalty, and it was found that the head of the family became the natural center of accumulation, the new property career of mankind was inaugurated. It was fully done before the close of the Later Period of barbarism. A little reflection must

24 ✻ Chapter 2 convince any one of the powerful influence property would now begin to exercise upon the human mind, and of the great awakening of new elements of character it was calculated to produce (1974[1877]:553–554).

These two passages refer to the direct causal influence of certain material conditions upon the human mind itself. In the first instance geographical isolation is said to hold back the progress of the mind, while in the second changes in human thinking are held to derive from new property systems. We hardly have here, then, a situation in which material factors are proximate and ideas ultimate. It is passages like these that cause exegetes to climb the walls and that make a definitive interpretation of Morgan’s conception of ordinary causal explanation impossible. Although there is really no basis for considering Morgan a consistent materialist, it is also difficult to regard him as a consistent idealist. Those who have seen his position as a rather muddled eclectic one are therefore on safest ground. It should not be especially surprising that Morgan was vague and seemingly inconsistent in regard to the identification of ordinary causes, for his more fundamental notion of causation was a developmentalist one in which evolutionary change is essentially its own explanation. Yet when his probable eclecticism in regard to ordinary causation is combined with a strong reliance on a developmentalism, the result is causal confusion on a grand scale. It is clear, then, that Morgan’s epistemology was an especially messy one that would scarcely be tolerated by modern philosophical standards. A similar debate about materialism versus idealism has also been carried out with respect to Tylor, with the exception that there have been fewer advocates for Tylor the materialist. Leslie White (1949a), though, has taken up this position. White sees Tylor in the same light as Morgan: as proposing a basically technological interpretation of the causes of social evolution. He argues that Tylor distinguished his evolutionary stages in terms of control over the food supply, that he saw changes in political organization as closely following technological changes, and that he even interpreted some intellectual features of culture as expressions of material conditions. White’s perspective, however, is curiously one-sided, and most scholars have opted either for an idealist Tylor, or for an eclectic one with the idealist elements dominant. Mandelbaum (1971) suggests that Tylor’s work was primarily devoted to understanding how the various features of culture are rooted in basic principles governing the nature of human thinking. Opler (1964) is one of the most vigorous proponents of an idealist foundation to Tylor’s evolutionism, suggesting that his work was dominated by intellectual development—particularly the development of increasingly rational thought—as the key to social evolution. As he does in the case of Morgan, Opler extracts numerous passages from various of Tylor’s works to support his case. Voget’s Tylor is also an idealist one (1975:289): “When in the nineteenth century Tylor . . . sagely advised that development in the material arts provided an

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 25 excellent guide for charting the rise from a savage mental state to that of civilized man, he simply echoed a common view of Developmentalists generally. The study of technology was always approached with the idea that the tool was the expression of an idea.” Just as they propose an eclectic Morgan, Carneiro and Harris advocate an eclectic Tylor. Harris (1968) claims that Tylor had no consistent theory of the causes of culture, but he believes that he leaned more in the idealist direction. Despite a high regard for the importance of material conditions in social evolution, Harris suggests, Tylor was a fervent embracer of the Enlightenment’s idealist heritage, never really questioning the preeminence of mind in guiding the evolution of material culture. Settling the score with respect to Tylor is much easier than it is in regard to Morgan. Tylor makes reference again and again to the human mind, to the mental state of savages or of civilized men, and to the intellect; and he does so without making any really countervailing statements that suggest the subordination of intellectual conditions to material advances. As Opler and others have done, one can select numerous passages from almost any of his works to support an idealist interpretation. Here are just two of the strongest, since they depict material changes as rooted in the human mind: Lastly, civilized life may be taken as beginning with the art of writing, which by recording history, law, knowledge, and religion for the service of ages to come, binds together the past and the future in an unbroken chain of intellectual and moral progress (1916:24). In the various branches of the problem which will henceforth occupy our attention, that of determining the relation of the mental condition of savages to that of civilized men, it is an excellent guide and safeguard to keep before our minds the theory of development in the material arts. Throughout all the manifestations of the human intellect, facts will be found to fall into their places on the same general lines of evolution. . . . The study of savage and civilized life alike avail us to trace in the early history of the human intellect, not gifts of transcendental wisdom, but rude shrewd sense taking up the facts of common life and shaping from them schemes of primitive philosophy. It will be seen again and again, that savage opinion is in a more or less rudimentary state, while the civilized mind still bears vestiges, neither few nor slight, of a past condition from which savages represent the least, and civilized men the greatest advance (1924, I:68–69).

When it is additionally recognized that most of Tylor’s work focused on the evolution of religion, and that his conception of religion was itself a rather narrowly cognitive one, then his idealism appears paramount. If for Marx and Engels humans were basically tool makers and productive manipulators of their environment, for Tylor they were essentially philosophers thinking their way toward increasingly rational understandings.

26 ✻ Chapter 2 Let us turn now to Spencer, whose thinking falls largely outside the context of the materialism/idealism debate. It is somewhat ironic that he, perhaps the most explicitly developmentalist of all the classical evolutionists with his grandiose Law of Evolution, stated numerous ordinary causes of social evolution in a remarkably modern way. The main ordinary causes Spencer consistently evoked were population pressure, the environment, economics, and warfare, the first of which he seemed to regard as the most important (cf. Hirst, 1976). As he claimed in an early essay (1972[1852]:37): The excess of fertility has itself rendered the process of civilization inevitable. From the beginning, pressure of population has been the proximate cause of progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to the clearing of the earth’s surface. It forced men into the social state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements in production, and to increased skill and intelligence.

Carneiro (1973a) has shown how Spencer regarded environment, economics, and warfare as important causes of social evolution. Spencer regarded the environment as an important determinant in a manner analogous to modern cultural ecologists. Carneiro suggests that the importance Spencer attached to economic determinants can be clearly seen in his analysis of the role of commerce and industry in helping prepare the way for the development of Greek democracy. Spencer also gave considerable importance to warfare, as the following passage demonstrates (1895:280; cited in Carneiro, 1973a:110): In the struggle for existence among societies, the survival of the fittest is the survival of those in which the power of military cooperation is the greatest; and military cooperation is that primary kind of cooperation which prepares the way for other kinds. So that this formation of larger societies by the union of smaller ones in war, and this destruction or absorption of the smaller un-united societies by the united larger ones, is an inevitable process which the varieties of men most adapted for social life, supplant the less adapted varieties.

As Carneiro has pointed out, Spencer’s emphasis on warfare and intersocietal conflict was a major manifestation of his “social Darwinism,” his view that social struggle leading to the “survival of the fittest” played a crucial role in the evolution of society. Although there has been no serious materialist/idealist debate centering around Spencer, and even though Spencer took the trouble to denounce a materialist perspective, it is clear that he was very much a materialist nonetheless (cf. Carneiro, 1973a). His unambiguous emphasis on demographic, environmental, and economic factors as important determinants of social evolution not only places him substantially in the materialist camp, but it does so in a

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 27 very modern sense. This is particularly the case in regard to the role he gave to population pressure. Spencer has here anticipated a leading modern theory of social evolution (see Chapter 8). We thus return to the irony noted earlier: Despite some of his quaintness, and despite the profound developmentalism of his overblown Law of Evolution, there is a side to Spencer that is strikingly modern and scientific. Like that of many of the other classical evolutionists, as well as that of many other nineteenth-century social thinkers, Spencer’s thought was a curious epistemological and theoretical mélange.

The Classical Evolutionists and Darwinism The classical theories of social evolution historically coincided with the rise to prominence of Darwinian bioevolutionary theory. This was clearly no accident, and theories of evolution in both the biological and social realms were related. The specific nature of this relationship has been the subject of much discussion. Most of the attention has focused on Spencer’s evolutionism. Since Spencer was perhaps the leading advocate of the doctrine of social Darwinism, it has been widely believed that his evolutionary doctrines were largely a transferral of Darwinian theory to the sociocultural realm, a direct application of the Darwinian concepts of the “struggle for survival” and “natural selection” to social life. In the last few decades, though, the mythical character of this belief has been exposed by numerous scholars, most particularly by J. D. Y. Peel (1971) and Marvin Harris (1968). Peel has suggested that, despite their superficial resemblances, the theories of Darwin and Spencer were actually quite different. For instance, he points out that Darwin’s theory was much more modest and that it altogether lacked the developmentalism and necessitarianism of Spencer’s.6 Harris pursues a somewhat different course and makes a much bolder set of claims. He argues that the doctrine of “the struggle for survival” found in both Darwin and Spencer was independently derived by each from Malthus, and he also claims a certain priority for Spencer in the development of evolutionary concepts.7 It was Spencer rather than Darwin, Harris claims, who popularized the term “evolution” itself.8 Moreover, Spencer’s term “survival of the fittest” was originally developed by him and actually borrowed by Darwin as a preferred synonym for his own term “natural selection” in the fifth edition of Origin of Species. Harris also shows that Spencer had already established his key evolutionary doctrines well before Darwin’s ideas appeared in print. Harris actually goes so far as to suggest that the label “social Darwinism” is a complete misnomer, and that, in view of the priority of Spencer and the esteem in which Darwin held him, “the term ‘Biological Spencerism’ would be an appropriate label for that period of the history of biological theory in which Darwin’s ideas gained their ascendancy” (1968:129).9

28 ✻ Chapter 2 Yet in the final analysis it is not really a claim for the causal influence of Spencer on Darwin that Harris is arguing for. Rather, it is the view that both Darwin’s and Spencer’s evolutionary theories were largely independent outcomes of the same cultural and intellectual milieu. As Harris puts it (1968:129): It was not a matter of one discipline aping another, but rather a parallel response by both disciplines to similar ideological needs. The biologization of sociocultural theory arose from the need for countering the politically subversive environmentalism of the eighteenth century. The conversion of biological theory to evolutionism was an outgrowth of the social scientists’ interest in progress and perfectibility, while the concept of natural selection arose from an interest in racial, national, and class forms of war and conflict.

While one can have strong reservations about this exceptionally bold claim, that need not invalidate Harris’s more general point about the proper relation between Spencer and Darwin. The point is that Spencer’s ideas were his own rather than a simple imitation of Darwin’s. As for the relation of Tylor and Morgan to Darwinism, some scholars have attempted to portray both as self-consciously using Darwinian concepts to explain social evolution. Opler (1964, 1965), for example, suggests that Tylor was an explicit “cultural Darwinist,” and he cites no fewer than eight passages from Tylor’s various works as evidence for his case. The following is an example (Tylor, 1871, I:68–69; cited in Opler, 1964:133–134): It will be seen again and again, by examining such topics as language, mythology, custom, religion, that savage opinion is in a more or less rudimentary state, while the civilized mind still bears vestiges, neither few nor slight, of a past condition from which savages represent the least, and civilized men the greatest advance. Throughout the whole vast range of the history of human thought and habit, while civilization has to contend not only with survival from lower levels, but also with degeneration within its own borders, it yet proves capable of overcoming both and taking its own course. History within its proper field, and ethnography over a wider range, combine to show that the institutions which can best hold their own in the world gradually supersede the less fit ones, and that this incessant conflict determines the general resultant course of culture.

In the other passages cited by Opler, we find Tylor using phrases like “unless when superseded by some better device” or “which form in any age their fittest representatives,” or at least more indirectly suggesting the operation of a process of natural selection in social life. Carneiro’s view of Tylor is much the same as Opler’s, and in fact Carneiro’s preferred evidentiary passages overlap with Opler’s, including the one

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 29 cited immediately above. Carneiro also proposes Tylor’s famed discussion of exogamy rules, in which he remarks that “primitive tribes must have had plainly before their minds the simple practical alternative between marrying out and being killed out” (Tylor, 1889:267), as an exemplification of Tylor’s reliance on a kind of natural selection theory. Opler and Carneiro propose the same basic interpretation for Morgan. Although Opler believes that Morgan relied less frequently on a Darwinian kind of social evolutionism than Tylor did, he views Morgan as embracing a kind of Darwinism nonetheless, and he notes that Morgan explicitly used the term “natural selection” at several points in Ancient Society. Both Opler and Carneiro regard Morgan’s discussion of the evolution of social organization and the family as based on a principle of natural selection. A passage they both cite states that “the organization into classes upon sex, and the subsequent higher organization into gentes upon kin, must be regarded as the results of great social movements worked out unconsciously through natural selection” (Morgan, 1974[1877]:48). White has strongly denied any influence of Darwinism on either Tylor or Morgan, and with respect to Tylor he claims that Tylor himself explicitly proclaims his independence of Darwin. White quotes from Tylor’s preface to the second edition of Primitive Culture to the following effect: “The present work [is] arranged on its own lines, coming scarcely into contact of detail with the previous works of these eminent philosophers [Darwin and Spencer].” Opler counters White’s claim with the argument that if this quoted fragment is placed in its larger context, then Tylor can only be reasonably interpreted to mean that he is borrowing generally from Darwinian and Spencerian ideas but makes few specific references to them because his own data are neither biological nor philosophical in character. There is little doubt but that Opler has the better interpretation of Tylor’s meaning here. Certainly one could not use Tylor’s comments in his preface to prove that Tylor is denying any Darwinian influence, for the possibility that he is actually endorsing a general sort of debt to Darwin is clearly there. And it also seems to be the case that Tylor, and Morgan as well, did have a loose sort of natural selection conception of evolutionary change running through their works. This is not particularly surprising inasmuch as their works were published a decade or two after Darwin’s, and by that time Darwinian ideas were well known and of substantial influence. But whether they were self-consciously copying Darwin is doubtful, given the popularity of Darwinian natural selection and Spencerian survival-of-the-fittest ideas by the 1870s. It is even more doubtful that these ideas were fundamental to their thinking in the sense that they were for Spencer. Thus a loose kind of natural selection conception seems to be part of Tylor’s and Morgan’s evolutionary thinking, but it does not identify, let alone overpower, that thinking. As we have seen, other ideas are more basic to the evolutionism of Tylor and Morgan.

30 ✻ Chapter 2

Classical Evolutionism and the Doctrine of Progress The doctrine of progress—the idea that with the evolution of society there is a steady improvement in such aspects of the human condition as intelligence, morality, and happiness—has roots that are firmly planted well before the late nineteenth century. Indeed, this doctrine was virtually the cornerstone of Enlightenment social thought. The nineteenth-century evolutionists inherited this doctrine and perpetuated it, though, as we shall see, they did not accept it without reservation. Spencer’s conception of progress was a feature of his social Darwinism. By means of various forms of conflict and struggle new social forms emerged from older ones through a kind of survival of the fittest, and these more fit social arrangements led to an enhanced social adaptation and hence an improvement in the human condition. Spencer’s cosmic evolutionary law is also closely related to this view. Increasingly differentiated social arrangements produce more advanced levels of cooperation and integration, and these social arrangements are thus more adaptive. Spencer’s conception of progress is nowhere more evident, however, than in his discussion of the evolution from militant to industrial society. As noted earlier, Spencer conceptualized a movement away from a type of society based upon the pervasiveness of military organization and the domination of individuals by society as a whole, and toward a type of society depending little upon military organization and resting on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals. Individual freedom was the key to industrial society, and the increasing movement toward freedom was viewed by Spencer in extremely favorable terms, as is quite evident from the following passage (Spencer, 1972[1876]:159–160): [With industrial society] there go sentiments and ideas concerning the relation between the citizen and the State, opposite to those accompanying the militant type. In place of the doctrine that the duty of obedience to the governing agent is unqualified, there arises the doctrine that the will of the citizens is supreme and the governing agent exists merely to carry out their will. Thus subordinated in authority, the regulating power is also restricted in range. Instead of having an authority extending over actions of all kinds, it is shut out from large classes of actions. Its control over ways of living in respect to food, clothing, amusements, is repudiated; it is not allowed to dictate modes of production nor to regulate trade. Nor is this all. It becomes a duty to resist irresponsible government, and also to resist the excesses of responsible government. There arises a tendency in minorities to disobey even the legislature deputed by the majority, when it interferes in certain ways; and their oppositions to laws they condemn as inequitable, from time to time cause abolition of them. With which changes of political theory and accompanying sentiment, is joined a belief, implied or avowed, that the combined actions of the social aggregate have for their end

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 31 to maintain the conditions under which individual lives may be satisfactorily carried on; in place of the old belief that individual lives have for their end the maintenance of this aggregate’s combined actions.

The received wisdom on Spencer’s political and moral views is that he was an extremely vigorous defender of modern laissez-faire capitalism and imperialism. Such a view, for instance, is strongly advocated by Marvin Harris (1968). Yet this conventional viewpoint is something of an exaggeration. Carneiro (1967) has suggested that Spencer had important reservations about some of Britain’s colonial policies, and that on more than one occasion he reported feeling ashamed of his country. Peel (1971) has been even more emphatic in his effort to counter the conventional wisdom on Spencer. He claims that Spencer was a peace lover vehemently opposed to the colonial wars of the late nineteenth century, that he was hardly the apologist for capitalism that he has been made out to be, and that some of his writings reveal serious misgivings about modern industrial capitalism. Peel remarks that (1971:216): After comparing the life of a factory operative with that of a cottager, [Spencer] admitted “that this industrial development has proved extremely detrimental to the operative.” His work life is monotonous, his faculties are either overused or disused, and he is not really free to contract at will: “this liberty amounts in practice to little more than the ability to exchange one slavery for another, since, fit only for his particular occupation, he rarely has an opportunity of doing anything more than decide in what mill he will pass the greater part of his dreary days”. . . . He observes that “in the course of social progress parts . . . are sacrificed for the benefits of the society as a whole”; whereas in earlier days men were killed in war, now there was a “mortality entailed by the commercial struggle,” and “in either case men are used up for the benefit of posterity; and so long as they go on multiplying in excess of the means of subsistence, there appears no remedy.”

Tylor and Morgan also generally believed that social evolution could be equated with human progress. The very names they used for their evolutionary stages—savagery, barbarism, civilization—indisputably reveal this. Moreover, their writings are liberally sprinkled with statements attesting to the “rude conditions” of savages and their gradual improvement in barbarism, and, especially, in civilization, and they continually use words like “higher” and “lower” in reference to societies at different evolutionary stages. They are also quite explicit about their commitment to a view of progressive improvement in the human condition. Tylor says for example (1924, I:27): “From an ideal point of view, civilization may be looked upon as the general improvement of mankind by higher organization of the individual and society, to the end of promoting at once man’s goodness, power, and happiness.” And Morgan refers to “the inferiority of savage man in the

32 ✻ Chapter 2 mental and moral scale, undeveloped, inexperienced, and held down by his low animal appetites and passions” (1974[1877]:41). Numerous other passages from the works of both Tylor and Morgan could easily be cited to demonstrate their ethnocentrism and their belief in progress. But it is also clear that, like Spencer, Tylor and Morgan scarcely held an unqualified view of progress. Tylor, in fact, is at pains to point to the important qualifications that have to be made with respect to equating evolution with progress (Tylor, 1924, 1:27–29): But even those students who hold most strongly that the general course of civilization, as measured along the scale of races from savages to ourselves, is progress towards the benefit of mankind, must admit of many and manifold exceptions. Industrial and intellectual culture by no means advances uniformly in all its branches, and in fact excellence in various of its details is often obtained under conditions which keep back culture as a whole. . . . Thus, even in comparing mental and artistic culture among several peoples, the balance of good and ill is not quite easy to strike. If not only knowledge and art, but at the same time moral and political excellence, be taken into consideration, it becomes yet harder to reckon on an ideal scale the advance or decline from stage to stage of culture. . . . Whether in high ranges or in low of human life, it may be seen that advance of culture seldom results at once in unmixed good. . . . The white invader or colonist, though representing on the whole a higher moral standard than the savage he improves or destroys, often represents his standard very ill, and at best can hardly claim to substitute a life stronger, nobler, and purer at every point than that which he supersedes.

As for Morgan, he had constant praise for the democracy and equality of the gens and on several occasions alluded to the ill effects of property and social inequality. The now famous closing words of Ancient Society were remarked upon by Marx and Engels and have been quoted many times since, but they still bear repeating (1974[1877]:561–562): Property and office were the foundations upon which aristocracy planted itself. Whether this principle shall live or die has been one of the great problems with which modern society has been engaged through the intervening periods . . . Although several thousand years have passed away without the overthrow of privileged classes, excepting in the United States [!], their burdensome character upon society has been demonstrated. . . . A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. . . . Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.

Classical Evolutionism: I ✻ 33

Notes 1. There were many other evolutionary thinkers in the period under discussion, but unfortunately there is no space to examine their ideas. The most influential and best known of these thinkers were J. J. Bachofen (1815–1887), Henry Sumner Maine (1822–1888), John McLennan (1827–1881), Julius Lippert (1839–1909), John Lubbock (1834–1913), and W. Robertson Smith (1846–1894). All of these thinkers wrote on the evolution of the family and kinship, McLennan coining the extremely durable terms “exogamy” and “endogamy.” The evolution of religion was a major subject for Bachofen, Lubbock, and Smith. Maine wrote also on the evolution of law, for which he is best remembered. Smith was unique in concentrating on family life and religion among Arabs and other Semitic peoples. The ideas of these thinkers are summarized by Harris (1968) and Burrow (1966), who also provide, of course, references to their major works. 2. Mandelbaum’s notion of functional laws should not be confused with what is usually called functionalist explanation, or with the sociological school of thought known as functionalism. Mandelbaum might have less misleadingly called these laws causal laws. 3. A number of other scholars have developed similar conceptions to characterize and criticize the nineteenth-century evolutionists. Karl Popper’s famous book The Poverty of Historicism (1957) developed the concept of historicism along much the same lines that Mandelbaum did a decade and a half later. Mandelbaum’s directionallaw/functional-law dichotomy is virtually repeated in Leon Goldstein’s (1967) contrast between developmental and causal laws, although Goldstein applies this distinction to recent rather than classical thinkers. In Chapter 1, I referred to Anthony Giddens’s (1981, 1984) notion that most evolutionary accounts rest on unfolding models. For the sake of terminological simplicity, I shall henceforth use the term developmentalism to characterize epistemological conceptions of social evolution that are historicist and that rest on directional or developmental laws or unfolding models. This discussion obviously suggests the question of the relation between developmentalist and teleological conceptions of historical change. Conceptually, teleological and developmentalist views of change cannot be strictly equated. The former assume the existence of a specific purpose or set of purposes whose realization drives history forward, and the latter do not necessarily do so. Yet in practice all teleological conceptions of history will be developmentalist, and most developmentalist ones will no doubt end up being teleological. Whether the formulations of Spencer and Morgan were teleological in addition to being developmentalist is perhaps something of an open question, but it is likely that they were (cf. Hirst, 1976). An interesting attempt to defend a type of developmentalism has been made by Olding (1978). It is noteworthy, though, that Olding’s examples involve things like stellar evolution and the sprouting of apple trees from apple seeds, and he says nothing of the history of societies. Even with respect to the kinds of physical and biological phenomena he addresses, however, his arguments seem dubious, because one can still reply that these highly law-like patterns of change can be explained by reducing them to certain functional laws. 4. The meaning of the term “developmentalist” is explained in note 2. The phrase “ordinary causal explanation” refers to what Mandelbaum means by explanation in

34 ✻ Chapter 2 terms of functional laws. I shall use this phrase (or the phrases “ordinary causation” or “ordinary causes”) from this point on in order to avoid the reader’s confusing this form of explanation with functionalist modes of analysis. 5. Actually, Hirst is probably right in the case of Spencer. Spencer often used the words “proximate” and “ultimate” in his explanatory statements, and thus he may well have consciously understood that he was employing two very different models of explanation (and, if so, he would obviously not have seen them as incompatible). 6. The same point has been made numerous times in recent years, and it is clear that Darwin’s model of causation adhered to Mandelbaum’s conception of explanation in terms of a functional law (cf. Toulmin, 1972). 7. Much the same argument is made by Burrow (1966). Young (1969) and Freeman (1974) are also important contributions to the discussion about the theories of Malthus, Spencer, and Darwin and the relations among them, although they have other concerns of their own as well. Freeman’s article places great emphasis on the differences between Darwin’s and Spencer’s theories to the detriment of Spencer. Although Freeman is probably correct, he exaggerates the differences and paints an unduly negative picture of Spencer, regarding him as little more than a speculative metaphysician in comparison with Darwin the rigorous scientist. 8. Toulmin (1972:330–331) notes that Darwin generally resisted the word “evolution” because he rejected what he took to be its developmentalist implications. He did not use this word at all until the sixth edition of Origin, and then did so only sparingly. 9. Harris’s interpretation of Spencer on these counts closely corresponds to that of Carneiro (1967), from which, in fact, it is substantially derived.

Chapter Three

The Antievolutionary Reaction

S

ocial evolutionism’s golden age came crashing to a halt soon after the beginning of the twentieth century, the decline actually starting in the last decade of the nineteenth. The increasing disfavor that evolutionism was beginning to encounter can be seen in a number of ways. For one thing, Spencer’s reputation sharply declined in the waning years of his life. Spencer was widely known to the general public and had a very favorable image among intellectuals, but in his last years his ideas came increasingly under attack and he was forced to modify them in order to keep others interested in them at all. In addition, the works of Morgan and Tylor were systematically attacked in American anthropology under the leadership of Franz Boas (1858–1942). Boas taught his students that evolutionism contained serious logical and theoretical errors, and during the first half of the twentieth century the antievolutionism that he and his followers espoused clearly prevailed over evolutionism. The objections of the Boasians against evolutionism were essentially fourfold. They thought that it was logically flawed in its employment of the comparative method as a basis for reconstructing evolutionary sequences; that it employed rigid unilinear evolutionary schemes; that it gave insufficient attention to the influence of diffusion, the widespread existence of which undermined evolutionary arguments; and that it proposed an illegitimate doctrine of progress, thereby denigrating cultures to the extent that they were less culturally developed. This chapter explores the first three of these criticisms. (It more or less concedes the last of them, which was discussed in the previous chapter.) The argument will be that the Boasians were either incorrect, or that they grossly exaggerated and oversimplified matters, on all three counts. 35

36 ✻ Chapter 3

Classical Evolutionism and the Comparative Method The comparative method was widely employed by the classical evolutionists in the construction of evolutionary sequences. Although they did not ignore archaeological data and used it whenever possible (Harris, 1968), its paucity at this time meant that it could not form the primary basis for their theoretical notions. The comparative method therefore of necessity constituted their major methodological tool. It was a procedure well known in their day and had been employed to a considerable extent by their eighteenth-century predecessors. The procedure was actually a quite simple one. It involved collecting information about known cultures that differed markedly among themselves and then arranging these cultures in a manner presumed to represent an actual historical sequence, a sequence through which such cultures could be said to have passed. In other words, contemporary cultures of a certain type were presumed to closely resemble historical cultures as they would have looked in their own time. Arranging known cultures in a particular manner according to certain specified criteria allowed one to infer historical change and to assume that the synchronic data represented an actual evolutionary sequence. Spencer was perhaps the most avid employer of the comparative method. In his monumental work Descriptive Sociology (1873–1934), he compiled highly detailed descriptions of individual cultures. These descriptions formed the basis for the actual comparisons and theoretical generalizations he made in the three volumes of his The Principles of Sociology. The first volume of Descriptive Sociology was published in 1873 and, by the time of his death, eight volumes had appeared. These dealt with such diverse groups as the English, ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, Malayo-Polynesian cultures, African cultures, various Asian groups, North and South American Indians, Hebrews and Phoenicians, and the French. Some of Spencer’s followers continued to turn out new volumes after his death, and by 1934 another seven had appeared. These dealt with the Chinese, the Hellenic and Hellenistic Greeks, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Rome, and additional African groups. Tylor and Morgan also made extensive use of the comparative method. Tylor claimed that “by comparing the various stages of civilization among races known to history, with the aid of archaeological inference from the remains of prehistoric tribes, it seems possible to judge in a rough way of an early general condition of man” (1924, I:21). Notice that in this passage Tylor indicates that the comparative method is to be used in conjunction with archaeological evidence, and that he claims no more than that contemporary cultures “approximate” earlier ones. One major way in which Tylor used the comparative method was through his concept of survivals, the existence of which, he thought, provided a reasonable foundation for inferences about evolutionary changes. As he put it,

The Antievolutionary Reaction ✻ 37 survivals “are processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved” (Tylor, 1924, I:16). In Ancient Society Morgan claimed that (1974[1877]:506–507), “Like the successive geological formations, the tribes of mankind may be arranged, according to their relative conditions, into successive strata. When thus arranged, they reveal with some degree of certainty the entire range of human progress from savagery to civilization.” Morgan made great use in Ancient Society of ethnographic materials from the Iroquois and the ancient Greeks and Romans, but he also drew upon information regarding numerous other preliterate and literate societies. This method was widely decried by Boas and many of his disciples and pupils. Boas himself identified it as logically flawed, saying that “if anthropology desires to establish laws governing the growth of culture it must not confine itself to comparing the results of the growth alone, but whenever such is feasible is must compare the processes of growth” (Boas, 1940a[1896]:280; emphasis added). Boas’s point was essentially that the comparative method rested on a process of mere inference that was much too insecure a foundation for establishing fundamental theoretical principles. The alternative to the comparative method was therefore the historical method, a method that involved actually observing the historical changes that had taken place in a particular society. A similar objection was made by one of Boas’s most prominent students, Alexander Goldenweiser, except Goldenweiser went further and charged that the comparative method rested upon the fallacy of circular reasoning. In his famous textbook Anthropology he asked (1937:508): What right has the evolutionist to arrange instances of cultural facts or processes gathered from different tribes into a successive series, and then claim it as historical, claim, that is, that it has actually occurred in this form, that the different instances were comprised in a concrete historic series of stages at some particular place and time, or in all places and times, whenever the particular institution฀has฀developed฀in฀history?฀.฀.฀.฀The฀only฀answer฀the฀evolutionist฀could฀ give here would be that according to the general principles of evolution such were the stages, and that now they were concretely illustrated; therefore the evolutionary hypothesis was correct. This reply cannot be accepted as valid. The instances may be factual and accurate enough as instances, but the ordering of them into a series of temporal succession, never as such observed nor deducible from the facts, could only be validated by the assumption of uniformity in development which is one of the tenets of evolution, the very hypothesis, that is, the procedure was intended to prove. The argument is therefore circular: something that is to be proved, or an inherent part of that something, is assumed in order to make the proof valid.

38 ✻ Chapter 3 As we shall see in later chapters, the comparative method is still a major tool of modern evolutionists, and the criticisms made against it by the Boasians are still widely endorsed today by numerous antievolutionary sociologists฀and฀anthropologists.฀Are฀these฀criticisms฀valid?฀Indeed,฀they฀are฀not,฀ and defenses of the legitimate employment of the comparative method have been made by numerous scholars. Robert Carneiro (1973a) has noted that the comparative method was already a well-known tool by the time the classical evolutionists began their work. Use of it was so well established that it was implicit in their work and they therefore hardly felt a need to defend its use. Of course, the fact that it was time-honored is hardly a suitable defense of it, but Carneiro suggests that the classical evolutionists actually had some clearly worked out principles whereby they could defend the comparative method’s employment. All of them used cultural complexity as a criterion for classifying cultures. This was, for example, Spencer’s main basis for his classifications. Similarly, Tylor proposed that (1871, I:28; quoted in Carneiro, 1973a:69): “The principal criteria of classification are the absence or presence, high or low development, of the industrial arts, especially metalworking, manufacture of implements and vessels, agriculture, &c., the extent of scientific knowledge, the definiteness of moral principles, the condition of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social and political organization, and so forth.” Marvin Harris (1968) has insisted that the use of the comparative method by the classical evolutionists was in principle sound, and that a distinction must be drawn between its appropriate employment and some of the abuses of it that were perpetrated by the nineteenth-century evolutionists. Harris points out that the classical evolutionists tended to underestimate the degree of diversity in both contemporary and ancient societies. This led them to make a number of serious errors, such as assuming that the lack of metallurgy implied the absence of social stratification, or assuming that a universal matrilineal stage of family organization preceded a universal patrilineal one. But, Harris argues, the comparative method is without doubt a legitimate, and actually a crucial, tool if properly employed. Are there such things as surviving stone age฀cultures,฀he฀asks?฀Indeed,฀the฀assumption฀that฀there฀are฀is฀a฀perfectly฀ valid one in precisely the same sense as the assumption widely employed by evolutionary biologists that contemporary species are survivals from the past (and that there are morphological similarities between surviving species and extinct ones). Along the same lines Elman Service puts it exceptionally well when he asks (1971a:7; emphasis added): If the aboriginal culture of the Arunta of Australia is not a form of adaptation to a particular kind of (total) environment made long, long ago and preserved into modern times because of its isolation, then what is it? Does a people have whatever฀kind฀of฀culture฀it฀might฀dream฀up฀at฀any฀given฀time?฀Obviously฀not.฀ Do the Arunta have a rudimentary technology and simple social life because

The Antievolutionary Reaction ✻ 39 that฀is฀as฀far฀as฀their฀mental฀powers฀would฀take฀them?฀No.฀.฀.฀.฀What฀else฀can฀ explain such a culture, then, but that there have been survivals into the present of ancient cultural forms which because of relative isolation have maintained a relatively stable adaptation.

This defense of the comparative method is actually associated with a profound irony, and that is that the antievolutionists themselves sometimes recognized the value of the comparative method and made their own use of it. Carneiro (1973a) has pointed out that Boas himself would occasionally equate contemporary primitives with ancient societal forms, and he quotes him as saying that “we find in modern times isolated tribes living in a way that may very well be paralleled with early conditions” (Boas, 1932:608; cited in Carneiro, 1973a:74). Moreover, Goldenweiser was a promoter of the comparative method in spite of himself. What else could have provided the basis for the following remarks (Goldenweiser, 1937:520–521)? Take, for example, chieftainship. It is probable that one or another kind of leadership has existed in human society from the beginning, but certainly not hereditary leadership. Before succession in office was established or could have been thought of, there must have been leaders or officials whose office was not hereditary. Similarly, leadership must have developed in relatively small groups; the presence of a chieftain wielding power over a populous tribe or group of tribes, could not possibly be regarded as a primary or truly primitive state of affairs. . . . [I]n the domain of religion and magic . . . the data indicate that the more primitive forms of supernatural creatures and magical devices are associated with single or at any rate simple purposes and functions. A primal magical rite is for fertility, protection, success in hunting or in love; a primitive spirit is of sickness or famine, of craftsmanship or of valour. The more comprehensive forms of magical power, the more versatile deities encountered among the more advanced primitives as well as in historic times, came into being through a process of syncretism—powers and functions originally connected with separate things, acts, or supernatural beings, now became concentrated in a single carrier. We cannot very well conceive of this process as reversed, except under very special conditions, without going both in the face of known facts and of theoretical probability. Or take the field of economics. Once more, some sort of vague proprietary sense may, perhaps, be regarded as having belonged to man from the beginning. Do฀we฀not฀see฀incipient฀elements฀of฀it฀already฀among฀animals?฀But฀here฀also฀ the idea of inheritance of property must have appeared later. This theoretically feasible conception is fully vindicated by a survey of primitive tribes; the cruder ones either manage without the notion of property inheritance or have no very definite regulations in this connexion. The exchange of goods or commodities, again, may be very old indeed, but before a medium of exchange developed there was exchange in kind, and it is out of the perplexities and inconveniences of the latter that the stimulus arose first to regard certain goods as a medium of exchange, then to devise a separate medium which no longer had much or any value except as a medium.

40 ✻ Chapter 3 Their formal protestations notwithstanding, it would definitely appear that at least some of the Boasians unconsciously knew a good thing when they saw it.1

Were the Classical Evolutionists Unilinearists? One of the strongest objections made by the Boasians against the nineteenthcentury evolutionists was that they proposed rigid evolutionary schemes in which they interpreted all cultural development as occurring along uniform lines—that they were unilinear evolutionists. The Boasians differed somewhat among themselves in terms of how severely they chastised the classical evolutionists for this alleged characteristic, but they were all generally agreed that it constituted a serious flaw in their works. Boas was willing to admit the existence of certain parallels in cultural development in different parts of the globe, but he thought them insufficient to establish a hypothesis of “a single general line of development” (Boas, 1940b[1920]; cf. Harris, 1968). Other Boasians, like Goldenweiser and Robert Lowie, were perhaps willing to admit greater parallelism than Boas was, but they too would admit only “limited parallels.” In general, the Boasians preferred to emphasize the unique historical development of every society. Were the Boasians correct in their judgment that the nineteenth-century evolutionists฀were฀unilinearists?฀Although฀there฀are฀still฀many฀contemporary฀ social scientists who believe that they were (more commonly sociologists rather than anthropologists, I suspect; cf. Appelbaum, 1970), a number have attempted to expose this view as little more than a myth (Hirst, 1976; Kaplan and Manners, 1972; Harris, 1968; Carneiro, 1973a). Two of the most vigorous advocates of the inaccuracy of the Boasian claim are Harris and Carneiro. Harris has emphasized that the classical evolutionists introduced numerous qualifications into their statements about a general line of cultural development and thus scarcely promoted a rigid, lockstep view of evolutionary change. He points out that the classical evolutionists thought the general similarities in cultural development more interesting and more worth pursuing because their express aim was to develop a “science of universal history.” This could hardly have been achieved by dwelling on diversity and the unique features of cultural change. Carneiro exempts all of the classical evolutionists from the charge of rigid unilinearism. Like Harris, he notes that they introduced numerous qualifying statements into their generalizations. He has been especially eager to exempt Spencer from the unilinearist charge and cites a prominent passage from Spencer to suggest that he “was not only not a unilinear evolutionist, he was not even a linear evolutionist” (Carneiro, 1967:xlii; emphasis added). The passage in question is a particularly famous one in which Spencer says, “Social progress is not linear but divergent and redivergent. . . . [M]ultiplying groups

The Antievolutionary Reaction ✻ 41 have tended ever to acquire differences, now major and now minor: there have arisen genera and species of societies” (1900:331). This passage is also cited by Harris and by numerous other exegetes of Spencer’s evolutionism. Both Harris and Carneiro are able to cite numerous passages from the works of the classical evolutionists to support their arguments, and there can be little doubt about the validity of their interpretation of these passages. It would not be difficult to adduce further passages to the same effect. Yet there is a sense in which both thinkers engage in overstatement and oversimplification. The issue really turns on what is meant by unilinearism. For his part, Harris seems to take it to mean the view that all cultures inexorably evolve through the same stages, with no stage-skipping, stagnation, or regression being permitted. If this is what unilinearism means, then it is child’s play to show that the classical evolutionists were not unilinearists. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine anyone’s ever holding such a view. It is possible, however, to define unilinearism in a somewhat looser way. Unilinearism can be defined as the view that cultural development generally moves along broadly similar (but not rigidly uniform) lines.2 Let us call the type of unilinearism focused on by Harris strong unilinearism, while identifying the type defined in the preceding sentence as weak unilinearism. This allows us to say with relative ease that, although the classical evolutionists were scarcely strong unilinearists, they certainly were weak unilinearists.3 Indeed, weak unilinearism is the hallmark of their analyses, and statements to this effect are easy to locate in their writings. Spencer’s qualification that evolution is not linear but divergent and redivergent aside, how else could we฀ interpret฀ his฀ famous฀ Law฀ of฀ Evolution฀ but฀ as฀ a฀ type฀ of฀ unilinearism?฀ Consider also Spencer’s claim that there is a generalized movement from militant to industrial society. Even more significant is his classification of societies along the dimension of societal complexity. In speaking of societies in the context of this scheme, he says, “The stages of compounding and recompounding have to be passed through in succession. . . . In this order has social evolution gone on, and only in this order does it appear to be possible” (1972[1876]:147–148). And consider the following passages from the writings of Morgan and Tylor that can be sensibly interpreted only as manifestations of a weak unilinearism: The tendency of culture has been similar throughout the existence of human society, and . . . we may fairly judge from its known historic course what its prehistoric course may have been (Tylor, 1924, 1:33). It may be remarked finally that the experience of mankind has run in nearly uniform channels; that human necessities in similar conditions have been substantially the same; and that the operations of the mental principle have been uniform in virtue of the specific identity of the brain of all the races of mankind (Morgan, 1974[1877]:8).4

42 ✻ Chapter 3 The course and manner of [societal] development was predetermined, as well as restricted within narrow limits of divergence, by the natural logic of the human mind and the necessary limitations of its powers. Progress has been found to be substantially the same in kind in tribes and nations inhabiting different and even disconnected continents, while in the same status, with deviations from uniformity in particular instances produced by special causes (Morgan, 1974[1877]:18). Mankind were able to produce in similar conditions the same implements and utensils, the same inventions, and to develop similar institutions from the same original germs of thought (Morgan, 1974[1877]:562).

In support of the claim that the classical evolutionists did indeed favor a type of unilinearism, let us also not overlook a key argument of the previous chapter: that nineteenth-century evolutionism was substantially based on a doctrine of developmentalism. A conception of evolutionary transformation as a predetermined unfolding of immanences automatically presupposes a unilinear conception of change, and in such a view divergence can only be regarded as a deviation from a typical path (witness the usage of this very word by Morgan in the third passage quoted above, and notice how he claims that such divergence must be explained by “special causes”). The developmentalism of the classical evolutionists presents, in fact, the strongest case for their unilinearism.5

Classical Evolutionism and Diffusion A third major challenge to the classical evolutionists involved the role that external factors were thought to play in the formation of the particular characteristics of any given society. By and large, the Boasians opposed “independent evolution” to “diffusion” and declared diffusion the winner. The classical evolutionists were said to be unaware, or at least insufficiently aware, of the facts about the role of diffusion, and this was deemed another nail in their coffin. Although this idea is often held even today (cf. Mandelbaum, 1971), the Boasians committed an especially egregious error in this regard, and thus it has been extraordinarily easy for modern scholars to refute it. In all fairness, it must be pointed out that some of the Boasians recognized that the classical evolutionists were aware of the facts about diffusion. Yet they thought that the evolutionists either did not realize the implications these facts had for evolutionary theories, or that they produced unacceptable defenses of their theories in light of them (cf. Goldenweiser, 1937:517; Lowie, 1937:74–81). Lowie, for instance, cites numerous instances of Tylor’s high regard for the facts of diffusion, and notes that he “remains one of the few scholars whose championship of independent evolution is not a sterile, however unwarranted,

The Antievolutionary Reaction ✻ 43 denial of diffusion” (Lowie, 1937:81). Lowie also mentions Morgan’s awareness of diffusionary influences (Lowie, 1937:59). The facts of the matter, though, suggest that even Lowie grossly underestimated the appreciation the classical evolutionists had for diffusion. Although Tylor did show it an extraordinary regard, sometimes even to the point of favoring diffusionist explanations over those emphasizing independent evolution, he was alone only in the extent of his regard. As Harris (1968) has pointed out, Morgan not only knew about diffusion, but considered it to be an important factor in bringing about many of the uniformities of cultural evolution. Thus (Morgan, 1974[1877]:39; modified from citation in Harris, 1968:177): Whenever a continental connection existed, all the tribes must have shared in some measure in each other’s progress. All great inventions and discoveries propagate themselves; but the inferior tribes must have appreciated their value before they could appropriate them. In the continental areas certain tribes would lead; but the leadership would be apt to shift a number of times in the course of an ethnical period.

Along similar lines, Carneiro shows that in explaining the widespread occurrence of clans Morgan actually favored a diffusionist theory over one stressing independent invention. Harris and Carneiro make an outstanding case not only for the keen awareness by the classical evolutionists6 of the facts of diffusion, but for their integration of these facts into their evolutionary formulations.7 Here is another passage from Tylor not cited by either Harris or Carneiro, but that further buttresses this point (Tylor, 1924, I:39): “In striking a balance between the effects of forward and backward movement in civilization, it must be borne in mind how powerfully the diffusion of culture acts in preserving the results of progress from the attacks of degeneration. A progressive movement in culture spreads, and becomes independent of the fate of its originators.” And here is another passage from Morgan to the same effect (Morgan, 1974[1877]:16): “Some tribes and families have been left in geographical isolation to work out the problems of progress by original mental effort; and have, consequently, retained their arts and institutions pure and homogeneous; while those of other tribes and nations have been adulterated through external influence.” We see, then, that at least some of the classical evolutionists knew all about diffusion and saw no difficulty at all in integrating it into their evolutionary schemes. This makes it all the more curious that Lowie should have uttered his famous statement that “diffusion plays havoc with any universal law of sequence” (1937:60). That statement can only make sense to someone who sees cultural evolution as a purely endogenous process and who thus regards evolution and diffusion as diametrically opposed. But such a viewpoint was

44 ✻ Chapter 3 never held by the classical evolutionists. They seemed to have understood that “diffusion is merely discovery at second hand” (Ingold, 1986:40). In other words, they realized that diffusion is not an automatic process, but occurs in a highly selective manner. People do not simply borrow from others indiscriminately, but take those things that fit into their culture and for which a need is perceived. Likewise, many elements of other cultures are rejected because of their incompatibility or their inability to satisfy particular needs and wants. Once we conceptualize the human rationale behind diffusion in this more sophisticated and subtle way, we need no longer oppose it to an evolutionary scheme, even a weakly unilinear one.8

The Contributions of the Classical Evolutionists During the first few decades of the twentieth century evolution was a dirty word in Western social science. Evolutionism as a theoretical approach was held in contempt by many and viewed with great skepticism by most of the rest of the social-scientific world. It did not completely die out, and some prominent evolutionary works appeared during this period, the most notable of which were Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg’s The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (1965[1915]), William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller’s The Science of Society (1927), and Keller’s Societal Evolution (1931) (see Chapter 5). But it was a way of thinking about the nature of society that was practiced or endorsed only at risk to one’s intellectual career, which is why only a handful of bold social scientists dared engage in it. What฀illed฀the฀breach?฀In฀the฀United฀States฀it฀was฀the฀approach฀of฀Boas฀ himself, an approach often identified by contemporary scholars as historical particularism. Boas always recommended detailed study of the history of individual societies as being highly preferable to the comparative method. Early in his career he was willing to admit that general laws of societal development existed, and that it was appropriate for social scientists to search for them. Thus in his famous 1896 essay, “The limitations of the comparative method of anthropology,” he says, “By comparing histories of growth general laws may be found” (1940a[1896]:279). Moreover, at one point he was willing to admit certain basic parallels in cultural evolution in diverse regions of the world. But later in his career he had abandoned even this limited nomothetic viewpoint, declaring that “cultural phenomena are of such complexity that it seems to me doubtful whether valid cultural laws can be found. The causal conditions of cultural happenings lie always in the interaction between individual and society, and no classificatory study of societies will solve this problem” (1940c[1932]:257). He had settled upon the notion that the study of each society’s unique historical trajectory was the proper aim of social science, and this notion was widely perpetuated by his students and disciples, who dominated American anthropology during this time.9

The Antievolutionary Reaction ✻ 45 The Boasians were an exceptionally cautious and skeptical lot whose epistemology dictated that social-scientific research required faithful attention to the precise details of cultural life. When the Boasians looked at various societies and cultures, it was the differences rather than the similarities that struck them and that they found more worthy of attention. It is against this underlying conception of the nature of social science that the contributions of Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor must be judged. Of course many of their more specific notions must be rejected outright. They had a philosophically inappropriate epistemology that curiously mixed together ordinary causal and developmentalist modes of explanation, and even when they focused on specific causes of particular transformations they tended toward either idealism or a kind of confused eclecticism. They held a powerful ethnocentrism, and for the most part illegitimately equated evolution with progress. They clearly tended to overestimate the amount of uniformity in historical change despite their recognition of divergence and diversity. Their empirical errors were legion. Witness, for example, Morgan’s theory that a universal stage of matrilineality preceded a universal stage of patrilineality. This list of their general flaws and specific errors could be extended considerably, but it would be pointless to do so. Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor should not be evaluated in terms of the specificity of their contributions, but should be judged according to their underlying aims and the extent to which they provided a model for future generations in the better execution of those aims. As Harris has emphasized, the classical evolutionists were attempting to construct a “science of universal history,” an intellectual aim that had roots sunk back into the eighteenth century. They wanted as parsimonious an understanding of the historical development of human culture as possible, and this is what led them to focus on broad similarities, even at the expense of overstressing them. In this regard they remained much closer to the character of science as it has been practiced for hundreds of years in Western civilization, for the principle of parsimony—the idea that one seeks to explain the most with the least—has been a hallowed principle of scientific work for all that time.10 There is a fundamental irony in the Boasian conception of science. Although it was rigorously scientific in its deep respect for empirical documentation of assertions, it was profoundly antiscientific in its focus on the particular rather than the general. To their immense credit, Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor achieved a much greater balance of these scientific aims.

Notes 1. In a later chapter I shall say more about contemporary use of the comparative method and its vindication by the findings of modern archaeology. 2. In another article, Carneiro (1973b) takes essentially the same view as proposed here.

46 ✻ Chapter 3 3. Carneiro has pointed to yet another version of unilinearism in the works of the nineteenth-century evolutionists. He suggests that Morgan held the view that any society currently at Stage B must have passed through Stage A, although he never held that any society in Stage A must eventually evolve to Stage B. He offers the following passage from Morgan to substantiate his claim: “It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization” (Morgan, 1974[1877]:5; cited in Carneiro, 1973a:80). Carneiro regards this as a reasonable form of unilinearism and one that has never been refuted by the Boasians or any other antievolutionist. It seems most appropriate to inquire into the type of unilinearism the Boasians charged the classical evolutionists with promoting. Carneiro (1973b) has suggested that the Boasians meant their usage of the word unilinearism in the strong sense. Boas himself apparently did, for he says that the “evolutionary point of view presupposes that the course of historical changes in the cultural life of mankind follows definite laws which are applicable everywhere, and which bring it about that cultural development is, in its main lines, the same among all races and all peoples” (Boas, 1940b[1920]:281; emphasis added). It is clear, though, that at least some of the Boasians understood it in a weaker sense. Lowie, for instance, recognized that the classical evolutionists clearly qualified their generalizations (cf. Lowie, 1937:59). To the extent that Harris is arguing that the classical evolutionists were not strong unilinearists, he is of course correct in speaking of a “myth of unilinear evolution.” But there is no myth with respect to a weak unilinearism. I suspect Harris intends his argument to apply only to the strong version. 4. Harris (1968:171) cites the same passage in support of his argument against strong unilinearism, but italicizes the words “nearly” and “substantially.” 5. That they saw themselves as tracing the development of Culture rather than specific cultures, itself really part and parcel of their developmentalism, also clearly demonstrates a commitment to unilinearism. 6. Not only were Morgan and Tylor aware of these facts, but so was Spencer. For example, in discussing the various origins of polytheistic religions, he says that they may develop through endogenous evolution, through political conquest, or through a process of diffusion whereby, as a result of the reputations of certain deities spreading far and wide, these deities are adopted by other societies (see Chapter 11). 7. Doubtless no one has done more than Leslie White (1945a) to show the attention the classical evolutionists gave to diffusion. White has been able to extract no fewer than 15 passages from the writings of Morgan and Tylor that stress the importance of diffusion. Several of these passages clearly show how these thinkers integrated evolutionary and diffusionist concerns. White suggests three reasons for the Boasian misunderstanding on this score. First, he argues that their strong antievolutionism biased their reading of the classical evolutionists from the start. Second, he wonders with what care the Boasians actually read the works of the nineteenth-century evolutionists. Finally, he asserts that the Boasians consistently confused the evolution of culture as a whole with the evolution of specific tribes or nations. Since the classical evolutionists were principally concerned with the evolution of culture in an overall sense, the facts of diffusion could easily be acknowledged in a way consistent with evolutionism. But the Boasians failed to recognize this and misunderstood the classical evolutionists as trying to explain the historical development of particular cultures.

The Antievolutionary Reaction ✻ 47 8. For further discussion of this point see Collins (1986b:5n) and Harris (1968, 1988:128–130). It is interesting to note that Goldenweiser recognized the defense the classical evolutionists made of their position when confronted with the facts of diffusion by their critics. Goldenweiser says that (1937:517) “the evolutionists attempted to defend their position on the ground that of the cultural features entering a group from the outside only those would prove acceptable and, therefore, assimilable, which fitted into the pre-existing culture of the recipient group. If they did not so fit they would be rejected or at best remain unassimilated, loosely afloat, as it were, in a hostile or uncongenial cultural medium. If, on the other hand, the extraneous features did fit and as a consequence were accepted and assimilated, then this very fact would bear evidence to the preparedness of the recipient group to accept such features and, if so, it should also be credited with the capacity or readiness to evolve them independently, had it not chanced to receive them from without. At first blush this argument sounds convincing enough.” It does indeed sound convincing enough, and it is precisely the same argument used by contemporary evolutionists. Goldenweiser’s objection to the argument seems to be, first, that a culture’s failure to absorb an item from another culture does not constitute proof of its inability or unwillingness to do so, and second, that in fact most items can be appropriated by one culture from another. The first point is obviously true but stands as a good example of the rather unrealistic caution employed by the Boasians. The second point is patently false, and any modern anthropologist or comparative sociologist can construct a long list of items that would be extremely unlikely to diffuse from one culture to another. (Think, for example, of contemporary Western capitalists borrowing hunter-gatherer reciprocity as a new guiding ideal for operating their businesses, or contemporary hunter-gatherers adopting bureaucratic techniques employed by modern governments.) The great selectivity of diffusion is today well established. 9. The widespread modern consensus that Boas and his followers were antievolutionists has been challenged by Harris, for whom it is another myth in the history of social theory. Harris can say this only because of his conception of social evolution as any qualitative transformation in a sociocultural system, and thus his implicit conception of an evolutionist as one who attempts to describe and explain these transformations (cf. Harris, 1968:259–260, 348–351, 641–653). Harris’s notion of an evolutionary theory is much too loose. As argued in Chapter 1, such a theory is one that assumes at least some broad directional trends in history and at least some general causes of these trends. Although Boas’s admission early in his career of limited parallels might have qualified him as a type of evolutionist, by the end of his career he warned against the search for general trends and laws by which to explain them. This kind of historical particularism is still the dominant mode of thinking among historians today, and it is subscribed to by many anthropologists and some sociologists as well. No major scholar that I know of other than Harris regards this emphasis on the historically unique as legitimately belonging within the province of evolutionism, and modern historical particularists are generally at pains to emphasize their opposition to evolutionary interpretations (cf. Mann, 1986). Harris’s published statements on this matter are disconcerting given his lifelong stress on the prominence of general directional trends in history and the crucial need for nomothetic explanation of those trends. Harris’s views are taken

48 ✻ Chapter 3 up once again in Chapter 8 where I will try to show that he has slipped into a very simple confusion, the recognition of which turns his entire argument into a tempest in a teapot. It was apparently Leslie White who popularized the term “antievolutionism” (he actually referred to the Boasians as “reactionary antievolutionists”). White claims that he appropriated the term from Goldenweiser, who used it to characterize the general Boasian outlook. White provides a convincing justification for his continued use of Goldenweiser’s term (cf. White, 1947a). 10. For further discussion of the importance of the principle of parsimony in science, see Sanderson (1987). For its historical prominence, see Maxwell (1974a, 1974b).

C h a p t e r Fo u r

Marxism as Evolutionism

H

istorical materialism has long been regarded by many Marxists and interpreters of Karl Marx (1818–1883) as a form of evolutionism. Yet the specific character of the evolutionism of the originators of historical materialism has remained very much in doubt and debate continues to rage over many questions, especially whether Marx was at heart a basically teleological thinker whose theory of history was ultimately developmentalist. This long-standing question has become a central one once again with the contention of G. A. Cohen (1978) that Marx was a technological determinist and a resolutely teleological and developmentalist thinker. Cohen does not address himself to Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), but the character of Engels’s evolutionism, and especially of the extent to which it is consistent with Marx’s, has been another of the unsettled exegetical questions surrounding historical materialism. It is these questions that are the leading concerns of this chapter, which attempts a systematic analytical assessment of the nature of Marxism as an evolutionary theory. Because of the tremendous attention paid to Cohen’s interpretation of Marx, that interpretation is used as a point of departure. Did Marx, as Cohen asserts, give causal primacy to the productive forces, and did he link this causal conception to a deeply developmentalist conception of historical฀change?฀As฀we฀will฀see,฀the฀prevailing฀viewpoint฀has฀been฀against฀Cohen’s฀ position. My own conclusions will be the same. Moreover, I will argue that even positions similar to Cohen’s—those that argue for a developmentalist Marx in a more general and less technologically determinist way—are wrong. Marx, in short, attempted to explain social transformations in ordinary causal terms. And฀what฀then฀of฀Engels?฀The฀prevailing฀tendency฀has฀been฀to฀separate฀ him sharply from Marx and to suggest that he was a crudely developmentalist and teleological thinker in a way that Marx never was. I will suggest, 49

50 ✻ Chapter 4 however, that this view is incorrect and that the evolutionisms of Marx and Engels were not markedly different in tone and character. One central aspect of the relation between the evolutionary theories of Marx and Engels was the high regard both thinkers had for Morgan’s Ancient Society, and thus the nature of the relationship between Marxism and Morganism will need to be explored. I will also consider the relation between Marxism and Darwinism because, as in the case of Marx’s and Engels’s attitude toward Morgan, understanding the appreciation they had for Darwin’s work contributes much to understanding the character of their evolutionary theories.

Cohen’s Interpretation of Marx Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (1978) is perhaps the most important book on Marx’s historical materialism to appear in the last three decades. The interpretation of Marx that Cohen advances in this book can be broken down into two essential theses. What Cohen calls the primacy thesis holds that, for Marx, the productive forces determine the basic character of the relations of production. Since for Cohen Marx’s notion of productive forces reduces largely to technology, the primacy thesis essentially means that Marx attributed causal priority to technology and technological change in historical transformation. The development thesis is the notion that there is an inherent tendency for the productive forces to develop throughout history. Human beings are constituted so as continually to attempt to advance their level of technology to higher and higher levels; they are highly rational beings who desire to advance their technology as a means of overcoming scarcity. Cohen combines these theses and adds an interesting theoretical wrinkle to them to produce his unique interpretation of Marx. The wrinkle that Cohen adds is the notion that the relationship between the productive forces and the relations of production is a functional one: The productive forces determine the relations of production in the sense that the relations of production are functionally adapted to the productive forces, that is, these relations are as they are because they are best suited at a particular time to advance the productive forces to the maximum extent. This leads Cohen to a specific viewpoint on Marx’s explanation of both social stability and social transformation. Social stability prevails when the existing relations of production continue to promote the development of the productive forces. Yet at some point in any mode of production the relations of production exhaust themselves, as it were, and turn into barriers (“fetters”) against any further development of the forces. At this point an upheaval in the relations of production occurs. The old relations are stripped away and replaced by new relations that can once again promote the development of the forces. Social stability is then regained, but only to be lost again when the new relations of

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 51 production eventually turn into fetters on the productive forces, and so on throughout history until the stage of communism is reached. Cohen thus holds that Marx was both a technological determinist and a teleological thinker. In this view, Marx saw history as being guided by an ultimate purpose, which was the existence of a socialist society in which people are free and in which their basic material needs are easily satisfied. This ultimate endpoint of history can only be achieved through a historical process of the unfolding of successive stages in the development of the forces and relations of production. Cohen’s Marx is a deeply historicist one who views historical change as being explained in terms of a directional law, which in this case is the inherent tendency for humans to want to advance the development of the productive forces. At one point Cohen does admit that Marx frequently offers specific causal factors as explanations for historical changes, factors that especially involve aspects of class struggle. But Cohen asserts that, for Marx, such explanations are not his fundamental explanations. His fundamental explanations are developmentalist ones that appeal to the need for productive relations to change in order to continue advances in the productive forces. Most of the textual evidence for Cohen’s exegesis derives from Marx’s famous 1859 Preface, where Marx produces an extremely abstract summary of his basic theoretical position. The part of the Preface that Cohen pays closest attention to states that: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression of the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. . . . No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself . . . the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.

Cohen has also located numerous statements outside the Preface that he believes support the primacy thesis. The quotes he produces—from The

52 ✻ Chapter 4 German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Communist Manifesto, Wage Labour and Capital, Capital-I, Capital-III, and the Grundrisse—are indeed extremely similar to some of the most fundamental statements of the Preface. Cohen is therefore able to claim that a wide range of texts that Marx wrote over many years offer statements that are strongly consistent with the technological determinist and developmentalist interpretation.1 However, Marx also makes many other statements, and engages in numerous historical analyses, that are either not especially supportive of Cohen’s interpretation or that strongly contradict it. For these reasons Cohen has had no dearth of critics, and it is the arguments of some of them that we now need to consider.

Was Marx a Technological Determinist? In Cohen’s interpretation the primacy and the development theses are inextricably intertwined, and thus Cohen’s interpretation only makes sense when these theses are considered as part of a single argument. This means that if the primacy thesis is rejected, the development thesis must fall with it. With this in mind, let us consider some of the main objections that have been made against the primacy thesis. Jon Elster (1985) agrees that Marx’s abstract statements clearly appear to support the primacy thesis, but he notes that some of Marx’s most important historical analyses deviate sharply from the abstract theory. Elster asserts that Marx’s analyses of the dynamics of precapitalist societies do not claim the development of the productive forces to be the engine of change, but rather concentrate on the role of population growth. Elster also suggests that Marx’s analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism at the end of Capital-I departs markedly from the abstract theory. Elster concludes that historical materialism as formulated and practiced by Marx is a vague and often markedly inconsistent doctrine. Richard Miller (1981) does not reach the dramatic conclusion that Marx was vague and inconsistent, nor does he believe that there is a fundamental rift between his abstract statements and his concrete analyses of historical transformations. But he does suggest that even modest attention to Marx’s practices as a social historian will serve to bring Cohen’s interpretation strongly into question. Like Elster, Miller pays close attention to Marx’s famous analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Miller believes that in this analysis Marx gives clear priority to economic and political processes, not to technology. Miller says that in Marx’s discussion (1981:99–100) the old nobility is “devoured by the great feudal wars,” and replaced by a new nobility of mercantile supporters of the competing dynasties. . . . With this new nobility taking the lead, large landowners respond to Continental demand for wool by expropriating their tenants, converting peasant holdings to sheep

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 53 pastures. . . . This change does not occur because it makes farming more eficient.฀Quite฀traditional฀methods฀of฀sheep-herding฀have฀simply฀become฀more฀ lucrative for landowners. . . . Rich merchants use their new financial resources to set up manufacturing enterprises, often employing desperate refugees from the rise of capitalism in the countryside. Their large financial resources are crucial to the rise of manufacturing, for nontechnological reasons. . . . The rise of capitalism eventually includes substantial increases in productivity . . . but the crucial shifts in productive forces are not autonomous. In explaining this paradigmatic change in the level of productive forces, commercial and political processes are as important as the general desire to overcome material scarcity through technological improvement. . . . Marx’s one extensive discussion of technological change in a relatively narrow sense of “technological” is his account of the new reliance on machinery in the Industrial Revolution. There Marx gives approximately equal emphasis to the greater efficiency of machine production and to its social advantage to the capitalist, as a means of reducing wages, extending the work day, and instilling labor discipline by destroying bargaining advantages of skilled craftsmen.

Miller also shows that there is a strong clash between Cohen’s interpretation and Marx’s analyses of slavery and feudalism. In Marx’s analyses of these modes of production, he emphasizes that the relations of production characteristic of them prevailed because of the social power of an economically dominant class, not because such relations promoted technological development. Indeed, Marx points to the strongly fettering role of the relations of production during the stable phases of slavery and feudalism. In short, Marx’s analyses of these earlier modes of production are in one sense the very opposite of what Cohen is suggesting.

Was Marx a Developmentalist? The evidence against Cohen’s primacy thesis is strong, and the general weight of scholarly opinion has indeed been solidly against it. The objections of Elster and Miller are merely representative of views held by many of Cohen’s readers. Therefore the claim that Marx was a technological determinist must be rejected. And if Marx was not a technological determinist, then he could not have been a developmentalist in the sense that Cohen paints him. If Marx gives numerous arguments against the notion that technological change has been the principal cause of historical changes in the relations of production, then he could hardly have thought that there is a transcendent human tendency to advance the forces of production, a tendency that actually impels the movement of history toward some goal. It is still possible, however, that Marx could have been a developmentalist in some more general sense.

54 ✻ Chapter 4 One of the most vigorous contemporary defenders of such a Marx is Jon Elster (1985), himself, as just noted, a strong opponent of the primacy thesis. Elster has “little doubt that Marx was indeed guided by a teleological view of history” (1985:107). He claims that Marx actually had two fundamentally different ways of accounting for historical change: a speculative teleological philosophy of history in which history unfolds in a largely predetermined manner toward socialism, and an empirical theory of history that attempted to explain the transition from one mode of production to another in terms of the operation of particular causal processes. Moreover, he claims that Marx’s simultaneous reliance on developmentalist and ordinary causal explanatory models presented no problem for him, for “it is part and parcel of the teleological tradition that all events can be explained twice over, causally as well as teleologically” (1985:115). Elster acknowledges that in some of his writings Marx appears to take a strong stand against teleology, but he declares nonetheless that the bulk of Marx’s writings reveal its presence. The key passage in a quotation Elster takes from one of Marx’s articles for the New York Daily Tribune (“The British rule in India”) declares (quoted by Elster, 1985:111): “The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of฀Asia?฀If฀not,฀whatever฀may฀have฀been฀the฀crimes฀of฀England฀she฀was฀the฀ unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.” Elster also finds passages in the 1861–1863 Critique and the Grundrisse that he believes are clear indications of a firm commitment to teleology. To concentrate only on the most salient statements that Elster doubtless has in mind, we may list the following: But obviously this process of inversion is a merely historical necessity, a necessity for the development of the forces of production solely from a specific historic point of departure, or basis, but in no way an absolute necessity of production; rather, a vanishing one, and the result and the inherent purpose of this process is to suspend this basis itself, together with the form of the process (quoted in Elster, 1985:112). This surplus labour is, on the one hand, the basis of a society’s free time, and, on the other, it provides the material basis for the entire development of society and of culture in general. By forcing the great mass of society to carry out this work which goes beyond its immediate needs, the coercive power of capital creates culture: it fulfils an historical and social function (quoted in Elster, 1985:114–115). The higher development of the individual is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed, for the interests of the species, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals (quoted in Elster, 1985:115).

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 55 It is not at all obvious how these are clear indications of a teleological attitude on Marx’s part. All of these statements can admittedly be interpreted in a teleological vein, but it seems more likely that Marx was identifying certain necessary conditions and causal relationships, often with a rather dramatic linguistic flair (for which he had, of course, a well-known penchant). For example, when, in the first passage above, Marx speaks of mankind fulfilling its destiny and of England as the unconscious tool of history, I think it extremely unlikely that he meant such statements in a literal teleological sense. These are just dramatic ways of stating likely outcomes of certain processes. This interpretation seems highly preferable to Elster’s when we recognize the very explicit statements that Marx does make against teleology in various of his writings, a matter to be explored more carefully in a moment. Mandelbaum (1971) reaches conclusions on this matter that are sharply at variance with Elster’s. He freely admits that many of Marx’s statements appear strongly to endorse a thoroughly developmentalist conception of historical change. He believes, though, that the appearance of developmentalism in Marx is highly illusory, and that Marx actually followed the explanatory logic of ordinary causal laws. Mandelbaum contends that Marx’s analysis of the transition to capitalism found in the latter chapters of Capital-I cannot be rendered sensible unless it is viewed in this light. Since I have already indicated my skepticism of Elster’s imputation of teleology to Marx, it is obvious that I think that Mandelbaum’s conclusion is more sensible. Apart from the highly equivocal nature of the quotations on which Elster relies, there are some excellent additional reasons for thinking that Marx’s view of history was not a developmentalist and teleological one. One piece of evidence not to be taken lightly concerns Marx’s opinion of Darwin. It is well known that Marx was a fervent admirer of Darwin, but it is perhaps less well understood that one of the major reasons for this admiration was Darwin’s antiteleological conception of nature. Shortly after Origin of Species first appeared, Marx wrote to Lassalle about it, saying (Letter to Lassalle, Jan. 16, 1860; quoted in Heyer, 1982:15): “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. . . . [N]ot only is the death blow dealt here for the first time to ‘teleology’ in the natural sciences but their rational meaning is empirically explained.” Of course, Marx was precisely correct: Darwin did develop a theory that abolished teleology from nature and explained biological transformations in terms of the operation of simple causal mechanisms. And it seems almost inconceivable that, if Marx was himself so antagonistic to teleological explanations in nature, he could have endorsed them for society and history. Note also Marx’s reference to “class struggle” in his letter to Lassalle, and how he believed this paralleled Darwin’s usage of the notion of struggle in nature. This also strongly suggests that specific causal mechanisms are the proper

56 ✻ Chapter 4 basis for explaining historical change. That is hardly an endorsement of an irreducible directional law as the basis of explanation. Consider also the following famous passage from The German Ideology (1964[1845–1846]:59; cited in Elster, 1985:110; emphasis added): History is nothing but the succession of the separate generations, each of which uses the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all the preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances, and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity. This can be speculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of earlier history, i.e. the goal ascribed to the discovery of America is to further the eruption of the French Revolution.

This is an extraordinarily explicit statement against a teleological conception of history and a strong endorsement of explaining the flow of history in terms of the operation of specific causal forces at particular times. “History does nothing,” Marx says. That can only mean that history is no abstraction with a goal and a purpose beyond the concrete goals and purposes of men and women struggling with and against one another for the fulfillment of their basic aims and desires. Ironically, the very passage above is quoted by Elster but dismissed in the most cavalier manner as starkly in contrast to Marx’s other writings and as inexplicable except perhaps for some particular influence of Engels. In regard to such a dismissal, it must be noted that the contrast is not nearly as stark as Elster seems to think, since there are numerous other instances in which Marx rather explicitly rejects a teleological attitude. Moreover, it seems more than just a little odd that Elster relies on very ambiguous and highly equivocal statements and ignores a passage that is a model of clarity. A third piece of evidence invokes a particular commentary that Engels makes on Marx’s theory of history that needs to be properly understood and appreciated. At one point in Anti-Duhring Engels is concerned to defend Marxian dialectics against the attack of Herr Duhring. To do this, and to explain their concrete meaning, Engels cites a long passage from Capital-I in which Marx is discussing certain changes within the capitalist system that relate to the concentration and centralization of capital, the growing polarization of capitalists and workers, and the increasing unity and organization of the working class. Then Engels makes the following statement (1939[1894]:146–147; emphasis added): And now I ask the reader: where are the dialectical frills and mazes and intellectual arabesques; where the mixed and misconceived ideas as a result of which everything is all one in the end; where the dialectical miracles for his faithful followers; where the mysterious dialectical rubbish and the contortions based on฀the฀Hegelian฀Logos฀doctrine฀.฀.฀.฀?฀Marx merely shows from history . . . that just as the former petty industry necessarily, through its own development, created

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 57 the conditions of its annihilation, i.e., of the expropriation of the small proprietors, so now the capitalist mode of production has likewise itself created the material conditions which will annihilate it. The process is a historical one, and if it is at the same time a dialectical process, this is not Marx’s fault, however annoying it may be for Herr Duhring. . . . In characterising the process as the negation of the negation, therefore, Marx does not dream of attempting to prove by this that the process was historically necessary. On the contrary: after he has proved from history that in fact the process has already occurred, and partially must occur in the future, he then also characterizes it as a process which develops in accordance with a definite dialectical law. That is all. It is therefore once again a pure distortion of the facts by Herr Duhring, when he declares that the negation of the negation has to serve as the midwife to deliver the future from the womb of the past.

I interpret Engels to be saying that Marx has made a concrete study of history, identified certain trends from this study, and projected these trends into the future in terms of likely outcomes. Moreover, Engels suggests, it also happens to be the case that when these concrete processes and trends are closely examined it will be seen that they can be described as corresponding to a dialectical law known as the Law of the Negation of the Negation. Engels says that this historical process develops in accordance with a dialectical law. He does not say that there is an abstract law that actually determines or guides the process. I believe that the same rejection of a developmentalism is also apparent in Engels’s statement that it is a distortion to view a dialectical law operating as a midwife. None of the pieces of evidence I have submitted amount to anything like definitive proof that Marx was a causal theorist who rejected all developmentalist and teleological modes of reasoning. Yet I do believe that they make a persuasive case. But even if the precise nature of Marx’s theory of history must remain in some doubt, I still think that certain firm conclusions can be drawn. In the first place, even if we were to fall back on a position such as Elster’s—that Marx had a speculative philosophy of history in addition to an empirical theory of history—I do not believe, as Elster seems to, that this developmentalist philosophy of history dominates his empirical theory of history. Nor do I believe that Marx could ever be characterized epistemologically in the way that I have characterized Spencer and Morgan. In the writings of these thinkers, developmentalist and ordinary causal theories are both present, but the developmentalist aspects seem to swamp the ordinary causal ones. This is patently not the case for Marx. Even if we would grant that those statements of Marx’s that sound developmentalist could be taken at face value, the ratio of ordinary causal analyses to developmentalist statements is very high, whereas for Spencer and Morgan the reverse is the case. Marx was an evolutionist, but his evolutionism is distinctly different from that of Spencer and Morgan (and Tylor as well). It should not be overlooked that, like the classical evolutionists and other nineteenth-century thinkers, Marx did have a belief in historical progress.

58 ✻ Chapter 4 Slavery constitutes an improvement over primitive communism at least in the sense that it helps humankind to overcome the limitations of its meager technological apparatus. Capitalism, moreover, is progressive in numerous ways over feudalism: it abolishes the “idiocy” of rural life; it introduces democratic forms of government that, despite their substantial limitations, are preferable to absolutism; and, most importantly, it establishes certain conditions that help to pave the way for socialism. Socialism, of course, is superior to capitalism on many economic, political, and social counts. But none of this belief in progress necessarily reduces to a belief that there is some transcendent historical process that moves itself along toward some preordained end. One can see certain improvements resulting from major historical transformations without explaining those transformations as occurring in order to generate such improvements.

An Alternative Conception of Marx’s Theory of History If Marx was neither a technological determinist nor any sort of developmentalist, then what was his฀theory฀of฀history?฀Perhaps฀the฀most฀powerful฀answer฀ to this question has been given by Richard Miller (1981, 1984). Miller not only implicitly rejects a developmentalist Marx but, in contrast to Elster and a number of other Marxian exegetes, he refuses to believe that Marx was being fundamentally inconsistent or contradictory.2 He does believe, though, that Marx had essentially two historical theories. One of these was his explicit general theory, and this was the theory that guided him in his more abstract pronouncements. The other theory was a broader and more flexible version of the general theory, and this was the one that he usually depended on when he engaged in specific historical analyses. Miller presents what he calls a mode of production interpretation of historical materialism (hereafter called MPI). Marx’s problem in historical materialism was, as we know, to account for both social stability and major social transformations. Cohen’s interpretation is that Marx explained stability as resulting from the ability of a set of productive relations to promote technological development. Miller’s MPI, of course, rejects this argument and instead claims that Marx explained social stability as resulting from the social power of an economically dominant class. A given set of productive relations prevails because it is in the interest of the dominant class that they continue and because that class has the power to make them continue, not because it has some particular capacity for promoting technological development at that point in history. Indeed, it may well be the case that such a class impedes technological progress, as in the historical cases of ancient slavery and feudalism. With respect to social transformation, the MPI claims that Marx meant what he said when he referred in many of his abstract pronouncements to

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 59 the fettering of the productive forces by the productive relations, and thus when he made the productive forces basic to explaining social change. But Miller argues that where Cohen goes wrong is in adopting much too narrow a reading of the productive forces, one that makes them essentially equivalent to technology. Miller argues that Marx had a much broader meaning in mind, and that he included among the productive forces not only technology but such things as modes of social cooperation and work relations. The advance of productive forces in this broader sense, and the emergence of constraints on these by the existing relations of production, create possibilities for generating numerous forms of internal change that can ultimately radically transform a mode of production. For example, “it may be that the new productive forces would be so much more productive in a new economic structure that a class that would dominate the new structure can organize successful revolution against the ruling class, based on a widespread hope for greater well-being” (Miller, 1984:207). Miller believes that it is just this kind of process that Marx emphasizes in his account of the rise of the bourgeoisie from feudalism. Or it might be that new productive forces in the form of new work relations would be so constituted that they provide opportunities for a subordinate class to organize against the dominant class. An illustration of this process would be Marx’s prediction that the spread of advanced capitalist work relations would provide greater opportunities for workers to organize themselves into highly disciplined movements in order to oppose capitalists. Miller contends that the MPI fits Marx’s abstract theoretical statements and many of his concrete historical analyses, but that there are some historical analyses that remain outside the scope of such a theory. He therefore suggests that Marx adopted in practice an even broader view of history, one positing that contradictions within an economic structure itself (and not just between the forces and relations of production) may also be crucial in generating major social transformations. Miller believes that this emphasis on internal economic contradictions can be found in various of Marx’s writings, for example in The Communist Manifesto, in which Marx “traces the rise of capitalism to ultimately self-destructive conflicts inherent in the feudal economic structure” (Miller, 1981:114); in the Grundrisse, in which he emphasizes the transformative importance of class divisions in ancient Rome; and in Capital-I, in which he emphasizes how chronic warfare among the feudal nobility was a major factor contributing to the dissolution of feudalism. Miller concludes that there was always a fundamental tension between the narrower and broader versions of the MPI in Marx’s writings, and that Marx himself was never really able to resolve this tension. Yet while the narrower MPI was the theory he followed when he made most of his explicit abstract statements, Miller believes that the broader version of the MPI was the theory he more commonly adopted as a practicing historian. This conclusion dovetails well with the arguments of Marxian

60 ✻ Chapter 4 exegetes who oppose technological determinism that Marx made class struggle central to his theory of history. But at the same time it is clear that Miller’s interpretation of Marx is a more precise and painstaking one, for it attempts to come to grips with the real meaning (or meanings) of Marx’s most abstract theoretical pronouncements and unite them with as much of his historical practice as possible. This is why I suggested earlier that Miller’s exegetical contribution has a very special importance.3

Marx’s Periodization of History Like most evolutionists, Marx offered a set of general stages for characterizing the evolution of human societies. Unfortunately, he is less clear about his stages than is any other major evolutionist, classical or modern. There are not only major ambiguities about just what he means by particular stages, but he offered more than one evolutionary scheme. In The German Ideology we find Marx’s first serious attempt at an evolutionary scheme. Here he lists four major stages from earliest times to the modern world, each of which is based on a characteristic mode of ownership of the productive forces: tribal, ancient, feudal, and capitalist modes of production. Marx identifies the tribal stage as one in which people live by hunting and fishing, by animal husbandry, or in some cases by rudimentary forms of agriculture. The division of labor at this stage is very simple, being little more than an extension of the division of labor found within the family. In the ancient stage, both communal and private property exist side by side. The division of labor is more extensive, and there emerges an antagonism between town and country. In the highest form of this stage, represented by ancient Rome, there is the complete development of a class division between citizens and slaves. Feudalism emerges with the downfall of Rome and its overrunning by the Germanic tribes. The principal subordinated class is a peasantry rather than a class of slaves, and therefore the main form of property is landed property with serf labor attached to it. The first stirrings of capitalism are felt in the sixteenth century, but as a mode of production proper it does not exist until after the middle of the eighteenth century. It is characterized by a class division between a bourgeoisie and an industrial proletariat and by the accumulation of capital as the driving force of economic life. In the 1859 Preface, Marx proposes a slightly different evolutionary scheme, speaking of Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and bourgeois stages. In the Grundrisse (and especially in the section on the Formen, or forms of production preceding capitalist production), written in 1857–1858, these stages are discussed to one extent or another, and two further stages are added, a Slavonic and a Germanic. These latter stages are apparently regarded as minor stages, but this is never made explicit, nor is there any definite account of how they relate to the other stages. Most of the discussion in the Grundrisse is difficult to follow and ambiguous in the extreme.

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 61 Eric Hobsbawm (1964) suggests that the most important innovation in the discussion of evolutionary stages in the Grundrisse concerns the Asiatic stage. It appears that Marx has now subsumed under the Asiatic type what he formerly called the tribal stage. In Asiatic society economic life centers around the clan and property is held communally. This primitive community is apparently a self-sustaining unit. It does not exist in isolation, however, because members of the community must pay tribute to a “despotic regime hovering over the little communes” (Marx, 1973[1857–1858]:474). Marx gives as his principal examples of the Asiatic stage ancient Mexico and Peru, the Celts, and parts of India. He describes this stage in the following manner (1973[1857–1858]:473): Amidst oriental despotism and the propertylessness which seems legally to exist there, this clan or communal property exists in fact as the foundation, created mostly by a combination of manufactures and agriculture within the small commune, which thus becomes altogether self-sustaining, and contains all the conditions of reproduction and surplus production within itself. A part of their surplus labour and surplus production belongs to the higher community, which exists ultimately as a person, and this surplus labour takes the form of tribute etc., as well as of common labour for the exaltation of the unity, partly of the real despot, partly of the imagined clan-being, the god.

In the waning years of his life Marx began to concern himself intensively with the works of some of the classical evolutionists, especially Morgan, and he took a detailed series of notes on Ancient Society (these and Marx’s notes on other nineteenth-century evolutionists have been compiled by Lawrence Krader under the title The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx [Marx, 1972/1879–1882]). But Marx never wrote anything for publication based on these notes and, although his understanding of primitive society had clearly been substantially augmented, this new knowledge was never incorporated into any new evolutionary scheme. It remained for Engels to develop the possibilities latent in Morgan and in Marx’s notes on him, a subject to which we shall turn in the next section. There has always been much thought given to the question of whether or not Marx was a unilinear evolutionist. Again, the tremendous ambiguities presented by Marx’s evolutionary schemes make it difficult to provide a definitive answer to this question, but the weight of scholarly opinion seems solidly against identifying him as a unilinearist, at least in the strong sense of that term (Harris, 1968; Hobsbawm, 1964; Elster, 1985). He did, of course, believe that history revealed human progress in a general sort of way, and in the 1859 Preface he does say that the “Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society.” Yet he never does say that these stages must follow one another in a strict sequence and that they are worldwide in scope. His discussion of the Asiatic stage,

62 ✻ Chapter 4 for example, seemed to emphasize that it contained a peculiar tendency toward stagnation rather than transformation. And his correspondence with Vera Zasulich shows that he apparently believed that Russia was capable of a direct transition to socialism, that is, that it did not have to go through a full development of capitalism. In view of these and other considerations, Hobsbawm has concluded that (1964:37–38): It would seem . . . that [Marx’s] analysis fits into a schema of the historical stages in the following way. The oriental (and Slavonic) forms are historically closest to man’s origins, since they conserve the functioning (village) community in the midst of the more elaborate social superstructure, and have an insufficiently developed class system. . . . The ancient and Germanic systems, though also primary—i.e., not derived from the oriental—represent a somewhat more articulated form of evolution out of primitive communalism; but the “Germanic system” as such does not form a special socioeconomic formation. It forms the socioeconomic formation of feudalism in conjunction with the medieval town. . . . This combination then, which emerges during the Middle Ages, forms the third phase. Bourgeois society, emerging out of feudalism, forms the fourth. The statement that the Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and bourgeois formations are “progressive” does not therefore imply any simple unilinear view of history, not a simple view that all history is progress. It merely states that each of these systems is in crucial respects further removed from the primitive state of man.

In addition to suggesting why Marx was not a strong unilinearist, though, Hobsbawm’s statement at the same time indicates that Marx clearly was a weak unilinearist. History has a general overall movement, and this movement can be roughly identified by a general classification scheme. Historical change is closely associated with the development of the productive forces and with the movement away from the social and economic conditions of the most primitive human communities. In this respect Marx was a weak unilinearist in much the same sense that the other classical evolutionists were. Yet for all the defects of the evolutionary schemes of the other nineteenth-century evolutionists, in comparison to Marx’s they had one overriding virtue: that of extraordinary clarity. Marx’s schemes, however they may be interpreted, are a very poor foundation on which to build modern evolutionary theories. Despite their overly simple and obviously ethnocentric character, schemes like that of Morgan have proved a much better guide for modern evolutionists.

Engels’s Evolutionism It is very well known that Engels made major contributions of his own to an evolutionary theory of society. In 1878 he published the famous Anti-Duhring, a savage polemic against a certain Herr Duhring, a rather minor German

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 63 philosophical contemporary of Marx and Engels. This work contains Engels’s most explicit abstract theoretical statements. In 1884 he published The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (OFPPS), a work that rehashes and extends Morgan’s Ancient Society. It has always been recognized that Engels’s evolutionary formulations have had a distinctiveness about them, and no one has ever suggested that they could simply be assimilated to Marx’s. Yet there has remained much controversy over whether or not Engels’s ideas constituted a marked departure from Marx’s thinking. In recent decades the predominant tendency in Western scholarship has been to suggest that they did in fact constitute such a departure, and to the detriment of Engels. Indeed, the belittling of Engels has become something of a favorite sport. It is far beyond the scope of the present book to attempt anything approaching a full-scale exegetical settling of this matter, but I would like to suggest some reasons why the attempt radically to separate the evolutionary thinking of Marx and Engels is misplaced. To my mind the most pressing question concerning the evolutionisms of Marx and Engels concerns whether or not Engels’s evolutionism qualifies as a form of developmentalism. Mandelbaum’s view on this issue is a common one. Although he has exempted Marx from adherence to this doctrine, he claims that Engels was actually very closely associated with it. Mandelbaum believes that Engels’s development of a general dialectical conception of nature and of history is a classic instance of explanation in terms of a directional law. To assess Mandelbaum’s argument, let us examine Engels’s most abstract theoretical formulations with a special eye to those that Mandelbaum relies on most heavily in his interpretation. In Anti-Duhring (1939[1894]), Engels develops an extremely abstract conception of all of nature and of human history and social life. This conception is based on the formulation of two dialectical laws, which Engels calls฀the฀Law฀of฀the฀Transformation฀of฀Quantity฀into฀Quality,฀and฀the฀Law฀ of the Negation of the Negation. It is the second of these laws that Engels identifies as the most fundamental part of his dialectical philosophy, and it is developed in terms highly reminiscent of Spencer’s Law of Evolution. According to Engels, this law is the basic law of all change everywhere in the universe. He applies it to such diverse phenomena as the sprouting of barley seeds, the development of rock formations, mathematical formulations, and human history. To get a proper feel for how Engels applies this law, I quote from him in extenso (1939[1894]:148–152): Let us take a grain of barley. Millions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed and then consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with conditions which for it are normal, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and moisture a specific change takes place, it germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has

64 ✻ Chapter 4 arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life process of this฀plant?฀It฀grows,฀lowers,฀is฀fertilized฀and฀inally฀once฀more฀produces฀grains฀ of barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated. As a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the original grain of barley, but not as a single unit, but ten, twenty or thirty fold . . . [T]he whole of geology is a series of negated negations, a series arising from the successive shattering of old and the depositing of new rock formations. . . . In the course of millions of centuries, ever new strata are formed and in turn are for the most part destroyed, ever anew serving as material for the formation of new strata. But the result of this process has been a very positive one: the creation, out of the most varied chemical elements, of a mixed and mechanically pulverized soil which makes possible the most abundant and diverse vegetation. It is the same in mathematics. Let us take any algebraic magnitude whatever: for example, a. If this is negated, we get –a (minus a). If we negate that negation, by multiplying –a by –a, we get +a2, i.e., the original positive magnitude, but at a higher degree, raised to its second power. . . . It is the same, too, in history. All civilized peoples begin with the common ownership of land. With all peoples who have passed a certain primitive stage, in the course of the development of agriculture this common ownership becomes a fetter on production. It is abolished, negated, and after a long or shorter series of intermediate stages is transformed into private property. But at a higher stage of agricultural development, brought about by private property in land itself, private property in turn becomes a fetter on production as is the case today, both with small and large landownership. The demand that it also should be negated, that it should once again be transformed into common property, necessarily arises. But this demand does not mean the restoration of the old original common ownership, but the institution of a far higher and more developed form of possession in common which, far from being a hindrance to production, on the contrary for the first time frees production from all fetters and gives it the possibility of making full use of modern chemical discoveries and mechanical inventions.

It can readily be seen that, so applied, the Law of the Negation of the Negation is just as vacuous a theoretical device as Spencer’s Law of Evolution. With respect to human history, if Engels really means that invoking such a law can actually serve to explain historical change, then there is little reason to take such an argument seriously. But does Engels really mean this, or is this an illusion฀that฀masks฀another฀mode฀of฀explanation฀that฀is฀actually฀at฀work? Mandelbaum obviously believes that Engels must be taken literally. He puts in evidence numerous statements of Engels that indisputably have a developmentalist ring to them, among them Engels’s famous eulogy of Marx at his funeral that declared, “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history,” as well as the following (1935[1888]:22; cited in Mandelbaum, 1971:76): “All successive historical situations are only transitory stages in

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 65 the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the newer and higher conditions which gradually develop in its own bosom, each loses its validity and justification.” There are also several passages in Anti-Duhring that have a strong developmentalist flavor, as when Engels makes ancient slavery necessary to the development of modern socialism, or when he makes class divisions essential for the development of the productive forces (cf. in particular Engels, 1939[1894]:199–201). Still, I think a good case can be made that, even though Engels clearly seemed to fall back on developmentalist modes of presentation, he was not really a developmentalist at heart and that his explanations depended more on an ordinary causal conception of historical change, much as Marx’s did. Consider first of all a statement quoted earlier that Engels had made about Marx. In polemicizing against Herr Duhring, Engels is at pains to show that there is nothing at all intellectually mysterious about dialectics, and he does so by quoting a long passage from near the end of Capital-I in which Marx is obviously describing changes within capitalism in terms of ordinary causal relationships. Engels then goes on to say that Marx is merely characterizing this process as one that develops in accordance with a dialectical law. Engels also vigorously denies that Marx was speaking of any sort of historical necessity, and asserts that he was not giving the negation of the negation the role of “historical midwife.” As I noted in the earlier discussion, I think the simplest interpretation of this passage is that Engels is suggesting (explicitly for Marx, but undoubtedly for himself as well) that the actual mode of explanation Marxism follows is one based upon causal reconstructions of historical connections. Perhaps the crucial clue in this passage is Engels’s phrase “in accordance with.” It would seem that Engels uses such a phrase in order to deny any claim that Marx or he might be making to the effect that the Law of the Negation of the Negation actually guides or determines historical changes. On the contrary, Engels is asserting that the causal connections revealed by history add up in the end to characterization or manifestation in terms of the Law of the Negation of the Negation. If this interpretation is correct, then Engels does not believe in directional laws that are irreducible, the criterion that for Mandelbaum is crucial. As a second piece of evidence in support of this interpretation, I offer OFPPS (1970[1884]). As noted earlier, this work is largely a rehash of Morgan’s Ancient Society based on Marx’s notes and Engels’s own reading of Morgan, although Engels does extend some of Morgan’s ideas and add a few of his own. Two things about OFPPS are especially relevant to the issue currently at hand. For one thing, it is clear that Engels engages in a good deal of ordinary causal explanation. For example, he traces the major historical decline in the status of women to growth of private property and social stratification. In addition, we find a famous causal analysis of the origin of

66 ✻ Chapter 4 the state in which this form of political society is seen as arising as a mechanism for protecting a society’s ruling class against the threats to its position from subordinate classes. In addition, despite the tremendous extent to which OFPPS relies on Ancient Society, the degree to which the developmentalism of Morgan has not been directly taken over by Engels is extremely noteworthy. One is hard-pressed, for instance, to find Engels retaining Morgan’s constant references to the “germs” contained in early social forms that are said to be the basis for the development of later social forms. Engels was a tremendous admirer of Morgan, and OFPPS takes over many of his ideas unchanged. It would seem that if Engels had really been philosophically committed to a developmentalist doctrine, then he would have taken that over from Morgan too, although perhaps in modified form. Thus the absence of developmentalist statements in OFPPS, Engels’s major application of his evolutionary theories, seems to suggest much. What I am really arguing is that Engels, like Marx, should be judged more by his practice of historical explanation than by his abstract theoretical statements in regard to history. It is true that Engels’s abstract statements sound more blatantly developmentalist than Marx’s, and the possibility remains that Engels may indeed have had one foot in this philosophical camp. But certainly there is a major difference between Engels and, say, Hegel, for whom there really was an abstract historical process that dragged concrete history along with it. There also seems to be a major difference between Engels and classical evolutionists like Spencer and Morgan. Although Engels’s Law of the Negation of the Negation closely resembles in structure Spencer’s Law of Evolution, I think the similarity is more apparent than real. Spencer’s law is intended more literally and its application is less counterbalanced by other considerations than is the case with Engels’s.4

Marx, Engels, and Morgan The admiration of both Marx and Engels for Morgan’s Ancient Society has already been made apparent, and indeed their view of Morgan has been well known to serious students of all three scholars. Marvin Harris has actually gone so far as to claim that (1968:246) Ancient Society was a work of supreme importance to Marx and Engels because it opened their eyes to the complexity of primitive cultures and to the inadequacies of their own dabbling in this area. . . . As far as primitive culture is concerned, Marx and Engels bought Morgan lock, stock, and barrel. Morgan’s scheme, its tri-part periodization, its evolution from sexual communism to monogamy, from gens to state, from matrilineality to patrilineality, became the standard source of ethnological enlightenment for Marxists and communists throughout the world.

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 67 Although guilty of some overstatement, Harris is not far off the mark, at least with respect to Engels. In his preface to OFPPS, Engels refers to Ancient Society as “one of the few epoch-making works of our time” (1970[1884]:72). More significantly, he claims that “Morgan in his own way had discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by Marx forty years ago, and in his comparison of barbarism and civilization it led him, in the main points, to the same conclusions as Marx” (1970[1884]:71). Ancient Society also had apparently compelled Engels to modify some of his own thinking. Presumably as a result of Morgan’s extensive analyses of kinship systems, Engels became convinced of their causal importance in social life, and so much so as to declare that (1970[1884]:71–72; emphasis added): “According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life. . . . The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both kinds of production: by the state of development of labor on the one hand and of the family on the other.” Engels clearly regarded Morgan’s thinking as Marxian in its theoretical and political essentials. Not only did he claim that Morgan had independently rediscovered the materialistic conception of history, but he also saw Morgan as a fellow socialist. Engels closes OFPPS with a long quote from Ancient Society in which Morgan criticizes the effects of private property and predicts the emergence of a new stage of social life that “will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes” (Morgan, 1974[1877]:562; cited in Engels, 1970[1884]:237). Engels was obviously wrong in assuming that Morgan had rediscovered historical materialism, or even that he was any sort of materialist at all. As we saw in Chapter 2, there is compelling evidence against thinking of Morgan as a materialist and in favor of regarding him as a sort of eclectic with strong idealist leanings. Engels was also incorrect in seeing Morgan as a socialist fellow traveler. While Morgan was indeed critical of the effects of private property on the quality of human life, his statement about the emergence of a new, higher plane of social life was scarcely motivated by the kind of socialist thinking that characterized Marx and Engels. Morgan seemed to have in mind the emergence of the sort of parliamentary democratic mode of government that has actually come to characterize Western societies in the last century. That Morgan’s thinking on political questions was fundamentally different from Marx’s and Engels’s is indisputably shown by his assertion that the United States is a society in which social classes have passed out of existence! Marx seemed to maintain a somewhat more critical stance toward Morgan. His notes on Ancient Society suggest that he did not miss the significance of Morgan’s reference to property in terms of an idea, and in a letter to Vera Zasulich Marx suggests that Morgan is not a thinker who would be “suspected

68 ✻ Chapter 4 of revolutionary tendencies” (Shaw, 1984; Krader, 1977). Yet even Marx was on the whole extremely favorable toward Morgan, his view of that thinker not differing appreciably from Engels’s. Why were Marx and Engels so laudatory฀of฀Morgan?฀Why฀did฀they฀embrace฀him฀as฀a฀kindred฀spirit฀in฀the฀face฀of฀ what฀many฀regard฀today฀as฀such฀obvious฀evidence฀to฀the฀contrary?฀William฀ Shaw has suggested that both Marx and Engels were aware of the contrasts between their own ideas and those of Morgan but chose to minimize them because they saw Morgan’s positive contributions as greatly outweighing his deficiencies. As Shaw puts it (1984:225): No doubt, fully to appreciate Ancient Society’s strengths and to perceive its inchoate historical materialism, one should read it, as Marx and Engels obviously did, in contrast with other anthropological studies of the period. And since, more than many books, Ancient Society is open to diverse interpretations, Engels (and very likely Marx) were able to read more historical materialism into Morgan than was probably there. It would also seem that Engels pursued the intellectual equivalent of a united front policy with regard to Morgan. On the one hand, Engels’s ongoing belief was that the British anthropological establishment had entered a conspiracy of silence against Morgan’s subversive ideas. Closing ranks with Morgan was therefore more important than emphasizing differences. On the other and less honorable hand, one might surmise that, by claiming Morgan for their own, Marx and Engels hoped to add to the prestige of their own theory.

It may well have been that Marx and Engels hoped the intellectual appropriation of Morgan would enhance the prestige of their own theory. But certainly the reverse occurrence was not in the cards. Indeed, as Harris has argued, the association of Marx and Engels (and their followers and successors) with Morgan led not only to the decreased prestige of the latter, but to actual efforts to discredit Morgan’s theory simply by pointing to its embracement by the Marxists. Thus, “with Morgan’s scheme incorporated into Communist doctrine, the struggling science of anthropology crossed the threshold of the twentieth century with a clear mandate for its own survival and well-being: expose Morgan’s scheme and destroy the method on which it was based” (Harris, 1968:249).

The Darwinian Connection Just as they were strong admirers of Morgan, Marx and Engels were both greatly impressed with the achievements of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Engels makes a number of glowing references to Darwin in Anti-Duhring and, as we have seen, he drew a direct parallel between Darwin and Marx in his eulogy at Marx’s funeral. Although many Marxian exegetes have attempted to diminish the significance of Engels’s eulogizing remarks, there is no reason not to conclude with Paul Heyer that (1982:11) “we can

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 69 only assume that if Engels at such a sensitive moment elected to draw the parallel, it must have held meaning for Marx.” Indeed, all the direct evidence given by Marx himself suggests that he would have agreed with this assessment. Earlier we quoted from Marx’s letter to Lassalle in which Marx says that “Darwin’s book . . . serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.” Moreover, when Marx first read Darwin’s Origin he was apparently fascinated by it and talked about its tremendous importance for months thereafter (Heyer, 1982). It is true that Marx did say in a letter to Engels that “it is remarkable how Darwin has discerned anew amongst beasts and plants his English society with its division of labor, competition, elucidation of new markets, ‘discoveries’ and the Malthusian ‘struggle for existence’. . . . In Darwin the animal kingdom figures as bourgeois society” (Marx, 1979[1862]:157). But Marx meant by this statement only that the character of the social and economic order in which Darwin lived had undoubtedly influenced his thinking about nature. Marx did not mean to suggest that Darwin’s theory was inadequate or wrong, and there is enormous evidence that he thought no such thing. Some of the most powerful evidence in support of this last statement concerns the fact that in 1873 Marx inscribed a copy of the second edition of Capital and sent it to Darwin, along with a letter that has been lost or destroyed. Darwin wrote back to Marx later that same year thanking him for the book and indicating that he knew little of the subject of political economy and was therefore not quite worthy of receiving such a profound contribution to the subject (Heyer, 1982). If Marx, a man who heaped intellectual contempt on others with apparent ease, actually went so far as to send Darwin one of his works to read (and no doubt to be impressed by), there can be no serious doubt about his opinion of Darwin or his belief in important resemblances between Darwin’s work and his own.5 To say that there were strong parallels between Darwinism and Marxism, however, is not to say that Marxism ever borrowed any explicit notions from Darwinism. Marx’s basic theoretical ideas were already well established by the time Darwin published Origin. If there is little basis for the view that the evolutionism of Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor was strongly influenced by Darwinism, there is none at all for the notion, should anyone care to advocate it, that the evolutionism of Marx and Engels fell at any time under such influence. The intellectual traditions that lay behind Marxism were entirely different from those that set the course for Darwinism. Thus Marxism and Darwinism have developed entirely independently of each other, even after their mutual awareness.

Conclusions No proper assessment of the contributions made by Marx and Engels to a theory of social evolution can be made until we take a closer look at how

70 ✻ Chapter 4 contemporary materialist evolutionists have attempted to develop many of their insights. I have already indicated, though, that the evolutionary stages presented by Marx, however we interpret them, are thoroughly inadequate. Apart from the ambiguities and confusions they present, they have a strong Eurocentric bias and thus are highly deficient in providing a worldwide perspective. This Eurocentric bias is strongly evident in Marx’s concern with ancient Roman society and with European feudalism, as well as in his view (common in his day among European historians) that Asiatic societies had little transformative potential. Perhaps the most serious problem with the Marxian stages, though, concerns the criterion on which they are based: the mode of production. Although Marx and Engels made it clear that a mode of production was a sort of concatenation of forces and relations of production, exactly what this means, and how the concept of a mode of production can be operationalized for the purposes of basing an evolutionary scheme on it, remains very unclear. This may have been obvious to Marx himself, for in reality the evolutionary stages he lists are really stages of ownership—of relations of production. The forces of production are there in his stages surely enough, but only in a kind of shadowy and murky way. The problem of just what a mode of production is and how it can be operationalized is even more apparent in Engels’s OFPPS. Here we find Engels appropriating Morgan’s tripartite scheme of Savagery-Barbarism-Civilization and recommending its incorporation into the Marxian evolutionary schema. But Morgan’s scheme is based mainly on technological criteria and bears little relationship to any of the schemes set forth by Marx. To mix it indiscriminately with Marx’s is only to invite further trouble. None of the difficulties we have been discussing is incapable of resolution, but they were never adequately resolved by Marx and Engels themselves. However, if we turn away from these conceptual and classificatory difficulties, then Marx and Engels can be seen in a more favorable light. In a broad theoretical sense, their work was certainly a vast improvement on the epistemologically confused formulations of Spencer and Morgan and the idealism of Tylor. Not only did Marx and Engels abandon the developmentalism that pervaded the thinking of these others, but they rooted their causal formulations in material forces. Both are major accomplishments. Although Marx’s and Engels’s materialist formulations leave much to be desired, they certainly constitute a solid base on which to build. Many modern evolutionists have been highly appreciative of the Marxian tradition. Some have thought of themselves explicitly as Marxists and have tried to develop evolutionary formulations that have hewn very closely to the original Marxian formulations. A greater number though, have borrowed from Marx more generally, more in spirit than in letter, as it were. They have given up the mode of production concept while retaining the notion that understanding technological and economic changes is crucial to a broader understanding of social evolution. Some of them have considerably

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 71 broadened the meaning of a material infrastructure well beyond what was intended by Marx and Engels. Such changes have necessitated abandoning the Marxian evolutionary schemes and replacing them with ones that are conceptually sounder and easier to operationalize. The works of these contemporary materialist evolutionists will be systematically explored in later chapters. It is there that we will genuinely come to appreciate the importance of the foundations that Marx and Engels established.

Notes 1. Of course, Cohen is himself a neo-Marxian historicist and developmentalist. Evidence for this comes most obviously from the subtitle of his book (“A Defence”). But should anyone still have doubts, there are crucial passages on pp. 134–135, 160–161, 197–198, 201, and 207–209 that should eliminate them. I quote here two of the most pertinent of these passages. In the first, Cohen is speaking of social development over its entire course, in the second specifically of capitalist development: We hold that the character of the forces functionally explains the character of the relations. . . . The favoured explanations take this form: the production relations are of kind R at time t because relations of kind R are suitable to the use and development of the productive forces at t, given the level of development of the latter at t. . . . When relations endure stably, they do so because they promote the development of the forces. When relations are revolutionized, the old relations cease to exist because they no longer favour the forces, and the new relations come into being because they are apt to do so. Dysfunctional relations persist for a time before being replaced. During that time the character of the relations is explained by their suitability to a past stage in the development of the forces. . . . Thus, if the relations suit the development of the forces, they obtain because they suit the development of the forces. And if the relations do not suit the development of the forces, they obtain because they recently did so (Cohen, 1978:160–161). Capitalism arises and persists because it, uniquely, is able to take productive power from the top of [precapitalist class society] to the bottom of [postclass society]. In effecting this progress, it lays up the material requisites of a classless society. “Development of the productive forces of social labour is the historical task and justification of capital. This is the way it unconsciously creates the requirements of a higher mode of production” [Marx, Capital-III, p. 254]. When these requirements are in store, capitalism is no longer justified, and no longer stable. It loses its rationale, and it becomes a “barrier” to further human development. It “enters into the same relation toward the development of social wealth and of the forces of production as the gild system, serfdom, and slavery, and is necessarily stripped off as a fetter” [Marx, Grundrisse, p. 749]. Having made liberty for the mass of mankind compatible with the material reproduction of the species, its “historic destiny is fulfilled” [Marx, Grundrisse, p. 325] (Cohen, 1978:201).

72 ✻ Chapter 4 2. Compare Miller’s interpretation in particular with that of S. H. Rigby (1987). Rigby rejects developmentalist interpretations of Marx, but claims that Marx was radically inconsistent in his theoretical understanding of history. He allegedly had two contradictory theories of history. One was a “productive force determinism,” the other a theory emphasizing the priority of the relations of production over the productive forces. Contrary to Rigby, it is difficult to believe that a thinker of Marx’s stature could have been so markedly inconsistent. For this and other reasons detailed in the text, Miller’s interpretation is clearly preferable. 3. None of this is to say that Miller is correct, and it must be admitted that there is a certain opaqueness to his presentation of the narrower version of the MPI. Miller’s analysis, especially his narrower version of the MPI, is not only carried out at an extremely abstract level of analysis; it is positively confusing on at least one major point. Miller insists that the narrower MPI is consistent with Marx’s abstract theoretical pronouncements in that “changes in productive forces initiate social change” (1984:210). One of his principal examples of this notion, as already noted, concerns Marx’s discussion of the role of workplace changes in capitalism that give workers opportunities to organize themselves against capitalists. But how is this truly an฀example฀of฀the฀priority฀of฀the฀productive฀forces?฀The฀question฀is฀begged฀as฀to฀ why these productive forces themselves changed, and Marx’s answer in this instance is that such changes derive from the economic interests of capitalists, and thus from the nature of the relations of production. Miller may well recognize all this, because at another point he does say that the MPI permits a “zigzag dialectic . . . between changes in productive forces and nonderivative social processes [that] is required by all of Marx’s concrete discussions of major transformations of the productive forces” (1984:209). Moreover, in the very same paragraph he apparently suggests that the MPI does not give explanatory primacy to the productive forces, even in the broader sense of those forces, and then slightly later he goes on to say that “if the mode of production interpretation is right, structures do select forces quite as much as forces select structures” (1984:212). If Miller is arguing that Marx perceived a complex causal interdependence between the forces and relations of production in explaining major social transformations, then that is a sensible interpretation. But he should say so more explicitly and thus explain more carefully what he means when he repeatedly asserts that the MPI claims that social change is initiated by changes in the productive forces. (Possibly he means that changes in the productive forces are only proximate causes that are often linked to deeper ultimate causes, but again the whole issue is left in doubt.) 4. The reader has a right to know why I have exempted Engels from the epistemological confusion with which I charged Spencer and Morgan. Actually, as already suggested, it is still quite possible that Engels may have been guilty of such confusion. If so, then the difference between him on the one hand and Spencer and Morgan on the other reduces essentially to a matter of emphasis. Spencer’s and Morgan’s ordinary causal arguments only make sense, I believe, in terms of their developmentalist arguments. But the situation with respect to Engels is different. Even if he were a subscriber to developmentalism, his causal arguments clearly take priority. Again, however, I think it improbable that Engels was a literal developmentalist. As an extremely close friend and associate of Marx’s for some forty years, Engels had to be profoundly aware of Marx’s hostility toward teleological arguments in regard to nature (and, as I have argued, by extension in regard to society and history). If

Marxism as Evolutionism ✻ 73 Engels really had disagreed with Marx on this matter, it would surely have come out during all that time. Engels was fiercely loyal to Marx and would not have set forth a view of his own that he knew to be opposed to Marx’s on an item of major concern without calling attention to the fact and excluding Marx from any association with such a view. It is well known that Engels read the manuscript of Anti-Duhring to Marx and that Marx raised no particular objection. Marxists antagonistic to Engels have tried to explain this away by saying, for instance, that Marx was too busy with other things really to concern himself with Engels’s writings, and that he didn’t especially care what went out under Engels’s name. This interpretation is extremely improbable. Marx knew that his name and Engels’s were strongly associated in the minds of their readers and interpreters, and that what Engels said would reflect upon him. Thus there is every reason to think that Marx did not object to Anti-Duhring because, in principle, he found it unobjectionable. In short, I think we have to proceed as if Marx and Engels were in basic accord with respect to developmentalist and teleological interpretations of history. If we are not going to tar Marx with the brush of developmentalism, then Engels should be excluded as well. The strong personal tie between Marx and Engels provides yet another line of evidence useful in rendering a nonliteral reading of Engels’s superficially developmentalist statements. No such countervailing evidence exists in the cases of Spencer and Morgan, and their statements must he taken more literally. 5. For many years it was thought that Marx had written a letter to Darwin asking to dedicate a new edition of Capital to him. No such letter has ever been found, but the presumption that one had existed was based on a letter Darwin wrote (with the greeting merely “Dear Sir”) on October 13, 1880, indicating that it would be inappropriate for him to give his consent to a matter not requiring it. Recent evidence now suggests that Darwin’s letter was written to Edward Aveling, Marx’s son-in-law. Aveling had apparently sought Darwin’s approval for a book he, Aveling, had written popularizing Darwin’s ideas (Heyer, 1982).

Chapter Five

Classical Evolutionism: II

T

he Boasian reaction against evolutionism was directed mainly against the theories of Morgan, Tylor, and Spencer, all of which were developed in the mid- to late nineteenth century. However, even during the Boasian antievolutionary interlude, evolutionism remained alive in the works of other important thinkers. In this chapter we extend the discussion of classical evolutionism begun in Chapter 2, looking specifically at the main works of L. T. Hobhouse, William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller, and Edward Westermarck, all of whom were sociologists rather than anthropologists, and most of whose ideas were produced after the turn of the twentieth century. One could not find social evolutionists who were more different in their approaches, each from the other. Hobhouse presented an idealist theory of social evolution that emphasized human progress and the achievement of harmony, whereas Sumner and Keller were Darwinians who identified the “struggle for existence” as the engine of social evolution. They were the first evolutionists to develop a thoroughly materialist conception of social evolution. Then, in Edward Westermarck, we have another Darwinian, but a Darwinian of a completely different sort. Westermarck was really the first sociobiologist, since the main thrust of his work involved applying Darwinian concepts to understand human nature.

L. T. Hobhouse Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse (1864–1929) is generally regarded as the first British sociologist. He wrote numerous books, most of them on the subject of long-term social evolution and its meaning for the present and 74

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 75 the future. Here I restrict myself to examining what I regard as the three most important of these books.

The Evolution of Morality Hobhouse’s book Morals in Evolution was one of his most important early works. Written originally in 1906 as a two-volume work, it was republished in one volume and as a third edition in 1915 and continued to be revised, with a seventh edition appearing in 1951. (Because Hobhouse died in 1929, some of these later revisions must have been made by Morris Ginsberg, an acolyte and eventual colleague. Since Ginsberg wrote an introduction to the seventh edition, he must have been responsible for bringing it out.) For Hobhouse, the evolution of systems of morality or ethics was part of a more general process of the evolution of thought. In this regard, Hobhouse sketched out progress from early preliterate societies (in which articulate thought is still rudimentary and dominated by impulses); to ancient protoscience in China, Babylonia, and Egypt; to a stage of reflection in the East between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE (characterized by the rise of the earliest world religions of Judaism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism); to the first truly critical and systematic secular philosophy in ancient Greece; and finally to the rise of modern empirical modes of thinking from the sixteenth century on (Ginsberg, 1950). Morality and ethics are systems of cognition or reason and can only be understood as such. Hobhouse marked off four major stages in the evolution of morals. At the lowest stage, people feel obligations toward one another, but these are limited to human relations in very small groups, either the local community or the kin group. Life is regarded as important, but it is only protected through such mechanisms as blood feud, and there is no moral principle that life itself is something sacred. Right moral action means avenging a wrong done to a member of one’s own group. A second stage of morality is reached when “certain rights and duties are attached to members of a society as such, when, e. g., it becomes a duty to protect life instead of merely aiding the avenger, to guard property instead of only countenancing retaliation upon the thief, to redress wrongs and yet in so doing to entertain questions of responsibility” (1951:624). Although moral obligations are broader than in the first stage, they still apply only to the members of one’s own group, and there are as yet no general ethical principles. This second stage of morality appears in the earliest civilizations and thus essentially corresponds to the second main stage of mental evolution. A third stage of morality is reached when people formulate moral principles and ideals of character and conduct. These are religious in nature and “the supernatural is itself the incarnation and expression of moral perfection” (1951:626). Here we find morality and ethics as integral parts of the great world religions, which have an evangelizing mission and aim to

76 ✻ Chapter 5 save all of mankind; this third moral stage corresponds roughly to the third mental stage. The fourth and highest stage is reached when an attempt is made to construct a rational ethical theory that prescribes rights and duties that apply to all human beings everywhere. A kind of ethical universalism emerges in which the world as a whole becomes a single moral community. It was the ancient Greeks who first began to think out this sort of ethical universalism, and it has been extended by philosophers and theologians in more modern times. Hobhouse’s approach to the evolution of morals sounds remarkably Hegelian. He tells us that moral evolution is “full of antitheses” that themselves “produce new syntheses.” The ultimate moral synthesis is reached in the modern state, which “rests on a measure of Right in the relations of men, and is so constituted as to be modifiable by the deliberate act of the community” (1951:633). At the end of his discussion of the main line of ethical development, Hobhouse tells us the following: But if our general conception of evolution is correct, the further development of society will follow a very different course from its past history, in that it is destined to fall within the scope of an organizing intelligence, and thereby to be removed from the play of blind force to the sphere of rational order. . . . Mind grasps the conditions of its development that it may master and make use of them in its further growth. . . . It is enough for the moment to reach the idea of a self-conscious evolution of humanity, and to find therein a meaning and an element of purpose for the historical process which has led up to it. . . . [T]his slowly wrought out dominance of mind in things is the central fact of evolution (Hobhouse, 1951:637).

Material Culture and Its Correlates In 1915, in collaboration with G. C. Wheeler and Morris Ginsberg, Hobhouse wrote what I regard as his most important work, The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (MCSISP). In this work the authors classified societies according to what they regarded as the most definitive element in social evolution, viz., the expansion in the stock of knowledge available to humans to manipulate and control their environment. The stock of knowledge was assessed in terms of the technological inventory of any given society, and yielded seven major “stages of economic culture,” as follows: 1. Lower Hunters: Peoples who live mainly by gathering; who have no permanent dwellings and no spinning or weaving, pottery, or metals; and who have no domesticated animals except the dog. 2. Higher Hunters: Peoples who live more by hunting than by gathering; who have more substantial dwellings along with spinning, weaving, and pottery making; and who have the horse or other domesticated animals.

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 77 3. Incipient Agriculturalists: Peoples who have developed agriculture only rudimentarily, and who still depend on hunting and gathering for most of their subsistence; the main agricultural tool is the digging stick, and there is rudimentary pottery but no metals. 4. Middle Agriculturalists: Peoples who live mainly through agriculture; who have substantial houses made of timber and spinning, weaving, and pottery; and who have no cattle or animal herds but possibly pigs and other small animals. 5. Highest Agriculturalists: Peoples who live entirely through agriculture and who cultivate the soil with the plow and draft animals; who practice manuring and crop rotation, and often irrigation; who have domesticated animals in the form of flocks or herds; and who have metals, woodworking, textiles, and regular trade with other communities or societies. 6. Lower Pastoralists: Peoples who live primarily by animal herding with little or no agriculture and minimal development of other practical arts. 7. Higher Pastoralists: Peoples who live primarily by animal herding, but who also have agriculture, metals, trade, and substantial development of handicrafts.

The authors make it clear that there is an evolutionary sequence from Lower to Higher Hunters, and then from Higher Hunters to all of the major types of agriculture or pastoralism, within each of which, of course, there is an evolutionary sequence. However, agriculture and pastoralism do not stand in an evolutionary relationship to each other, but represent alternative economic systems. The key question for the authors is, To what extent do these stages of economic culture correlate with other dimensions of social life, especially morality,฀religion,฀law,฀and฀overall฀social฀organization?฀In฀order฀to฀answer฀this฀ question, the authors assembled data on over 400 ethnographically known societies from all over the world. The authors first correlate the economic stages with forms of government and justice. The authors conceive of several stages of government, the simplest being “government slight or nil.” Here there are no persons who have power or authority to make binding decisions. At a slightly higher level there may be a tribal council or chief with some authority to make binding decisions and to which allegiance is owed by constituent units. And at the highest levels are highly centralized governments with considerable authority; here local units have lost their autonomy and the authority of any local chiefs has been overridden by more powerful chiefs or ruling councils. The results of the correlations between these economic and political stages are as follows: ฀ •฀ Government slight or nil: Lower Hunters, 47 percent; Higher Hunters, 25 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 27 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 10 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 0 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 13 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 0 percent. ฀ •฀ Tribal government (tribal chief and/or tribal council with some or substantial power): Lower Hunters, 25 percent; Higher Hunters, 31 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 22

78 ✻ Chapter 5 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 45 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 77 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 62 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 78 percent.

The authors performed a separate analysis in which they looked at the degree of power a chief held and how this was related to a society’s economic stage. Chiefs were classified as having (1) no power, (2) some power, or (3) substantial or great power. If we subtract number 1 from number 3, we see the following results: Hunters (all), –41 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists and Lower Pastoralists, +20 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, +29 percent; Highest Agriculturalists and Higher Pastoralists, +58 percent. Based on all of the above findings, the authors conclude, quite legitimately, that there is a steady progression in the extent of government and the power of political leaders as societies advance up the economic scale. Turning to the related question of how justice is administered, the authors make a basic distinction between private and public justice. In private justice, such offenses as murder, theft, abduction, or adultery are viewed only as injuries to the individuals affected, and redress for these injuries is personal. If a member of one’s kin group is killed, the members of that group then kill a member of the offending group, or perhaps demand some sort of indemnity payment. In the case of public justice, wrongdoings are viewed as offenses against the group, community, or society as a whole, and there are public officials designed to see that action is taken against the offenders and redress is made. The authors produce a four-fold classification of the administration of justice, as follows: 1. Purely Private Justice: No laws and no overriding authority to sanction offenses and provide redress; redress is entirely personal through direct retaliation, indemnity payments, or an “expiatory fight.” 2. Qualified Private Justice: The above, but with some private offenses publicly punished by an individual or group with authority or at least substantial powers of persuasion. 3. Qualified Public Justice: Sanctions against offenders and redress of offenses administered by individuals or groups with binding authority, but such public sanctioning and redress is incomplete such that some private justice remains. 4. Purely Public Justice: Public sanctioning of offenders and redressing of offenses is the regular system of justice.

When these four systems of justice were correlated with the economic stages, the following results were obtained: 1. Purely Private Justice: Lower Hunters, 40 percent; Higher Hunters, 62 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 48 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 35 percent;

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 79 Highest Agriculturalists, 11 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 28 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 19 percent. 2. Qualified Private Justice: Lower Hunters, 58 percent; Higher Hunters, 30 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 21 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 18 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 17 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 32 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 19 percent. 3. Qualified Public Justice: Lower Hunters, 2 percent; Higher Hunters, 3 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 10 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 23 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 30 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 24 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 13 percent. 4. Purely Public Justice: Lower Hunters, 0 percent; Higher Hunters, 5 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 21 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 24 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 41 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 16 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 48 percent.

To summarize the results more briefly, purely or predominantly private justice characterizes 98 percent of Lower Hunters but only 39 percent of Higher Pastoralists and just 29 percent of Highest Agriculturalists, whereas purely or predominantly public justice characterizes a mere 2 percent of Lower Hunters but 61 percent of Higher Pastoralists and 71 percent of Highest Agriculturalists. There is a clear shift in economic evolution away from private justice and toward public justice. Obviously, as the authors conclude, there is a very striking relationship between a society’s economic stage of culture and its mode or modes of administering justice. In a later chapter the authors go on to look at the relationship between stages of economic culture and various dimensions of marriage and family life. Here the correlations are generally less striking. But in the final analyses, which involve variables bearing on social stratification and property ownership, the results are again very dramatic. In terms of the presence of a serf or slave class, the figures are: Lower Hunters, 2 percent; Higher Hunters, 32 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 33 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 46 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 78 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 37 percent; Higher Pastoralists, 71 percent. Regarding the presence of a class of nobles, we see the following: Lower Hunters, 0 percent; Higher Hunters, 11 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, 3 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, 15 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, 23 percent; Lower Pastoralists, 20 percent; and Higher Pastoralists, 24 percent. In terms of property ownership, the authors conceptualize a continuum from complete communal ownership to private ownership by chiefs or nobles. If we subtract one end of the continuum from the other—chiefly or noble ownership from communal ownership—we get the following results: Lower Hunters, +69 percent; Higher Hunters, +72 percent; Incipient Agriculturalists, +64 percent; Middle Agriculturalists, +42 percent; Highest Agriculturalists, –8 percent; Lower Pastoralists, +48 percent; Higher Pastoralists, +29 percent. Overall, these figures demonstrate

80 ✻ Chapter 5 that as societies advance in economic level they are much more likely to have a class of serfs or slaves, somewhat more likely to have a nobility, and experience a decline in the importance of communal property and a rise in the importance of private (especially chiefly or noble) property. Given the emphasis on economic stages as the starting point for the whole book, and the correlations between these stages and other dimensions of social life, one might be excused for getting the impression that Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg were materialists. But this impression would be completely misleading. Throughout MCSISP, in fact, they offer no overall theory of the causes of social evolution. But this does not mean that Hobhouse did not have such a theory. This is clear from reading Morals in Evolution, but even clearer when we look at his final statement of his overall philosophy of evolution.

A Philosophy of Evolution Hobhouse was a prodigious and indefatigable scholar who wrote many books, but these books were closely related and formed parts of a larger whole. In this respect Hobhouse was much like Spencer: Both were clearly thinkers on a grand scale who never lost sight of the “Big Picture.” Like Spencer, Hobhouse had an overall philosophy of evolution. This philosophy was best expressed in his Development and Purpose: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Evolution, originally published in 1913 but with a second edition in 1927, two years before he died. We know this is his great capstone work because he says that “the book completes a scheme which has occupied the writer for twenty-six years” (1927:xvii). Right at the beginning we find Hobhouse criticizing Spencer for his materialism, his overemphasis on the “struggle for existence,” and his “uncompromising economic individualism.” Progress, for Hobhouse, consists in overcoming the struggle for existence and the substitution of social cooperation for conflict and competition. Hobhouse then makes reference to T. H. Green, a contemporary who was the leading British Hegelian philosopher of the day. Hobhouse rejected Green’s characterization of all reality as spiritual and seemed to imply that an adequate philosophy of evolution should define a middle ground between idealism and materialism. Nevertheless, Hobhouse was in fact very clearly on the idealist side. Indeed, he says regarding Hegel and Green: “As I followed this line of thought, it seemed to me that, details apart, the Hegelian conception of development possessed a certain rough, empirical value. There were grades or degrees of consciousness and selfconsciousness, and as personal self-consciousness was distinctive of man, so there was a higher self-consciousness of the human spirit, which would represent the term of the present stage in development” (Hobhouse, 1927:xxi). Hobhouse went on to say that in the Darwinian struggle for existence there had arisen a being that owed its survival to a mind, and of course this being

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 81 is Homo sapiens. This mind had the power to control its own destiny and to direct the course of social evolution. Natural selection was not the cause of progress, Darwin and Spencer notwithstanding; rather, mind (Mind) was. As noted earlier, for Hobhouse, the “slowly wrought out dominance of mind in things is the central fact of evolution” (Hobhouse, 1951:637). It would be hard to find a more explicit expression of a commitment to theoretical idealism. It is clear, then, that Hobhouse was an idealist, and an idealist in a very strong sense (cf. Owen, 1974:132–135, 141–144). On the surface, MCSISP looks materialist, but that appearance is thoroughly deceiving. For the stages of economic culture themselves are not to be explained in materialist terms, but rather as stages of the increase in the “stock of knowledge” that the human mind (Mind) has been accumulating over the eons. Hobhouse tells us that “social life is predominantly mental in the sense that it expresses the relations of thinking, sentient, craving creatures . . . with impulses belonging to them as minds” (1927:205). Was฀Hobhouse฀also฀then฀a฀teleological฀thinker,฀a฀causal฀developmentalist?฀ There is some good evidence that he may have been, for he says that the evolutionary process can be best understood as the effect of a purpose slowing working itself out under limiting conditions which it brings successively under control. This would imply not that reality is Spiritual or the creation of an unconditioned mind—a view equally repugnant to morality and experience—but that there is a spiritual element integral to the structure and movement of Reality, and that evolution is the process by which this principle makes itself master of the residual conditions which at first dominate its life and thwart its efforts (Hobhouse, 1927:xxix; emphasis added).

And John Owen says that, for Hobhouse, “evolution in general is the working out of what there is in things, the coming into actuality of that which existed in potentiality, the bringing to maturity of that which existed in germ” (1974:123; emphasis added). However, Morris Ginsberg, who probably understood Hobhouse better than anyone, has denied that he was any sort of developmentalist, holding that for Hobhouse “social change is not a process that goes on of itself over the heads of the individual efforts of men” (1950:xlvii). Perhaps, then, Hobhouse was like Spencer and Morgan, that is, a thinker who simultaneously embraced ordinary causal and developmentalist modes of explanation and who saw no contradiction between them (thus explaining social evolution “twice over”). But one thing is certain: Hobhouse never really tells us why the human mind should evolve over time to higher stages; it just does. This absence—the “dog that is not barking”—is highly suggestive of a developmentalism: It is just in the nature of mind to grow to higher and higher levels. And this developmentalism is closely intertwined with a fundamental progressivism, even though Hobhouse recognizes that progress is not automatic and social evolution is by no means strictly unilinear. Like

82 ✻ Chapter 5 Hegel, Hobhouse saw human progress as erratic, with periods of retrogression interspersed with periods of progression. But on the whole, humankind has been improving itself, gradually moving toward a society based on harmony and a kind of ethical universalism in which all of humanity would constitute a single social unit. In the closing chapter of Part I of Development and Purpose, in which Hobhouse reflects on the past and projects the future, he makes the following statements: What฀are฀the฀prospects฀of฀further฀advance?฀What฀are฀the฀capabilities฀of฀development in the life of man, and what ground have we for the belief that these capabilities฀will฀be฀fulilled?฀.฀.฀.฀We฀may฀expect฀.฀.฀.฀that฀the฀stage฀of฀self-conscious฀ development will complete itself, and prepare the way for a still higher and wider spiritual synthesis as previous stages have done. Mind as an organising principle will continue to grow indefinitely (1927:238; emphasis added). The case then stands as follows. The narrative of evolution leads us to conceive the maturation of Mind in man, through rational cooperation, to the complete control of the conditions of its own development. Given (1) that such a mind were actually evolved, and (2) that the conditions were malleable without restriction, it would be for its own purpose all-powerful, and would, therefore, with certainty achieve progressively the perfection of life. . . . Now the ideal has been defined as a Harmony in the entire life of mind, and the question is whether the conditions of evolution make for or against such a harmony, or whether, finally, they are such as to render harmony possible under the control of intelligence. . . . [A]s we have seen, the advance of Mind is measured by the constant extension of the sphere of harmony and the removal of partial disharmony and discord within that sphere (1927:241; emphasis added).

Metaphysics aside, it is difficult to get much more Hegelian than this!1

Conclusion Despite Hobhouse’s unfortunate theoretical idealism, and likely developmentalism, his MCSISP is a stunning empirical achievement for someone writing in 1915. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first large-scale attempt ever made to organize a large mass of ethnographic data quantitatively and to examine the relationships between the stages of material culture and other dimensions of social life. (Actually, Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg were building on the previous work of Nieboer [1900], but they went considerably beyond him. Tylor [1889] had earlier formulated a quantitative and statistical method for comparative study based on a sample of 300–400 societies, but his application of it was limited to marriage and descent patterns.) Moreover, Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg’s analysis of modes of the administration of justice, and the relationship between these modes and stages of economic life, apparently is the only such analysis ever conducted, making their results all the more valuable. Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg clearly presage

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 83 the famous Human Relations Area Files a generation before they were first begun. However, they presage them only indirectly. Standing in a direct and almost immediate line to the HRAF were William Graham Sumner and his student, Albert Galloway Keller, thinkers of an utterly different evolutionary persuasion than Hobhouse.

William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), one of the founders of American sociology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, published only one major book in his lifetime, the celebrated Folkways (1906). The ideas in this book were not evolutionary, although some of them do have a bearing on his later evolutionary thinking. For the major work on “the science of society” that he intended to write someday, he prepared drafts of a number of chapters and kept many notes for other projected chapters. But he was never able to complete work on this book. Before his death, Sumner left it to his leading student and disciple at Yale University, Albert Galloway Keller (1874–1956), to put this book together, but it took many years for Keller to do so. In 1927, the massive four-volume The Science of Society (SOS), with Sumner as first author and Keller second, finally appeared. The book totaled nearly 3,600 pages, with the final volume alone more than 1,300 pages. It is this book that is the source of Sumner’s evolutionary thinking.

An Evolutionary Science of Society Sumner and Keller’s evolutionism was diametrically opposed in almost every way imaginable to that of Hobhouse, for they drew their leading concepts and principles directly from Malthus and Darwin (and to some degree from Spencer). For Sumner and Keller, humans are highly competitive organisms who are constantly engaged with each other in a struggle for existence. This struggle occurs at all stages of social evolution, and it is unceasing and inevitable. Humans are inherently self-interested creatures who seek to do the best they can in the competitive struggle, and the features of society are the aggregate outcome of these self-interested strivings. Because human wants are infinitely expandable, there will always be conflict, and thus always societal evolution (Keller, 1931:98). Humans, of course, also engage in many forms of cooperation, but this cooperation does not spring from altruistic motives; rather, it is based on “enlightened self-interest,” or what Sumner famously dubbed antagonistic cooperation. Through both their competitive and their cooperative endeavors, humans in a society or group within a society create folkways, or established customs and traditions, many of which crystallize out as especially important to individual and group welfare as mores. Large blocks of mores devoted to

84 ✻ Chapter 5 the same basic type of endeavor become institutions. Mores and institutions represent modes of adjustment or adaptation to the environment. Ideas, and the practices that are their basis, arise in a variety of ways (more on which later), but there are always more of them than can survive. They are many in number and widely varied in nature, and thus there is always variation. The competitive struggle determines which of these ideas and practices will fail to persist and which ones will be accepted and become mores and institutions. This is selection, which is both against certain ideas and practices and for other ideas and practices. The most fit ideas and practices are selected for, and the less fit or altogether unfit are selected against. Selection is an impersonal process, both automatic and unplanned. Then, once selection has occurred and the mores and institutions have developed, there is transmission of them from one generation to the next. Subsequent generations tend to live automatically and unreflectively according to these mores and institutions. However, new sources of variation are always arising, and the most fit of these will be selected for and eventually replace old mores and institutions as the conditions requiring adjustment change. We then have social change or societal evolution. Sumner and Keller learned much from both Malthus and Darwin and were directly and strongly influenced by both. The essence of evolution is adjustment or adaptation to the environment. The starting point for understanding adaptation and evolution is what Sumner and Keller call the man-land ratio. Like other organisms, humans tend to produce themselves in such numbers so as to press against the resources available to support them. Although they may be sparsely settled upon the land for awhile, eventually they come to fill it up. As this occurs, resources are no longer sufficient to meet basic needs, and people respond either by migration to unsettled or less-settled territories, or by advancing their tools and techniques in order to wrest more food from the land. The man-land ratio is not only the starting point for understanding society and societal evolution: It is the universal explanation of social phenomena. Sumner and Keller formulate a Law of Population, which states that population has a strong tendency to grow and that its growth is the ultimate source of societal evolution. Where numbers are thin—where the man-land ratio is low—resources are usually sufficient to support individuals and communities and there is no incentive to advance technology, or what the authors call “the arts of subsistence.” But when numbers are great and the man-land ratio is high, evolution is the likely result. The Law of Population applies everywhere and at all times. As the authors say, “We never defeat or escape the forces in the field. Overpopulation means just the same thing for the people of Belgium as for those of Bengal or of an island in Melanesia. The phenomena of it, physical, mental, social, and political are always the same” (1927a:84). The authors focus much attention on the food quest, which involves the selfmaintenance institutions, and they mark off four major types of self-maintenance.

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 85 All of these types represent a sequence of stages from simple to complex. The most primordial is collecting. Here humans have no real tools and therefore must rely on scrounging or scavenging what they can get mostly with their bare hands. In order to survive under these conditions, the man-land ratio must be extremely low. At a later point humans develop tools and weapons, which leads to hunting and to a superior quality of subsistence. There follows an animal raising or pastoral stage in which humans depend on domesticated animals for the bulk of their subsistence. Sometimes, however, this stage “is often not far removed from the preceding stage, and the cattle-raising is scarcely more than a stocking of a preserve with game” (1927a:56). Animal raising is associated with considerable advancement of tools and subsistence arts, and gives the land much greater supportive power. Populations can and do increase and become denser. Finally, there is the plant culture or agricultural stage, in which people begin to cultivate the land. According to the authors, “agriculture represents a momentous advance in the arts of life, with a corresponding effect on numbers, for it immensely extends the supporting power of land. The food supply is more copious, of better quality, and more variegated” (1927a:58). In terms of a causal theory, we know that for Sumner and Keller, Malthusian population growth and its consequences, along with the Darwinian struggle for existence, are the starting points and foundations of the process of societal evolution. They tell us that “It is by virtue of the law of population, which expands upon the man-land relation, that there is a science of society” (1927a:85–86).฀But฀what฀of฀the฀institutions฀of฀society?฀How฀are฀they฀ arranged฀in฀an฀order฀of฀importance฀or฀priority?฀Institutions,฀being฀formed฀ from the mores, cluster about certain types of interests. Here Sumner and Keller identify four major categories of institutions: 1. Institutions of Self-Maintenance, which serve the “hunger-interest.” They involve the arts of subsistence, property, war for plunder, and the regulation of social order. 2. Institutions of Self-Perpetuation, which serve the “love-interest,” and involve the modes of marriage and family life. 3. Institutions of Self-Gratification, which serve the “pleasure-interest.” They concern such things as dress, ornamentation, games, dancing, play-acting, the fine arts, the use of drugs, and war for glory. 4. Religion, which serves the “fear-interest.” It involves animism, animatism, “daimonism,” and their derivatives.

However, in a more final classification, Sumner and Keller rather curiously remove religion from its own category and place it within the self-maintenance institutions. Their justification for this is that, citing Julius Lippert, “religion is the struggle for existence prolonged beyond the grave” (1927a:91). All of these institutions interpenetrate and influence one another, but Sumner and Keller regard the self-maintenance institutions as the most fundamental because they concern the most basic matters of survival and

86 ✻ Chapter 5 physical well-being. Their causal model therefore holds that the institutions of self-perpetuation and self-gratification are derived largely from the selfmaintenance institutions. In their words (1927a:91–92; emphasis added): “Self-perpetuation and self-gratification . . . do not call for analysis and classification according to the types of environment to which they constitute societal adjustments. They follow naturally after the forms of maintenance, selfgratification, as productive of no great institutions, bringing up the rear.” This, of course, is a materialist model if there ever was one, and, considering that underlying the self-maintenance institutions is the Law of Population and the man-land ratio, a very thoroughgoing materialist model. Then later, at the end of the third volume of SOS, the authors describe their materialist model in a more precise and nuanced way (1927c:2239): It is not . . . true that self-maintenance always overrides every other motive or interest of the group; nevertheless it is the prime motive and interest which prevails normally and in all but the exceptional cases and it gives shape to everything else. The intellectual interests conform to the economic necessities; the political institutions shape themselves to the economic powers and to the requirements of economic operations; notions of right and wrong and conceptions of rights are a product of economic relations which have been adopted because expedient and successful; philosophical and religious dogmas are a result of reflection on experiences furnished by the operation of existing systems of societal economy.2

Although Sumner and Keller were resolute materialists, they certainly did not regard the material conditions as always determinative of the other dimensions of social life. In the quotation immediately above they stress that the motives of self-maintenance do not always override other motives, and they also say that their emphasis on the causal role of the self-maintenance institutions “does not imply the absence of any reverse influence, from religion and the other secondary institutions upon the maintenance-organization” (1927c:2238). Here we also see that, despite their reclassification of religion under the self-maintenance institutions, this appears to be classificatory only because religion is assigned no apparent causal role. All of these conceptual and theoretical ideas are contained in the first three chapters of the first volume and the final two chapters of the third volume of SOS. The remainder of Volume I is taken up with discussion of the self-maintenance institutions: the subsistence quest; labor specialization and cooperation; the appropriation of energy in the form of fire, animals, plants, and men (slavery); forms of property; government; war and other antagonisms; social classes; the administration of justice; and the origins of the state. Volume II (1927b) discusses religion: “ghost-fear”; animism; “eidolism”; the ghost-cult; “daimonism”; fetishism and totemism; daimonology; taboos; sin, exorcism, and coercion; propitiation; sacrifice; human sacrifice and

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 87 cannibalism; magic; shamanism; and religion and morals. The remainder of Volume III deals with the self-perpetuation and self-gratification institutions: the origins of marriage; endogamy and exogamy; brideprice and dowry; the status of women; divorce; monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry; infanticide; modes of descent (“father-family” and “mother-family”); treatment of the elderly; pastime and play; games; drugs (intoxicants and narcotics); dancing; ostentation; and dress and bodily adornment. Obviously there is no space even to summarize these many fascinating and often extremely informative discussions. The final two chapters of the third volume also offer an extremely engaging methodological discussion. The authors tell us that they are using the comparative method, and they defend its use appropriately. The best way to understand something, they aver, is to find out how it came to be—how it evolved. They say that the study of survivals, sensu Tylor, can be an extremely useful means of doing this, just as Darwin did it with respect to the organic world. Sumner and Keller stress that they are engaged in a purely scientific endeavor that makes no room for moral judgments (passing such judgments being “impertinent”). Evolution cannot be equated with progress, because evolution only means a succession of stages of adjustment to the environment. Evolutionists must study both progressive (forward) social development as well as retrogressive (backward) development. Whether or not evolution leads to progress in the sense of improvement, or to degeneration, is deemed to be of no scientific significance. And progress is regarded as a notoriously subjective term, as Keller remarks (1931:326; emphasis added): It would be a notable exploit to prove that societal evolution is progressive, and toward what, or that it is not progressive—in fact, an incredible one, inasmuch as no preliminary agreement could possibly be secured as to what “progress” is. The question is irrelevant to the present discussion, for what we have undertaken to consider is only this: Is there a process of adjustment in the mores, irrespective฀of฀its฀trend,฀and฀if฀so,฀how฀does฀it฀work?฀To฀us,฀evolution฀is฀neither฀ progress nor retrogression, exclusively; it is both. “Progress” and “retrogression” are opinions on adjustments which do or do not appeal to one occupying a selected point of view, generally that of his own code. Evolution is adjustment to life conditions, and that is all it is.

Sumner and Keller thus steadfastly refuse to engage in any real discussion about whether or not there have been improvements in the human condition with societal evolution. (Although with respect to the self-maintenance institutions, they explicitly acknowledge a vast improvement from “destitution” to the comforts of modern life.) Nor did they, as some other classical evolutionists were inclined to do, see modern society as some sort of pinnacle of human achievement beyond which there is really nothing more to be done. Life is a constant struggle against both the forces of nature and other

88 ✻ Chapter 5 individuals and groups, and therefore adjustment and readjustment go on continually, inevitably, and incessantly. It is a fallacy to think otherwise: We may be sure that what we ourselves have and do is also only a stage on the way to something else. We are wrong in our tendency to think that what we have attained is the crown of things, or that, because we can see and are astounded at the errors (as we esteem them) of the past, therefore we are making none such now. The very opposite is the correct conclusion. If we see errors in the past, posterity will see them in our acts. It cannot be otherwise than that institutions and usages of today will be maladjustments with respect to some future time just as certainly as feudalism and coarse public exhibitions are errors to us (1927c:2241).

Inasmuch as Sumner and Keller were utterly explicit materialists of the most thoroughgoing and uncompromising sort, their epistemology is clearly that of ordinary causation. There is not even the slightest hint of developmentalism in their thinking. As Keller says, “That there may be some ‘end’ or ‘purpose’ to the adjustment process, that it may be ‘teleological,’ is here a wholly extraneous matter and one of complete indifference” (1931:326). Indeed, for thinkers who remained so close to Malthus and Darwin, there could not possibly be any sort of teleological or developmentalist logic underlying their evolutionism. And since they did not engage the question of progress and were not developmentalists, it would be a safe prediction that neither did they adhere to any sort of strong unilinearism. Indeed, that is precisely the case. As they tell us, it is both useful and necessary to construct a series of evolutionary stages, but no society “ever went exactly through it. It is made up of phenomena presented in many societies, set in order and sequence of development. This order contains an element of arrangement contributed from the mind of the series-maker, not from fact. It is schematic. It would be quite wrong, having constructed such a series, to argue from it that the history of a society could never present gaps, or inversions, or transfers in the order set down” (1927c:2203). Yet at the same time, “it is equally foolish to assert that the schematic representation is deceptive or useless because the history of every group shows departures from it. . . . It is only by falling in love with some classification and assuming its categories to be clean-cut, inclusive, and durable, to be natural instead of highly artificial, that one slips into this category fallacy” (1927c:2203). It would appear that Sumner and Keller have, in just a handful of short passages, persuasively answered most of the major criticisms that have ever been made of evolutionary theorizing.

Variation, Selection, Transmission, and Adaptation in Social Evolution In the penultimate paragraph of the third volume, the authors tell us how the long process of societal evolution is a purely natural, automatic, and unplanned process. As they put it (1927c:2250–2251):

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 89 Without attempting any poetic flights, we should wish simply to recall the long series of automatic adjustments in the mores which constitute the industrial organization, property, the regulative organization, religion, and marriage. No one planned them out. Men were simply trying their best to live at all, or with less discomfort, in the face of the physical, social, and supernatural environments, in the presence of the element of chance, and of the condition of bisexuality [i.e., the existence of two sexes]. Then what they have worked out, in the form of institutions, is seen, upon faithful examination, to have the rationality and the “logic” of the results of natural processes.

This emphasis on the natural, automatic, and unplanned character of societal evolution was developed at much greater length, and with great insight, in Keller’s own Societal Evolution: A Study of the Evolutionary Basis of the Science of Society, originally published in 1915 and revised in 1931. Keller tells us that he is applying Darwinian concepts directly to society, and that Spencer is an “untrustworthy guide” because he had mainly just a very abstract philosophy of evolution, not a real scientific effort (as we saw in Chapter 2, this is an erroneous contention, for Spencer does indeed postulate a number of ordinary causal mechanisms). And Keller says that he is not simply reasoning by analogy: Societal selection is real selection, although it differs in nature from natural selection in the organic world. Two฀crucial฀questions฀are,฀What฀is฀the฀source฀of฀variation?฀And฀is฀it฀random฀or฀deliberate?฀Keller฀offers฀a฀rough฀sequence฀to฀show฀how฀variations฀ arise and what happens to them: Need > Act > Test Through Experience > Repeat and Make Habitual > Societal Agreement > Folkways > Conviction of Expediency of Selected Variations > Mores > Religious Sanctioning. Variation may begin by people “throwing out tentatives,” which in the case of the most primitive peoples may be simply “unpremeditated squirmings.” Only at a later point are variations purposive, intentional, or planned out. Variations arise as mental reactions of individuals to their basic needs, mostly the needs of self-maintenance. Variations may be either conscious or unconscious, and they may be random, deliberate, or anything in between. Although variation is produced by individuals, selection and transmission, on the other hand, are clearly societal rather than individual matters: It is society that weeds out the less fit and ensures the transmission of the most fit across time and space. Insisting that selection is automatic and impersonal, Keller is at pains to distinguish between agency and cause. In this regard he says the following (1931:79): Various historians have revealed the common human weakness of seeking an agent rather than a cause—of attributing “progress” forthwith to personal agency, through the prowess of human reason, rather than of accounting for adjustment . . . by impersonal causation, operating in accord with undeviating law. They have reported that men perceived the evil of such-and-such a system—for instance, of slavery—and, taking their corporate destiny firmly and

90 ✻ Chapter 5 intelligently in hand, abolished it out of hand because it was “wrong.” The acme of this sort of phantasy is found in the theory that savages got together and drew up a “social contract.” More commonly nowadays the chronicler of social change, realizing the futility of such an explanation, has acclaimed the outstanding individual who has molded affairs by his compelling intellect, keenness of insight, and dominating personality, so that “the history of a people is the biography of its Great Men.” It is necessary to challenge both these theories of agency, multiple or single, before presenting an account of selection that is more nearly in accord with the facts.

What฀elements฀of฀society,฀then,฀impersonally฀engage฀in฀selection?฀Is฀it฀ “the฀masses”?฀At฀one฀point,฀Keller฀seems฀to฀think฀not,฀saying฀that฀the฀masses฀ do not have the power (he seems to mean the mental power) “to reach out after improvements or to plan steps of change.” The masses are highly conservative and traditional, and thus constitute an inertial force in society. “It is the classes who produce variation; it is the masses who carry forward the traditional mores” (1931:83). Presumably by “the classes” Keller means the higher, better-educated classes. For example, quoting Sumner, he says (1931:84): “Fifty years ago Darwin put some knowledge into the common stock. The peasants and artisans of his time did nothing of the kind. The masses understand, for instance, that Darwin said that ‘men are descended from monkeys.’ Only summary and glib propositions of that kind can ever get currency. . . . Thinking and understanding are too hard work.” Then, quoting W. J. Locke, Keller says, “It is astonishing what little account our sociological writers take of the elementary nature of the minds of the masses; how easily they are amused; how readily they are imposed upon; how little they are capable of analytical thought” (1931:84).3 But later Keller seems to give the masses a major role (1931:141; emphasis added): “The elimination or persistence of the mores is determined by the action of men in masses!” At first this appears to be a striking inconsistency, but it seems that what Keller is saying is that the masses play little or no role in producing variations, but a major role in selecting from among them. Selection may occur both between groups as well as within them. In terms of the former, we have selection occurring as the result of conflict between classes, groups, or entire societies. Here the dominant groups, classes, or societies impose their mores, or subordinated groups borrow those they find useful or simply imitate the habits of superordinate groups. Keller regards intergroup selection as especially important, saying that without it selection cannot be truly decisive. Keller then raises the question as to whether selection is “rational,” and by rational he means “correct and verifiable.” His answer is both yes and no, but predominantly no. In the selection process, the rational and the irrational are closely intertwined and it is often extremely difficult to disentangle them. But for the most part the process of selecting the mores among all the possibilities offered up is irrational. Society (“the masses”) seldom engages in any true reflection on

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 91 variations, but operates largely in accordance with its sense of pleasure or pain, thus adopting those variations that bring pleasure (i. e., that are rewarding) and spurning those that bring pain (i. e., that are costly). Keller seems to be saying here that selection is much more an emotional than a cognitive process, for he says that selection is rooted in interests, not in ideas. There are very few instances of selected mores being thought out or preplanned over any long period of time. Enlightened rational selection, Keller tells us, prevails only seldom even in the most advanced civilizations with the most sophisticated systems of thought and knowledge. And recall that selection is a largely unconscious process, which of course is what helps to make it also automatic and impersonal. Keller regards selection as being most intense in the most primitive groups because it is in such groups that people are living closest to nature. But as people advance toward civilization, the environment becomes increasingly artificial, reaching a zenith of artificiality in the modern industrial world. The more artificial the environment, the less intense the competition and the selection. To some extent civilization actually shields people from selection, Keller argues. This leads at some point to counterselection, a process in which the less biologically fit, who would have been eliminated in earlier stages of society, now survive and often prosper. The biologically less fit or unfit may turn out to be societally fit. But, Keller says, this is a normal and inevitable process, and it is not harmful to society. What then of transmission, the process whereby selected mores and institutions฀persist฀across฀groups฀and฀over฀the฀generations?฀Here฀Keller’s฀arguments฀ are extremely provocative. Like selection, transmission may occur between groups and societies or within them. As such, it can occur by inculcation or by imitation, but Keller thinks that it occurs much more frequently by imitation. For example: Within the primitive group, children attain to the type of their elders’ mores even if there is no deliberate education (1931:300). Education among primitives consists in so disposing of the young that they shall have before them that which it is desirable to imitate (1931:300). In the most primitive form of education, where life is far from complex, voluntary imitation is the predominant factor in tradition (1931:301).

Even inculcation itself works primarily through imitation: “Inculcation in all its forms rests ultimately upon imitation, which is the dominant means of transmission of the mores; it is really, in good part, an effort to induce or force imitation” (1931:318; emphasis added). And sometimes transmission occurs through simple conformity to the norms of the group. But transmission cannot always be assumed, as selection is, to be automatic. There is always a tendency, especially in more modern societies, for

92 ✻ Chapter 5 each new generation to “test the mores.” If they find them satisfactory to their needs and wants, they retain them, but if they bring more pain than pleasure, then they may challenge them and substitute new ones. “It is part of the evolutionary process on the societal plane that the mores shall be ever under question,” Keller says (1931:309), and “the path of history is strewn with discarded mores” (1931:108). Finally, Keller turns to adaptation, which is the end result of variation, selection, and transmission. Adaptation occurs only with respect to the institutions of self-maintenance, he contends. The other elements of society adjust themselves to the maintenance mores—there is a “strain toward consistency”—but they are not in themselves adaptations. Keller stresses that adaptation in the maintenance mores is everywhere, and that many of the features of the more primitive societies that were once deemed to be superstitious nonsense or utterly inexplicable turn out, on more careful examination, to be adaptive (“expedient” is a term often chosen by Keller as a synonym for “adaptive”). Keller goes on to illustrate the nature of adaptations in the maintenance institutions of three types of societies: temperate frontier societies, tropical frontier societies, and the city. Temperate frontier societies are really settler colonies, such as those that hived off from Britain to form the United States, Canada, and Australia. Here we find both substantial immigration and substantial population increase. The basic economic unit is the farm or homestead, privately owned and operated for subsistence without using any native labor. The temperate colony is economically independent of the home country, and in time wishes to become politically independent as well. It tends toward equality and democracy and wants statehood. But in the tropical frontier society or colony things are completely different. The hot climate is innervating, and thus discourages immigration, which is minimal and often largely male. Natural increase is also very slight, since family life is poorly developed. The basic economic unit is the plantation, which is devoted to the production of luxuries using compulsory native labor. The tropical colony remains economically dependent on the home country. It is not a society of rough equals, but rather a very hierarchical society with extremes of rich and poor, and often a division into a type of aristocracy and a subordinate class of slaves or indentured peasants.4 In the city a whole new set of adaptations arises as a response to the great density of population. Here we have an extremely artificial environment. One of the things city life especially requires is a great increase in the size and complexity of regulative institutions, as Keller explains (1931:384): Hence, on the one hand, rules for personal behavior that go into a detail uncalled for outside of a densely populated area; and, on the other, broad regulations and far-reaching provisions that scarcely visualize the individual at all. For example, take the traffic rules of all varieties as a case of limitation

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 93 of individual freedom of movement; and consider the building and fire codes as broad provisions for the welfare of community life. Everywhere it becomes necessary to resort to legislation, inspection, and enforcement.

Keller lists numerous other examples of new regulations, and thus the evolution of a vast and complex system of societal control that would be completely unnecessary in simpler societies. Many people feel maladaptive consequences of these controls in the form of nuisances and irritations, but they are adaptations nonetheless to the special conditions of life that a densely populated large city imposes.5

Foreshadowing the Human Relations Area Files Volume IV of SOS is Sumner and Keller’s so-called Case Book, and Maurice Rea Davie, who contributed greatly to its compilation, was an additional coauthor (Sumner, Keller, and Davie, 1927). This volume consists of 1,191 pages in 9-point type and is organized topically in terms of particular features of the ethnographic cases on which Sumner and Keller drew in their first three volumes. Each section of the case book is numbered, and the numbers are keyed to the section numbers in the first three volumes. The sections begin with number 9, Primitive Atomism, and end with number 449, Prestige, but many of the intervening sections are absent. Just to pick a few other representative sections more or less at random, we find: number 31, The Agricultural Stage; number 75, Conditions of Group-Specialization; number 114, Communal Property; number 155, The Chieftainship; number 211, Transmigration and Reincarnation; number 256, The Animal Fetish; number 302, Imitative Magic; number 361, Wife-Purchase; and number 404, Infanticide. Within each of the sections there are numerous ethnographic cases (often dozens) discussed. For example, under number 404, Infanticide, there are discussions of this practice among various aboriginal Australian groups; the Dobu, Tikopians, New Hebrides Islanders, Samoans, Gilbert Islanders, and the Marquesan Islanders of Oceania; traditional China; the ancient Greeks and Romans; early Arabs; the Toda of India; the Hottentots, Bunyoro, and Akamba of sub-Saharan Africa; aboriginal Greenlanders; the Bering Strait and Hudson Bay Eskimos; various southwestern American Indian tribes, such as the Apache, Mohave, and Navaho; and the Tlinkit, Kwakiutl, and Tsimshian of the Northwest Pacific Coast—among numerous others. The Case Book is a stunning achievement and involved a prodigious effort. It differs from the more than 400 ethnographic cases assembled by Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg in that their data were quantitative or numerical, whereas Sumner, Keller, and Davies’s were narratives. The Case Book is the immediate predecessor of the Yale Area Files, first assembled by George Peter Murdock at Yale in the 1930s and later renamed the Human Relations Area Files and greatly expanded. Murdock was a student of Keller,

94 ✻ Chapter 5 who, of course, was a student of Sumner, so there is the direct line Sumner > Keller > Murdock.6 The HRAF are the largest collection of ethnographic and historical case materials ever assembled, and have proven invaluable in anthropological and sociological research of many types. Ultimately, the HRAF were to lead to quantitative spinoffs, the most important of which are the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967), a compilation of data on 1,267 societies, and the “Standard Cross-Cultural Sample” (Murdock and White, 1969), a representative sample of 186 societies from every single microregion of the world. All of this is the legacy of William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller.

Edward Westermarck Edward Westermarck (1862–1939) was a Finnish sociologist who taught for a number of years in Finland and then later became a major figure in British intellectual life. He and Hobhouse were well acquainted as, indeed, for several years they shared the Martin White Professorship at the University of London, to which each was appointed in 1907. Westermarck’s most important works were The History of Human Marriage (HHM), a large three-volume work originally published in 1891 and revised and updated several times (with a fifth edition appearing in 1922), and The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906, 1908) (ODMI). Like Sumner and Keller, Westermarck was greatly influenced by Darwin, but his application of Darwinian ideas was completely different. Rather than developing a selectionist theory of social evolution, Westermarck was much more interested in using a Darwinian approach to understand human nature and its reflection in a wide range of social arrangements, marriage and family patterns and moral consciousness in particular. Nevertheless, Westermarck was well aware of the social evolutionary ideas of many of the classical evolutionists, and was especially influenced by Tylor, with whom he had carried on a lengthy correspondence since his student days (Ihanus, 1999). He made extensive use of the comparative method, and in all of his studies sought to “consider the customs or laws of peoples at all stages of civilisation” (1922a:23). At the same time, one cannot find in Westermarck’s works any classification of stages of social evolution, either with respect to societies in general or any of their specific institutions. Nor is there any systematic attempt to explain why societies have passed from one type of organization or one set of arrangements to another. This excludes Westermarck, then, from full membership in the “school” of the classical social evolutionists. But Westermarck’s ideas are too important to overlook, for they have a direct bearing on understanding various processes of social evolution. Much of the first volume of HHM, a work based on the dissertation Westermarck wrote at Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki, was devoted to a critique

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 95 of the celebrated argument, developed by such eminent evolutionists of the day as Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan, Lubbock, and Lippert, that the earliest humans lived in a state of promiscuity. Individual marriage did not exist, it was claimed, and a general state of “sexual communism” prevailed in which all men had access to all women. Westermarck exhaustively reviewed the evidence that had been presented in support of this argument, and found that on close examination it utterly failed to provide any such support. Regarding the statements that had been made of cases of primitive promiscuity, Westermarck said “it would be difficult to find a more untrustworthy collection of statements. Some of them are simply misrepresentations of theorists in which sexual laxity, frequency of separation, polyandry, group marriage or something like it . . . is confounded with promiscuity. Others are based upon indefinite evidence which may be interpreted in one way or another, or on information proved to be inaccurate. And not a single statement can be said to be authoritative” (1922a:124). Westermarck also observed that there were very good reasons for doubting that sexual promiscuity could ever have been a general pattern among humans. One reason was the emotion of sexual jealousy, which Westermarck thought to be extremely widespread (if not, indeed, universal). In this regard he set forth dozens of cases of the occurrence of sexual jealousy from many different types of societies from all over the globe, and also of the intensity and consequences of this jealousy. One consequence was the harsh condemnation of, and often severe punishment for, adultery. Since jealousy, on the part of both sexes but especially strong in the male, was such an important human emotion everywhere, it was inconceivable to Westermarck that early humans could ever have tolerated widespread promiscuity. Early humans, Westermarck contended, practiced marriage and lived in organized families. Marriage and the family were both reproductive and economic institutions, for it was the main role of the mother to nurture the children and of the father to provide economic support and protection. In classical Darwinian style, Westermarck sought the origins of the human family in humankind’s hominoid ancestry (1922a:69): “I think we have reason to believe that the family, implying marital and paternal care, was hardly less indispensable for primitive man than it is for the gorilla and chimpanzee. If this was the case, the family may have been an inheritance from the parent species out of which the Anthropoids and the Hominides . . . gradually developed.” In the second volume of HHM, Westermarck developed the hypothesis on the origin of incest avoidance and exogamy for which he is today most famous, the “familiarity breeds indifference” theory. Westermarck thought that the tendency to avoid incestuous sexual relations with close kin sprang from a deep human emotion that had evolved by natural selection. He expressed the matter as follows (1922b:192): “Generally speaking, there is a remarkable absence of erotic feelings between persons living very closely

96 ✻ Chapter 5 together from childhood. Nay more, in this, as in many other cases, sexual aversion when the act is thought of. This I take to be the fundamental cause of the exogamous prohibitions.” Westermarck was not the first to have thought of this, for he located similar ideas in the writings of Montesquieu, the sociologist William Isaac Thomas, Havelock Ellis, and even Plato. In good Darwinian fashion, Westermarck noted that not only is incest avoidance a human universal, but it is the common practice in many species of animals, even birds and honeybees. What is universal in the incest rules is the prohibition of sexual relations among members of the nuclear family. Having an almost encyclopedic knowledge of ethnographic practices, Westermarck well knew that there was considerable variation beyond the nuclear family, with many societies extending the prohibition to certain categories of cousins but not to others, and yet other societies prohibiting all first and even many second cousins. He accounted for these exogamous practices in the same way. Lineages or clans that practiced exogamy were often territorialized units in which cousins grew up in close contact. Where there was a prohibition on the marriage of clanmates who grew up at considerable distance from each other, Westermarck theorized that these separated clans had in the recent past once been territorial: “The exogamous rules, though in the first place associated with kinship because near relatives normally live together, have come to include relatives who do not live together—just as social rights and duties connected with kinship, although ultimately depending upon close living together, have a strong tendency to last after the local tie is broken” (1922b:214). But why did this disinclination to mate with agemates with whom one was in฀close฀contact฀in฀early฀childhood฀evolve?฀How฀was฀it฀adaptive?฀Westermarck’s฀ answer is that it evolved to prevent the damaging genetic consequences of close inbreeding. He even cites statistical data from a number of studies of modern populations on the consequences of first-cousin marriages to support this claim, as well as observations of the effects of cousin marriages in preliterate societies (see Westermarck, 1922b:226–232). In the third volume of HHM (1922c), Westermarck looked at monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry. He noted that the number of societies in which polygyny is permitted or encouraged increases with the evolution of more advanced agricultural and pastoral societies, although with further social evolution monogamy has tended to come to the fore. He offers Darwinian and economic materialist explanations as to why one form of marriage should prevail over the other. Polygyny may often result from an excess of women, but it more commonly results from male desires: for sexual variety; for youth and beauty (when the youthful beauty of a man’s wife has declined or disappeared, he may desire to take on additional and younger wives); for many offspring; for many useful laborers; and for wealth and status. The number of polygynous societies has tended to increase with social evolution, Westermarck contends, because more advanced societies have greater inequalities

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 97 of wealth, and it is the wealthy who have the means to support many wives. The return to monogamy with the further advance of civilization stems from the increasing refinement of the sentiment of love; from a higher regard for the feelings of women; and from an improvement in women’s status, allowing them to live without needing a husband’s support. Westermarck was also keenly interested in the source of moral concepts and judgments, and their evolution, which was the subject of his ODMI. Once again we find Darwinian natural selectionist reasoning at work. Westermarck was highly critical of the arguments of nearly all moral philosophers that morality and ethics are products of reason, arguing instead that moral concepts are rooted in moral emotions. Moral concepts are generalizations or objectifications of moral emotions involving either indignation or approval, and the moral emotions are actually part of a larger class of emotions that Westermarck called retributive emotions. Moral disapproval is a type of resentment closely related to anger and the desire for revenge, whereas moral approval is a type of kindly emotion very similar to gratitude. The retributive emotions themselves have been acquired by means of natural selection in the struggle for existence; both resentment and retributive kindly emotion are states of mind which have a tendency to promote the interests of the individuals who feel them. This explanation also applies to the moral emotions in so far as they are retributive: it accounts for the hostile attitude of moral disapproval towards the cause of pain, and for the friendly attitude of moral approval towards the cause of pleasure. Our retributive emotions are always reactions against pain or pleasure felt by ourselves; this holds true of the moral emotions as well as of revenge and gratitude (1908:739; emphasis added).

And again: “And as natural selection accounts for the origin of resentment, so it also accounts for the origin of the retributive kindly emotion. Both of these emotions are useful states of mind; by resentment evils are averted, by retributive kindliness benefits are secured” (1906:95; emphasis added). Westermarck went on to analyze the nature of the principal moral concepts in these terms, holding that the concepts of vice, wrong, ought and duty, right and rights, and justice and injustice are rooted in moral disapproval, whereas the concepts of good, virtue, and merit are rooted in moral approval. Westermarck noted that there are both universal and variable moral judgments. The universal features of morality spring from a “general uniformity of human nature,” whereas moral variations are due to “different external conditions.” In terms of the former, both primitive and modern societies, for example, regard charity as a duty and generosity as a virtue. As examples of the latter, Westermarck says that economic hardship may lead to infanticide or the abandoning of the old and that “necessity and the force of habit may deprive these actions of the stigma which would otherwise be attached to them” (1908:742). Similarly, economic conditions have had an impact on moral ideas concerning such things as slavery.

98 ✻ Chapter 5 Westermarck was much concerned with the evolution of morality within the context of overall societal evolution. He noted that in the course of moral evolution there has been a strong tendency to condemn direct retaliation for wrongs and emphasize forgiveness as a moral duty. This shift was particularly apparent in the development of the major world religions, and was part of an even more encompassing shift in the direction of greater altruism and sympathy toward a wider range of persons. Westermarck regarded this as a process of “moral enlightenment,” and noted that at its higher stages morality was based more on reason than on emotion. Enlightened minds see that retaliation as a result of resentment is partial, that is, springs from entirely personal motives, and that such retaliation may often be directed against not only wrongdoers but other innocent parties associated with them, such as lineage or clan mates. This heightened moral consciousness “condemns any retributive infliction of pain which it regards as undeserved; and it seems to be in the first place with a view to preventing such injustice that teachers of morality have enjoined upon men to love their enemies” (1906:78–79). At the same time, Westermarck pointed out that the aggressive nature of moral disapproval does not disappear in moral evolution. Instead, it becomes more disguised and expresses itself in new and different ways. Because the desire for retribution is so deeply imbedded in human nature, it cannot be abolished, but merely transformed and redirected: “Resentment is directed against the cause of the offence. . . . Deliberate and discriminating resentment is therefore apt to turn against the will rather than against the willer; as we have seen, it is desirous to inflict pain on the offender chiefly as a means of removing the cause of pain suffered, i. e., the existence of the bad will” (1906:91). However, at the same time Westermarck noted that this conceptual distinction between will and willer, or between sin and sinner, is extremely difficult for humans to maintain in actual practice because “it may be fairly doubted whether [maintaining this distinction] is within the capacity of ordinary human nature” (1906:92). In the second volume of ODMI, Westermarck devoted an entire chapter to homosexual love. He gives perhaps several dozen examples of homosexual practices from around the world, and notes that such practices have been found in numerous animal species. As for the causes of homosexuality, Westermarck argues that in some instances it is due to “congenital sexual inversion” and in others to specific conditions, especially the scarcity of partners of the opposite sex. Without naming them as such, Westermarck identifies the two main forms of homosexuality, preferential and situational (Sanderson, 2001, 2003). It is the former that he attributes to congenital inversion, and the latter to specific conditions. However, even in the case of preferential homosexuality, Westermarck argues that the force of habit may turn what begins as an adaptation to circumstances into an actual preference (although he does suggest that there likely had to be some initial biological predisposition for this to occur). Inasmuch as Westermarck himself was apparently

Classical Evolutionism: II ✻ 99 gay (Ihanus, 1999), his quite straightforward and highly objective analysis of homosexuality is striking. The relationship between this discussion and moral concepts is not completely clear, except that Westermarck does aver that the stigmatization and punishment of homosexuality by such religions as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity were excessive.7

Comparisons and Conclusions The theories of Sumner and Keller and of Westermarck are quite at variance with those of the thinker with whom we started this chapter, L. T. Hobhouse. Whereas Sumner and Keller were materialists of the most fundamental sort, Hobhouse was a Hegelianized idealist for whom the evolution of mind was the engine of social evolution. Hobhouse was also strongly opposed to any conception of social evolution that made the struggle for existence the driving element (Owen, 1974:123–127). He thought that evolution was about much more than mere survival, and that as evolution progresses it moves away from struggle and conflict and toward increasing harmony. Hobhouse, of course, was responding in this respect to Spencer rather than to Sumner and Keller, since the latter’s major evolutionary publications did not appear until long after Hobhouse’s major works. According to John Owen (1974:10), the “materialistic outlook [of Spencer] was repugnant to Hobhouse.” And so would have been the materialism and Darwinian selectionism of Sumner and Keller.8 Owen sides strongly with Hobhouse, but his work on Hobhouse is as much hagiography as objective analysis. I would take precisely the opposite view. As I shall seek to show in later chapters, the idealist perspective represented by Hobhouse is fundamentally misguided. Indeed, the riposte that could have been directed at Hobhouse was that of Keller (1931:97): Societal selection and evolution, he said, “is a complicated affair, not to be explained offhand by easy reference to the human mind and its choices.” However, Hobhouse’s work with Wheeler and Ginsberg, MCSISP, in spite of its implicit idealist causal assumptions, was for its time a first-rate piece of cross-cultural evolutionary analysis that can stand as a model for later work in a similar vein. I would rate Sumner and Keller as the very best of the classical social evolutionists. Not only is their evolutionism vastly preferable to the bulk of Hobhouse’s, but it is superior in certain ways to that of Morgan and Tylor. And, although it follows somewhat in the Spencerian tradition, it is a far better formulation of that tradition. It totally avoids the developmentalism of Spencer and Morgan, the causal confusion of Morgan, and the idealism of Tylor. Sumner and Keller’s emphasis on population growth and the manland ratio, their view that human interests are everywhere the same (to live and to reproduce), and their view that the self-maintenance institutions have fundamental causal priority anticipates to an astonishing degree the much

100 ✻ Chapter 5 more recent materialist evolutionism of Marvin Harris. Moreover, their selectionism is a strong anticipation of such recent Darwinian social evolutionists as Donald Campbell (1965, 1975), Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1981), and W. G. Runciman (1989), as well as of the dual inheritance theories of Boyd and Richerson (1985, 2005) and William Durham (1991). Their emphasis on imitation as the key mechanism of cultural transmission—especially the “imitation of the ways of the envied” (Keller, 1931:313)—has essentially been reinvented by Boyd and Richerson and renamed indirect transmission (see Chapter 10). They also anticipate Goudsblom (1993) on the importance of the discovery of fire, Lenski (2005) on the role of the compass and gunpowder in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and Henri Pirenne (1933, 1937) and Paul Sweezy (1976[1950]) on the role of the revival of trade in “disposing of the feudal system” (Keller, 1931:233–234). The one serious weakness in Sumner and Keller’s selectionism is their denial of human agency in the evolutionary process, but this is a problem that is rather easily fixed (see Chapter 11). How then does Westermarck figure in this mix, especially considering that he฀and฀Hobhouse฀shared฀the฀same฀university฀chair฀for฀many฀years?฀Theoretically, of course, they were worlds apart, with Westermarck the Darwinian biological (and sometimes economic) materialist and Hobhouse the Hegelianized idealist. Early in his student days Westermarck read Hegel, for whom he “soon developed a lasting distaste” (Pipping, 1982:355). Westermarck was always puzzled and perturbed by the influence that Hegelianism continued to exercise on British philosophy (Ihanus, 1999). Hobhouse’s link to the German idealist tradition would therefore have given him serious pause. However, Westermarck and Hobhouse did cite and in some ways seemed to appreciate each other. For example, in his analysis of the relationship between forms of marriage and stages of social evolution, Westermarck drew on findings presented in MCSISP. And in the preface to the first edition of Morals in Evolution, Hobhouse says that Dr. Westermarck’s important work on The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas would have been of immense value to me had it appeared a little earlier. It is particularly satisfactory to me to find that so far as we cover the same field my results generally harmonize with his, and this notwithstanding a material divergence in ethical theory. On almost every page of some of my chapters references to his volume might be added to my footnotes (1951[1915]:vii).

But their ideas on morals and their evolution were utterly different. Hobhouse acknowledges a “divergence in ethical theory,” but he does not appear to recognize just how deep this divergence is. Indeed, as Morris Ginsberg has said, Hobhouse’s view of the “rational good” may be brought out briefly by comparing it with evolutionary naturalism. . . . Clearly Hobhouse was no adherent of evolutionary naturalism. . . .

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With T. H. Huxley, he rejected outright the theory that ethics can be deduced from evolution. . . . The ethical is thus not superimposed on the “natural” or “cosmic,” but it is an element in the general development of mind which, in Hobhouse’s view, is not a product of the biological conditions, but an independent factor. . . . Nor is Hobhouse’s ethics “naturalistic” in the sense of seeking to reduce the ethical to nonethical terms. . . . But his conception of obligation is thoroughly Kantian. The moral rule is binding no matter what our inclinations may be. For what it enjoins is not the good generically, but the rational good, and the rational good is independent of the individual’s recognition of it (1950: xxxvii–xxxviii; emphasis added).

Thus Hobhouse was strongly opposed to precisely that which Westermarck was perhaps the first major proponent—an evolutionary naturalism. Westermarck was not necessarily trying to derive an ethical “ought” from a factual “is,” but he was deriving the most basic forms of the moral sense from the moral emotions that reside in the brain and that have been put there by natural selection. And Westermarck was indeed deriving the ethical from the nonethical, in the sense that the retributive moral emotions are part of a larger class of nonmoral retributive emotions. And finally, Westermarck strongly disliked Kant’s ethical theory. According to Juhani Ihanus (1999:271–272), “Westermarck wrote that as a student he had become exhausted with Kant’s style and his almost empty moral law. Westermarck’s comments on Kant were usually polemically critical or ironic.” Westermarck and Hobhouse did share the view that there had been a trend in moral evolution toward greater inclusiveness and universalism, a generally accurate and important idea developed in more recent times by Talcott Parsons (1971), Jürgen Habermas (1979, 1984), and Klaus Eder (1992, 1999). But outside of this the commonalities are narrow and the differences gaping. If we evaluate Westermarck in comparison with Sumner and Keller, there is little choice to be made. Sumner and Keller have a genuine theory of social evolution, whereas Westermarck does not.9 However, Westermarck has a developed theory of human nature that exists only in rudimentary form in Sumner and Keller. Thus we can learn a great deal from all three of them. The modern-day Sumners and Kellers are the Darwinian social evolutionists and dual inheritance theorists mentioned earlier. The modern-day Westermarcks are the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists. Westermarck was in fact the first real sociobiologist, but he was so far ahead of his time that it was to be the better part of a century before his early lead was picked up. Westermarck’s theory of incest avoidance and exogamy has been revived and much new research evidence provides very strong support for it (Shepher, 1971, 1983; McCabe, 1983; Wolf, 1995; Sanderson, 2001:215–220, 238–239; Turner and Maryanski, 2005:30–32; Wolf and Durham, 2005). And his Darwinian theory of moral emotions and moral concepts is also finding important modern adherents (de Waal, 1996; Ridley, 1996; Arnhart, 1998, 2005; Krebs, 2005).

102 ✻ Chapter 5 Charles Darwin famously called Herbert Spencer “about a dozen times my superior,” by which he meant, not that Spencer had made greater intellectual accomplishments (which would be a rather absurd thing to think, even for someone of Darwin’s modesty), but that Spencer had more sheer brainpower. This is probably one of the few things that Darwin got badly wrong, but at any rate Sumner and Keller and, especially, Edward Westermarck, were, if not a dozen times the superior of Spencer, Morgan, and Tylor, then at least superior by a reasonable order of magnitude. And this is saying quite a lot, since in Chapter 2 my general conclusions on the latter thinkers were on the whole quite favorable. But Sumner, Keller, and Westermarck’s ideas have stood the test of time much better, and as such give us much better foundations on which to build, as we shall see in later chapters.

Notes 1. John Owen (1974:13) also sees Hobhouse as falling within the Hegelian tradition: “In opposition to materialism, he evolved a ‘spiritual conception’ of life, based upon Hegelian notions.” In this regard Hobhouse’s evolutionism strongly anticipates the much more recent evolutionism of Talcott Parsons in several respects: in its Hegel-influenced idealism, its apparent developmentalism, and its lack of any felt need to explain why human ideas advance other than by saying that there is simply some sort of inherent tendency for that to happen. Hobhouse also saw a strong recent evolutionary trend toward greater social inclusiveness, a striking anticipation of Parsons. Parsonian evolutionism is discussed in Chapter 7. Hobhouse’s evolutionism also anticipates the work of Jürgen Habermas and Klaus Eder in their emphasis on collective societal learning. Habermas and Eder stress not only that societies learn, but “learn that they learn,” the latter phenomenon a product of very recent times. A strikingly similar view is taken by Hobhouse. 2. On several occasions, the authors even use the term “superstructure” to refer to those institutions not relating to self-maintenance, thus recalling Marx and Engels. Indeed, Marx is addressed quite directly, positively in terms of his materialism but of course negatively in terms of his political ideology. In Societal Evolution Keller says that “the superstructure cannot vary except in detail from the type conditioned by the character of the foundation” (1931:226; emphasis added). This certainly smacks of Bau und Uberbau! And Keller adds the following (1931:249–250): “If this is ‘economic determinism,’ so be it. The objection to that theory seems to inhere in its application rather than in its own validity. Marx had a therapeutic plan, based upon his doctrine, for changing the maintenance mores, a plan of selection from which most men of perception would dissent. Doctrinaire socialists do not study to adjust to verities, but challenge them in utopian fashion. . . . It is possible, however, to believe in the basic nature of the economic life and then, when it comes to planning action, modestly try to help society adapt to the conditions of life as learned; it is not necessary to have in view the radical alteration of the whole social order. . . . Belief in some of the Marxian positions, together with entire distrust in the plan for their application, does not make one a socialist or communist.” So, materialism (even economic determinism),

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yes; socialism or communism, no. Keller also provides numerous examples of the derivation of self-perpetuation and self-gratification institutions (the “superstructure”) from the institutions of self-maintenance. Space does not permit discussion of these here, but see in particular Keller (1931:225–247). 3. This might be called “the masses are asses” conception of the role of the general population in producing societal variations. Given the smug (not to say arrogant) style with which Sumner and Keller, elite Yale professors both, usually wrote, I seriously doubt whether this can be justifiably called an overinterpretation! 4. Keller discusses one other type of frontier society which was suggested to him by a former student. This is a highly temporary society characterized by the mining camp, railroad construction camp, or cattle drive. Here men are in the vast demographic majority and thus women exert virtually no influence on the mores. If any code of mores is to develop, it must do so extremely rapidly. However, since mores tend to develop by slow accretion, only “sets of codes” tend to emerge, and these codes vary according to environmental conditions. These temporary societies “tolerate conditions which would be utterly abhorrent in any other civilization—dance halls, saloons, streets of gambling houses, and brothels—all tolerated without protest, for the camper, after the first shock of ‘acclimatization,’ believes them none of his business. . . . In such a colony, offenses which are ordinarily taken care of by the law become matters of personal conflict between the aggrieved and the aggressor” (1931:371). Moreover, “There is usually one common enterprise, or industry, which is a very strong bond of unity, and practically the only one. Let a man transgress against The Work, and he speedily comes to grief. A cattle thief was pursued with much greater avidity in the Old West than a plain murderer” (1931:371). That famous genre of American films, the Western, illustrates about as well as anything can all of these themes and several more. 5. In a slightly cryptic note at the end of Societal Evolution, Keller explains that Sumner had written an essay entitled “The application of the notions of evolution and progress on [sic] the superorganic domain,” which he presented at a departmental club at Yale University. Biologists, geologists, psychologists, and historians were in attendance, and there were several lengthy discussions of Sumner’s arguments. At the end of these discussions Sumner decided against including this discussion in his forthcoming Folkways. Then Keller says this (1931:409; emphasis added): “As for the systematic application to the folkways of the central idea of Darwinian evolution—adaptation to environment, secured through the operation of variation, selection, and transmission—I do not believe it occurred to Sumner to undertake it.” Keller goes on to say that he thinks Sumner would have had to return to the question of evolution if he were ever to write his “Science of Society.” Keller follows with this bombshell: “I could not accept his views about evolution and the mores—views which were somewhat unsettled for him, I thought, by the [departmental club] discussions I have mentioned; and I came to the conviction that some understanding must be arrived at respecting societal evolution before it would be possible to complete a general book on the science of society” (1931:410; emphasis added). Unfortunately (and this is the cryptic part), Keller does not say what exactly it was in Sumner’s conception of evolution that he could not accept. Be that as it may, the only possible conclusion from all of this is that the classically Darwinian evolutionary approach, both in SOS and in Societal Evolution, is due almost entirely to Keller. Should we need more evidence, the book in which these ideas are by far more thoroughly developed, Societal Evolution, was authored by

104 ✻ Chapter 5 Keller alone, the first edition of which appeared only five years after Sumner’s death but twelve years before SOS. 6. Actually, there is one more link in the chain, so that we get Sumner > Keller > Murdock > Gerhard Lenski. And the link is through Yale, since that is where Lenski did his graduate work. Lenski is one of the few sociologists ever to have used the HRAF and to have become a social evolutionist with an extensive familiarity with anthropological writings and data. Lenski’s evolutionism is discussed in Chapter 9. If we want to extend the link one more generation, we then have Sumner > Keller > Murdock > Lenski > Sanderson, since my own thinking has been greatly influenced by Lenski. However, the Yale connection is broken, since I did not study there. 7. For additional insights into Westermarck, see Pipping (1982), Stroup (1984), and Ihanus (1999). All of these authors show that Westermarck was once a celebrated sociologist whose reputation quite undeservedly began to decline in the 1920s, and after the 1930s he sank out of sight. He came to be identified by the highly pejorative phrase “just one of those nineteenth-century evolutionists” (Pipping, 1982:348). Pipping, Stroup, and Ihanus try to rescue and restore his reputation as a great thinker. One of Westermarck’s main rivals was Émile Durkheim, who was highly critical of Westermarck on many issues, as was Westermarck of Durkheim. 8. Just as in the case of Spencer, Sumner and Keller’s social Darwinism has been misrepresented and exaggerated. They were by no means the complete laissez-faire heartless individualists they have generally been made out to be. They described elite groups everywhere as economically predatory and condemned the notion that the most powerful nations had a right to exploit smaller and weaker nations. Sumner did not favor the rich over the poor, as is usually thought, but in fact saw the rich as often being socially harmful inasmuch as many of them did no real work. Sumner actually favored the middle classes because he saw in them society’s best hope. Nor did Sumner and Keller oppose all forms of intervention. (For especially pregnant passages, see 1927c:2222–2223.) For example: “There are three possible policies: to let things take their course as they will; to meddle indiscriminately; to interfere discerningly. The first of these has never been put into practice by anyone; the second is the common mode; the third is the only hope men have” (1927c:2222–2223). Moreover, according to Bruce Curtis (1981), Sumner was just as committed to the cooperative and harmonious possibilities in the human condition as he was to the importance of competition, and he looked forward to a future in which conflicts between groups would be increasingly resolved and social harmony extended. 9. Even though Westermarck had no general theory of social evolution, when addressing evolutionary transitions he seemed to invoke economic causes more than any other types. And never do we get the “evolution of mind” as a causal factor, except when discussing the origin of the higher moral concepts.

Chapter Six

The Evolutionary Revival

B

y the middle of the 1930s evolutionism was beginning to show signs of regaining the respectability it had lost for some four decades. The first substantial indications of this renewed respect for evolutionary theorizing could be discerned in the work of Vere Gordon Childe (1892–1957), an Australian-born archaeologist and prehistorian who pursued his academic career in Britain. Childe was shortly followed in his evolutionary endeavors by two American anthropologists, Leslie White (1900–1975) and Julian Steward (1902–1972). White produced a version of evolutionary theory in the 1940s and 1950s that was deliberately intended to be a rehabilitation of the evolutionism of the classical evolutionists, especially Morgan. Steward generated a more modest version of evolutionism that was opposed in some important ways to White’s version, but that shared much with it nonetheless. These three thinkers may collectively be regarded as staging an “evolutionary revival” in the social sciences, a revival that had become fairly complete by the 1960s. Their influence on later intellectual generations has been very great, and much of what may today be regarded as sound in evolutionary theorizing can be traced to certain of their ideas. This chapter is devoted to explicating and critically assessing their major formulations.

V. Gordon Childe Childe’s Substantive Contributions Childe’s earliest work of real intellectual substance was anything but an exercise in social evolutionism. In 1925 he published The Dawn of European Civilization, a work that subsequently went through six editions and that many 105

106 ✻ Chapter 6 prehistorians still regard as his most important. The Dawn was an attempt to trace the prehistoric roots of European civilization. It was thus concerned with the unique qualities of one particular civilization, hardly the kind of focus of a thinker preoccupied with evolutionary considerations. Although Childe never abandoned his concern with European uniqueness, or indeed with the unique features of other civilizations and cultural traditions, in due time he did begin to show a serious interest in the broad similarities in the historical development of societies throughout prehistory. In 1936 he published Man Makes Himself (MMH), a work intended largely for an audience of intelligent laypersons rather than professional archaeologists and prehistorians, and in 1942 a sequel to MMH appeared under the title What Happened in History (WHH). Childe’s leading substantive contributions to an evolutionary understanding of prehistory are contained in these two works. That Childe had adopted at least a minimal evolutionary perspective is clearly revealed in the opening paragraph of WHH. Here he declares (1954:13): Written history contains a very patchy and incomplete record of what mankind has accomplished in parts of the world during the last five thousand years. The period surveyed is at best about one hundredth part of the time during which men have been active on our planet. The picture presented is frankly chaotic; it is hard to recognize in it any unifying pattern, any directional trends. Archaeology surveys a period a hundred times as long. In this enlarged field of study it does disclose general trends, cumulative changes proceeding in one main direction and towards recognizable results.

The central contribution of MMH was Childe’s postulation of two great revolutions that had occurred in prehistory in three different regions of the world: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India. The Neolithic Revolution was a major technological and economic transformation that introduced domesticated plants and animals and gave humankind control for the first time over its food supply. This food-producing revolution had a number of important consequences. For one thing, it provided both an opportunity and a motive for the production and accumulation of an economic surplus, or an amount of goods beyond that necessary for consumption by members of the community. Stored surplus food helps to tide the community over bad seasons, to provide a form of insurance in the event of droughts and crop failures. It can also support a larger population than food-gathering societies could, and thus a second major consequence of the Neolithic Revolution was population increase. Childe stressed that early Neolithic communities experienced other important technological changes that logically followed the emergence of food production. Because of the beginnings of surplus economic production vessels were needed to store grains and other food products, and thus the manufacture of pottery emerged on a large scale. The earliest Neolithic

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 107 communities of the Middle East also provide the first indications of textile manufacture. Yet despite the emergence of these new industries, Neolithic societies did not develop any significant form of labor specialization beyond that based on sex. More elaborate forms of occupational specialization were not to appear for some time. The evolutionary character of Childe’s conception of the Neolithic Revolution is clearly revealed by his use of the comparative method and by the high level of abstraction of his description of a Neolithic stage of economic life. In this regard Childe says (1936:94–95): The simple food-producing economy just described is an abstraction. Our picture is based on a selection of supposedly distinctive traits from materials afforded by ethnographers’ observations of modern “savages” and inferences from particular archaeological sites. The precise stage of economic development here adumbrated may never have been fully realized in precisely this concrete form. Archaeology alone could justify the presentation of a “neolithic” economy as a universal historical stage in the progress towards modern civilization. But all archaeology can do at present is to isolate temporary phases in what was really a continuous process. We have tacitly assumed that similar phases were realized nearly simultaneously in several areas. But in prehistoric times such simultaneity cannot be proved, even in the cases of regions so close together as Tasa in Middle Egypt, the Fayum, and the Delta.

This passage shows that Childe was aware of the limitations of the comparative method and of the need in his day of much more empirical evidence to establish firmly the existence of a Neolithic stage of social evolution. But these difficulties did not stop him from making the kinds of bold inferences and generalizations about historical change that the antievolutionists of the day were so loath to make. Childe went on to argue that these early Neolithic communities continued to evolve over the millennia along similar lines and eventually underwent a second major technological and economic transformation, one that he dubbed the Urban Revolution. This revolution was made possible by, among other things, the invention of the plow. The plow revolutionized agriculture by dramatically improving soil fertility and by making it possible for a man to cultivate much larger plots of land than was ever possible in Neolithic times. The plow therefore meant larger crops, a greater food supply, and the possibility of producing economic surpluses on a major scale. As its name suggests, the Urban Revolution inaugurated a transformation in which the city emerged as an especially significant feature of social and economic life. But the city had come into existence, and had become important, only because of other dramatic changes. The production of large economic surpluses made it possible for many individuals to be freed from agricultural work altogether, and thus craft specialization was promoted because craftsmen could live off what others produced. The increasing economic

108 ✻ Chapter 6 productivity of agriculture also made it possible for large supplies of wealth to be created, and this led to increasing social conflict and the emergence of sharp class divisions. The state emerged as a means of managing this conflict. In short, a much more complex and internally specialized society with deep social, economic, and political cleavages had emerged.

The Logic of Childe’s Evolutionism Despite the obvious theoretical significance we can glean from them, MMH and WHH were primarily substantive rather than theoretical contributions. They were primarily designed to tell a story about parallel changes in prehistory, not to state abstract theoretical principles. Eventually, though, Childe came to produce an account of social evolution that had more theoretical aims. In 1951 he wrote Social Evolution (SE), a short book based on a series of invited lectures. If we combine many of Childe’s explicit theoretical statements in this book with the more theoretical parts of his early substantive works, a reasonably clear picture emerges of the logical structure of his evolutionary account of world prehistory. Let us begin with the question of whether Childe was a unilinearist of any sort. This issue is particularly important in view of Julian Steward’s (1955) characterization of Childe’s evolutionism as one that concentrated so much on the broad outlines of cultural evolution that it lost almost complete sight of historical divergence and local variation. In SE Childe attempted to develop a general evolutionary classification system. After deciding that the time-honored archaeological classification of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages was not serviceable as a set of evolutionary stages, Childe turned his attention to Morgan’s scheme of SavageryBarbarism-Civilization. He concluded that this scheme was thoroughly inadequate in its details, but that it was nonetheless the best available, and thus he adopted it (minus the substages) as his own. For Childe, Savagery referred to pre-Neolithic food-gathering societies, Barbarism to early food-producers, and Civilization to societies having achieved writing. This adoption of Morgan’s general evolutionary scheme is no doubt one of the things that must have been uppermost in Steward’s mind when he characterized Childe’s evolutionism in the way that he did. As it turns out, however, there is much more to Childe’s evolutionism than this, for he gave the divergent features of historical change just as much attention, if not more attention, than the parallel features. There are numerous statements in MMH that reveal great concern for the divergent aspects of the Neolithic and Urban Revolutions in the different world regions. In SE evolutionary divergence is given even more emphasis. Commenting on the evolutionary sequences in Temperate Europe, the Mediterranean, the Nile Valley, and Mesopotamia, Childe says that the outcome, civilization, is basically the same but that in each case “the intervening steps in development do not exhibit

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 109 even abstract parallelism” (1951:161). At slightly later points he says, “So the observed developments in rural economy do not run parallel; they cannot therefore be used to define stages common to all the sequences examined” (1951:162); and, “For within the status of barbarism at least, the observable cultural sequences do not follow parallel lines” (1951:165–166). These assertions scarcely seem like the views of a theorist committed to anything but an especially weak version of unilinearism. When such assertions are placed alongside Childe’s lifelong interest in the unique features of European civilization and its prehistory, it becomes almost impossible to understand how Steward could have characterized him in the manner that he did (cf. Harris, 1968; Trigger, 1980). Indeed, it might almost be wondered whether Childe had not virtually abandoned evolutionism altogether in favor of a form of historical particularism. But this conclusion is not warranted either, as we can see when we recognize that Childe’s understanding of social evolution was based on a close analogy with organic evolution. As he notes (1951:166): Organic evolution is never represented pictorially by a bundle of parallel lines, but by a tree with branches all up the trunk and each branch bristling with twigs. In so far as the archaeological picture could be represented by such a figure, it would disclose a process analogous to organic evolution. In fact, differentiation—the splitting of large homogeneous cultures into a multitude of distinct local cultures—is a conspicuous feature in the archaeological record.

Another interesting feature of Childe’s evolutionism is the emphasis he gave to diffusion. He not only recognized diffusion as common and important, but actually regarded it as a major mechanism whereby evolution occurred. He often viewed diffusion and independent occurrence as working inextricably together to produce historical outcomes. One of the best instances of such thinking on his part concerns his explanation of the observed similarities among world regions in the transition to urbanism. In a most pertinent passage he says (1936:190): Some sort of diffusion had evidently been going on. Yet no theory of one-sided dependence is compatible with the contrasts revealed by closer scrutiny. Urban civilization was not simply transplanted from one centre to another, but was an organic growth rooted in the local soil. If we want a modern analogy, the establishment of mechanized industry and factory production by European capitalists in Africa or India will not serve. We must think rather of the rise of that system of production in the countries on both sides of the Atlantic. America, Britain, France, the Low Countries shared a common scientific, cultural, and mercantile tradition long before the Industrial Revolution. Despite wars and custom-barriers, the interchange of goods, ideas, and persons went on continuously. England, indeed, was in the van of the Revolution itself, but the other countries did not merely copy her mechanical inventions or economic

110 ✻ Chapter 6 organization; they had been experimenting along the same lines, and made independent contributions when the time came. . . . And so Egypt, Sumer, and India had not been isolated or independent before the revolution. All shared more or less a common cultural tradition to which each had been contributing. And it had been maintained and enriched by a continuous intercourse involving an interchange of goods, ideas, and craftsmen. That is the explanation of the observed parallelism.

Childe’s views regarding social progress also need to be considered when analyzing the logic of his evolutionism. Unfortunately, there are certain ambiguities in his thinking (or at least his written statements) that make a definitive interpretation on this score difficult. On the one hand, Childe had an astonishingly simple criterion for assessing the degree to which evolutionary changes represent progress: the sheer size of the population that can be supported by any particular mode of social and economic life. In MMH Childe argued that the Neolithic Revolution led to human progress because the population increased greatly as a result of it (1936:40): “From the biological standpoint the new economy was a success; it had made possible a multiplication of our species.” Likewise, the Urban Revolution represented progress because it resulted in a further multiplication of the human species. At the same time Childe clearly recognized that such a simple criterion taken alone could not be mechanically applied to assess the existence and extent of progress. He clearly recognized that it was not the quantitative existence of life itself, but also the quality of that life, that had to be considered. Thus we find Childe arguing in various passages that in several respects the Urban Revolution represented a setback for humankind. Most significantly, its generation of deep social and economic cleavages imposed new burdens on the mass of the population. Most people shared little in the new wealth that was produced and were sinking to the level of serfs. Warfare and militarism also increased markedly after the Urban Revolution, a further indication of the arrest of social progress. For the most part, though, it seems that Childe was an optimistic believer in the ultimate triumph of progress despite the kinds of setbacks that the Urban Revolution produced. This interpretation is clearly suggested by the closing lines of WHH (1954:292): “Progress is real if discontinuous. The upward cure resolves itself into a series of troughs and crests. But in those domains that archaeology as well as written history can survey, no trough ever declines to the low level of the preceding one; each crest out-tops its last precursor.” Actually, there is some evidence that Childe had a classically historicist view of progress. Near the end of MMH there is an especially provocative passage that declares (1936:268): It is as futile to deplore the superstitions of the past as it is to complain of the unsightly scaffolding essential to the erection of a lonely building. It is childish

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 111 to ask why man did not progress straight from the squalor of a “preclass” society to the glories of a classless paradise, nowhere fully realized as yet. Perhaps the conflicts and contradictions, above revealed, themselves constitute the dialectics of progress. In any case, they are facts of history. If we dislike them, that does not mean that progress is a delusion, but merely that we have understood neither the facts nor progress nor man.

Whether Childe actually held firmly and consistently to the kind of historicist view of progress suggested by this passage is difficult to ascertain, since there is little else in his writings so explicit. But be that as it may, a more interesting question is whether or not he was ever committed to a historicist view of explanation, that is, one committed to an epistemology of directional or developmental laws. There is very little evidence to suggest that Childe ever held a developmentalist conception of evolutionary explanation. Not only is there a marked absence of statements in his work to suggest he embraced such an epistemology, but there are numerous passages strongly suggesting precisely the opposite. Consider, for instance, the opening sentence of his summary theoretical work SE. Here Childe denies any credence to conceptions of social evolution that refer to transcendent processes working outside of the basic actions of human beings in particular contexts (1951:1): “In using the phrase ‘social evolution,’ students of the science of man . . . have mistaken ‘evolution’ for a sort of generalized magic force that does the work of the concrete individual factors that shape the course of history.” That Childe continually insisted upon paying close attention to the unique features of historical change in different societies and world regions also strongly suggests the absence of a developmentalist epistemology. For Childe, there is no singular “evolutionist process” that is but the unfolding of latent potentialities toward some goal. There is, rather, a whole series of separate histories revealing both important similarities and major differences, the similarities being great enough to allow some important generalizations to be made. There is, of course, no inherent contradiction between an acknowledgment of historical uniqueness and a developmentalist epistemology. As we have seen, the classical evolutionists were perfectly willing to acknowledge uniqueness. Yet Childe stressed it in a way that they never did, and such stress certainly seems incompatible with a belief in a developmentalist process. Finally, the title of Childe’s most famous book—Man Makes Himself—is of no small significance. By choosing this title Childe meant to suggest that history is made by men—by the actions of concrete human beings who find themselves in particular circumstances. Human beings are not only made by their societies, but in turn make them as well. This obvious stress upon humans as agents seems thoroughly incompatible with any commitment to a developmentalist belief in transcendent historical laws that push individuals along certain predetermined paths.

112 ✻ Chapter 6 If Childe was not a developmentalist, and if he therefore embraced an ordinary causal conception of historical change, what did he propose as the chief฀causes฀of฀evolutionary฀changes?฀This฀is฀a฀dificult฀question฀to฀answer฀ with any specificity because Childe devotes the vast amount of his published work to description rather than to explanation. About the best that can be said is that Childe adhered to a very loosely Marxist conception of history, but one that was never carefully spelled out in his writings and thus always remained ambiguous. Childe apparently always regarded himself as a Marxist, both politically and theoretically. His writings are peppered with references, allusions, and sometimes even forthright discussions of Marx, and he took a particular interest in the rigid unilinear evolutionary scheme of the Soviet prehistorian Nicholai Yakovlevich Marr, eventually denouncing it (Trigger, 1980). He frequently employed the language of dialectics, referring to how certain economic forms of society contained internal contradictions that they had to overcome. In MMH Childe aligned himself with Marxism under the label of the “realist” conception of history. His realist view of history, though, seems Marxist only in the simplest and most general sense: as a theory emphasizing economic and technological conditions as the guiding factors in historical change. Childe says that “Marx insisted on the prime importance of economic conditions, of the social forces of production, and of applications of science as factors in historical change” (1936:7). Often Childe’s Marxism reduces to little more than a kind of technological determinism. Bruce Trigger (1980) has insisted that Childe was not a technological determinist because he recognized that technology was itself conditioned by social and economic conditions. Trigger is doubtless correct, yet technology is given center stage far more often than not in Childe’s theoretical analyses. For instance, he often speaks of the different kinds of social organization that are implied by stone, bronze, and iron tools. Moreover, his account of the Urban Revolution concentrates upon technological factors as basic to bringing it about. Much emphasis is given to the plow in heralding the Agricultural Revolution that made urbanism possible, and it is claimed that the Urban Revolution “was possible only because Sumerians, Egyptians, and Indians disposed of a body of accumulated experience and applied science” (1936:202). It is true that Childe does go on to say that “the practical needs of the new economy had, in fact, evoked the innovations” (1936:202), thus seemingly rejecting a technological determinism. Yet most of his discussion of urbanism focuses on technology, and if he wished to make economic factors causally determinant there is no clear indication (other than very general references to “contradictions”) as to how broad economic changes themselves occur. In summary, it can be said that Childe had an ordinary causal rather than a developmentalist conception of social evolution, and that he was consistently a materialist. But beyond this it is difficult to go because of the casual and underdeveloped way in which Childe advanced explanatory arguments. His

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 113 evolutionism was focused overwhelmingly on descriptions of broad similarities and important differences in sequences of historical change in different societies, and theoretical analyses got very short shrift indeed.

Leslie White No one has done more than Leslie White to revive and rehabilitate the classical evolutionary tradition and to stress the importance of an evolutionary approach to social life. White has insisted upon emphasizing the similarities between his brand of evolutionism and those brands developed by Morgan and Tylor, and for this reason he has rejected the label “neoevolutionist.” As we shall see, there are some important affinities between White’s evolutionary analyses and those of these classical theorists. On the other hand, there are some major differences that White failed to recognize, a failure that resulted from his incorrect understanding of the causal arguments advanced by Morgan and Tylor. Let us examine White’s evolutionism by reversing the procedure we followed for Childe, first looking at White’s more abstract theoretical notions, which after all he did publish earlier in his career, and then considering the substantive contributions he made to evolutionism in his book The Evolution of Culture (EC) (1959).

White’s Abstract Evolutionary Formulations Throughout the 1940s White wrote a series of articles that attacked the antievolutionists for the many misconceptions they perpetuated about the classical evolutionists and that set forth certain basic evolutionary principles. In these articles White addressed many key questions and concerns regarding evolutionary theory, among them the distinction between evolution and history; the unit or units to which evolutionary accounts apply; the relationship between diffusion and evolution; the problem of evolutionary stages; the scope of evolutionary theories (i.e., unilinearism versus something else); the relationship between evolution and progress; and the causes of evolutionary change. White’s version of evolutionism cannot be understood apart from his more general conception of what culture is and how its existence can be explained. White argued that it is essential to distinguish between Culture and a culture, or between culture and peoples. Peoples are individual tribes and nations. They are the carriers of the elements of culture—of the technical inventions, rules, forms of consciousness, and social patterns that human beings have created—and the particular cultures of these peoples obviously differ. Culture itself, though, refers to the culture of humankind taken as a whole: the totality of all human inventions and achievements accumulated over the entire history of human experience on earth.

114 ✻ Chapter 6 Early in his career White adopted and subsequently never abandoned the uncompromising antireductionism promoted by Durkheim and the Durkheimians: the notion that culture is a reality sui generis and can be explained only in terms of culture. Thus White steadfastly opposed any interpretation of cultural forms or traits that attempted to explain them in psychological terms—in terms of the properties of individual persons. In fact, he even went so far as to suggest that culture was such an important reality that the science that studied it should have its own distinct name: culturology. When White applied these basic ideas to evolutionary theorizing, he began by distinguishing evolution from history, and thus evolutionary accounts from historical ones (White, 1945b). For him, historical accounts were those that attempted to describe and explain unique sequences of events. Evolutionary accounts, though, ignored historical uniqueness and concentrated on categories of phenomena. They were concerned with describing and explaining a temporal sequence of forms. White went on to argue that anthropologists need not be forced to choose absolutely between these two types of analysis, as both were legitimate. But they were fundamentally different and should never be confused. White, of course, chose to cast his lot with evolutionism, but this did not lead him to argue that an interest in uniqueness was improper and misplaced. Carrying this argument forward, White claimed that evolutionary accounts dealt only with culture taken as a whole, and never with individual tribes or nations. In fact, he argued that the Boasian belief that evolutionism applied to peoples rather than to culture is what led them into such serious errors, such as the belief that the facts of diffusion make a mockery of evolutionary explanations. As White put it (1945a:343): The Boas school has confused the evolution of culture with the culture history of peoples. The [classical] evolutionists worked out formulas which said that a culture trait or complex B has grown out of trait or complex A, and is developing into, or toward, trait or complex C. In other words, they describe a culture process in terms of stages of development. They say nothing about peoples or tribes. . . . But the Boas school has tried to apply these formulas that describe a process of cultural development to the culture history of a people. Naturally the attempt failed; the cultural formulas have nothing to do with peoples.

At first glance White’s distinction between history and evolution, and between historical and evolutionary accounts, seems entirely reasonable. The distinction between generalizing and particularizing, or nomothetic and idiographic, approaches has long been acknowledged by social scientists. It is easy enough to recognize that phenomena can be approached either in terms of how they are similar to or different from each other. Moreover, White was not claiming exclusive priority for evolutionary accounts, but recognized

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 115 that evolutionary and historical accounts can be employed complementarily. Unfortunately, though, White was actually claiming something more than this. He was simultaneously making at least two much bolder claims. First, White was claiming that there actually is a reality that may be called “culture as a whole,” to which, and only to which, evolutionary accounts apply. But฀what฀is฀the฀ontological฀status฀of฀this฀“culture฀as฀a฀whole”?฀Is฀it฀a฀“thing”฀ in฀the฀Durkheimian฀sense฀that฀White฀seemed฀to฀be฀suggesting?฀Carneiro฀ (1973b) has argued that there are two possible meanings that can be ascribed to the phrase “the evolution of culture as a whole.” One meaning Carneiro calls the “initial-appearance view.” This view holds that, in a situation in which Trait A is said to precede Trait B evolutionarily, then the very first appearance of A occurred earlier than the very first appearance of B. The other possible meaning Carneiro refers to as the “predominance-of-cases view.” This view claims that Trait A may be regarded as evolutionarily prior to Trait B if it occurs earlier in a majority of individual societies, regardless of when it first appeared. Which of these two meanings did White give to his conception of฀the฀evolution฀of฀culture฀as฀a฀whole?฀It฀seems฀that฀he฀cannot฀have฀meant฀ the second and remained logically consistent, because that involves adding up individual cases, and White explicitly rejected the notion that evolution has anything to do with specific societies. It is possible, of course, that he intended the first meaning, but nowhere in his writings is there any explicit statement to this effect. Unfortunately, many of his most significant statements on this matter appear highly equivocal, such as the quote given immediately above. Therefore it is entirely unclear whether White intended one or the other of Carneiro’s meanings, whether he might have intended them both, or, indeed, whether he had in mind some third meaning that no one has yet been able to fathom. But even if this matter could be put to rest, there is another much more formidable one, and that involves White’s extraordinary statement that evolutionism has nothing to do with individual tribes or peoples. The unacceptability of this statement, and the confusion it so obviously displays, has been exposed by Marvin Harris, who asks (1968:649): Does฀the฀law฀of฀gravitation฀tell฀us฀nothing฀about฀particulars?฀When฀one฀predicts฀ a particular eclipse on a particular planet of a particular sun by a particular moon,฀has฀this฀no฀relation฀to฀the฀general฀law?฀White฀undoubtedly฀means฀to฀ say something else, to wit: no general law tells us everything about particulars. . . . But if a generalization tells us nothing about particulars, it can scarcely enjoy the status of an empirical proposition.

Actually, White’s entire analysis in this regard was to some extent much ado about nothing. In the first chapter of EC he declares that “evolutionist interpretations of culture will therefore be both unilinear and multilinear. One type of interpretation is as valid as the other; each implies the other”

116 ✻ Chapter 6 (1959:31). In making such remarks White seems almost to recognize the inadequacy of his assertion that evolutionist accounts deal only with “culture as a whole.” Moreover, the actual substantive analyses in the remainder of this book make continual reference to individual tribes in order to illustrate his฀general฀analyses.฀Indeed,฀how฀could฀he฀have฀done฀otherwise?฀As฀Harris฀ has pointed out (1968:643): White not only attempts to trace the whole course of cultural development . . . but he also reconstructs specific cultural sequences in the light of the general trends manifest in the universal sequence. In Australia, for example, the Arunta system of marriage classes is said to have evolved from the Kariera type of relationship. . . . More commonly, it is White’s practice to interpret the significance of various institutions in particular societies on the assumption that the culture has reached a certain level of evolution. Thus, his treatment of social stratification in Polynesia and the Northwest Coast draws heavily on the universalistic generalization . . . that “it is not until kinship has ceased to be the basis of social systems and society has become organized on the basis of property relations and territorial distinctions that true classes of subordination and superordination come into being.”

Let us now turn our attention to the question of epistemology and causation฀in฀White’s฀evolutionism.฀Was฀White฀a฀developmentalist?฀Did฀he฀believe฀ in฀irreducible฀directional฀laws฀of฀evolutionary฀change?฀Mandelbaum฀(1971) has suggested that directional-law and functional-law modes of explanation seem to have coexisted in White’s work. Tim Ingold has taken a stronger position, claiming that “White’s conception of the evolutionary process . . . is essentially pre-Darwinian” (1986:82), and holding that his evolutionism was based on the notion of “an ‘unfolding of immanences’” (1986:82). Some reasonable grounds do exist for presuming that White was operating within the framework of developmentalism. For instance, his famous essay “Energy and the evolution of culture” (1943) is, after all, devoted to presenting and elaborating a “law” of evolution. In addition, White has declared that “the temporal-formal [evolutionary] process is determinative: prediction is possible to a high degree. In the decomposition of a radioactive substance one stage determines the next and the course and rate of change can be predicted. In short, we can predict the course of evolution” (1949b:230). I believe, however, that both Mandelbaum and Ingold have mistaken superficial appearances for the essence of White’s explanatory model, which was basically an ordinary causal one. To develop this argument I must return for a moment to White’s conception of culture. Why does culture exist, White asks, and why does it take one form฀or฀another?฀White’s฀answer฀is฀that฀it฀is฀adaptive; it exists as “a mechanism for serving human needs” (1943:337–338). White divided cultural systems into three basic spheres, each of which serves particular kinds of needs. Technology consists of the tools and techniques that people use in obtaining food and shelter and in defending themselves; social systems are the organized

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 117 patterns of social relationships they carry on; and ideology consists of the beliefs they hold in common. White was a vigorous materialist and thus regarded the technological component of culture as largely determining the nature of social systems and ideologies. This materialism was expressed forcefully in White’s view that cultures are really thermodynamic systems, or modes of harnessing energy and putting it to use. His basic law of evolution relates the level at which a society has harnessed energy to its overall level of cultural evolution. It states that culture develops when the amount of energy harnessed by man per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the technological means of putting this energy to work is increased; or, as both factors are simultaneously increased” (White, 1943:338). White argued that there had been two great leaps forward in humankind’s capacity to harness energy: the Agricultural Revolution, which brought about domestication of plants and the development of animal husbandry; and the Fuel Revolution, which is White’s name for the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Each of these, he argued, was responsible for major transformations in the other components of culture. Although White’s law of evolution, with its clear conception of a directional tendency in cultural evolution, may look very much like an irreducible directional law, there is every reason to suppose that White attempted to account for this directional tendency only in ordinary causal terms. White makes a great many statements throughout his works that I believe easily support this interpretation, but I will be satisfied with the following one because it leaves little doubt. In discussing the consequences of the Agricultural Revolution for cultural evolution, White says (1943:343–344): The sequence of events was somewhat as follows: agriculture transformed a roaming population into a sedentary one. It greatly increased the food supply, which in turn increased the population. As human labor became more productive in agriculture, an increasing portion of society became divorced from the task of food-getting, and was devoted to other occupations. Thus society becomes organized into occupational groups: masons, metal workers, jade carvers, weavers, scribes, priests. This has the effect of accelerating progress in the arts, crafts, and sciences (astronomy, mathematics, etc.), since they are now in the hands of specialists, rather than jacks-of-all-trades. With an increase in manufacturing, added to division of society into occupational groups, comes production for exchange and sale (instead of primarily for use as in tribal society), mediums of exchange, money, merchants, banks, mortgages, debtors, slaves. An accumulation of wealth and competition for favored regions provoke wars of conquest, and produce professional military and ruling classes, slavery and serfdom. Thus agriculture wrought a profound change in the life-and-culture of man as it had existed in the human-energy state of development.

What else was White stating in this passage but a series of causal relationships between฀a฀set฀of฀variables?฀What฀else฀was฀he฀doing฀but฀explaining฀a฀directional฀

118 ✻ Chapter 6 tendency฀in฀cultural฀evolution฀in฀ordinary฀causal฀terms?฀Although฀White฀ gave great stress to the notion that there is an overall directional trend in the development of culture, it is hard to believe that he thought this trend was explained by some sort of irreducible law of change that was unrelated to specific causal relationships between specific variables at specific times. Before turning our attention to White’s important substantive contributions we need to examine his conception of progress because it is closely related to his energy theory of cultural evolution. White’s views here have a strong affinity with Childe’s, and they run into the same difficulties. White believed it was perfectly sensible to think of progress as an accompaniment of cultural evolution, and progress in the evaluative sense of “betterment” or “improvement.” He proposed that the degree to which cultures had progressed could be assessed objectively, the criterion for such assessment being the degree of survival and security of the members of a society. The best indicator of the level of survival and security was the amount of energy that had been harnessed. Cultures that had harnessed more energy could provide their members longer and healthier lives freer from the insecurities imposed by nature. Unfortunately, this criterion made it extremely difficult if not impossible for White to assess progress along other than material lines, and in fact its rather mechanical employment led him into very dubious assertions about crucial ethical concerns. For example, in one place he asserts (1947b:183–184): The purpose of culture, in its several aspects as well as a whole, is to make life secure, perpetual, and worthwhile. We might not be able to say that the ethical code, religion, or form of family of the British who colonized Tasmania was any “better” in and of itself than that of the aborigines they found there. But we can certainly say that the beliefs, ethics, family form, etc., of the invaders were integral parts of a culture that was far superior to that of the poor blacks they exterminated. Cultures—as means of carrying on the struggle for existence—can be compared with each other and evaluated. Their ethical, political, familial, and other aspects, considered apart from cultural wholes, cannot be so treated.

There is actually a great deal of evidence that White did not believe in the kind of relativism being asserted in this passage. At other points he not only made implicit moral judgments about cultures, but actually took a very negative view of several aspects of more energy-intensive cultures, a view that conflicted sharply with his purely thermodynamic criterion of cultural progress. It is principally in EC that we find such an analysis, so let us turn to that work.

White’s Substantive Contributions EC was originally intended to be only a portion of a much larger work summarizing the main outlines of cultural evolution from Paleolithic times

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 119 to the present. But the remainder of the work never appeared, and so EC remains White’s sole book-length contribution to a substantive analysis of evolutionary changes.1 The analysis of cultural evolution in it ends, as the subtitle announces, at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. In this work White took up several prominent themes of major interest to social scientists, anthropologists in particular, but his most significant discussions concerned evolutionary modes of economic life, the cultural effects of the domestication of plants and animals, and the role of the “state-church” in civil society. In these analyses White revealed himself to be strongly under the spell of Morgan and Engels (cf. Harris, 1968). EC is permeated by Morgan’s distinction between societas and civitas. White argued that there are two, and fundamentally only two, different kinds of economic systems. One of these is found in primitive societies based on kinship, and in it economic relationships are part of social relationships in which human beings are ends in themselves. This kind of economic system does not produce goods for the purpose of maximizing the economic gain of the producers. The well-being of the entire community, rather, is the aim of production. Everyone has equal access to the means of production, and no division of the society into social classes exists. In the other kind of economic system the relationship between goods dominates the relationship between persons. Production takes place in order to maximize the economic gain of the producers. Private ownership of the means of production exists, and economic life is centered around competition, struggle, and exploitation. This economic system is impersonal and nonhuman—indeed, actually inhuman, immoral, and inhumane. The transition from the first economic system, which White called primitive society, to the second, which he called civil society, was brought about by the introduction of agriculture, White’s Agricultural Revolution. The shift to an agricultural technology led to a whole series of cultural consequences eventually culminating in the economic and political inequalities that White identified as among the most essential features of civil society. An agricultural technology allowed for a substantial increase in food production, and this in turn produced a general increase in population. Increases in population size and density generated an overall structural differentiation and functional specialization of society. Some members of society were released from their roles as food producers and became occupational specialists of various sorts: weavers, metalworkers, potters, carpenters, etc. This growing functional specialization broke down the old economic system based on kinship and mutual aid and led to an economic system built around private ownership and the production of goods for the purpose of economic gain. The struggle for wealth created class divisions of various sorts, the particular type of class structure varying from one society to another. Because society was now divided into a ruling class and one or more subordinate classes, and because this class polarization grew worse with the further

120 ✻ Chapter 6 intensification of the Agricultural Revolution, a special need arose to manage the tensions such class polarization created. For White, the mechanism that evolved to fulfill this need was the state-church. His essentially Marxist argument is summarized as follows (1959:313–314): The struggle between dominant and subordinate classes has been chronic and perennial in civil society. The lower classes—the slaves, serfs, industrial proletariat—periodically try to better their lot by revolt and insurrection. If the social system is to be kept intact, if it is not to explode in violence and subside in anarchy, the relationship of subordination and superordination between the classes must be maintained; in other words, the subordinate class must be kept in a condition of subjection and exploitation. It is the business of the state-church to see that this is done.

It is clear that White viewed the transition from primitive to civil society as producing a host of social, economic, and political evils. His judgments of this evolutionary transformation differed little from those of Marx and Engels, with whom he was obviously aligning himself despite his failure to mention them. As I pointed out earlier, this constitutes a very strong implicit qualification of his view that progress can be measured objectively in thermodynamic terms. White’s negative evaluation of the cleavages of thermodynamically advanced societies thus signified a serious tension in his work.

Julian Steward Julian Steward’s brand of evolutionary theory can be properly understood only in light of his objections to the evolutionary theories of Childe and White. In his most explicit theoretical essay on the subject, Steward distinguished three major types of evolutionism: unilinear, universal, and multilinear evolution. It is unfortunate that Steward persistently used the word “evolution” in this regard, an obvious confusion between theories and the empirical processes they are intended to represent.2 Nonetheless, to maintain the integrity of Steward’s analysis I shall follow his usage. Unilinear evolution for Steward involved the theories of the classical evolutionists, especially Morgan and Tylor. Steward argued that these theories had been shown to contain so many factual inaccuracies that they had not stood the test of time. They therefore had to be abandoned. Some theorists, though, had not given them up, but rather had rehabilitated and reformulated them. Thus the creation by Childe and White of universal evolution, of which Steward was even more critical than he was of unilinear evolution. He argued that Childe and White emphasized the extremely broad generalizations of the unilinear evolutionists at the expense of their recognition of divergences and local variations. This meant that the evolutionary sequences postulated by Childe and White were “so general that they are

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 121 neither very arguable nor very useful” (Steward, 1955:17). Steward went on to complain that the extreme generality of the theories of the proponents of universal evolution gave these theories no applicability to individual cases, that “White’s law of energy levels, for example, can tell us nothing about the development of the characteristics of individual cultures” (1955:18). This made universal evolution even less useful than unilinear evolution for, “right or wrong, the nineteenth-century evolutionists did attempt to explain concretely why a matriarchy should precede other social forms, why animism was the precursor of gods and spirits, why a kin-based society evolved into a territorial-based, state-controlled society, and why other specific features of culture appeared” (1955:18). Steward thus proposed multilinear evolution, which he argued would be concerned with the search for laws dealing with significant regularities in cultural change. These laws, though, would hardly have the level of generality of the propositions of Childe and White. They would assume the existence of parallels in cultural development, but parallels of much more limited scope. As Steward put it, multilinear evolution “deals only with those limited parallels of form, function, and sequence which have empirical validity” (1955:19). In essence, the theory of multilinear evolution as Steward proposed it was a kind of nervous compromise between the very general and highly abstract formulations of the classical evolutionists and of Childe and White, and the historical particularism of the Boasians. Steward wanted to be nomothetic, but only so much. He apparently felt that nomothetic statements that took insufficient account of unique historical features of societies were just as bad as highly particularizing arguments that failed to recognize any historical similarities at all. Before examining how Steward tried to apply his theory of multilinear evolution to cultural changes, two points must be mentioned. First, as both Harris (1968) and Carneiro (1973b) have pointed out, it is extremely unfortunate that Steward referred to multilinear evolution as a “methodology.” When this language is combined with Steward’s failure to distinguish between evolution as an empirical process and evolutionism as a theory of such a process, then it is obvious that Steward is plagued by some serious misconceptions. Perhaps Steward meant by his attribution of methodological status to multilinear evolution that it is a general intellectual strategy designed to ascertain the extent to which significant regularities in cultural change do or do not exist. But it is certainly not a methodology in any conventional sense of that term, that is, a set of methods or techniques for gathering and analyzing empirical data. Second, there are excellent reasons for questioning Steward’s whole concept of universal evolution. As we have already had occasion to note, and as others have pointed out (cf. Harris, 1968), Childe and White scarcely formulated universal propositions or laws that had no application to individual cases or that failed to be sufficiently appreciative of historical variation and

122 ✻ Chapter 6 divergence. In MMH and WHH, Childe made much mention of how historical differences coexist with broad patterns, and in SE the emphasis on historical divergence virtually overrode the stress on similarity of pattern. With respect to White, there was a great deal of explicit recognition of local variation and, his formal statements to the contrary notwithstanding, he extensively applied his general energistic law of evolution to individual cases. In many ways Childe and White were just as “multilinear” as Steward himself. These difficulties aside, what did Steward’s evolutionism look like in practice?฀Steward’s฀earliest,฀and฀still฀probably฀most฀signiicant,฀substantive฀ contribution to evolutionary theory was his famous essay “Cultural causality and law: A trial formulation of the development of early civilizations,” published in 1949. This article was a landmark in the revival of evolutionism in the social sciences because it actually demonstrated with reliable empirical data the existence of strong parallels in cultural evolution in different parts of the world. Using archaeological data, Steward claimed that societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Peru, and Mesoamerica had undergone very similar evolutionary sequences in the transition from simple hunter-gatherers to complex agrarian civilizations. Steward delineated five basic stages that each world region had passed through. In addition to a hunting and gathering stage, these included a stage of incipient agriculture, which began when plant and animal domestication first started to supplement foraging and ended when agriculture became the principal basis for subsistence; a formative era, during which cultivation became more intensive and communitywide irrigation projects were constructed; an era of regional development and fluorescence, during which irrigation works were expanded, economic specialization increased, class stratification became fully established, and multicommunity states emerged; and finally an era of cyclical conquests, which was marked by the emergence of large-scale militarism, empire building, urbanization, and the elaboration and increasing rigidification of stratification systems. Typically, Steward was very cautious about the scope of application of the regularities to which he pointed in this essay. He stressed that his evolutionary scheme of stages was rough and tentative. Moreover, it applied only to the arid and semiarid regions where early civilization arose, and thus could not be regarded as a worldwide evolutionary scheme. Steward had not yet adopted the term multilinear, but he apparently felt this work was an exercise in multilinear evolution. Yet as Carneiro has argued, Steward was actually engaged in a kind of analysis much closer to unilinear evolutionism, and his “formulation was of more general application than he was ready to assert” (Carneiro, 1973b:94). Indeed, Cameiro suggests that (1973b:94), despite Steward’s demurral, his sequence of stages seemed to fit the development of civilization in areas where irrigation was not practiced, as well as those in which it was. Steward had never actually said that civilization in humid areas

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 123 had not gone through the same stages as those he had proposed for arid areas. Now he found that Yucatan, a region of tropical rain forest, “appears to fit the formulation made for the more arid areas to the extent that its sequences were very similar to those of Mesoamerica generally” (1949:17). Already, then, there was an indication that Steward’s stages might apply beyond the limits he had originally set for them.

Thus, even though only a few short years later Steward began officially proclaiming the doctrine of multilinear evolution, he actually started his evolutionary career as essentially a practitioner of a weak unilinearism. What happened฀in฀between?฀If฀Carneiro฀(1973b) is right, it was the discovery of certain discrepancies between his evolutionary scheme and the empirical evidence. Steward apparently took these discrepancies at face value, which caused him to become very nervous about the boldness of his scheme and to retreat from it. “So it was that without ever realizing he had practiced it, Steward turned his back on unilinear evolution and cast his lot with that mode of evolution he came to call multilinear” (Carneiro, 1973b:96). The rest of his career Steward basically practiced the kind of limited multilinearism he explicitly advocated. When he returned to comment on the broad parallels in the evolution from foraging to civilization throughout the world, he always stressed the important differences between the evolutionary sequences. Furthermore, his later empirical studies generally had a very limited empirical scope. For example, one of his most famous studies concerned parallel changes he observed in two different tribes, the Algonkians of Canada and the Mundurucu of South America (Murphy and Steward, 1956). In aboriginal times these two tribes were quite different, but they were independently subjected to very similar influences that led to similar evolutionary outcomes. The Algonkians hunted large migratory game and were organized into nomadic bands, whereas the Mundurucu were tropical forest horticulturalists residing in semipermanent villages. As a result of their contact by outsiders, both societies came to be integrated into capitalist economic networks, the Algonkians as fur trappers and the Mundurucu as rubber producers. Both groups began to reorganize their economies in order to produce commodities for sale to outside commercial interests. According to Steward, this similar involvement in commercial networks led to essentially the same results. As economic individualism took over, traditional forms of social integration gave way to an emphasis on new kinds of social units. Most importantly, traditional modes of kinship broke down and were replaced by nuclear families as the most important social group. Let us conclude our discussion of Steward by turning to the kinds of epistemological and causal assumptions he made. With respect to the issue of developmentalism, it is even more obvious than in the cases of Childe and White that Steward was not a developmentalist. We can infer this from the very nature of his explicit theoretical pronouncements, for a nervousness

124 ✻ Chapter 6 about broad generalizations and an emphasis on multilinearity are scarcely the kinds of orientations likely to be held by someone who believes that evolutionary changes are the unfolding of a preordained pattern. But we need not be restricted to indirect inferences, for we find Steward explicitly opposing any such doctrine (Steward, 1977[1956]:59–60): Few students of evolution today . . . would argue that the universe has any design making progress inevitable, either in the biological or the cultural realm. Certainly there is nothing in the evolutionary process which preordained the particular developments that occurred on our planet. From the principles operating in biological evolution—heredity, mutation, natural selection, and so on—an observer who visited the earth some half a billion years ago, when the algae represented the highest existing form of life, could not possibly have predicted the evolution of fishes, let alone man. Likewise, no known principle of cultural development could even have predicted specific inventions such as the bow, iron smelting, writing, tribal clans, states, or cities.

There can be no serious doubt that Steward had nothing to do with the epistemology of developmentalism and operated instead with a straightforward ordinary causal epistemology. What kinds of ordinary causes did he propose?฀Like฀Childe฀and฀White,฀Steward฀was฀consistently฀a฀materialist,฀but฀ a materialist of a rather different sort. For him, ecological variables constituted the most important causal forces impelling the evolution of societies. The role of ecology can be seen vividly in his early essay on the development of civilization. Steward adopted Wittfogel’s hypothesis that large-scale political controls evolved in arid and semiarid parts of the world in order to manage the irrigation works that were necessary for farming. Demography was also involved in the evolution of the ancient civilizations. Under a particular system of irrigation the limits of agricultural productivity were eventually reached, and the resulting population pressure created intersocietal conflicts of various sorts, including warfare. Warfare led to conquest and larger states, which resulted in the expansion of irrigation works, and this in turn led to a further increase in population. In sum, Steward envisioned the evolution of civilization as resulting from a spiraling process of positive feedback involving several variables but initially set in motion by a particular set of ecological conditions. Ecological explanations are also highly evident in Steward’s other evolutionary works, and so much so that he has come to be acknowledged as the founder of the theoretical approach known as cultural ecology. This approach is devoted to exploring the ways in which ecological variables interact with technological and economic ones to produce various cultural outcomes. Steward regarded his emphasis upon ecological causation as yet another basis for holding his version of evolutionary theory to be superior to the versions produced by the other contemporary evolutionists, especially White’s. As Steward put it, cultural ecology differs from these other evolutionary

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 125 “conceptions of culture history in that it introduces the local environment as the extracultural factor in the fruitless assumption that culture comes from culture” (1955:36).

Some Comparisons and Conclusions The three men who were the leading intellectual figures of the evolutionary revival had much in common. Despite a few superficial appearances suggesting otherwise, none of them adhered to a developmentalist or unfolding model of cultural change, and thus all offered explanations of evolutionary transformations that rested on an ordinary causal epistemology. In this particular respect they were similar as well, for all were consistent materialists. They were materialists in different ways, Childe and White emphasizing technology and Steward ecology, but materialists they all were nonetheless. In addition, all explicitly recognized that evolutionary models of change could not be entirely endogenist—that they could not assume that evolutionary changes were purely internal to societies. They were not only well aware of the existence of diffusion and other forms of intersocietal contact, but they gave these factors positive roles in evolutionary change. All three thinkers employed the comparative method in their evolutionary analyses, yet all did so judiciously, and they were well aware of its limitations and pitfalls. Their chief differences concerned primarily the version of materialist explanation they espoused and, more importantly, the scope of their evolutionary theories. Childe and White were much more willing than Steward to state bold generalizations. Although Steward’s first real contribution to evolutionary analysis was a bold exercise in tracing broad evolutionary parallels, he soon backed away from such a sweeping model and embraced a more timid conception of what an evolutionary theory could do. But it is wise not to overemphasize even this difference between the three men. In spite of his bold tracing of parallels, Childe never tired of emphasizing historical divergence between societies, and so much so that one of his major interpreters has been moved to comment that it is “clear that his view of evolution was at least as multilinear as was that of Julian Steward” (Trigger, 1980:174). Moreover, White’s protestations that evolutionism had nothing to do with the culture history of individual tribes was inevitably abandoned in practice, and White always noted the existence of many forms of historical uniqueness and the legitimacy of anthropological study of that uniqueness. In assessing the contributions of these thinkers their obvious deficiencies cannot be overlooked. The most serious defects in Childe’s work concern the vagueness of his materialism and the rather grandiose historicist conception of progress that he seemed to hold. There has been much debate among prehistorians and other social scientists about the extent to which Childe actually was a Marxist.3 Although Childe did think of himself as a Marxist, it is clear

126 ✻ Chapter 6 that his model of evolutionary change can be called such only in the most general sense of that term. As we noted earlier, his materialist explanations often seemed to reduce to little more than a general sort of technological determinism, and in Chapter 4 we dispensed with the notion that Marx was some sort of technological determinist. Moreover, Childe conceptualized technological change itself as virtually equivalent to the “expansion of human knowledge,” an unusually narrow formulation for someone alleging to be a Marxist. We also noted earlier the difficulties with Childe’s conception of progress. He believed that history reveals human progress and that it can best be measured in terms of the numbers of people who can be supported by any given mode of economic production. But this crude and simplistic criterion runs headlong into some very uncomfortable facts of which Childe himself was all too aware. The most significant of these is the existence, in those very societies where the largest populations are found, of economic and political divisions that place tremendous burdens on the vast majority of the population. Childe tried to reconcile these apparently contradictory consequences of social evolution by arguing that progress occurred in an overall sense despite stagnations and even retrogressions along the way. But, as many evolutionists of the last forty years have recognized, this will not do at all, and the whole concept of progress has had to be thoroughly rethought (see Chapters 8, 9, and 12). Similar difficulties are found in White’s brand of evolutionary theory. Since White’s conception of human progress was basically the same as Childe’s in every respect, it is subject to the same criticisms, but with an additional confusion. Near the end of his life White published a short book in which he altered two of his former positions (White, 1975). He began to recognize the difficulties with his earlier concept of progress and thus came to the very pessimistic conclusion that the belief in progress is illusory. The record of cultural evolution, he insisted, has been a record of increasing warfare, slavery, exploitation, and other forms of social conflict. We have made our planet increasingly uninhabitable, and the specter of annihilation now hovers over us. This change in viewpoint does help to make his general concept of progress a more realistic and consistent one, but unfortunately it led White to draw a totally unwarranted conclusion: that culture must be viewed as unrelated to the satisfaction of human needs. This is obviously a complete reversal of his earlier utilitarian position regarding the function of culture. If culture is฀not฀utilitarian,฀then฀what฀is฀it?฀White’s฀new฀answer฀was฀that฀culture฀has฀ no real function, and therefore all anthropologists can do is describe how cultures are organized and how they operate. As he put it, “cultural systems must be explained in terms of themselves, in terms of their components, their structure. They are explained in terms of the intrinsic properties of their components and the integration of these parts in a unity” (1975:36).

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 127 This major retreat into a kind of sterile functionalism is doubly unfortunate. In the first place it threatens to make a shambles of White’s evolutionism, since the different elements of his overall theory are now badly out of kilter with each other. But even more significantly, White’s newfound antiutilitarianism is a complete non sequitur. White concluded that because cultural evolution has been associated with so many social evils it cannot be thought of as adaptive, as being built up in response to human needs. It is entirely correct to say that cultures have not for some time (even several thousand years) been adequately serving many of the needs of the majority of their members (see Chapters 8 and 9). But that is a far cry from saying that cultures are not built up in response to the efforts of individuals to satisfy their needs. White could have concluded that, because of various forms of scarcity and the existence of many different kinds of needs, after a certain point in cultural evolution it was no longer likely that cultures would reflect the needs of everyone equally. He could also have concluded that many cultural systems were built up closely in accordance with the particular needs of elite groups that had emerged. These conclusions would have been perfectly consistent with the notion of culture as utilitarian (although certainly a modified and broadened utilitarianism), but at the same time they would have made it possible to deny that cultural evolution produced some sort of progress in the sense of greater “adaptedness.” They would have allowed White to avoid sliding into a sterile functionalism that is completely unequipped to explain the causes of cultural phenomena, including broad trajectories of cultural evolution. In short, they would have permitted him to escape the kind of intellectual castration to which he submitted.4 White’s materialism also leaves much to be desired. Because White openly adopted a technologically determinist model of cultural evolution, he cannot be charged with the vagueness that I attributed to Childe’s model.5 But this explicit technological determinism is itself open to severe criticism. As Chapters 8 and 9 will attempt to show, although technological change is highly correlated with many other important evolutionary changes, its role as a causal agent has been greatly overrated. Much evidence now suggests that changes in technology are as often, if not actually more often, dependent upon other cultural changes as causative of them. The very close correlation between technological change and other social transformations misled White and many of his followers into making it causal. We have only just recently begun to extricate ourselves from this misconception.6 Another problem with White’s evolutionism is the crudeness of many of his formulations. The simplicity of his technological model of evolutionary change is one major kind of crudeness in his work. This is a problem related to, but yet significantly apart from, the explanatory inadequacy of the technological determinism to which I just pointed. It concerns his implicit (and often explicit) assumption that cultures are conceptualizable largely as thermodynamic systems. Consider, for example, the following statement (1943:344):

128 ✻ Chapter 6 “So far as general type of culture is concerned, there is no fundamental difference between the culture of Greece during the time of Archimedes and that of Western Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century.” What White meant by this astonishing statement is that the same overall level of technology was possessed by the early Greeks and the Western Europeans just before the Industrial Revolution. It is very doubtful whether even that notion could be adequately defended, but the more serious problem is that White could make such an assertion only by completely ignoring the many important nontechnological differences between ancient Greece and early modern Europe. Such a procedure cannot be recommended as one likely to produce a very sophisticated and meaningful view of social evolution. White’s crudeness extended also to the extreme generality of his conceptualization of evolutionary “stages.” Much of his discussion in EC was built around Morgan’s distinction between societas and civitas. This is by no means an altogether useless formulation, but it is hardly precise enough to capture the essence of the evolutionary changes from simple hunting and gathering bands to complex agrarian civilizations. The same kind of problem crops up in White’s treatment of what he calls the Agricultural Revolution. Here he compressed thousands of years of change under a single heading and ignored many very important differences between societies depending in one way or another on agriculture for subsistence. He made it appear as if there were a sudden transformation from egalitarian bands to highly complex societies characterized by intensive social stratification and an oppressive state, quite a serious distortion of the character of the evolutionary changes that did take place. Finally, we cannot overlook the egregious error White made in asserting that general laws do not apply to particulars, and thus that evolutionary analyses cannot be applied to the history of individual tribes and nations. It is fortunate that White largely disregarded this misguided notion in his own substantive work, for it is difficult to imagine the effect had he not. But White cannot be completely exonerated, because his proclamations badly misled others and have created a serious and unnecessary impediment to a proper evaluation of his work. Criticism of Steward can be much briefer and more straightforward. He largely avoided the trap regarding the problem of progress into which Childe and White fell. Indeed, he pointed out that (1955:13–14), “The concept of progress is largely separable from evolution.” Steward’s materialism also seems on much firmer ground, both because of the clarity and consistency with which he applied it, and because of its empirical suitability. Steward carried out many impressive studies designed to show the effects of ecological conditions—or, more specifically, the effects of the interaction of those conditions with technological and economic ones—on a host of social and cultural phenomena. These studies have been carried out with sophistication and a powerful appreciation of subtleties, and they strongly suggest an important evolutionary role for ecology.

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 129 The main problem with Steward’s work is simply the timidity of his generalizations, his unwillingness to develop the kinds of general evolutionary models that really excite the blood. As we have already noted, Steward let empirical evidence dominate theory far too much, retreating rapidly from bold theoretical generalizations when they ran into even moderate empirical anomalies. He thus produced a form of evolutionary theory notable for its limited and narrow scope. I believe that a clear reading of the evidence that has now accumulated will show that Steward was unnecessarily cautious. Yet despite all these criticisms, the contributions of Childe, White, and Steward have been far more positive than negative. All three thinkers departed to one extent or another from the particularist tradition that was intellectually hegemonic in their time, and they made use of the best available archaeological and ethnographic evidence to show how realistic evolutionary generalizations could be formulated and defended. They did this, moreover, by adopting an ordinary causal epistemology of explaining historical change, and thus without lapsing into the developmentalism to which some of the classical evolutionists were highly prone. In addition, they collectively contributed to the revitalization of the materialist tradition most closely associated with Marx and Engels, but that had fallen into terrible disrepute in the early decades of the twentieth century. Their materialism, though, was pursued outside of or on the fringes of Marxism,7 and in a much more satisfactory empirical manner. In essence, they established a new version of materialist evolutionary analysis that, while unacceptable in many ways, was moving in the right direction. They set social scientists along a path that allowed many of their own errors to be corrected and many new theoretical leads to emerge. Through their influence, it has been possible for social scientists to produce a materialist evolutionary model that is more empirically defensible and less conceptually vulnerable to the criticisms of today’s antievolutionists. In Chapters 8 and 9 we shall have occasion to examine the major works of the most important contributors to this model.

Notes 1. Robert Carneiro and the late Beth Dillingham, White’s literary executors, have helped me learn the details of what happened. The manuscript for EC that White originally submitted to McGraw-Hill was longer than the publisher would agree to publish. This manuscript contained a long treatment of the “fuel revolution,” White’s name for the Industrial Revolution. This section of the original manuscript now exists as a separate manuscript of 428 pages entitled The Fuel Revolution, and is in the possession of Carneiro at the American Museum of Natural History. White also wrote much of yet another manuscript, Modern Capitalist Culture, to which he continued to add throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. This manuscript, a much longer manuscript of approximately 1,300 pages, is also in Carneiro’s possession. Through Carneiro’s kindness, I have been able to read both of these manuscripts. The Fuel Revolution is a highly detailed examination of the Industrial Revolution

130 ✻ Chapter 6 in England, and then its “spread” to France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States. There are also chapters on industrialization in China, India, Latin America, and Africa. Modern Capitalist Culture is a much less polished manuscript that contains discussions of, inter alia, the historical development of European capitalism, the general character of “capitalist-democratic” culture, the development of capitalism in the United States, the state-church in capitalist-democratic society, “jungle capitalism,” class relations, and the development of welfare systems. For many years Carneiro tried unsuccessfully to secure a publisher for these manuscripts, and until recently had probably more or less given up. However, Mitch Allen, the owner and editor in chief of Left Coast Press, a small press he founded in 2005, has now agreed to publish both books. Modern Capitalist Culture will appear in both an unabridged edition for libraries and an abridged edition for classroom use. The books are scheduled to appear in 2007 or 2008. Left Coast Press will also be reissuing The Evolution of Culture. 2. This same terminological confusion is also found in White’s works. White frequently spoke of the existence of an “evolutionist process.” 3. For various interpretations of the role of Marxism in Childe’s works see Clark (1976), Thomas (1982), Gathercole (1971), McNairn (1980), Peace (1988), and Trigger (1980). The last of these provides several additional references. 4. The problem being discussed is obviously the crucial one of the meaning of the concept of “adaptation” and its applicability to evolutionary analyses. This problem gets the much fuller airing it deserves in Chapter 10. It is also touched on in Chapters 7–9 with respect to the evolutionary theories of Talcott Parsons, Marvin Harris, and others. Actually, White did show some indication of being able to salvage something from the ruins he left behind. Later in the same book he begins to suggest that cultural evolution is much determined by how different individuals and groups pursue their interests and how the opposition of interests is resolved. This conflict model was of course very much present in White’s earlier work, although it coexisted uncomfortably with his thermodynamic conception of progress and seemed to be subordinated to it. But in the later work it has come to the forefront. It is unfortunate that White refers to this “new” approach by the pretentious name “method of vector analysis” (vectors, it appears, are simply interests). It is also a pity that he never recognizes that there is no contradiction between talking about interests and their role in cultural evolution and talking about culture as serving human needs. When people pursue their interests, and when some of them end up dominating others and structuring society according to those interests, what are they doing฀except฀striving฀to฀satisfy฀certain฀of฀their฀needs?฀We฀may฀not฀like฀the฀way฀they฀ do it and the end results it produces, but they are doing it nonetheless. 5. White was very clear about his technological determinism, but he did not always apply it consistently. In EC he actually embraced an ecological argument to explain the origin of agriculture, suggesting that hunter-gatherers had the essentials of agricultural knowledge many thousands of years before they practiced it and thus that they had to be pushed over the threshold into agricultural practice by some sort of environmental disequilibrium. In developing this argument White not only abandoned technological determinism but even went so far as to violate his Durkheimian dictum that “culture can only be explained in terms of culture.” White should be commended for showing such flexibility, though, because his explanation

The Evolutionary Revival ✻ 131 would today be regarded as far superior to theories of agricultural origins that make technological change (in the form of “increased knowledge”) fundamental. 6. The severe limitations of White’s technological determinism are also highly apparent in his unpublished volumes. The Fuel Revolution is a tedious and repetitive discussion of industrialization in one country after another. White apparently understood this form of technological change as virtually its own cause, as there is little explicit discussion of the social, economic, and political context in which certain levels of industrialization do or do not occur. Modern Capitalist Culture in many ways compounds these difficulties. The fuel revolution is discussed once again, but the causal relationship between industrialization and the expansion of capitalism is never really grappled with. Presumably we still have a simplistic technological determinism, as would be suggested by White’s startling statement that “the steam engine was . . . the prime mover of modern imperialism.” 7. In spite of Childe’s Marxist self-identification, I would regard him, as is perhaps clear already, as actually only on Marxism’s fringes. I would also place White on Marxism’s fringes rather than outside the tradition entirely. He did have a strong admiration for Engels and some of his analyses in EC sound loosely Marxist, and so it is clear that he was influenced by Marxism. Steward, of course, was outside the Marxist tradition altogether.

Chapter Seven

Sociological Evolutionism: I

The evolutionary revival discussed in the last chapter was a

distinctly anthropological phenomenon, which is simply to say that it was brought about by scholars who identified themselves professionally with that field of study. As it happens, though, sociology was to experience some two decades later an evolutionary revival of its own, but one that took two very different forms. On the one hand, the leading sociological theorist of the time, Talcott Parsons, produced a functionalist version of evolutionary theory rooted in the tradition of German idealism. But at almost exactly the same time another sociologist, Gerhard Lenski, was developing an evolutionary approach with roots in the Anglo-American materialist tradition of Childe and White. It seems that when sociologists think of evolutionary theory it is primarily the Parsonian functionalist version they have in mind. For example, the British sociologist Anthony Smith (1973), in referring to what he calls sociological neoevolutionism, has Parsonian evolutionism alone in mind and assumes that it stands for evolutionism as a whole. Smith is highly critical of Parsonian evolutionism, but it is a serious distortion to assume that to call attention to the flaws of this version of evolutionism is to give credence to an overall antievolutionary stance. Parsonian evolutionism, as we shall see, contains glaring inadequacies, but for the most part these are overcome in the materialist evolutionism of Lenski. This chapter discusses Parsonian evolutionism, subjecting it to a severe and largely dismissive critique. Then, after a discussion of contemporaneous versions of anthropological evolutionism in Chapter 8, I turn in Chapter 9 to Lenski’s evolutionism and other recent sociological theories of social evolution.

132

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 133

Parsons’s Theory of Social Evolution It is well known that the bulk of Parsons’s sociological theory is little concerned with social change. As of 1950, he had no systematic theory of change at all, but in The Social System, published the next year (Parsons, 1951), he did formulate his famous pattern variables: affectivity versus affective neutrality, self-orientation versus collectivity-orientation, universalism versus particularism, achievement versus ascription, and specificity versus diffuseness. Initially these were just static concepts for classifying role orientations and types of social systems, but they gradually evolved in a dynamic direction—as concepts for identifying processes of change from one role or social system type to the other. Then, in 1956, in collaboration with Neil Smelser, Parsons developed his famous AGIL paradigm, which referred to the functional differentiation of social systems, to which the concept of structural differentiation was added in short order (Parsons and Smelser, 1956). With these formulations Parsons was slowly fumbling his way toward a general theory of social change, although it took another decade for him to fully realize it. By the mid-1960s he had come to produce not only a general theory of change, but a large-scale and complex theory of long-term social evolution designed to explain societal evolution from the earliest and simplest bands and tribes to the most advanced industrial societies.1 The master principle of Parsons’s evolutionary theory is that of structural differentiation. But Parsons adds to this notion another critical one: the concept of adaptive capacity. Societies are goal-oriented systems that seek ways of adapting themselves to their environments. The key to adaptation is differentiation, and there is a tendency in social systems for them to become more differentiated. By differentiating, social systems increase their adaptive capacity, or undergo what Parsons calls adaptive upgrading. They improve the overall level of their functioning. For Parsons, the evolution of human social life is basically a long story about the increasing differentiation and adaptiveness of goal-seeking social systems. Despite these new wrinkles, an older Parsonian concern has not gotten lost in the shuffle. The famous pattern variables are still to be found alive and well and have ended up being synthesized into the differentiation-increasing adaptation model. As it has turned out, for Parsons increasing differentiation also happens to be a process that closely parallels the transition from one of the pattern variables to its opposite.

Evolutionary Universals Parsons’s first systematic development of an evolutionary theory of change occurred in his article “Evolutionary universals in society” (1964). This article developed the concept of an evolutionary universal, which is “a complex of structures and associated processes the development of which so increases the long-run adaptive capacity of living systems in a given class that only systems

134 ✻ Chapter 7 that develop the complex can attain certain higher levels of general adaptive capacity” (1964:340–341). In other words, it is a structural innovation that improves the level of functioning of a system and serves also as a prerequisite for further evolutionary advances. Parsons makes an explicit analogy with what he takes to be evolutionary universals in the biological world. Vision is held to be one of these, and in the case of human biological evolution the hands and the brain are regarded as important evolutionary universals. Parsons proposes that six evolutionary universals have been especially significant in the historical development of human societies. The first of these is social stratification. Its significance lies in its capacity to overcome the evolutionary limitations of ascription. A second evolutionary universal is a system of cultural legitimation. Most broadly, this involves a set of ideals whereby a society defines its own identity and distinguishes itself from other societies. It also concerns those ideals whereby particular groups within a society can justify their social position and advantages vis-à-vis other groups. A second pair of evolutionary universals that becomes important at a later stage of social evolution is administrative bureaucracy and money and markets. The key characteristic of bureaucracy is its institutionalization of authority in offices. The evolutionary significance of bureaucracy for Parsons is rooted in Weber’s conception of bureaucracy as “the most effective large-scale administrative organization that man has invented” (1964:349). Money and markets are also a major evolutionary accomplishment. Markets allow for the much more efficient acquisition and deployment of resources; money is a great mediator of the use of goods and services. Markets and money allow resources to be freed from ascriptive bonds. There is yet a third pair of evolutionary universals that comes into play at the most advanced stage of social evolution. Generalized universalistic norms are abstract legal rules that apply to an entire society rather than to one or more specific groups within it. Rome was the first premodern society to develop a universalistic legal system, but this system has become crystallized and fully systematized only in modern times. In particular, it is the English common law that represents the most developed version of a universalistic legal order. Parsons believes that this system has been “decisive for the modern world” and that it is “the most important single hallmark of modern society” (1964:353). The democratic association is the other of this modern pair of evolutionary universals. It involves elective office, the franchise, and collective decisionmaking. The use of power now rests on a broad social consensus, and thus is a generalized medium for the attainment of societal goals.

Primitive, Intermediate, and Modern Societies The full development of Parsons’s theory of social evolution is contained in a pair of books, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (SECP)

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 135 (1966) and The System of Modern Societies (SMS) (1971). These books identify and describe in detail three major stages of social evolution. Primitive societies are most significantly characterized by their undifferentiated structure. Social life is strongly rooted in kinship and other social institutions are not differentiated from it. In the truly most primitive societies, the members of the society have no well-developed conception of themselves as a distinctive entity—no clear cultural boundedness. They are also characterized by the general status equivalence of different kinship groups. The transition to a more advanced type of primitive society is marked by the emergence of a hierarchical ordering of these groups. Accompanying the rise of this early form of stratification is the emergence of a clear cultural boundedness of the whole society, usually in the form of religious legitimation. The transition from primitive to intermediate societies is marked by the development of written language. Intermediate societies contain two subtypes, archaic and advanced intermediate societies (the latter are also known as historic empires). Archaic societies are characterized by a higher level of cultural legitimation than found in advanced primitive societies. This cultural legitimation is still religious, but it now involves a literate priesthood. The emergence of a priesthood, of course, represents a differentiation of a select group of religious specialists from the remainder of society. Archaic societies are also characterized by the development of an administrative apparatus of a sort well beyond the type possessed by even the most advanced primitive societies. Moreover, there is a substantial differentiation of political and religious leadership roles. Parsons considers ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to be the leading examples of archaic societies. The historic empires are distinguished from archaic societies by their innovations in the realm of culture—by their philosophic breakthroughs. Parsons regards four civilizations—China, India, the Islamic empires, and Rome—as the great historic empires. China developed an innovation that was entirely new in social evolution. This involved the creation of a governing class—the mandarins—whose status was defined in cultural terms. China, though, had definite evolutionary limitations. One of these involved its degree of rationalization of law, which was little developed beyond that of Mesopotamia and was still characterized by a strong particularism. In addition, its economy was weakly differentiated because it had failed to develop a monetary system sufficient to support an elaborate market system. India went much further than China in producing a rationally consistent religio-philosophical system, but in fact it went too far in this direction. This “drained away cultural impetus for social development, leaving the society at the mercy of relatively archaic social configurations” (1966:80). As a result, India was unable to develop any highly stable, long-term political structure. The Islamic empires were also characterized by important religiophilosophical innovations. These centered about the Umma, or the solidary community of the faithful. The evolutionary failure of the Islamic empires,

136 ✻ Chapter 7 though, lay in their failure to “undergo the crucial processes of differentiation, inclusion, and upgrading that could have transformed the Umma into a total society permeated by universalistic norms” (1966:86). Where all these historic empires failed, Rome succeeded. Its greatest achievement, for Parsons, was its highly universalistic legal system, a system that he claims was the most evolved system of law until modern times. The universalism of its legal system was closely associated with a concept of citizenship and with a general democratization of the society. In addition to these political achievements, Rome also made major strides in the economic sphere, for it had an elaborate system of money, credit, and markets. The evolutionary transition to modern societies was only made possible, according to Parsons, by the existence of two earlier “seedbed” societies, Israel and Greece. These societies made major cultural innovations that contributed crucially to the evolution of modernism. Israel’s contribution lay in the religion of Judaism and its conception of a single universal God whose normative order was applicable to all mankind. Moreover, Judaism planted the seeds of religious individualism that would be carried over into Christianity. One similarity between ancient Greece and Israel involved the Greek conception of a pan-Hellenic culture that was broader than any single sociopolitical community. This highly universalistic conception of normative order was strongly promoted by its leading intellectuals, such as Plato and Socrates. Thus Parsons believes that Israel and Greece contributed much to modern society even though they were not aligned on the direct evolutionary path to it. Rome, however, was on this direct path, and its most significant evolutionary contribution was, as we have seen, its elaborate universalistic legal system. In addition, Christianity was an outgrowth of the Roman Empire and of Judaism within it. Christianity also provided crucial foundations for future evolutionary developments because it continued and significantly elaborated the religious individualism begun by Judaism. Modernism first began to crystallize in the northwest corner of Europe, particularly in England, France, and Holland, and thus these three nations were the “spearheads” of early modernity. Parsons attributes the greatest evolutionary significance to England, for it “had become by the end of the seventeenth century the most highly differentiated society in the European system” (1971:67). The highly differentiated character of English society is viewed by Parsons as having emerged on a number of fronts. One was economic. Commercial farming arose, and thus landowners began to employ tenant farmers. This “differentiated [the owners’] own functions as social and political leaders in the local community from those of economic production in which their land was a factor of production” (1971:66). An important set of economic changes was also occurring in the towns. These changes especially involved the disintegration of the particularistic system of medieval guilds. Other aspects of differentiation in English society involved

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 137 religion, government, and law. Protestantism began to break down the traditional fusion of religion and government, and government began to separate itself from the societal community. There thus emerged “a government in which highly influential elements of the societal community were constituents of representative bodies rather than members of government” (1971:67). Connected with this trend toward parliamentary government were legal changes that began to emphasize the rights of individual members of the societal community. The key developments in the transition to modernity were the industrial and democratic revolutions. The Industrial Revolution produced a massive differentiation in the economic structure of society and greatly extended the market system. Labor became freed from the diffuse and particularistic context in which it had been imbedded in medieval society, and the occupational role began to emerge as the primary basis for the organization of a labor force. The massive differentiation of the economy produced by the Industrial Revolution created the functional imperative for new integrative mechanisms, and the democratic revolution occurred largely in response to this new societal need. The democratic revolution ushered in a value system emphasizing equality of opportunity, and “to the extent that this emerging value pattern was institutionalized, achievement and achievement capacity became the primary criteria of eligibility for differentially valued statuses” (1971:81). The modernity of the twentieth century is most clearly exemplified by the United States. It is, in Parsons’s words, the “new lead society” of contemporary modernity. The United States has gone further than any other society in terms of its level of differentiation and its replacement of ascription by achievement and particularism by universalism. Ethnicity and social class have been increasingly abolished as criteria for social roles, and the greater inclusiveness of the American societal community is well represented by its great elaboration of the concept of citizenship. The United States has also experienced major educational and economic transformations. It has undergone an educational revolution that has contributed greatly to the occupational upgrading of the society, especially in terms of the emergence of the professions. The professions have assumed a critical role in the occupational structure. In terms of economic changes, one of the most important has been the separation of the ownership of corporations from their control.

The Logical Structure of Parsonian Evolutionism The Explanatory Logic of Parsons’s Theory Let us now turn to a consideration of the logical structure of Parsons’s theory of social evolution, beginning with the kind of explanatory logic on which

138 ✻ Chapter 7 it depends. There is every reason to think that this explanatory logic shares much in common with the classical evolutionists. Parsonian evolutionism is, in other words, a mixture of developmentalist and ordinary causal explanation. I want to start with the ordinary causal arguments in Parsons, because these are highly characteristic throughout his evolutionary works. In regard to both his general social theory and his theory of evolution, Parsons has been referred to again and again as a cultural idealist. However, this is not how he sees himself, for near the end of SECP he identifies himself as a causal pluralist (1966:113): “No claim that social change is ‘determined’ by economic interests, ideas, personalities of particular individuals, geographical conditions, and so on, is acceptable. All such single-factor theories belong to the kindergarten stage of social science’s development. Any factor is always interdependent with several others.” Parsons does go on to say, however, that to favor a causal pluralism does not prevent one from establishing a hierarchical ordering of the relative importance of various causal factors. All are important, but some may be more important than others. And what kind of rank ordering does Parsons create?฀In฀fact฀he฀produces฀one฀that฀elevates฀human฀ideals฀and฀values฀and฀ their associated moral rules to supreme importance. As he puts it, “I am a cultural determinist, rather than a social determinist. Similarly, I believe that, within the social system, the normative elements are more important for social change than the ‘material interests’ of constitutive units” (1966:113). It would definitely appear, however, that Parsons gives considerably more weight to ideational factors than he would have us believe. They are much more than simply at the top of a causal hierarchy. Indeed, the simple fact of the matter is that Parsons’s preferred explanations in his pair of books on social evolution almost always give pride of place to symbolic codes, legal norms, religious or philosophical systems, or some other phenomenon that is primarily mental or ideational. For example, a crucial prerequisite for the transition from primitive to advanced primitive societies is a system of cultural legitimation that gives the societal community a sufficient degree of boundedness. Likewise, the emergence of stratification requires that socially dominant groups formulate a system of ideals for legitimizing their superior position. When we turn to Parsons’s discussion of archaic societies and historic empires, a similar idealist emphasis is found. One of the most important evolutionary features of archaic societies is their elaborate cosmologies, cosmologies that require a much more extensive form of cultural legitimation than necessary at an earlier evolutionary stage. The great evolutionary significance of the historic empires involves their philosophical breakthroughs. In two cases (India and Islam) these breakthroughs center on religiophilosophical systems, whereas in another (Rome) the great breakthrough is said to involve a system of legal norms.

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 139 The story is the same with respect to the so-called seedbed societies. Israel’s greatest evolutionary contribution is its universalistic religion, while Greece’s involves a more secularized philosophical system of justice. Moreover, Judaism led to Christianity, which is of enormous evolutionary significance for Parsons because of its universalizing and individualizing qualities. In fact, it is Christianity that prevented medieval society from regressing even further than it did. When we get to modernity, we find that the influence of Protestantism is very great, as is especially the democratic revolution. And what is the substance฀of฀the฀democratic฀revolution?฀Parsons฀tells฀us฀that฀it฀is฀essentially฀an฀ upheaval in values, one that led to greater emphasis on equality of opportunity. The move toward citizenship is part of this democratic revolution as well, and what is citizenship for Parsons but basically a set of philosophical concepts embodied in a constitution. Thus it is not difficult to make a case for Parsons’s ordinary causal explanations being primarily idealist ones. It is clear that Parsons regards the most important achievements in long-term sociocultural evolution as being in the area of symbolic codes, values, and norms, and that these achievements, once they arise, contribute crucially to yet further achievements. Yet it is also clear that Parsons offers little or nothing in the way of explaining many of these evolutionary outcomes. That is, even though Judaism, for example, is said to be an important evolutionary phenomenon influencing the development of Christianity, how do we account for Judaism’s origination of what Parsons฀claims฀is฀its฀most฀important฀doctrine,฀viz.,฀its฀universalism?฀Or,฀to฀ take another example, Roman universalistic law is said to contribute much to the universalism of modern times, but then how are we to understand the origin฀of฀Roman฀legal฀norms฀in฀the฀irst฀place?฀Parsons฀is฀remarkably฀silent฀ on these obviously crucial questions and others like them. Sometimes Parsons answers questions like these in classically functionalist terms, as when he “explains” the democratic revolution in terms of the new functional need for integration brought about by massive economic differentiation. But more often he is simply silent. How do we explain this theoretical฀absence?฀Is฀it฀that฀Parsons฀does฀not฀recognize฀that฀he฀has฀failed฀ to฀account฀for฀something฀so฀important?฀Or฀could฀it฀be฀that฀Parsons฀simply฀ regards many cultural outcomes as essentially arbitrary occurrences that happen to have fortuitous results, as some idealists are prone to argue (cf. Sahlins, 1976)?฀I฀think฀that฀the฀irst฀possibility฀is฀highly฀implausible฀for฀a฀ thinker of Parsons’s stature. As for the second possibility, I think this would be ruled out of court immediately by Parsons’s insistence on the nonrandom and directional character of social evolution. There is a third possibility, though, and that is that Parsons sees no need to offer ordinary causal explanations for many evolutionary occurrences because he believes he has already implicitly “explained” them as part of a grand developmental scheme, one that harkens back to the

140 ✻ Chapter 7 developmentalism of the classical evolutionists and even beyond them to the German idealist philosopher Hegel. Was Parsons a developmentalist whose ordinary causal arguments made sense only when placed in the context฀of฀a฀more฀all-embracing฀explanatory฀principle?฀There฀can฀be฀little฀ doubt that he was certainly a historicist, for historicist reasoning is basic to his whole concept of an evolutionary universal, a notion that is at the very heart of his theoretical system. His six evolutionary universals seem to make sense only in terms of their role in a larger historical whole—in terms of their contribution to later developments. Moreover, throughout his pair of books on evolutionary theory we find the same kind of historicist reasoning employed repeatedly. Rome’s contribution to modernity is its universalistic legal system, which was a prerequisite for modern legal systems. Likewise, Greece’s historical role was its development of a secular system of justice. And so on and so forth. But does this rather obvious historicism translate into a full-blown developmentalism?฀I฀think฀that฀it฀does,฀and฀that฀it฀is฀the฀essential฀ingredient฀that฀ ties together the various aspects of his theoretical system.2 And I believe it is the closing paragraph of SMS that provides the most explicit indication of this developmentalism. In this paragraph Parsons says (1971:143; emphasis added): We should expect that anything like a “culminating” phase of modern development is a good way off—very like a century or more. Talk of “postmodern” society is thus decidedly premature. Taking into account the undeniable possibility of overwhelming destruction, our expectation is nevertheless that the main trend of the next century or more will be toward completion of the type of society that we have called “modern.”

Although I have italicized much of the last sentence of this quotation, it is obvious฀that฀the฀key฀word฀here฀is฀“completion.”฀Completion?!฀Does฀Parsons฀ mean฀it?฀Does฀he฀expect฀to฀be฀taken฀literally?฀I฀think฀that฀the฀whole฀tone฀of฀ his evolutionary analyses suggests that he does, and that can only mean that he sees human history as evolving toward some ultimate goal. We are not there yet, he says, but it is obvious that he thinks we have gotten very close, and the most important consideration is that he thinks there is a “there” to get to. To take this argument just one step further, let us note that the imbeddedness of idealist arguments in a developmentalist explanatory logic is hardly a new phenomenon in social theory. For, after all, that is just what we saw in the case of Morgan, and it was even more pronounced in the case of Hegel before him. For Parsons, then, like Morgan and Hegel earlier, the evolution of human society is fundamentally the evolution of the powers of the human mind in accordance with a rational plan.3

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 141

Advancement and Progress The implications of the preceding arguments for the question of whether or not Parsons equated evolution with progress should be more than obvious. Since the master principle of evolutionary transformation is social differentiation, and since more differentiated social systems have greater adaptive capacity, it is clear that Parsons believes that evolution is inextricably associated with advancement and progress. Indeed, this identification of social evolution with social advancement is a keystone of his theory, and it would appear that Parsons is really making the teleological argument that evolution occurs in order to bring about advancement. Thus Parsons does not in the least shy away from making explicit value judgments about different social and cultural systems. As he tells us (1966:109–110): To be an evolutionist, one must define a general trend in evolution—one cannot be a radical cultural relativist who regards the Arunta of Australia and such modern societies as the Soviet Union as equally authentic “cultures,” to be judged as equals in all basic respects. Our perspective clearly involves evolutionary judgments—for example, that intermediate societies are more advanced than primitive societies, and modern societies . . . are more advanced than intermediate societies. I have tried to make my basic criterion congruent with that used in biological theory, calling more “advanced” the systems that display greater generalized adaptive capacity.

A more contentious question concerns whether or not Parsons’s conception of evolutionary advancement is also highly ethnocentric. After all, it is one thing to place social systems in an evaluative hierarchy, but quite another to do so in a way that springs from one’s own cultural biases. Parsons himself has vigorously denied an ethnocentric bias to his formulations, and he offers three arguments in his defense. First, he says that the adaptive capacity of a society, though of crucial importance to him, may not be so in the judgment of many other people. Others may focus on other dimensions of social life as a basis for evaluating societies. Second, he says that modern societies may well not be the be-all and end-all of social evolution, for they may give way to a “postmodern” phase of evolution. Finally, modern societies themselves are said to contain many elements that were originally obtained from nonWestern sources. None of these arguments is especially convincing. The first is evasive in the extreme, for does Parsons actually expect us to accept that he himself really believes that his concept of adaptive capacity can be employed in such฀a฀highly฀relativistic฀way?฀The฀second฀and฀third,฀even฀if฀highly฀accurate฀ characterizations, do not really address the problem of ethnocentrism in a straightforward way. Thus, in spite of these disclaimers, it is still very difficult to escape the conclusion that Parsons’s judgments about evolutionary

142 ✻ Chapter 7 advancement are deeply permeated by his biases in favor of his own particular society (and his own social position in it). What societal characteristics receive฀ most฀ favorable฀ endorsement฀ in฀ Parsons’s฀ theory?฀ The฀ answer฀ is,฀ precisely those that Parsons believes to be most heavily concentrated in the contemporary United States, the society that he refers to as the “lead society” of contemporary modernity. And where did this “lead society’s” principal societal฀characteristics฀originate฀historically?฀The฀answer฀is,฀in฀England฀and,฀ more distantly, in ancient Rome. Is this not an American-centered or, more broadly,฀a฀Eurocentric฀perspective? When we look more closely at some of Parsons’s pronouncements about the details of modern societies themselves, we find still further evidence of ethnocentrism, and this time of a sort that is closely associated with Parsons’s own social position. Take, for example, Parsons’s discussion of the modern professions. Parsons gives enormous approval to the development of these versions of the modern occupational role. He believes that they contribute greatly to the adaptiveness of modern societies because they are built around achievement rather than ascription, and because they are oriented to serving the social collectivity rather than the self. And what is the profession par excellence? It turns out to be the academic profession, the very one to which Parsons himself belongs. Can such a judgment made by an American professor teaching at฀Harvard฀University฀conceivably฀be฀thought฀of฀as฀free฀from฀cultural฀biases?

The Problem of Unilinearism Given the importance that Parsons gives to advancement and progress in social evolution, it might naturally be assumed that his version of evolutionism is a unilinear version. Yet he denies this too, and insists upon separating his evolutionary theory from the theories of the classical evolutionists, especially Spencer’s. His, he says, is much more sophisticated and avoids the unilinear trap of the classical theorists (1966:110): The present analysis differs significantly from most older evolutionary theories in that the developmental dimension I have used is fully compatible with the idea that there is considerable variability and branching among lines of evolution. The evidence we have reviewed indicates that, in the earlier stages of evolution, there have been multiple and variable origins of the basic societal types. Thus, we need not postulate one primitive origin of all intermediate societies. . . . At all stages, the importance of such variability can be adequately treated, we argue, only by an analytic theory of variable factors and components. The impressive development of such theory since Spencer’s time enables us to construct a much more sophisticated evolutionary scheme than his.

Once again, however, Parsons seems to overstate his case considerably. Although he has not produced a strong version of unilinear evolutionism, there is no doubt that his evolutionary theory is unilinear in the weak sense.

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 143 Despite the disclaimers about variability and multiple origins, the fact remains that virtually the entirety of Parsons’s evolutionary analysis is preoccupied with the main trunk of evolutionary development—the continuous differentiation and adaptive upgrading leading up to modern times. The only concern at all that Parsons has with divergent developments is directed toward the way in which these developments feed back into the main evolutionary trunk. This is precisely the significance of his analysis of ancient Israel and Greece. They are not analyzed for their own sake, but only in terms of their ultimate contribution to modernity. It is thus extremely difficult to agree with Parsons’s own assessment that his evolutionism represents a significant improvement over that of the classical evolutionists with respect to the problem of unilinearism. In fact, in many ways his theory is even more unilinear than theirs, for they not only frequently discussed divergent developments, but often did so for their own sake instead of simply for their contribution to the main line of evolutionary development.

Parsons’s Theory of Social Evolution: A Critique I have already implied many criticisms of Parsons’s evolutionary theory: its developmentalist and teleological structure, its idealist bias, its ethnocentric emphasis on advancement and progress, and its unilinearism. But I now want to subject Parsons’s theory to a much more systematic critical scrutiny, beginning, as seems logical, with his master evolutionary principle.

The Concept of Differentiation in Parsons’s Theory As we have seen, the critical concept for Parsons’s theory of social evolution is that of differentiation, a concept that he inherited from the functionalist evolutionary tradition of Spencer and Durkheim. The concept plays a double role in his theory; it is, as Anthony Smith (1973) has noted, both the process and the causal motor of evolutionary change. Because the concept does double duty in this fashion, to assess its adequacy we must ask two basic questions about it: Is increasing differentiation an important characteristic of evolutionary฀change?฀If฀so,฀is฀the฀tendency฀toward฀increasing฀differentiation฀ capable฀of฀explaining฀anything฀about฀social฀evolution? In regard to the first question, Charles Tilly (1984) suggests that, although increasing differentiation can be shown to be a significant aspect of much social change, it is nonetheless not nearly as significant as Parsons conceives it to be. Furthermore, dedifferentiation is also a prominent feature of numerous important social changes. As Tilly notes (1984:48), many social processes . . . involve dedifferentiation: linguistic standardization, the development of mass consumption, and the agglomeration of petty

144 ✻ Chapter 7 sovereignties into national states provide clear examples. Furthermore, differentiation matters little to other important social processes such as capital concentration and the diffusion of world religions. Indeed, we have no warrant for thinking of differentiation in itself as a coherent, general, law-like social process.

Anthony Smith takes a similar view, noting that increasing societal specialization is a substantial trend in the history of human societies, but also cautioning that “we should be careful not to elevate this trend into a sort of master principle of historical development” (1973:136). But of course this is exactly what Parsons has done, and with a vengeance. In fact, Parsons wants to find differentiation everywhere, even when the changes in question need not (or perhaps even cannot) be meaningfully described in such terms. Take for example, his description of the democratic revolution as a major example of differentiation, one that allegedly differentiated the polity from the societal community. It is perhaps not inaccurate to make such a description, but does describing฀the฀process฀that฀way฀convey฀what฀is฀most฀signiicant฀about฀it?฀That฀ seems unlikely. Or take the shift toward the modern occupational role, which Parsons interprets as a differentiation within the economic sphere. Is it the differentiated฀character฀of฀this฀process฀that฀is฀most฀important?฀Serious฀doubts฀ would seem to be in order. Could this process be accurately characterized without฀even฀using฀the฀concept฀of฀differentiation?฀More฀than฀likely฀it฀could. But regardless of the extent to which differentiation is an important feature of historical social change, there remains the more crucial question of the explanatory usefulness of the differentiation concept. In this regard I am in complete sympathy with Anthony Smith’s judgment that it is extremely difficult “to make a case for the explanatory potential of the concept” and that “the idea that we should view differentiation as . . . the motor of change . . . must be entirely discounted” (1973:145). The reason for such a negative judgment can be stated quite straightforwardly. Parsons’s argument for the explanatory significance of differentiation is an entirely teleological one, and thus completely unacceptable. Differentiation occurs because it leads to adaptive upgrading, an increasing adaptive capacity of the social system. But not only is this assertion unacceptable because of its teleological character, it employs an extremely vague and troublesome concept of adaptation. And since the concept of differentiation is meaningless in Parsons’s evolutionary theory without being attached to his concept of adaptive capacity, this latter concept must also be carefully scrutinized. If it is found wanting, as I shall argue, then this is all the more reason to reject the theoretical utility of the differentiation concept.4

Parsons and Adaptive Capacity Parsons’s use of the concepts of adaptation and adaptive capacity seems so severely flawed as to constitute a fatal weakness in his theory. In the first instance,

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 145 the Parsonian concept of adaptive capacity rests on a highly reified notion of societies. For Parsons, what adapts is a social system, or at the very least one of its principal subsystems. It is never individual human beings who are the referents for Parsons’s concept of adaptive capacity, but always abstract “systems.” This classically functionalist notion has been shown time and again to be thoroughly inadequate, and the reason is that it presumes the existence of something that cannot logically have an existence. It presumes the actual existence of a social system as a thing apart with “needs” and “imperatives” of its own. But social systems do not exist as things apart, and they do not have needs or imperatives. Only individual human beings do, and thus it is only to them that the concept of adaptation can apply if it is to be applied at all. But beyond this overwhelming difficulty, there is another fatal weakness in the Parsonian concept of adaptive capacity: its paralyzing vagueness. This vagueness has been remarked upon by numerous scholars (cf. Giddens, 1984; Zeitlin, 1973). Parsons tells us that adaptive capacity has to do with the ability of a social system to function effectively with respect to its environment, and that this involves active mastery of the environment rather than simply passive adjustment to it. It is not at all clear what this is to be taken to mean. The term “environment,” for example, is altogether ambiguous. We are left in the dark as to whether this means the physical environment or the social environment, and as to what the nature and dimensions of this environment are. Consider also the problems with the concept of “mastery.” What does it really฀mean฀to฀suggest฀that฀social฀systems฀evolve฀toward฀increasing฀mastery?฀ Anthropological studies of the simplest human societies, band-organized hunter-gatherers, show conclusively that the members of such groups have detailed knowledge of their natural environments and that they have been able to work out very delicate mechanisms for remaining in close harmony with them. Yet in contemporary industrial societies the amount of destruction done to the environment has been so severe that it is thought by many that environmental and social disaster await. It would thus appear that in one very real sense evolutionarily earlier societies show a much greater environmental “mastery” than evolutionarily later ones. Irving Zeitlin has implied a similar point in asking, “How can one speak of greater adaptive capacity in the present period of history, when all men live in the shadow of a possible nuclear฀holocaust?”฀(1973:56). Given these conceptual and empirical difficulties, what then could Parsons have had in mind in declaring evolutionarily more recent societies to have greater฀adaptive฀capacity?฀I฀think฀there฀is฀only฀one฀realistic฀answer฀to฀that฀ question, and that is that these societies more closely approximate Parsons’s preconceived notions as to what a properly structured society ought to look like. This returns us to the problem of Parsons’s ethnocentrism, for I think this is precisely what is guiding his judgments about adaptive capacity. If I am correct, this means that Parsons’s concept of adaptive capacity is a purely

146 ✻ Chapter 7 value-laden one that thoroughly distorts our understanding of the nature and causes of trajectories of social evolution.5

The Idealizations in Parsons’s Evolutionary Theory The problem of value-ladenness also seems to be central to Parsons’s characterization of social evolution as marking a gradual shift from one kind of action orientation to another—from one pattern variable to its opposite. In order to criticize Parsons’s evolutionary use of the pattern variables, let me select just two of them: ascription versus achievement and self-orientation versus collectivity-orientation. Parsons claims that the general course of social evolution is marked by a gradual movement away from ascriptive social bonds toward achievement. I think a good case can be made that things have happened quite differently. Parsons believes that the simplest societies are strongly rooted in ascriptive ties because of the importance these societies give to kinship. Kinship ties are, of course, ascriptive, and Parsons is quite right to note that they are of crucial importance in these kinds of societies. However, he has overlooked other dimensions of such societies in which achievement rather than ascription prevails. A notorious feature of societies that anthropologists generally call band and village societies is their egalitarian and unstratified character. There are no class divisions—no groups with unequal access to the means of production. This does not mean that such societies do not have important positions of leadership. They do, but the crucial thing about such leadership positions is the extent to which they are openly contested by members of the society. Band and village societies generally lack hereditary restrictions on the capacity to exercise leadership, and so it is achievement rather than ascription that determines who the leaders are. An excellent example of what I am talking about is provided by Marshall Sahlins’s (1963) analysis of patterns of leadership in two kinds of societies found in the southern Pacific that may be said to differ in evolutionary terms. In Melanesia, there tended to be societies in which there were no developed stratification patterns in the sense of the existence of discretely identifiable social classes. These societies had leaders known as “big men,” who were men of considerable social rank who exercised important economic and political functions. To attain the status of big man, a man had to compete with other aspirants, since there were no hereditary mechanisms for the transmission of leadership roles. To get to be a big man, a man had to demonstrate his abilities to the entire village, and big men could easily lose their leadership roles if their abilities or motivation for leadership declined. It is clear that this kind of leadership pattern was based on achievement rather than ascription. In Polynesia, on the other hand, there tended to be found societies that Sahlins regarded as farther along on an evolutionary scale. These societies were stratified into hereditary social classes, and the top leadership roles were

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 147 those of chiefs rather than big men. Chiefs were leaders who were capable of exercising considerably more power than that available to big men. No open competition for the role of chief existed, and a man could attain the position of paramount chief (or village subchief) only by inheriting it in a family line. The Polynesian pattern of chiefly leadership was obviously based on ascription rather than achievement. Sahlins contends that the hereditary chiefly pattern typical of aboriginal Polynesia actually evolved from a pattern much like the big-man system found throughout Melanesia in recent times. If so, then what we are witnessing is the actual evolution from achievement to ascription, the very opposite of the proposed Parsonian pattern. But the illustration Sahlins provides is only one among many that can be drawn from the works of anthropologists. It is well known among anthropologists that many important social roles in the simplest societies are openly contested, and that in more evolved societies the hereditary placement of individuals into social roles is commonplace. Much the same sort of argument can be made with respect to the selforientation/collectivity-orientation pattern variable. Parsons has insisted that social evolution has traveled a path of increasing concern for the collectivity over the self. Yet, despite the fact that Parsonian evolutionary theory draws on Durkheimian notions, Durkheim himself stressed that small-scale societies are grounded in mechanical solidarity, a social pattern in which the individual self is rather completely assimilated into the collectivity. In fact, compelling evidence suggests that all preindustrial societies emphasize a collectivityorientation over a self-orientation, and that the real predominance of the self-orientation did not begin to emerge until the transition to modernity a few hundred years ago. One of the most important features of modern societies stressed by many sociologists is their “individualism.” Parsonian defenders might object to this line of reasoning by claiming that the self-orientation/collectivity-orientation distinction has more to do with the use of power than with the psychological relationship between self and society. Perhaps so, but serious problems with the Parsonian evolutionary analysis remain nonetheless. In societies of the big-man type, for instance, political leadership exercised by big men must serve the larger interests of the collectivity, otherwise big men cease to be big men. Big men are regarded as public servants, and one of their primary responsibilities is the redistribution of economic products to the entire community. Self-oriented big men last only a short while in their roles. Contrast this situation with the use of political power by Polynesian chiefs, which is indeed strikingly more self-oriented. In the great agrarian civilizations, the self-interested use of political power is carried to an even greater extreme. Parsons would have us believe, of course, that in the transition to modernity all this changed, and that power became a “generalized societal medium” to be used in behalf of the entire society. But such a notion would be extremely difficult to defend and is really little more than an extraordinary idealization of modern society.

148 ✻ Chapter 7 Such a tendency toward idealization should no longer surprise us, though, and in fact is fully consistent with the marked ethnocentrism that pervades Parsonian evolutionism. It is this aspect of Parsons’s theory of evolution that catches the eye of Irving Zeitlin, who connects it with Parsons’s functionalism and idealism. Suggesting that Parsons’s evolutionary theory is actually very much a hidden polemic against Marxian materialism, Zeitlin claims that the most serious absences in the theory are those concerning the social role of conflict, domination, and material self-interest (1973:54): There is no discussion whatsoever of the connection between economic surplus and classes. No attention is given to the proposition, now generally accepted among social scientists, that with the emergence of a significant surplus over and above subsistence requirements of the producers themselves, a group other than the producers manages in various ways to gain control of the surplus as well as the productive resources; and that a system of domination thus emerges that ensures the maintenance of the producers’ subsistence at a minimum level and continued economic and other advantages for the rulers. This economic basis of stratification, the resulting conflicts of material interests, the struggles over access and control of the surpluses and key resources, the use of force and the threat of force to gain or retain control of resources, war within and among societies, the institutionalization of political power to maintain the privileges of the dominant class—all this receives no treatment in Parsons’ conception of social change and “evolution.”

And so we see yet another serious distortion produced by Parsons in his effort to understand the broad evolutionary trajectory of human societies.

Talcott Parsons: The American Hegel Earlier we noted that Parsonian evolutionism is rooted to a considerable extent in the evolutionary tradition of Spencer and Durkheim. It should be more than obvious that Parsons is working within a theoretical tradition in which Spencer’s conception of increasing social differentiation and Durkheim’s (1933[1893]) view of the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity are classical exemplars of how best to understand evolutionary change.6 But Parsons himself actually stresses his links to a different tradition of classical social theory. At the beginning of SMS he suggests that his evolutionary theory owes most to “German idealism, as it passed from Hegel through Marx to Weber. Although it is fashionable today to ridicule Hegel’s glorification of the Prussian state, he did develop a sophisticated theory of general societal evolution and its culmination in the modern West” (1971:1). Parsons goes on to emphasize the indebtedness of his theory to Weber, particularly in terms of Weber’s conception of the increasing rationalization of the West, and Hegel is not mentioned again. This seems sensible enough,

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 149 for certainly there are unmistakable earmarks of Weber’s direct influence on Parsons (at least with respect to Parsons’s interpretation of Weber). On the other hand, there is a sense in which the influence of Hegel on Parsons was actually greater. After all, Weber was not at all sympathetic to evolutionary interpretations of history, especially those of such enormous sweep as Parsons’s. Moreover, it is well known that Weber’s view of the present and future state of the West was a melancholy and pessimistic one, and the contrast between this view and Parsons’s cheery optimism is stark. Yet on both these counts the views of Parsons and Hegel are strikingly similar. Consider the comparisons that can be made between Parsons and Hegel. Most obviously, both had strongly historicist and developmentalist modes of explaining historical changes. Hegel thought that history unfolded as part of a rational developmental process that had an ultimate endpoint (see Hegel, 1953[1837], 1956[1899]). History was governed by reason (for Hegel, Reason) and would culminate in freedom (Freedom), which consisted of mankind’s complete knowledge of itself. Parsons thinks much the same thing. History (social evolution) has an endpoint, which is the modern society. This society is more rationally organized than any previous one, and it too holds out much greater freedom (especially in the form of universalism and an emphasis on achievement). Similarly, both Hegel and Parsons held the view that at every major stage of historical development there is a single society that is ahead of all the others—that has progressed further toward the fully rational society. Hegel thought that in ancient times it was Rome that held this position, while in modern times it was Germany (Prussia). Likewise, Parsons gives Rome pride of place among the historic empires, and the United States is identified as the “lead society” of contemporary modernity. Hegel and Parsons are also linked by their theoretical idealism, a point specifically mentioned by Parsons. For Hegel historical development is the unfolding of the Absolute Idea, and societies and civilizations are to be identified principally by their achievements in the realms of art, religion, and philosophy. Parsons certainly holds no metaphysical notion of an Absolute Idea, but he does, despite his disclaimers, offer a strongly idealist interpretation of the nature of human societies. For Parsons, the great achievements in social evolution belong mostly to the realm of ideas, and these achievements are said to be essential for further developments. But let it not be forgotten that the idealisms of both Hegel and Parsons make sense only within a larger conception of the causes of historical change, a conception that emphasizes history as the logical unfolding of inherent potentialities toward some ultimate goal. Another similarity between Hegel and Parsons concerns the role they ascribed to individuals in historical change. For both, individuals are not agents who create historical events, but mainly tools who are “used by” larger forces to achieve grander goals than anything imagined by individuals. Hegel’s concept

150 ✻ Chapter 7 of the “cunning of reason” is the main expression of his view of the relationship of individuals to the historical process. Parsons has nothing quite so grand, but his concept of structural differentiation shows clearly how much emphasis is given to abstract social structures over human individuals. Finally, it can be said that both thinkers had views of history that were similarly “unilinear.” For both there is a main thrust to history that must be distinguished from numerous “historical sideshows.” Neither is interested in these sideshows, but really only in the historical events that contribute to the onward-and-upward directional movement of history. Indeed, given the strong฀developmentalism฀of฀both฀thinkers,฀how฀could฀it฀be฀otherwise? Of course, there are also major differences between the two thinkers that should not be ignored. Hegel’s philosophy of history was really devoted to a theodicy—a justification of the role of God in history—and it would be difficult to argue for anything like this underlying Parsons’s evolutionary theory (Parsons has, however, been called a deeply religious thinker). Hegel also gave a historical role to what he called “world-historical individuals.” These were men—such as Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon—who had a glimpse of the contribution they and their society could make to history, and who were prepared to act on this understanding. There is really no parallel to this in Parsons’s evolutionary theory. In addition, Parsons’s theory is offered as a scientific and explicitly evolutionary theory, and close links are suggested between the processes of biological and social evolution. Nothing like this, obviously, is to be found in Hegel. Finally, we should not overlook the explicitly dialectical foundations of Hegel’s philosophy of history. This image of history moving forward as the result of a continual series of negations and syntheses is something completely lacking in Parsons.7 Nevertheless, the similarities between Parsons’s theory of social evolution and Hegel’s philosophy of history are striking, and these similarities should give us pause. Although Parsons’s evolutionary theory avoids some of the more horrendous metaphysical dimensions of Hegelianism, it is still rooted in many of the same philosophical and theoretical assumptions, assumptions that scarcely bode well for acquiring an adequate understanding of the character of social evolution. It has often been suggested by critics of Parsons that his evolutionary theory is scarcely an advance beyond the theories produced by Spencer and the other classical evolutionists.8 Indeed, more might be said, and that is that in several crucial respects Parsonian evolutionism is not even much of an intellectual advance beyond the thinking of a German philosopher whose ideas about the broad course of historical change were themselves inferior to those of the classical evolutionists.

Conclusion This critique of Parsonian evolutionism has been unusually severe, so I will strive to end on a cheerier and more positive note. As Irving Zeitlin (1973)

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 151 has pointed out, there was in fact not one Talcott Parsons but two. There was Parsons the architectonic grand theorist, whose ideas both Zeitlin and I have found seriously wanting. And then there was Parsons the author of numerous essays on substantive matters, essays that were often quite insightful. The one Parsons had almost nothing to do with the other, for, as Zeitlin remarks, when Parsons discussed substantive issues in individual essays he made virtually no use of his general theoretical ideas. What Zeitlin says of Parsons’s substantive essays applies as well to some specific ideas in Parsons’s two short evolutionary works. In SMS, somewhere past the halfway point we find Parsons contending that there has been a striking trend in modern societies, especially the United States, toward increasing universalism, inclusiveness, and egalitarianism. This trend began long ago with the democratic revolution and the development of the modern conception of citizenship, but it has continued unabated. Parsons says that the trend “has been enhanced in the United States by the increasing elimination of ethnic membership and social class as ascriptively important constitutive structures.” Referring in particular to the increasing extension of T. H. Marshall’s concept of citizenship, Parsons says the following (1971:94): Back of it . . . stand more general principles, first embodied in the Bill of Rights and extended both by amendment and by judicial interpretation, a particularly important phase of which has occurred recently. There is in this complex a strong egalitarian emphasis, increasingly stressed over time, on the basic equalities of citizens’ rights to protection, certain freedoms, certain basic conditions of welfare, and opportunities, especially perhaps access to education and occupational development. In fact, it seems correct to say that, at least in principle, the new societal community has come to be defined as a company of equals. Departures from the egalitarian principle must be justified, either on the basis of the incapacity to participate fully—as among small children—or of being qualified for special contributions, as through competence, to the societal welfare.

Parsons is unquestionably right about this. Even the most casual observer of modern American and Western society has to be aware of the massive and seemingly inexorable trend toward greater equality and inclusiveness. Indeed, since Parsons died over a quarter-century ago, the trend has not only continued but dramatically intensified. Many people wish to allow noncitizens, such as illegal immigrants, into the “community of equals,” and some even want to include other species in this community. So Parsons is right, but the question still remains: Is he right for the right reason?฀Yes฀and฀no.฀His฀explanation฀of฀this฀trend฀is,฀of฀course,฀ideational:฀ The trend is an increasing evolutionary elaboration of fundamental ideas and ideals. The trend does have this dimension. But there is another dimension to the trend, which is that it has been carried forward by the increasing empowerment of subordinate classes. Modern industrial capitalism is a

152 ✻ Chapter 7 mass society, not only in the sense of the increasingly prominent role of the mass media of communication, but also in the sense that “the masses” (to use Sumner and Keller’s phrase) and their interests have become a much greater฀focal฀point฀of฀the฀society.฀And฀why?฀Primarily฀because฀of฀the฀advance฀ of capitalism as a system of mass consumerism, a system that increasingly caters to “the masses” in order to maximize the sale of its wares and its profits. And this is a material development, not an ideational one. The masses increasingly seek equality and incorporation into full-fledged participation in the fruits of modern life; it is their material interests that help to spawn new inclusivist and egalitarian ideas in the minds of those members of the cultural elite who promote them.9

Notes 1. Other major works that preceded Parsons’s full-blown evolutionary theory, but that drew on his early ideas on social change, include Neil Smelser’s Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (1959), Bert Hoselitz’s Sociological Aspects of Economic Growth (1960), and S. N. Eisenstadt’s Modernization: Protest and Change (1966; cf. Eisenstadt, 1968, 1973). These last two contributions to so-called modernization theory elaborate a distinction between “traditional” and “modern” societies in order to explain variations in levels of economic development among contemporary nations (Hoselitz frames the distinction between “traditional” and “modern” by drawing explicitly on Parsons’s pattern variables). What is perhaps Eisenstadt’s single most important work, The Political Systems of Empires (1963), is grounded in evolutionary theoretical assumptions but is not a work focusing on modernization per se. His essay “Social change, differentiation, and evolution” (1964) is an important general theoretical contribution. Mention should also be made of Robert Bellah’s “Religious evolution” (1964). This famous essay on the evolution of religion makes use of Parsons’s concept of differentiation. 2. Much the same argument is developed by Anthony Smith in his well-known critique of functionalist evolutionism, The Concept of Social Change (1973). Smith is extremely critical of Parsons for largely avoiding any discussion of actual causal mechanisms of evolutionary transformation. He also asserts that Parsonian evolutionism in general rests firmly on the notion that “to change is to unfold the potentialities of [a] structure” (1973:50). For a contrasting interpretation of the explanatory structure of Parsonian evolutionism, see Haines (1987). 3. Near the end of this chapter I will offer a systematic and explicit comparison of Parsons and Hegel. 4. In one sense, though, the concept of differentiation cannot be so summarily dismissed. If we accept that the evolution of human societies is broadly characterized by increasing differentiation, then we are still left with the problem of accounting for the existence of such a pattern. This is all the more important when we recognize that biological evolution is also characterized by increasing complexity. There are

Sociological Evolutionism: I ✻ 153 two quite different ways we might approach this problem. We could assert that differentiation is a fairly uninteresting by-product of social (and biological) evolution that has garnered far more attention than it deserves. Or we could suggest that differentiation is an evolutionary phenomenon of considerable importance, but one whose significance has been improperly understood by Parsons and the functionalist evolutionists in general. In Chapter 10 I shall attempt a resolution of the dilemma I have posed in the context of a consideration of the significance given to differentiation by biological evolutionists. 5. These overwhelming difficulties with Parsons’s employment of the concept of adaptation do not require, as a number of social scientists seem to think, abandonment of the concept itself. As I will attempt to show in Chapters 10 and 12, the concept is a perfectly good one that is both useful and essential for social-scientific analyses, including evolutionary ones. But it is fraught with dangers and thus should be used only with the greatest care. 6. Parsons says little about the relationship of his evolutionary ideas to those of Spencer and Durkheim, but Smelser (1968) points to an explicit connection between Parsonian evolutionism and the earlier works of Spencer and Durkheim (see in particular p. 137 and pp. 197–198). 7. On the other hand, Hegel did suggest that dialectical change led to increasing diversity and the unification of diversity, and that such a process was fundamental to the unfolding of Reason in history. Is not Parsons saying something strikingly similar? 8. Indeed, in some crucial respects Spencer would hold the upper hand. Spencer’s most important insights, such as those regarding the role of population pressure and warfare in social evolution, are superior to anything produced by Parsons. 9. It would appear that, when it comes to Parsons, even when I “giveth with one hand,” I cannot help but “taketh away with the other.”

Chapter Eight

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f evolutionary theorizing in sociology in recent decades has been dominated by Parsonian functionalism and idealism, the situation has been quite different in anthropology. For here it has been the materialist evolutionary tradition of Childe, White, and Steward that has been most influential. Indeed, the anthropological evolutionism during this time may be characterized as a kind of “second generation” of the evolutionary revival, for the theorists in question have all been students or close followers of either White or Steward or both. The most important of these theorists are Marshall Sahlins, Elman Service, Robert Carneiro, and Marvin Harris. It has been they, Harris in particular, who have made the most notable recent contributions to broad theoretical questions, although there have also been Marxian alternatives to more conventional anthropological evolutionism. There are considerable differences among these thinkers, and they have been faithful to the materialist evolutionary tradition in different ways and to different degrees. Nonetheless, it is that tradition in which they are rooted and that accounts for the direction in which their ideas have developed. And the very best of these ideas, I will argue, are to be greatly preferred to the developmentalism, functionalism, and idealism of the Parsonians.

The Evolutionism of the Young Marshall Sahlins Discussion of the evolutionary contributions of Marshall Sahlins is somewhat hampered by the fact that it is a position with which he is no longer associated. In the late 1960s Sahlins began to shift his theoretical sympathies to a 154

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kind of structuralism and to severely criticize many of the assumptions of the materialist version of evolutionism he previously espoused (Sahlins, 1976, 2000). In any event, his early work is enormously stamped with the imprint of Leslie White, and it is that work that I want to examine here.

Specific Versus General Evolution Sahlins’s contributions to evolutionism are of both a more abstractly theoretical and a more substantive variety. With respect to the former, Sahlins (1960) contributed an early essay that attempted to reconcile the antagonism between White and Steward concerning the proper scope of evolutionary theories. Sahlins claimed that the dispute between these two thinkers was a misguided and unnecessary one that could easily be resolved by recognizing that evolution, in both the biological and the sociocultural realms, is a dual phenomenon. On the one hand there is what Sahlins called specific evolution. This is “descent with modification,” and it involves the emergence of particular kinds of new structures, which in sociocultural life are of course new social practices and institutions. On the other hand, there is what Sahlins referred to as general evolution. This is the “grand movement” or “overall direction” of evolutionary modifications. Despite being unique, specific evolutionary changes are also associated with an overall movement of sociocultural life from one stage of development to another. Given that Sahlins was closely following in White’s footsteps, he identified this overall movement as one involving increased energy capture or, alternatively, a higher form of social integration. Sahlins has stressed that specific and general evolution are not two different concrete processes, but simply two aspects of the evolutionary process, two different dimensions of the same thing. Thus formulated, his conception has a strong intuitive appeal and would seem to put to rest once and for all the conflict between White and Steward over “universal” versus “multilinear” evolution. Unfortunately, as Marvin Harris (1968) has noted, closer inspection reveals several difficulties with Sahlins’s formulation. The most serious of these is his smuggling of the concept of progress into the notion of general evolution. Actually, Sahlins has tried to dissociate his notion of progress from any moral or ethical conception, asserting that “general progress also occurs in culture, and it can be absolutely, objectively, and nonmoralistically ascertained” (1960:27). Yet Sahlins’s criteria for measuring progress “objectively” are very suspicious. He suggests that this can be done by rating the energy-capturing capacity of a given society, since thermodynamically “higher” societies have greater flexibility and greater control over their environments (hence greater “all-round adaptability”). In addition, he supplements this thermodynamic criterion with an organizational one by pointing out that more thermodynamically advanced societies have greater specialization and a higher level of integration of their parts. This,

156 ✻ Chapter 8 too, is said to enhance their “all-round adaptability.” But these notions are only stated, never argued, and they recall precisely the kinds of difficulties that were earlier identified in connection with White’s notion of progress and Parsons’s notion of “increased adaptive capacity.” The suspicion cannot be avoided, then, that underlying Sahlins’s so-called objective criterion of progress is actually a highly subjective and evaluative one. Purged of its concept of progress and of its misuse of the concept of adaptation, Sahlins’s distinction retains the intuitive appeal suggested earlier. However, it can be improved upon by referring to evolutionary phenomena in a tripartite sense—to parallel, convergent, and divergent evolution. We shall encounter these concepts later in this chapter in discussing the work of Marvin Harris.

Specific Evolution in Oceania The problems with Sahlins’s distinction aside, it is clear that his own substantive contributions to evolutionism have involved specific rather than general evolution. These contributions have concerned the evolution of social stratification and political organization in Melanesia and Polynesia. In Social Stratification in Polynesia (1958), Sahlins attempted to account for variations in the extent to which the societies of Polynesia were stratified. Some of these societies, like Hawaii, Tonga, and Tahiti, had rather elaborate forms of stratification characterized by sharp differences between social strata in power, wealth, and social status. At the other extreme, societies such as Pukapuka and Tokelau exhibited only minimal forms of stratified life, with status and power differences being quite small. Sahlins claimed that these differences were of striking evolutionary significance and were closely related to each society’s overall level of economic productivity. Historically, he argued, those societies that were now seen to be more stratified were those that in the past had risen to higher levels of economic productivity. This productivity led them to generate economic surpluses, which became the basis for the formation of stratification. It is obvious that this study of Polynesian stratification systems applies the comparative method to infer an evolutionary sequence. So does Sahlins’s study of political evolution in Oceania. In an article that has become an anthropological classic, Sahlins (1963) has contrasted the nature of political systems in Melanesia with that of Polynesia. In Melanesia, he has noted, the typical political structure is the tribe, a segmental form of political organization in which each local village is politically self-sufficient and autonomous. Villages commonly have informal leaders known as big men, who are men of considerable renown and prestige but who lack true authority or power. Thus their political significance is limited, both in geographical range and in their capacity to command the actions of others. In Polynesia, by contrast, chiefdoms rather than tribes tend to prevail. Chiefdoms unite local villages

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into a larger whole and are overseen by a chief and cadre of subchiefs with the genuine capacity to command others. Whereas village big men rise to their positions through their own efforts, chiefs are installed in permanent offices. And whereas big men can easily lose their positions through failure to lead effectively, chiefs have a much firmer hold on theirs. Sahlins’s study of evolutionary variations in political evolution in Oceania is mainly typological and is thus limited by its lack of any real attempt to explain this evolutionary process. Social Stratification in Polynesia, however, explicitly sets forth an explanatory mechanism, this being growing energy capture and rising economic productivity. In essence, Sahlins has formulated what has been called a surplus theory of the evolution of stratification, a theory that stems directly from Childe and White. The difficulties with this theory will become apparent in our discussion of the evolutionary theories of Harris (and of Gerhard Lenski in Chapter 9). Suffice it to say at this point that such a theory, although it correctly takes note of the relationship between productivity and stratification, appears to misconstrue the causal mechanisms involved. In particular, it gives technology a causal role it does not deserve.

Elman Service’s Functionalist Evolutionism Contemporary interpreters of evolutionary theories usually assimilate the work of Elman Service to that of Marshall Sahlins because of the famous book that they coedited (Evolution and Culture, 1960). But these interpreters have generally failed to appreciate the divergence in the particular ideas of these two evolutionists. Despite its similarities to Sahlins’s evolutionary views, Service’s thinking contains unique features, and in fact represents the greatest departure from the Childe-White materialist tradition of all the thinkers considered in this chapter. Service is no consistent materialist, and he actually insists upon a kind of evolutionism that rejects any particular prime mover as the mechanism of evolutionary change. Moreover, his thinking is perhaps more permeated by functionalist notions than that of any other member of the second generation of the evolutionary revival.

Service’s Basic Evolutionary Notions At first glance, Service’s evolutionism would appear to be not only of a rigid, unilinear sort, but actually a manifestation of a kind of developmentalism. Indeed, in offering a definition of sociocultural evolution he says (1971b:12): Let us retain the term evolution with as many of its originally important connotations as possible. Etymologically, it is from the Latin: evolutis, “unrolling.” In modern ordinary usage, it is “an unfolding”; “a development.” Such a very

158 ✻ Chapter 8 general conception allows its use by many kinds of evolutionists. The central core of meaning is that of direction or progress along some kind of linear scale.

However, it becomes quickly apparent that Service is anything but true to this conception of evolution, for his evolutionism is notable for its remarkable flexibility. He tells us not only that “there is no inner dynamic of inevitable orthogenetic change” (1971b:11), but that evolutionary theories do not even require parallelism. He suggests that a critical ingredient of any evolutionary theory, and one that has been missing in many, is a focus on the complex interrelations between and among societies. This notion actually becomes the basis for his discussion of the evolutionary significance of the present world economic and political hierarchy of societies. The so-called underdeveloped societies of the Third World are not merely following the historical path of the advanced industrial countries, and indeed cannot do so. As he puts it (1971b:53): The modern conditions to which any new industrialization must adapt are . . . totally different from those of the original industrialization. . . . The original industrialization was such a dramatic evolutionary breakthrough that European culture quickly established its dominance over most of the non-Western world. This is a normal consequence of significant evolutionary advances, the widening of the sphere of dominance. The dominance remains today except in those parts, notably Russia and China, that have made political revolutions against it. But the technological revolution, the Second Industrialization, is still in the future, seriously handicapped and, paradoxically, curiously advantaged by the presence of the already-industrialized states. It can profit from the modern technological advances made by Western science and from its splendid potentialities only if it can free itself from any dependence on the Western world’s complicated economic system. This Western web of dominance is what has created an unprecedented environment for the new industrialization, and this is why the new technological evolution can be called revolution, for it must act against the dominance of the Euro-American system in the technoeconomic sphere just as in political affairs.

These assertions not only show the kind of flexible evolutionism that Service advocates, but also converge remarkably with contemporary dependency and world-system theories of Third World underdevelopment. Service’s remarks also relate closely to his so-called Law of Evolutionary Potential, one of his more interesting concepts that will be explored in a moment.

Service and Political Evolution It is not these notions, however, that have been the basis for Service’s reputation as an evolutionist. On the contrary, this reputation derives from his work

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on political evolution. His main contribution in this regard is embodied in a slim book written in 1962, Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective (2nd ed., 1971a). In this book Service proposed an evolutionary classification of forms of political organization that has become widely employed by anthropologists and been used as a basis for substantial archaeological research. Service postulated four main stages of political evolution: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. Bands are highly characteristic of hunters and gatherers. People live in very small, highly mobile groups that lack any positions of formal authority, and the various bands within an overall culture are not unified or integrated in any way into a larger political whole. Tribes were ushered into existence by the Neolithic Revolution. The basic political unit is the village, which is now a larger and more permanent residential unit than the camp of band society. As in bands, leadership tends to be highly informal and personal, and there are no formal offices or positions through which leaders can exercise genuine domination over others. While there are mechanisms integrating the village into a larger whole, these are not political, and each village is a politically autonomous, largely self-regulating unit. Chiefdoms differ from tribes in that the individual villages lose their autonomy and become integrated into a larger political whole, which has a hierarchical organization and a set of formalized offices held by people who command real power and authority. States carry these centralizing and hierarchical characteristics further and institutionalize the use of force in controlling the mass of the subject population. Primitive Social Organization is more a classificatory work than a truly explanatory one, and it is not particularly easy to see just what kind of explanatory mechanism Service relies on to account for the transition from one evolutionary stage of political order to the next. It would appear, though, that his explanation of political evolution is essentially a functionalist one. This is strongly suggested by his identification of his political stages as forms of integration. Moreover, each succeeding form of integration is described in more positive terms than the preceding one. Tribes lack political unification but they do contain what Service calls pantribal sodalities, or mechanisms that contribute to social integration, and it seems clear that Service views this development favorably. Likewise, chiefdoms constitute real organizational advances over tribes (1971a:133–134): The rise of chiefdoms seems to have been related to a total environmental situation which was selective for specialization in production and redistribution of produce from a controlling center. The resulting organic basis of social integration made possible a more integrated society, and the increased efficiency in production and distribution made possible a denser society. . . . Chiefdoms are redistributional societies with a permanent central agency of coordination. . . . [T]he central agency . . . can . . . act to foster and preserve the integration of the society for the sake of integration alone.

160 ✻ Chapter 8 With respect to the evolution of the state, Service leaves little doubt about his position. In his major work on this problem, Origins of the State and Civilization (1975), Service strongly rejects Marxian and other conflict theories and emphasizes instead the benefits that accrued to society as a whole from the emergence of the state. He stresses three major kinds of benefits that he believes were conferred by the state: a more complex network of economic redistribution; a more successful war organization with the potential to increase wealth and enhance “national pride”; and public works, such as monumental architecture and irrigation systems (cf. Service, 1978). It must not be assumed that Service’s functionalist theory of political evolution is as simplistically teleological as Parsonian evolutionism. Unlike Parsons, Service does not assume some inherent developmental tendency rooted in the human mind that is made to do all the explanatory work. And he does make at least some attempt to specify the kinds of economic, political, and environmental conditions that are propitious for the emergence of new forms of political organization. Yet these aspects of his theoretical analysis are weakly developed and take a definite backseat to the functionalist emphasis on societal improvement with evolutionary transformation. And this, along with his obvious antagonism to Marxian and conflict theories of political evolution, brings his evolutionism uncomfortably close to the Parsonian version. It need hardly be said that this is a major departure from the Whitean evolutionary tradition.

The Law of Evolutionary Potential My negative conclusions regarding Service’s treatment of political evolution should not allow us to overlook what is of genuine value in his work. I have already commented favorably on Service’s recognition of the importance of intersocietal relations in social evolution, and this recognition dovetails somewhat with another important dimension of his evolutionism. This is his attempt to formulate a provocative evolutionary principle that he has called the Law of Evolutionary Potential. Service sets forth the Law of Evolutionary Potential as follows (1960:97): “The more specialized and adapted a form in a given evolutionary stage, the smaller is its potential for passing to the next stage.” As such, it refers to the discontinuous character of evolutionary change. Those societies that have attained the most advanced levels of evolutionary development are unlikely to be the ones that make the transition to a new evolutionary stage. They tend to stagnate and decline, and thus to be overtaken by other societies at lower evolutionary levels. Service believes that his law was anticipated numerous times by other scholars, especially by Thorstein Veblen with his concepts of “the merits of borrowing” and “the penalty of taking the lead,” and by Leon Trotsky with his notion of “the privilege of historic backwardness.” And Robert Carneiro

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claims that Herbert Spencer was another anticipator of Service’s law, doing so even earlier than either Veblen or Trotsky. Carneiro quotes Spencer to the effect that “though structure up to a certain point is requisite for growth, structure beyond that point impedes growth” (Spencer, 1886:64; quoted in Carneiro, 2003:32). Since Veblen and Trotsky are referring to the capacity of a society both to avoid the mistakes and to imitate the virtues of an evolutionarily more advanced one, this presumably is the mechanism through which Service conceives the Law of Evolutionary Potential as operating. Service suggests that history reveals many instances of the operation of this law. These include such things as the supercession of older civilizations by newer ones and the rapid industrialization of Russia and Germany even though they were relative latecomers to the industrialization process. Service also suggests that some of the larger contemporary underdeveloped countries that have freed themselves from Western dominance, especially China, may have enormous evolutionary potential. Service’s law is pregnant with possibilities and not enough has been done with it by evolutionary theorists. It would seem to converge in important ways with Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system theory and, with appropriate modification, with Marvin Harris’s intensification-depletion model of social evolution (discussed later in this chapter). One sees empirical instances of Service’s law everywhere, especially in modern history. Spain had a great empire in the sixteenth century, but was eclipsed later by the Netherlands (the United Provinces) in the seventeenth, which was in turn eclipsed by Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth. Then Britain herself yielded to the United States in the twentieth, which now seems to be entering a period of฀long,฀if฀slow,฀decline.฀Which฀nation฀is฀poised฀to฀assume฀the฀mantle?฀Why,฀ none other than China, mentioned explicitly by Service himself. It is this nation that in all likelihood will become the next great world economic, political, and military power (Sanderson and Alderson, 2005). The last 500 years show the operation of the Law of Evolutionary Potential everywhere and “everywhen.”

Robert Carneiro’s Spencerian Evolutionism Robert Carneiro has had a long and distinguished career as one of this country’s leading anthropologists. He was a student of Leslie White in the 1950s and absorbed White’s materialist and evolutionary approach to anthropology. As I see it, Carneiro’s most important contributions fall into three major areas. First, he has made detailed exegeses of the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer and has shown, with considerable success I think, that it should be viewed in a much more favorable light than it usually is. Spencer was by no means just the social Darwinist bumbler that he is usually made out to be. Carneiro has shown that he was well ahead of his time in formulating

162 ✻ Chapter 8 sensible scientific ideas about the key factors in the evolutionary process (cf. Turner, 1985). Second, Carneiro has made important conceptual and methodological contributions to the study of social evolution. He has adopted a resolutely Spencerian conception of social evolution, insisting that it involves the emergence of increasingly complex social systems from simpler ones. If the concept of social evolution means anything, Carneiro insists, it means this. Carneiro has also been an innovator in the use of scalogram analysis to identify the main line of evolution. And finally, and probably most importantly, Carneiro has developed a famous theory of the origin of the early state in the centers where it first emerged in the ancient world. This theory, perhaps the best known of all state origin theories, makes population pressure, warfare, and what Carneiro has called environmental circumscription the key factors in state evolution. In this section I shall concentrate on the second and third areas of Carneiro’s contributions, after which I will look at some very recent wrinkles that Carneiro has added to his evolutionary thinking.

Conceptual and Methodological Contributions Carneiro’s conceptual and methodological contributions concern his definition of evolution, his rehabilitation of the concept of unilinear evolution, and his application of scalogram analysis to the construction of evolutionary sequences. Carneiro (1972, 1973b) insists that the very best definition of evolution ever offered was the one developed originally by Herbert Spencer: Evolution is change in a direction of increasing societal complexity. He notes that since Spencer’s time there has been a tendency among both biological and social evolutionists to define evolution in more general terms, and largely as most any sort of qualitative structural change. He laments this fact, but also notes that in recent years there has been something of a return to the conception of evolution offered by Spencer. Working with this conception of social evolution, Carneiro has also tried to show that the dismissal of the concept of unilinear evolution, by evolutionists as well as antievolutionists, has been premature. In the first instance, he claims, the nineteenth-century evolutionists did not adhere as rigidly to a conception of unilinearism as is usually thought. They actually claimed no more than that most societies go through the same basic stages, not that all did so. And such a view, he argues, is perfectly valid and can be empirically supported. Thus Carneiro advocates essentially the notion of weak unilinearism introduced in Chapter 2. Carneiro (1973b) also accepts much of what Steward’s concept of multilinear evolution was intended to convey, although without the dubious and unnecessary baggage that Steward attached to it. However, he notes that the notion of multilinear evolution should not be allowed to distract us, as it often has, from seeing the unilinear trends that may also be discerned in divergent evolutionary trajectories. As he puts it, “We must not be stopped

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short when we encounter multilinearity; we must be ready to look for the less obvious unilinearity that may be concealed within it” (1973b:103). Carneiro has also made an interesting methodological innovation in the study of cultural evolution. This involves his appropriation of Guttman scalogram analysis for use in constructing evolutionary sequences of the weak unilinear type. In an early article (Carneiro, 1962), he tried to demonstrate the logic and potential fruitfulness of scale analysis. The logic of scale analysis is simple enough. It involves taking x number of societies and y number of culture traits and arranging them together in a single order starting with the society containing the fewest traits and ending with the society containing the greatest number of traits. The extent to which the resulting order forms a Guttman scale can be determined by calculating a coefficient of reproducibility, an acceptable Guttman scale having a coefficient of 0.90 or better. If a perfect Guttman scale could be produced with a set of societies and culture traits, then the following characteristics would be found (Carneiro, 1962): Societies higher on the scale would have all the traits of societies of lower rank, and at least some in addition; if we know a trait to be present in a society, we would know what other traits will be present; if we know what trait is absent from a society, then we will also know what other traits will be absent; if we know the number of traits a society has, we will know which traits these are. The potential significance of scale analysis should not be hard to discern. Within the limitations obviously imposed by the comparative method that underlies its use, successful scaling of societal characteristics clearly establishes the existence of a sequence that cries out for explanation. The establishment of the sequence in and of itself explains nothing, of course, but it certainly provides a solid basis on which the construction of explanations of process can be built. It would establish a kind of logical ordering of societal characteristics in the sense of determining which traits would tend to be prerequisites for the emergence of other traits. Carneiro has seen the potential fruitfulness of scale analysis for evolutionary theorizing quite clearly (1962:168): Suppose we were to find, for example, that in the evolution of societies slavery, confederacies, priests, human sacrifice, markets, monarchy, courts of law and the corvée consistently followed each other in that order. The very occurrence of this sequence, once recognized, would serve as a challenge to us to apply our knowledge of process and to formulate an explanation of that regularity. I am convinced, in fact, that one of the handicaps under which students of the evolutionary process have had to labor is that many developmental regularities—the raw materials for their theories and interpretations—still lie undiscovered or unrecognized. Since scale analysis is particularly well suited to reveal such developmental regularities, it should turn out to be an extremely useful adjunct to the student of the evolutionary process.

In actual attempts to scale societies and their traits, Carneiro (1968a, 1973c) has reported very good success. It is impossible to report the details

164 ✻ Chapter 8 of his results here, but he has carried out scale analysis with a large number of societies and traits and has produced scales with reproducibility coefficients well beyond the acceptable minimum. He believes this vindicates his concept of a basic unilinearism to cultural evolution, but of course in a weak rather than a strong sense of the term. Moreover, he suggests that such a weak unilinearism can now be slightly reformulated. As he says, “Instead of saying that societies tend to go through the same stages, we say that societies tend to evolve certain traits in the same order” (1973c:839).

Carneiro and Political Evolution Cameiro’s most important contribution to modern evolutionism is his theory of the evolution of chiefdoms and states. This part of his work has been highly praised, has had lasting significance, and, somewhat ironically, is not altogether consistent with his emphasis on complexity as the sine qua non of social evolution. Although he continues to mention the increasing complexity that accompanies chiefdoms and states, this takes a definite backseat to his other theoretical considerations. Carneiro’s theory of political evolution is most forcefully presented in his article “A theory of the origin of the state” (1970; see also Carneiro, 1981a, 1987). Carneiro proposes that the key process leading to the state is an ecological one that he calls environmental circumscription. Environmental circumscription exists when societies inhabiting a particular region are confronted with physical barriers to their further geographical expansion. The operation of circumscription can best be understood by looking at a situation in which it does not occur. The Amazon Basin of South America is a major area of uncircumscribed land. The horticultural tribes that have occupied this region of the world have generally remained at a level of political evolution well below that of the state. When confronted by population pressure, it was easy for villages to fission and for one group to move into previously unoccupied land. Thus expansion, rather than evolution, has characterized this region of the world. But in circumscribed zones the expansion of peoples has definite limits. After a point, expansion is no longer feasible because of such physical barriers as deserts, mountain ranges, or bodies of water, and thus village movement is not a possible solution to the problem of population growth. What occurs instead is warfare over land, and this warfare leads to the formation of more powerful and militaristic political systems. Villages begin conquering other villages and subordinating the conquered. Chiefdoms eventually form, but further population growth and warfare lead to the conquest of some chiefdoms by others, thus eventually producing states. As this evolutionary process continues, large empires may be formed out of the conquest of some states by others. Carneiro has also added a few wrinkles to this basic argument to give it a broader explanatory scope. He notes that circumscription may sometimes

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take the form of social circumscription. This occurs when the barriers to movement involve the presence of other societies rather than aspects of the physical environment. He also adds the notion of resource concentration as an occasional factor in political evolution. An area that is particularly abundant in plant and animal resources tends to attract many people to it and permits substantial population growth. When this growth reaches problematic proportions, movement out of the area may be blocked or at least made difficult by the presence of other groups (i.e., social circumscription is operating). Warfare and political conquest are thus predictable outcomes. Carneiro (1987) suggests that this kind of process has been responsible for the emergence of chiefdoms in uncircumscribed areas of Amazonia. It is important to note that Carneiro’s theory differs significantly from Service’s functionalist theory of political evolution. Carneiro stresses that his theory is an entirely coercive one that does not assume that people would give up their political autonomy voluntarily. In his view, except for those at the top, people clearly do not see the formation of more powerful political structures as in their interests, and thus Carneiro himself can hardly see it that way either. The circumscription theory is one of the most impressive theories of political evolution we have, and it has stood the test of time remarkably well (cf. Graber and Roscoe, 1988). It is surely Carneiro’s most important contribution to modern evolutionism, and it shows that he belongs firmly within the materialist tradition of evolutionary theorizing.1

Ideas, Individuals, and the Culture Process In his recent book The Muse of History and the Science of Culture (2000), Carneiro has tried to sum up and pull together the major strands of his work. It is a capstone work, integrating several decades of sustained thought. For the most part, the book is a response to those historians who claim that history is mostly a lot of noise signifying nothing; that there is no determined historical process; that history is made by individuals, especially—or perhaps only—by Great Men; and that human ideas are the prime movers of historical change. Carneiro also takes the bold step of formulating several laws of historical change. Carneiro’s argument against the causal role of ideas seems especially compelling. In his words (2000:141–142): What are we to say about something so obvious and indisputable as that ideas precede฀actions?฀Only฀that฀if฀it฀is฀actually฀meant฀to฀pass฀for฀analysis,฀it฀is฀analysis฀ of the most rudimentary and superficial kind. . . . Of course ideas precede actions! Nothing could be simpler or clearer. Even Marxists, generally regarded as allowing only material conditions into the pantheon of behavioral determinants, readily admit this. Engels, for instance, cheerfully conceded that “all the driving

166 ✻ Chapter 8 forces of the actions of any individual person must pass through his brain, and transform themselves into motives of his will in order to set him into action.” The real question is, what gives rise to the ideas that enter people’s minds and฀cause฀them฀to฀behave฀as฀they฀do?฀Where฀do฀these฀ideas฀come฀from?฀And฀ unless one is a dedicated Platonist, ideas are not uncaused causes. They emerge out of antecedent conditions.

As a materialist like Carneiro, I couldn’t agree more. Those who reject cultural idealism in the fashion of Carneiro also usually come down squarely on the nomothetic side of the idiographic-nomothetic debate, and Carneiro is no exception. While by no means denying that historical events are always in some sense unique, he insists upon a nomothetic understanding of history. To achieve this (2000:151), First, one must dissolve an event out of its specific space-and-time matrix and place it into a broader context, where it becomes a member of a general class of phenomena. Second, one must cast the net wide enough to gather as many comparable instances of the phenomenon as possible. What this second step implies is clear enough. If history is to be a science at all, it must be broadly comparative.

Some historians, Carneiro notes, have welcomed this approach; he mentions in particular William McNeill. But we cannot rely on historians alone to amass the amount of comparative data necessary for a true science of history. One must look to the anthropologist as well to find the needed reservoir of facts. From Carneiro’s perspective, the study of history must be the study of long-term social evolution. For Carneiro another name for the process of social evolution is the culture process. Here he is totally faithful to his Whitean heritage. The culture process is “the matrix of ever-changing and blending circumstances—with particular individuals assumed to be its agents but nonetheless left out of the equation” (2000:178). It is “the flow of culture . . . as a great unitary stream, embracing every cultural tradition, in all places and at all times” (2000:179). Although these assertions may seem innocent enough, as we will see below they are fraught with difficulties.

Laws of History In the penultimate chapter of Muse, Carneiro asks the question, Are there laws of฀history?฀He฀answers฀in฀the฀afirmative,฀and฀his฀inal฀chapter฀is฀an฀attempt฀ to formulate several such laws. A scientific law, for Carneiro, “is a statement of a strict regularity in the behavior of some element of nature” (2000:199). According to Carneiro, the first real historical law was his mentor Leslie White’s law relating cultural evolution to energy capture, but other anthropologists have also tried to formulate laws. George Peter Murdock (1949),

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for example, was able to formulate what Carneiro calls “statistical laws” of cultural development. These laws state the probability of a certain cultural pattern emerging if a certain trait or, more precisely, a certain combination of traits, is present. For example, Murdock showed that there is a very high probability—on the order of 80 to 90 percent—of lineal kinship terminology (which is the form used in the United States and other industrial societies today, as well as in many hunter-gatherer societies) being present if a society is also characterized by monogamous marriage, the isolated nuclear family, neolocal residence, and the absence of exogamous lineages or clans. And there is also, of course, Elman Service’s Law of Evolutionary Potential. But Carneiro, as one might well imagine, has formulated several historical laws of his own, three of which he presents in this last chapter. The first involves societal complexity as a function of population size. Carneiro formulates the relationship quantitatively and expresses it in terms of the mathematical formula N  p2/3 where N refers to the number of organizational traits a society possesses, p to its population size, and the exponent 2/3 to the rate at which the number of structural features it possesses increases as population increases. As an example, the Kuikuru, a horticultural tribe in the Brazilian rainforest, contained 145 people and had 11 structural traits, whereas the Ao Naga of northeast India had villages numbering approximately 600 people and 27 structural traits. Carneiro studied 40 ethnographic cases and found that this law held in all 40, whether small bands of about 15 members or multicommunity tribes of up to 2,000 members. A second law involves predicting the time it will take for chiefdoms to evolve from a set of autonomous villages. This is a function of W, the area of arable land within a circumscribed valley or island; C, the area required to provide the average person with the amount of food he or she normally obtains from agriculture over the course of a year; P, the total population of the valley or island; r, the average annual rate of population increase; and t (the unknown), the number of years needed for population growth to bring all cultivable land into production. This law is also expressed in terms of a mathematical formula, which is log W – log P C t= log (1 + r) Carneiro exemplifies this law as follows: Imagine a circumscribed valley of 64,000 acres, all of which are cultivable, that contains three villages each numbering 100 persons, for a total valley population size of 300. Imagine

168 ✻ Chapter 8 also that each person needs an average of .95 acres of land to feed himself or herself for a year, and assume a rate of population growth of 1 percent a year. Plugging these numbers into the formula, we get log 64,000 .95 – log 300 t=

log (1.01)

How long, then, does it take for this society of autonomous villages to evolve into฀a฀chiefdom?฀Solving฀the฀equation,฀the฀answer฀is฀544 years. Unfortunately, to this point Carneiro has not been able to evaluate this law empirically because he has not been able to locate the necessary data to do so. The only data at this point in world history would have to be archaeological. Despite not being able to locate such data, Carneiro is optimistic that eventually at least one archaeologist will be able to supply data for at least one circumscribed valley. Finally, Carneiro presents a law of cultural development using scalogram analysis. This law states that “the further apart two traits are in a general evolutionary sequence, the more likely it is that in any given society the two will have evolved in the same relative order. Conversely, the closer two traits are in a general evolutionary sequence, the greater the likelihood that this order might have been reversed in the way any given society developed them.” This law, it would appear, has been induced by the examination of a large mass of cross-cultural data. According to Carneiro, it is no more presumptuous to call this a law than to call Boyle’s Law of Gases a law. Both, he claims, are examples of statistical laws.

A Critique I find most of Carneiro’s ideas eminently reasonable and I am able to agree with most of them. I would endorse with special vigor his attempt to formulate laws of evolution in mathematical terms, exactly the right move for a nomothetic science of history. Nonetheless, there are some areas where I see difficulties. These concern a fundamental assumption underlying his employment of scalogram analysis, his insistence on limiting the conceptualization of social evolution to increasing complexity, his theory of political evolution, and his classical Whitean emphasis on culture as a process separate from individuals. It would appear that Carneiro’s use of scalogram analysis has done much to advance a powerful kind of evolutionary argument. For this reason it is somewhat surprising that scale analysis has not been employed more extensively by others. On the other hand there are some problems with scale analysis that need to be brought to light, and these may well account for its failure to be more widely developed. In the first place, there is a narrow

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conception of social evolution that is implied by scale analysis, viz., evolution as cumulation. Scale analysis makes it appear that evolution involves essentially a cumulative sequence of cultural development (a very Whitean notion, incidentally). Culture evolves by adding new characteristics to old ones. But this is a misleading notion, for cultural evolution is first and foremost a transformational rather than an additive process. In other words, societies do not evolve by simply piling new traits on top of old ones, but by developing new characteristics that drive the old characteristics out. Carneiro does recognize the noncumulative character of evolution when he says that “evolution is not only cumulative but also supplantive” (1973b:105). It is quite clear, though, that he thinks of the supplantive character of evolution as distinctly secondary to its additive character. This difficulty is compounded by a further one that actually involves a problem with Carneiro’s overall conception of evolution: his insistence on evolution as change in a direction of increasing complexity. This conception of evolution is at the heart, of course, of functionalist evolutionary views. Carneiro, though, is no functionalist. As we saw above, his theory of political evolution is a vigorous type of conflict theory. This makes it all the more remarkable that he insists so firmly upon an increasing complexity view of evolution.2 This tension in Carneiro’s work aside, what are the difficulties with the complexity฀concept?฀As฀noted฀in฀Chapter฀7, it is valid to say that increasing complexity is a prominent feature of social evolution. But, as suggested there, it is neither what is most important about evolutionary change nor central to explaining why evolution occurs. Some examples may suffice to explain what I mean. Take Carneiro’s discussion of the evolution of chiefdoms and states. Carneiro conceives of these forms of political organization in a way that makes each more complex than what preceded it. There is no need to quarrel with that, but why regard the level of complexity as the most important dimension฀of฀these฀forms฀of฀political฀organization?฀Chiefdoms฀are฀more฀complex฀ than tribes, but they also differ from tribes in that they concentrate power and authority in the hands of a small number of individuals who may use it against the mass of the population. Why not regard this latter characteristic, rather฀than฀the฀complexity฀one,฀as฀the฀crucial฀feature?฀The฀matter฀is฀similar฀ with respect to states. They are more complexly organized than chiefdoms, but they also have something chiefdoms lack, viz., the capacity to use repressive force to overcome most forms of rebellion against them. Again, why not regard฀this฀as฀what฀is฀evolutionarily฀central฀to฀them?฀In฀my฀view,฀the฀burden฀ is on those who claim so much for the dimension of complexity to provide a rationale for its evolutionary importance. I do not think they have been able to do so in terms that are acceptable, and unfortunately Cameiro falls into this same trap. (A partial exception may be found in the work of Jonathan Turner [1995, 2003], which is discussed in Chapter 9.) To take another example, consider a problem with which historical sociologists have been greatly concerned: the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

170 ✻ Chapter 8 Who would doubt that modern capitalism is a much more complex system of฀social฀life฀than฀the฀feudal฀system฀that฀preceded฀it?฀Yet฀why฀regard฀this฀as฀ the฀signiicance฀of฀the฀evolutionary฀transition฀from฀the฀one฀to฀the฀other?฀ I would think that the significance of this transition lies in the emergence of a fundamentally new mode of social and economic life, one in which very different principles of economic organization are at work. Certainly the complexity of modern capitalist society cannot be ignored, but the burden is upon those who proclaim such to say why this particular characteristic should be elevated to supreme importance. Finally, consider a different kind of evolutionary problem: that of explaining the evolution of the subsystems or institutions of societies themselves, a problem that Carneiro identifies as an important one. The gender arrangements of modern industrial societies, for example, differ substantially from those of earlier agrarian societies, but the notion of complexity would seem to be useless as a basis for comparison. If we look at family arrangements the problem becomes even worse, for it has long been recognized that the family patterns of modern industrial societies are generally much simpler than those of preindustrial societies. This kind of argument could be extended considerably, but it should be more than sufficient to make the point. What฀of฀Carneiro’s฀theory฀of฀the฀origin฀of฀the฀state?฀Although฀this฀is฀one฀ of the most impressive theories of state origins ever developed, I think it is missing an essential element. Carneiro’s central variables, of course, are population pressure, warfare, and environmental circumscription. While these are undoubtedly some of the key factors involved, there is an economic side to this process that Carneiro ignores. Recently I conducted several empirical analyses using data on preindustrial societies from Murdock’s (1967) Ethnographic Atlas (N = 1,267) and Murdock and White’s (1969) Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (N = 186) (Sanderson, 2001). With respect to the Atlas, three variables turned out to be highly correlated with a society’s stage of political evolution. Community size correlated .672 (Pearson r), class stratification .657, and subsistence type .525. Political stage and these three variables were entered into a multiple regression analysis, and together the independent variables explained 56 percent of the variance in political stage. Class stratification was the best predictor, followed very closely by community size. Subsistence type was a much poorer predictor than either of these. A similar multiple regression analysis was conducted for the Standard CrossCultural Sample. Here the independent variables were stratification, community size, population density, and subsistence type. All of the independent variables were moderately to strongly correlated with political stage, but community size and population density washed out completely when the other variables were partialed out. Subsistence type and stratification together explained 65 percent of the variance, with stratification explaining a clear majority of this. These findings suggest to me that political evolution is to a very large extent a matter of the struggle for wealth and power, a process

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not recognized by Carneiro. This puts Marxian-oriented theories into the picture as identifying a crucial part of the process of political evolution. This does not mean that Carneiro’s theory is wrong, just that the processes he identifies have to be reinterpreted. If warfare is a major part of the process of state evolution, and I suspect it is, then it should be seen as motivated by the struggle for wealth and power just as much as (and perhaps more than) the struggle for more land to feed more people. Finally, it is important to say something about Carneiro’s conception of the role of individuals in historical change. As an anthropologist, Carneiro wants to make culture a central, if not the central, concept. No surprise there, especially for one of Leslie White’s most accomplished disciples. But what is culture, what does it do, how is it formed, and how does it relate to individuals?฀For฀Carneiro,฀as฀for฀most฀other฀anthropologists,฀it฀seems฀to฀be฀ a disembodied entity with a life of its own. In Muse Carneiro tells us that to “grasp the causes of these great [historical] movements, it is not to individuals, with all their quirks and foibles, that we must look. Rather, it is to the flow of the culture process” (2000:223). Just before saying this, Carneiro asserted that “of course it is the actions of individuals that constitute the ore that the historian mines,” but that “the problem arises when we try to account for what human beings have done” (2000:222). And to account for individual actions Carneiro seems to be saying that individuals are simply the carriers of cultural forces. Somewhat later in Muse (2000:226–227) he says that cultural “forces act by penetrating the consciousness and wills of individuals, taking possession of them, and making their human vehicles feel that those great social ends toward which these forces are inexorably pushing them are their very own personal goals. . . . Being surrounded and possessed by his culture, imbibing it at his mother’s breast, the individual becomes its unconscious and willing tool.” Note the language—humans are but vehicles for, or unconscious tools of, cultural forces. Carneiro’s denial of any human agency to culture and cultural evolution strongly recalls Sumner and Keller’s similar denial, and thus shares the same defect. In Carneiro’s case, the crucial question is, Whence these฀cultural฀forces฀themselves?฀How฀did฀they฀come฀into฀existence?฀I฀do฀not฀ find an answer to this question in Carneiro’s latest writings because I do not think he feels it is a question that has to be answered. My own answer would be that cultural forces, which do indeed exist and are real enough, are created by individuals on the basis of their fundamental needs, goals, inclinations, tendencies, and so on, and within the context of the constraints imposed on them by their physical environment and by the cultural forces created by individuals in the past. This leads us in the direction of developing a concept of what individuals are like, of human nature, if you will. Carneiro does not want to go in this direction. But if we are truly to understand historical change in the hard-headed scientific sense Carneiro recommends, then I think that moving along this path is imperative.

172 ✻ Chapter 8

Marvin Harris’s Materialist Evolutionism Perhaps the most important theory of social evolution ever developed by an anthropologist is that of Marvin Harris. Like Carneiro, Harris has been greatly influenced by White, but he was even more substantially influenced by Julian Steward’s cultural ecology. His thinking also bears the unmistakable imprint of Marx and Engels, Harris having produced about as materialist a theory of social evolution as one can imagine. There are also clear elements of functionalism in Harris’s thinking, but these have almost nothing in common with Parsonianism. Indeed, it would be hard to think of a model of social evolution more antithetical to Parsonian evolutionism than Harris’s. For Harris, virtually everything about Parsonian sociology was anathema. In one sense the treatment of Harris as an evolutionary theorist may seem inappropriate, or at least a matter of misplaced emphasis. Harris (1968) has been severely critical of White for emphasizing the evolutionary character of his work rather than its materialist causal foundations, and he has shown great impatience with the debate between White and Steward over the appropriate level of generality of evolutionary formulations. He believes that the crucial question for anthropologists is not how much orderliness and pattern there is to historical change, but what kinds of causes one invokes to explain historical changes of all types, be they general or highly idiosyncratic ones. Moreover, he has asserted that White was quite wrong to characterize Boas as an antievolutionist. Not only did Boas accept a type of evolutionism, Harris asserts, but so did a number of other famous anthropologists who are usually classed as antievolutionists (or at least nonevolutionists), such as Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. As noted in Chapter 3, such comments seem confusing and disconcerting, coming as they do from a thinker famed for his commitment to anthropology as a rigorously scientific and nomothetic endeavor. But as also suggested at that time, this whole issue is really a tempest in a teapot because it is based on a very simple confusion that is easily resolved: that between evolution as an empirical process and evolutionism as a theoretical model of such an empirical process. Harris can only define Boas, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and others as having evolutionary outlooks because he defines an evolutionary outlook as one concerned with the process of evolution, and evolution for him is any structural transformation in a sociocultural system. It does not matter, he says, whether this transformation has occurred only once, a handful of times, or hundreds of times. This definition of evolution is perfectly sensible, but it does not follow that an evolutionary approach is simply one that is concerned with any sort of evolutionary process. According to the definition of an evolutionary theory adopted in Chapter 1, the absolutely minimal requirement for such a theory is the assumption of at least some general directional trends in history. From this point of view, Boas (at least the mature Boas) could not have been an

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evolutionist because he generally denied the existence of such trends and opted for an emphasis on the historically unique. Likewise, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown could not legitimately be considered evolutionists because they showed no concern with historical directionality. Ironically, despite his formal protestations about what does and does not count as an evolutionary perspective, Harris is clearly an evolutionist in our terms because of his strong nomothetic concerns. In a manner similar to Sahlins’s distinction between general and specific evolution, he has distinguished among parallel, convergent, and divergent evolution, and has insisted that parallel and convergent evolutionary processes are far more common than divergent ones. Parallel evolution involves the movement of societies along similar paths, while convergent evolution involves the movement of initially dissimilar societies toward increasingly similar structural patterns. Divergent evolution is characterized by increasing dissimilarity, and of course involves the production of unique social patterns. Thus it is highly misleading for Harris to have formally characterized an evolutionary outlook in the way that he has. What I think Harris means to say is that, contrary to White’s sterile distinction between evolution and history (and thus between evolutionary and historical analyses), nomothetic theories rooted in general evolutionary principles must also apply to historically unique events. And with such an argument, of course, there can be no disagreement. In fact, despite Harris’s strong attention to parallel and convergent evolution, he has also shown himself to be concerned with a large variety of divergent evolutionary phenomena. He has truly achieved a balance between the “universal” evolutionism of White and the “multilinear” evolutionism of Steward. Since Harris has insisted, though, that the really crucial question concerns the causes of all types of evolutionary changes, and since his main claim to fame rests on the way he answers this question, we need to examine the basic features of his general theoretical model before we can see how it applies to a range of evolutionary phenomena.

Harris and Cultural Materialism In numerous publications over some three decades, Harris has developed a comprehensive theoretical strategy to which he has given the name cultural materialism. The most explicit and detailed formal expositions of this strategy are to be found in The Rise of Anthropological Theory (“the RAT”) (1968) and Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (CM) (1979). In what may be his earliest formal statement of cultural materialism, Harris refers to the existence of a major theoretical principle that is “the analogue of the Darwinian strategy in the realm of sociocultural phenomena” (1968:4). This is the principle of techno-environmental and techno-economic determinism, and it (1968:4)

174 ✻ Chapter 8 holds that similar technologies applied to similar environments tend to produce similar arrangements of labor in production and distribution, and that these in turn call forth similar kinds of social groupings, which justify and coordinate their activities by means of similar systems of values and beliefs. Translated into research strategy, the principle of techno-environmental, techno-economic determinism assigns priority to the study of the material conditions of sociocultural life, much as the principle of natural selection assigns priority to the study of differential reproductive success.

From the time of the statement of this guiding theoretical principle until the end of the 1970s, Harris’s thinking underwent a certain amount of development, and so by the time of the publication of Cultural Materialism in 1979 we find a slightly different and more fully worked out conception of cultural materialism. Demographic variables, though not previously neglected, have now become a more explicit and important part of the cultural materialist research program. Sociocultural systems are explicitly trichotomized into infrastructural, structural, and superstructural components, a deliberate modification and elaboration of the Marxian distinction between base and superstructure. Infrastructure consists of not only a mode of production, but also a mode of reproduction. The mode of production includes subsistence strategies, technoenvironmental relationships, ecosystems, and work patterns. The mode of reproduction involves the production of human beings rather than the production of subsistence, and it includes mating patterns, demographic features of populations, modes of nurturing infants, and the technology of birth control and population regulation. The structure consists of what Harris calls domestic and political economy. The domestic economy principally involves age and sex roles and patterns of family organization, whereas the political economy involves modes of ownership of productive resources (essentially, Marxian relations of production), stratification patterns, patterns of political organization, and warfare and military organization. The superstructure includes art, music, ritual, sport, science, myths, symbols, philosophies, religion, and various other ideational phenomena.3 Having given us a kind of anatomy of sociocultural systems, Harris proceeds to reformulate his earlier principle of technoenvironmental and technoeconomic determinism as the principle of infrastructural determinism. This principle asserts that the flow of causation in social life runs mainly from the infrastructure to the structure to the superstructure. Less abstractly, this essentially means that the modes of production and reproduction have a kind of logical priority in the satisfaction of human needs and thus come to be established first; that these infrastructural conditions therefore provide the foundation upon which various types of domestic and political economies are erected; and that in turn these forms of domestic and political economy elicit various types of values, ideas, symbols, and rituals designed to interpret and reinforce the prevailing domestic and political arrangements. As a principle of evolutionary change, Harris’s principle asserts

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that changes tend to be initiated in the infrastructure and that these necessitate corresponding changes in structure and superstructure. Why฀does฀infrastructure฀have฀the฀causal฀importance฀it฀does?฀For฀Harris,฀ this has to do with the logical priority of infrastructural conditions, with the fact that they involve the most vital and fundamental of all human concerns: the production of subsistence and the reproduction of human life itself. As he puts it (1979:57): Infrastructure . . . is the principal interface between culture and nature, the boundary across which the ecological, chemical, and physical restraints to which human action is subject interact with the principal sociocultural practices aimed at overcoming or modifying those restraints. . . . [P]riority for theory building logically settles upon those sectors under the greatest direct restraints from the givens of nature. To endow the mental superstructure with strategic priority, as the cultural idealists advocate, is a bad bet. Nature is indifferent to whether God is a loving father or a bloodthirsty cannibal. But nature is not indifferent to whether the fallow period in a swidden field is one year or ten. We know that powerful restraints exist on the infrastructural level; hence it is a good bet that these restraints are passed on to the structural and superstructural components.

Harris has also been especially concerned in this later version of his work to defend himself against the charge of “vulgar materialism” hurled at him by such structural Marxists as Maurice Godelier (1972, 1977) and Jonathan Friedman (1974). Cultural materialism, he says, by no means entirely reduces the explanation of structure and superstructure to infrastructural conditions. The principle of infrastructural determinism applies probabilistically rather than in a strict one-to-one manner—to what occurs in the majority of cases and over the long run. Moreover, not only do structure and superstructure sometimes play active causal roles in the determination of social outcomes, but they are never to be viewed as mere epiphenomenal reflexes of the modes of production and reproduction. As Harris has said, “On the contrary, structure and superstructure clearly play vital system-maintaining roles in the negative feedback processes responsible for the conservation of the system” (1979:72). It is obvious that Harris’s cultural materialist strategy has strong affinities with both White’s and Steward’s evolutionisms and Marxian historical materialism. Harris’s trichotomous division of sociocultural systems and his notion of infrastructural causality strongly recall White’s division of sociocultural systems into technology, social organization, and ideology, as well as his technological determinism. However, Harris’s trichotomous distinction is considerably more elaborate than White’s, and his notion of causation is much less simple, involving as it does a range of material conditions in addition to technology. Technological change is as often a result of other evolutionary changes as a cause of them. The influence of Steward is most

176 ✻ Chapter 8 apparent in the emphasis on ecological conditions as primary causal forces. Steward’s multilinear emphasis is also apparent in the very substantial attention Harris gives to a whole range of divergent evolutionary phenomena. With respect to historical materialism, the key similarities should be obvious enough, and Harris has explicitly recognized his indebtedness to Marx by claiming that Marx’s materialist understanding of causation was his greatest intellectual contribution. But there are also a number of crucial differences between cultural and historical materialism, three of which deserve special note. First, it is clear that Harris’s notion of infrastructure is considerably broader than Marx’s. Harris’s mode of production includes ecological conditions and makes them key causal forces. While Marx did not fail to take note of such conditions and sometimes spoke as if they could be counted as forces of production, he hardly considered them in any systematic way. In addition, Harris’s entire concept of a mode of reproduction as a determinant of sociocultural structure and evolution not only has no counterpart in historical materialism, but Marx himself was openly hostile to such a notion. He regarded the Malthusian emphasis on population pressure as a cause of poverty as part of a reactionary ideology and referred to Malthus himself as “a baboon.” Second, Harris has transferred what Marx called the relations of production from the infrastructure to the structure (specifically, to the political economy), and by doing so he has attempted to explain variations in these productive relations in terms of various elements of the infrastructure. (Although, as we shall see, somewhat inconsistently Harris frequently speaks of “economic conditions” as principal causal forces in a manner that suggests he sometimes thinks of them as part of the infrastructure.) Finally, and to many Marxists most significantly, Harris has vehemently rejected the dialectical character of historical materialism. Its very worst feature, he declares, is its emphasis on Hegelian dialectical reasoning. The concept of dialectics is said to be mystical nonsense, and Hegel was a “monkey on Marx’s and Engels’s back.” In the hands of most Marxian dialecticians, the concept of dialectics usually refers to the “negations” or “contradictions” that exist within sociocultural systems and that cause them to change from one state to another. Harris suggests, however, that all societies always contain many features that can be identified by the terms “negation” or “contradiction,” and therefore it is crucial to identify which of these negations or contradictions is most important in producing changes within the system. But the concept of dialectics is such a rarefied philosophical abstraction that it is thoroughly incapable of providing the kinds of operational instructions necessary for identifying the most causally important contradictions (hence Harris’s characterization of it as “mystical nonsense”). As Harris puts it (1979:153): The problem for dialectical analysis, as much as for any causal explanatory strategy, is not merely to identify any contradictions (or stresses, malfunctions,

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deviations, amplifications, etc.) but to identify those which decisively determine the system’s future state. It is useless to be told as a generality that some components are more important than others. One needs to know which ones they are, and dialectics will not tell us whether infanticide has been a decisive factor in the evolution of modes of production. It will not resolve the question of whether males exploit females in pre-state societies; whether egalitarian redistributors were the structural base for the development of a ruling class; or whether irrigation agriculture promoted the evolution of oriental despotisms in the Middle East and China.

Moreover (1979:146), the name cultural materialists give to the process in which there is both discontinuity and continuity—in which a thing is both changed and not changed, is negated but affirmed, is destroyed but preserved—is evolution. To call such changes “dialectical” adds no additional information about evolutionary processes unless one is prepared to state some general principles by which dialectical negations can always be distinguished from other evolutionary “negations” (i.e., “transformations”). No one has ever succeeded in stating these principles.

One additional consideration needs to be explored with respect to Harris’s general theoretical principles. This concerns the charge, made by numerous scholars but especially by Godelier (1977) and Friedman (1974), that Harris’s cultural materialism is simply another version of functionalism. This charge may seem appropriate when we recognize that many of Harris’s explanations of sociocultural phenomena concentrate on their “adaptive” character, their functional rationality for the individuals who create them. Such a charge, however, is misplaced and reflects a failure to understand both the specifics of Harris’s arguments and the nature of functionalism itself. It is true, of course, that classically functionalist thinkers like Parsons have made the concept of adaptation central to their evolutionary formulations. But we need to recognize that the manner in which this concept is used in such formulations is strikingly different from the way Harris uses it. For Parsons, what adapts is a sociocultural system as a whole (or some subsystem of it). Harris, however, normally does not analyze adaptation from the standpoint of a sociocultural system as a whole, but only from the standpoint of the particular individuals who make up such systems. As he has said (1979:60), “The selection processes responsible for the divergent and convergent evolutionary trajectories of sociocultural systems operate mainly on the individual level; individuals follow one rather than another course of action, and as a result the aggregate pattern changes.” Harris’s whole concept of adaptation is actually informed by a thoroughgoing cost-benefit analysis (1979:61): “Cultural evolution, like biological evolution, has (up to now at least) taken place through opportunistic changes that increase benefits and lower costs to individuals.”

178 ✻ Chapter 8 This kind of methodological individualism is remote from the reifications of Parsons and the functionalists, and it is precisely the kind of analysis that is needed in order to uncover the kinds of societal conflicts and oppositions for which functionalism is highly unprepared. Indeed, Harris’s evolutionary analyses often contain precisely the kind of conflict emphasis that is associated with the Marxian tradition and that is so absent in functionalism. Furthermore, when Harris does appear to be analyzing a sociocultural phenomenon from the point of view of the society as a whole (which really means nothing more than from the point of view of all the people in it), it will be seen that the society in question is a small-scale, egalitarian society notably lacking structured forms of social domination and subordination.4 Moreover, in Parsonian functionalist evolutionism evolutionary changes are said to produce increasingly well-adapted societies (indeed, occur in order to produce such increases in adaptive efficiency). Harris, however, emphatically rejects this functionalist notion of social evolution generating “increased adaptive capacity.” Indeed, his analyses of general evolutionary trends often lead him to conclusions that are strikingly at odds with this kind of notion.

Harris’s General Evolutionary Model While RAT and CM contain Harris’s most important general theoretical statements, it is to his book Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (CK) (1977) that one must look to find his most important arguments that are explicitly evolutionary. In this book Harris offers a theory of sociocultural evolution that contrasts strikingly with the technologically oriented and progressivist views of Childe and White. As he says, his aim is “to replace the old onwards-and-upwards Victorian view of progress with a more realistic account of cultural evolution” (1977:x). For Harris, the essence of cultural evolution over the past 10,000 years lies in the need for the members of human societies to intensify their modes of economic production against the inevitable depletions and lowered living standards they confront. The intensification of production provides a solution to declining living standards, but it is at best only a partial and temporary solution. Eventually intensification leads to a new wave of depletion and declining standards of living, which in turn necessitates a new wave of intensification that is more vigorous than the previous one. This newer wave of intensification in turn produces yet further depletions, and thus there occurs an ever-continuing, spiraling process that is both selfperpetuating and self-defeating. Harris conceives of two different types of intensification. The first involves no changes in the technology of subsistence. In this case people work harder and longer and make more vigorous use of the basic resources of their environment within their existing technological framework. This may serve for a time to slow down the process of depletion, but eventually a point is

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reached at which production can no longer be usefully intensified without changing the technology. Technological change—the development of new tools, techniques, and production methods—then results as the only hope of staving off further depletions and ultimately catastrophic consequences. What sets off the process of depletion that necessitates these intensifying responses?฀The฀answer฀to฀this฀question฀depends฀on฀the฀particular฀time฀and฀ place and the type of society involved. For prestate societies, Harris believes that the main engine of depletion is population growth and subsequent population pressure. Given their limited birth control technologies, prestate populations are unable to prevent their populations from growing. Hunter-gatherers are able to control their populations through such techniques as prolonged nursing of infants (which tends to prevent ovulation) and infanticide, and horticultural and agricultural populations are known to make frequent use of infanticide in addition to less drastic means of birth and population control. But these methods only slow down the rate of growth, and techniques like infanticide impose psychological costs on people that they would otherwise wish to avoid. When population pressures eventually lead to levels of depletion that people find intolerable, they are prompted to develop new technologies that for a time will halt (and perhaps even reverse) the depletion. With a more productive environment, people are motivated to relax the constraints they have been placing on their fertility levels (e.g., reduced frequency of intercourse, infanticide), and thus technological advance leads to an increasing rate of population growth, and this in turn is destined to bring about a new wave of depletion. With the rise of civilization and the state this entire process is aggravated and made more complicated by the existence of severe forms of exploitation between dominant and subordinate classes, as well as severe forms of intersocietal competition and aggression. With the rise of modern capitalism and industrialism, massive technological intensification and depletion occur primarily as a result of the economic motives of capitalist ruling classes and the economic expectations of the materially acquisitive members of modern industrial societies. This intensification-depletion-renewed-intensification model5 is applied by Harris to numerous parallel, convergent, and divergent evolutionary phenomena over the past 10,000 years. With the model he attempts to account for such phenomena as the origin of agricultural modes of production, warfare and male supremacist institutions in band and village societies, the rise of economic and political hierarchies out of an earlier condition of equality, the origin of the state, the emergence of monotheistic religions of love and mercy, Aztec ritualistic cannibalism, Hindu cow love and Jewish-Moslem pig hate, the origin of hydraulic civilizations, and the origins of modern capitalism and industrialism. It would seem instructive to look at those particular arguments that seem most convincing and best documented. Ancient hunter-gatherers, Harris suggests, were surprisingly well nourished and led interesting and fulfilling lives. They worked little and had much

180 ✻ Chapter 8 leisure time. Under these conditions, they were not motivated to turn to an agricultural mode of production, even though they undoubtedly understood the rudiments of plant and animal domestication and thus could have become agriculturalists if they desired. What finally compelled them to do so beginning some 10,000 years ago, Harris claims, was population pressure in the context of a changing environment. The retreat of the glaciers had converted grasslands to forests, thus leading to the extinction of most of the big game animals on which these hunter-gatherers relied. The declining living standards resulting from these demographic and ecological changes necessitated the implementation of the agricultural knowledge that these hunter-gatherer communities already possessed. With the transition to early Neolithic communities, controls over population growth were relaxed and population pressures once again became severe in due time. This led horticultural societies to systematic forms of intervillage warfare as a means of producing more favorable ratios between population and the food supply, especially the supply of animal protein. With warfare a prominent feature of social and political life, male supremacist institutions arose. Exaggerating masculinity and denigrating the female sex, Harris claims, were means whereby societies dependent on warfare could train young boys to be highly militant, combat-ready warriors. The need to intensify production has also had definite consequences for the emergence of economic and political inequalities and social stratification. In many horticultural societies, ambitious economic and political leaders known as big men have arisen, and these individuals have played important roles as intensifers of production and the redistribution of economic surpluses. Such individuals lack the capacity to command others, and thus depend on their voluntary compliance. If production is intensified beyond a certain point, however, the relationship between economic and political leaders and the mass of the population comes to be inverted, and big men are transformed into chiefs—individuals who control the productive process and issue commands to their followers. With intensification carried to still higher levels, the conditions are set for the emergence of societies based on ruling classes and the state, and the earliest states emerged under conditions in which production was intensified and reintensified in circumscribed environments. Harris argues that the transition from the medieval feudal economy of Western Europe to a capitalist mode of production began largely as a result of the overintensification of the feudal system. Population growth in the late Middle Ages produced declining yields, and marginal lands were increasingly occupied and made cultivable. By the fourteenth century the feudal system had reached an ecological and demographic crisis that paved the way for the merchant class and the towns, which had been growing in importance all along, to begin gaining the upper hand and shift the system along more commercialistic lines. With the rise of capitalism, the stage was set for the

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development of an industrial form of technology that has now depleted the natural environment to a degree previously unimaginable.6 Two extremely notable features of Harris’s evolutionism involve his explanation for technological change and his antiprogressivism, the two being inextricably linked. For Childe and White, technological change was primarily driven by the acquisition of new knowledge, and this new knowledge allowed people to gain better control over their environment and, at least in some ways, improve their conditions of life. But for Harris, technological change is neither an uncaused cause nor a prime mover of social evolution. On the contrary, it is to a large extent an effect of other causes. Technological change is a form of subsistence intensification that occurs primarily when people have degraded their environments to such an extent that new technologies are the only thing that will save them from further declines in their living standards. It is not part of some sort of Parsonian “increased adaptive capacity,” because most of the time things actually get worse. The record of the past 10,000 years of sociocultural evolution is in many ways a record of retrogression—of greater workloads and less leisure time, of declining standards of living that reach their nadir in agrarian civilizations and parts of the contemporary Third World, of increasing economic and political inequalities, of the growth of various forms of oppression and exploitation, and ultimately of the possibility of ecological catastrophe and nuclear annihilation. Harris readily admits that major improvements have occurred with the shift to modern industrial and capitalist societies in the past century or two, but that is only a very short time in human history and prehistory. In my view, Harris’s evolutionism is the very best of the evolutionary approaches created by social scientists up through the 1990s. It is true to the spirit of the classical evolutionists—the creation of a “science of universal history”—but vastly improves upon their evolutionary schemes, causal assertions, and empirical claims (although it is very similar to, and in many ways further develops and extends, the evolutionism of Sumner and Keller). It incorporates much that is of value in classical Marxian evolutionism while at the same time abandoning that theoretical tradition’s most dubious features. Its sensible, hard-headed materialism, along with its resolutely antidevelopmentalist, antiteleological, and antiprogressivist character, make it a vast improvement over the Hegelianized evolutionism of Talcott Parsons and his followers.7 The most powerful rival of Harris’s evolutionism is that of Childe and White (and the major sociological follower of Childe and White, Gerhard Lenski [1970, 2005], whose work is discussed in Chapter 9), the tradition from which Harris himself descends. (I do not consider Carneiro’s evolutionism as a powerful rival, not so much because it is not powerful but because it is not especially a rival. Like Harris, Carneiro is a cultural materialist, and his evolutionism is much more similar to Harris’s than different.) But even here, as I have tried to show, Harris’s evolutionism shows itself to be far superior. Harris’s far broader and much more flexible materialist

182 ✻ Chapter 8 model of causation is clearly preferable to the narrow technological emphasis of Childe and White, and also to the limited ecological multilinearism of Steward. Harris’s evolutionism is also superior to Childe, White, and Steward in two other major respects: It thoroughly overcomes their dubious (and often highly confused) progressivist bias,8 and it continually demonstrates how an intelligent evolutionary theory attends equally to divergent and parallel/convergent evolutionary trends. Yet despite these important strengths, Harris’s evolutionism is obviously not without its defects, three of which most immediately come to mind. These involve its confusion of emic/etic modes of analysis with the empirical features of sociocultural systems (see note 3), its conception of the relationship between political economy and the material infrastructure, and its claim to apply its theoretical principles equally to both precapitalist and capitalist societies. Since the first of these problems is not concerned with Harris’s evolutionary arguments per se (being more an aspect of his general, abstract formulations), I shall discuss only the other two. One major way in which Harris distances himself from Marxism involves the removal of the Marxian relations of production from the material infrastructure and their placement in the social structure. The advantage of this, Harris argues, is that it allows for the explanation of variation in the relations of production themselves in terms of variations in technological, demographic, and ecological conditions. I believe that Harris is at least partly right to claim that economic and class relationships can be explained in such a way. However, his claim is much too strong, for it is often the case that variations in patterns of economic ownership and class relations determine the nature of productive technology, demographic arrangements, and modes of utilization of the environment. One only has to think, for instance, of such things as the responsiveness of fertility rates to economic incentives or disincentives; the fact that the industrialization of the Western world was carried out under the auspices of a capitalist class; and the extent to which many precapitalist ruling classes were opposed to many technological changes. Actually, Harris is well aware of such facts and often explains them in the way I am suggesting. Moreover, when speaking of the principal causal forces in sociocultural evolution he often includes “economy” along with technology, demography, and ecology. All of this can only mean that there is a serious ambiguity in his causal model. But in matters as crucial as these, the precise statement of causal arguments is absolutely essential. (The whole problem of the relationship of “economy” to infrastructure is discussed in more detail in Sanderson [2006a, 2006b].) These ambiguities are closely related to another difficulty: Harris’s claim to have developed an explanatory model that has equal applicability to all societies. Such a claim must be regarded with extreme skepticism. There seems to have occurred a major “evolutionary rupture” in the transition from precapitalist societies to modern capitalism, a major reordering of the

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evolutionary “rules of the game,” so to speak (Sanderson, 1994a, 1999b). This means that explaining evolutionary events after the rise of capitalism is quite a different matter from explaining them in the precapitalist world. Harris’s model seems far more useful in explaining precapitalist evolution. Although it can be fruitfully applied to the evolution of societies in the modern capitalist world, its demographic and ecological emphasis is not especially well suited to explain phenomena in which the role of political economy is overwhelmingly dominant. It is true that Harris does tend to shift his causal emphasis from demography and ecology to political economy when he analyzes modern capitalist societies (cf. Harris, 1981, 1992), and that he is well aware of the forces of economic dominance and dependency in the modern world-system. Yet his model does not give nearly enough emphasis to forces operating within the world capitalist system over the past 500 years to uncover certain critical features of contemporary social evolution.9 That said, however, it is no doubt an understandable and perhaps inevitable feature of evolutionary models developed by anthropologists that they are weakest with respect to explaining evolutionary transformations in capitalist and industrial societies. (Carneiro, for example, despite his excellent grasp of much of precapitalist social evolution [Carneiro, 2000], utterly fails even to address modern social evolution and claims himself unqualified to do so. And in his recent history of evolutionary theorizing [Carneiro, 2003], he totally ignores contributions made by sociologists except for a very brief mention.) Likewise, models developed by sociologists are usually not very impressive in their attempts to explain preindustrial and precapitalist evolutionary phenomena. The ideal, obviously would be to develop a more comprehensive model equally capable of handling precapitalist and capitalist evolution. Lenski (1970, 2005), Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997), and my own work (Sanderson, 1994a, 1999b) are efforts to produce such a model. In Chapter 9 I examine Lenski’s effort and that of Chase-Dunn and Hall, and in Chapter 12 I give a detailed presentation of my own effort.10

Coda: Marxian Alternatives to Anthropological Evolutionism With the staggering failure of Marx’s historical predictions, and the collapse of communist states under their own dead weight, Marxism has come upon extremely hard times. In this intellectual and sociopolitical milieu, Marxian theories of historical evolution have all but disappeared. Some of the best Marxian historical work is that of Perry Anderson (1974a, 1974b, 1992) and Geoffrey de Ste. Croix (1981). However, Anderson is a self-avowed antievolutionist, and de Ste. Croix’s work focuses only on antiquity. The only thing even close to Marxian evolutionism currently being undertaken by major scholars is the world-systemic evolutionism of Chase-Dunn and Hall (which, as noted above, we shall examine in Chapter 9) and the “global anthropology”

184 ✻ Chapter 8 of Ekholm and Friedman (2006) (cf. Blaut, 1993; Frank and Gills, 1993; Denemark, Friedman, Gills, and Modelski, 2000). But this work is a far cry from classical or even modern historical materialism. However, in the 1970s, before the sun had set on the Marxian revival of the 1960s, there was a Marxian alternative to anthropological evolutionism. Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst’s Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (1975) was a very notable example. Unfortunately, these authors not only opposed evolutionism, mistakenly equating it with a type of developmentalism, but even suggested that Marxism is not and should not be a historical social science. What is more, their stultifying Marxian structuralism of the Althusserian variety actually led them to “reject the notion of history as a coherent and worthwhile object of study” (1975:321). But there were Marxian anthropologists who did formulate evolutionary theories of historical change, foremost among them Maurice Godelier (1975, 1978) and Jonathan Friedman (1975; Friedman and Rowlands, 1978), the former a Frenchman and the latter an American who has spent much time at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. These thinkers developed their own versions of structural Marxist anthropology—somewhat problematic versions, but nonetheless versions well above the nadir sunk to by Hindess and Hirst. Godelier accepts the Marxian dictum that the infrastructure is determinant “in the final instance” but argues that infrastructure cannot be understood merely in technoeconomic terms. Infrastructure is a matter of a particular social function rather than a particular structure, and there are actually different kinds of social structures that can function as infrastructure. Although in modern capitalist society it is the economy that plays the role of infrastructure, in precapitalist societies such institutions as kinship, politics, and even religion can function as infrastructure. Since for Godelier the crucial aspect of infrastructure is the relations of production, this means that kinship, politics, or religion actually constitute the relations of production in most precapitalist societies, and that they determine the other features of social life. This theoretical stance is deemed highly preferable to that of Harris and the cultural materialists, who, as we have seen, are chastised for their “vulgar” or “mechanical” materialism. They are said to reduce the explanation of everything to the forces of production or to economics, thus failing to see the crucial causal importance of relations of production (and of the structures that function as relations of production). Although Godelier has endorsed a multilinear version of evolutionism, he has contributed little to it. He has carried out numerous interesting analyses of diverse patterns of social life, but there is little application of his structural Marxist notions to the explanation of evolutionary transitions, especially largescale ones. Jonathan Friedman, on the other hand, has done just that. In one of his earlier studies, Friedman (1975) has attempted to reinterpret the oscillation between gumlao and gumsa social forms among the Kachin of Burma (originally made famous by Leach [1954]) as a multilinear evolutionary

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phenomenon. In order to understand the evolution from gumlao to gumsa, Friedman distinguishes between dominance and constraint. Dominance is direct determination, but constraint is a negative determination only. A factor that constrains can only influence what cannot happen, but a factor that is dominant actually determines what will happen within the context of whatever constraints are operating. For Friedman, social relations of production are dominant, but the forces of production are constraining only. The evolution from gumlao to gumsa is most strikingly a shift toward a much more stratified society. According to Friedman, the impetus for this development is the increasing demand for surplus production on the part of gumlao big men, a demand that results from their growing desire for prestige. As surplus production increases, big men are gradually converted into hereditary chiefs of the type that characterize the gumsa social form. But at this point the forces of production begin to operate as constraints upon further development. Among the Kachin, the land is unable to tolerate high levels of productive intensification, and thus the movement from gumlao to gumsa has a built-in contradiction. The continuing demand of gumsa chiefs for more surplus cannot be met, and growing discontent on the part of the primary producers leads to revolts and the breakdown of the system. The system then reverts to its original gumlao form, where the conditions are restored for a new phase of the evolution from gumlao to gumsa. As Friedman puts it (1975:186), “Political breakdown is accompanied by a redispersal of the population that permits the regrowth of primary forest without which the high productivity necessary for political development would be unavailable.” The reestablishment of favorable economic conditions for a reintensification of production then generates a new cycle of hierarchy formation. Friedman argues that the gumlao-gumsa cycle is dependent on a relatively stable population, or at least the possibility of territorial expansion for growing populations. Where population pressure becomes a problem, however, a different evolutionary outcome is likely. Thus in areas adjacent to the Kachin, Friedman reports the existence of an evolutionary process that is unidirectional rather than cyclical and that has gone much further in the direction of hierarchization. Here the forces of production are less constraining than among the Kachin, and thus the constant demands for surplus lead to continuing evolution rather than a devolutionary collapse. True chiefdoms form and develop further in direct proportion to the ecological possibilities. In a later article written with Michael Rowlands (Friedman and Rowlands, 1978), Friedman has attempted to show how this latter sort of evolutionary process is actually what has been involved in the evolution of civilization in its major centers, especially in North China, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and Peru. Large territorial states developed “in techno-economic conditions where there is a combination of effective land scarcity plus the possibility of extreme agricultural intensification” (1978:234). And as local conditions

186 ✻ Chapter 8 varied, multilinear evolutionary trajectories occurred within a more general process of social evolution. For example, with respect to Mesopotamia (1978:250–251) “the ecological factors that curtailed . . . early developments in the Levant and Anatolia would appear not to have operated. . . . Here the possibilities of agricultural intensification with the development of irrigation raised the limitations on the fuller development of the evolutionary sequence.” Moreover, in Mesoamerica social evolution went further in the Highlands than in the Lowlands because (1978:259) the Highlands of Mesoamerica contained both the conditions for intensification of agriculture beyond swiddening (i. e., irrigation) and direct access to the raw materials needed for specialist craft production. In the competition between centres, the Highlands would have a decided advantage in the nucleation of population and the intensification of food production for the maintenance of large numbers of non–food-producing specialists.

The greatest state in prehistoric Mesoamerica prior to the Aztecs was Teotihuacán, and “the capacity for intensive food production at Teotihuacán was critical for the achievement of the degree of urban growth found nowhere else in Mesoamerica” (1978:260). In the Lowlands, the collapse of the Classic Maya was due in large part to the limits to agricultural intensification in the ecological conditions imposed by the tropical Lowlands. Another important feature of Friedman and Rowlands’s overall argument is the emphasis they give to “external relations” in social evolution. The basic unit of evolution is not so much the individual society because societies are linked over wide regions into larger networks, especially networks of economic exchange. These networks contain both “centers” and “peripheries” in which the latter supply the former with many of their necessary raw materials; however, areas peripheral at one time may become centers later on. And (1978:270; emphasis added): All this external exchange, which tempts us to signal the importance of the larger regional system, is not simply a fortuitous juxtaposition of local societies. . . . The development of states, the absolute increase in production and its growing differentiation, imply, from a very early period, the necessity of exchange over wider areas in order to maintain social systems. The precise kinds of needs, the use to be made of imports, etc., are of course dependent on the structures that develop within societies, but the larger network is the condition of reproduction of that local system and can have a strong selective effect on internal structures.

In collaboration with Kajsa Ekholm, Friedman (1982; Ekholm and Friedman, 1982) later made this emphasis on larger regional networks, or “precapitalist world-systems,” the centerpoint of his work, and it became

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the basis for Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall’s development of a full-blown world-systemic theory of long-term social evolution. It is primarily in this way that this particular version of Marxian evolutionism has stayed alive and been played out.11 But to return to the main thrust of Godelier and Friedman’s structural Marxism, a number of critical points need to be made. First, the claim that infrastructure and superstructure refer to functions rather than structures, and thus that such phenomena as kinship and religion can be either infrastructure or superstructure, is extremely questionable, either as faithful to Marx or as a logical viewpoint in its own right. The whole argument is based on a very simple confusion. When Godelier insists that in many precapitalist societies kinship is dominant (and thus functions as relations of production), he is obviously basing his conclusion on the great importance given to kinship in such societies. But what Godelier should have concluded is that kinship is the context within which relations of production operate, not that kinship relations are relations of production. Relations of production, or, more simply, modes of economic ownership of productive forces, can still be analytically separated from kinship and described in their own terms. Indeed, they must be, and so must the other institutional sectors of precapitalist societies even though they may be undifferentiated from each other as well as from kinship relations. The alternative is to conclude that precapitalist societies consist of kinship and nothing else, for kinship thoroughly permeates all social relations. For example, since kinship relations are the kinds of relations through which religious ritual operates, do we then want to say that kinship functions as religion?฀Obviously฀not. The claim that relations of production are determinative, and productive forces only constraining, is also highly dubious. Any intelligent analysis of evolutionary transitions should concentrate on showing how both relations and forces interact in various ways in producing evolutionary events. In some cases—modern capitalism, for example—relations may take priority, and in other cases forces, but this is a matter for empirical study rather than for blanket assertion. In addition, to give all the weight to productive relations begs the question as to how such relations emerge in the first place. Godelier and Friedman have little to say on this obviously crucial matter, and their analyses of the role of productive relations often border on idealism (Harris, 1979; Berger, 1976). For example, Friedman suggests a certain “logic” within tribal relations of production to increase surplus production, but we are never told why such a logic exists (except for a vague reference to “fetishism”). These criticisms aside, in important respects structural Marxism converges with cultural materialism and thus can make important contributions to evolutionary analysis (Moseley and Wallerstein, 1978; Harris, 1979). Harris has shown that many of Godelier’s substantive analyses, especially his interpretation of Australian section systems and various aspects of band society, closely

188 ✻ Chapter 8 parallel cultural materialist analyses. Furthermore, Friedman’s treatment of important evolutionary phenomena stresses many of the same variables that cultural materialists emphasize, especially population pressure, environmental degradation, and the possibilities (or lack thereof) within particular ecological settings for productive intensification. Thus, as Harris has suggested, the structural Marxists often “reveal themselves as cultural materialists in spite of themselves” (1979:231).

Notes 1. However, his materialism is a noted departure from the technological determinism of Childe and White and, as we shall see shortly, actually converges with the cultural materialism of Marvin Harris (cf. Carneiro, 1974). 2. Actually, Carneiro does have one foot squarely placed within the functionalist camp and accepts a number of its basic assumptions. This is not surprising for a theorist who explicitly views himself as working in the evolutionary tradition of Herbert Spencer. This means that Carneiro’s thinking is rooted in two mutually antagonistic theoretical camps. However, I would make two points about this tension in Carneiro’s work. First, I would claim that Carneiro’s functionalism is a rather watered-down version that largely avoids this theoretical tradition’s most unacceptable features. Second, I think that the functionalism that is there is clearly playing second fiddle to a conflict view of social evolution. At least this is the aspect of his work that I find most interesting and worth building on. 3. For the sake of simplification, and because it is not directly related to Harris’s explicitly evolutionary concerns, I shall ignore what I believe is the severe and highly unnecessary confusion that Harris creates by mixing together his emic/etic distinction with his categories of infrastructure, structure, and superstructure. I address this problem in more detail in a recent paper (Sanderson, 2007a), but suffice it to say here that Harris has confused an epistemological approach to the study of social life (emics versus etics) with the substantive features of social life (infrastructures, structures, and superstructures). This is especially ironic in view of the fact that Harris himself once warned against such confusion (cf. Harris, 1968). 4. It must be acknowledged that in much of his earlier work, Harris often engaged in certain kinds of functionalist reasoning. In RAT Harris refers to Marx and Engels as practicing a sort of “diachronic causal functionalism,” a mode of analysis he claimed was unobjectionable. In the same work we also find Harris endorsing certain non-Marxian modes of functionalist theorizing. And in a number of his substantive analyses, Harris resorted to “group selectionist” reasoning. For example, in Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches (CPWW) he heartily embraced Roy Rappaport’s (1967) hyperfunctionalist analysis of Maring warfare, which stressed the “equilibrating” or “self-regulating” character of social systems. Harris also explained primitive warfare, infanticide, Northwest Coast potlatching, and the incest taboo in functionalist or group selectionist terms. Warfare is adaptive at the group level because it creates “no-man’s lands” that help maintain the supply of animal protein at a higher level; infanticide is a population-regulating mechanism that operates at the group level; the potlatch was a mechanism for redistributing and equalizing resources throughout

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large regions; and the incest taboo was invented in order to minimize intrafamily conflict, an old functionalist argument that most anthropologists have endorsed and that goes back at least as far as Malinowski in the early twentieth century. Yet even though Harris continued to advocate certain forms of functionalism throughout his career, his own functionalist analyses have been far removed from Parsonian functionalism, with its societal needs, teleology, etc. Moreover, even though many of Harris’s early analyses were synchronic in nature (as functionalism normally is), there was a pronounced shift to a more diachronic mode of analysis in his later work (note, for example, how he eventually supplemented his early synchronic analyses of Hindu cow worship with diachronic analyses). And, despite his continued endorsement of group selectionist explanations for specific phenomena, for the most part Harris abandoned this kind of thinking and replaced it with methodologically individualist cost-benefit analysis in his later work. The critical turning point seems to have been sometime between CPWW (1974) and CK (1977). 5. No reasonably alert reader can have failed to notice that this model has a strikingly “dialectical” quality about it, and it is inconceivable that Harris himself has overlooked this. But what is important about the model is not simply that it assumes the existence of “contradictions” or “negations” that create continual evolutionary modifications. What is important is that Harris has avoided the abstract language of the dialecticians and actually identified the specific “contradictions” he believes to be responsible for fundamental social transformations. 6. See Harris (1979:77–114) for an extensive summary of the scope of application of his cultural materialist approach. 7. I have failed to find even a shred of evidence that Harris subscribes to some sort of teleological or developmentalist conception of sociocultural evolution. Indeed, how could he and still maintain the view that in sociocultural evolution things change more฀often฀for฀the฀worse฀than฀for฀the฀better?฀Furthermore,฀my฀discussion฀of฀Harris’s฀ materialist conception of causality should make it crystal clear that his epistemology is precisely the type of ordinary causal one identified by Mandelbaum as essential for the satisfactory explanation of any observed evolutionary trends. 8. Harris’s evolutionism is not only antiprogressivist, but is perhaps the only clearly antiprogressivist evolutionary model ever developed. This does not mean that Harris thinks that things never change for the better. Indeed, he acknowledges that sometimes and in some ways they do. But this is not a simple and automatic result, as it is in many (perhaps most) other evolutionary theories, of the adoption of technoenvironmentally more efficient production methods. 9. Marvin Harris died in 2001, two years after publishing his last book, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times (Harris, 1999). There is nothing new in it in terms of a general theory of social evolution, but there are some nuggets. The only chapters at all pertaining to the issue of social evolution are those on science and objectivity, biology and culture, the current status of cultural materialism, postmodernism, a critique of my own theory of the emergence of capitalism in both Europe and Japan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In my view the most problematic part of this book is Harris’s treatment of the relationship between biology and culture. I have long been one of a growing number of social scientists who argue that cultural materialism and sociobiology are highly compatible and can be synthesized. Indeed, I would argue that cultural materialist explanations make sense only in light of sociobiology. Harris stresses that it is the

190 ✻ Chapter 8 pursuit of wealth and power rather than reproductive success that explains many features of cultural systems, but he fails to realize that the acquisition of wealth and power is essential to reproductive success in most societies. Harris’s proximate explanations require sociobiology’s ultimate explanations. I thought I had detected some movement of Harris over the past twenty years toward grasping this point, but apparently I was wrong, for Harris’s antibiological warheads are on full alert in this book. He repeats many of his original criticisms and continues to show that his understanding of what the sociobiologists are actually saying is meager. Much of what he says is, in fact, completely irrelevant to sociobiological claims. With Lawrence Kuznar, I have edited a book that is a critical assessment of Harris’s cultural materialism (Kuznar and Sanderson, 2007). My own lengthy chapter in this book, “Marvin Harris, meet Charles Darwin: A critical evaluation and theoretical extension of cultural materialism” (Sanderson, 2007a), provides many additional criticisms of Harris. I also show in some detail how his ideas can be synthesized with Darwinian evolutionary social science (a summary of a much longer argument found in Sanderson [2001]). Other chapters in this collection directly pertinent to questions of social evolution are James G. Peoples, “Materialist particularity in nuclear Micronesia: A pre-postmodernist theory of cultural evolution”; Alan R. Sandstrom, “Cultural materialism, rational choice, and the problem of general ethnography: Marvin Harris and the struggle for science in anthropology”; P. Nick Kardulias, “Linking past and present: Cultural materialism, archaeology, and the medieval transition in the Aegean”; Lawrence Kuznar, William Frederick, and Robert Sedlmeyer, “The effect of nepotism on the evolution of social inequality”; James Dow, “Coevolutionary materialism”; Robert Carneiro, “What role does population pressure play in the evolutionary฀dynamics฀of฀Marvin฀Harris?”;฀and฀David฀Kennedy,฀“Evolutionary฀materialism฀ and Darwinian conflict theory: A critical analysis of Stephen Sanderson’s extensions of cultural materialism” (and see my reply to Kennedy [Sanderson, 2007b]). I urge interested readers to consult these papers. 10. In anthropology the most recent major evolutionary work is that of the cultural anthropologist Allen Johnson and the archaeologist Timothy Earle, The Evolution of Human Societies (1987; 2nd ed. 2000). The authors’ overall evolutionary model closely resembles both Harris’s and Carneiro’s. The evolutionary process is driven by population growth and consequent environmental degradation and technological intensification. With intensification comes the shift to increasingly stratified and hierarchical societies. The authors conceive of three major stages of evolution. The first, the family-level group, consists of populations in which the basic economic unit is the family. People may survive by hunting and gathering, by simple forms of horticulture, or perhaps by a combination of the two. Population pressure in family-level groups leads eventually to the formation of local groups, where groups of families combine into villages and lineages and clans become important organizing principles. These societies are either acephalous or, at most, are led by big men. The highest stage is the regional polity, which consists of truly hierarchical societies ranging all the way from simple chiefdoms of 1,000 members, to complex chiefdoms of up to 100,000 members, to states governing millions. There has long been a debate as to whether powerful leaders and complex polities emerge because higher levels of integration are needed to manage the affairs of society—the integration perspective—or whether powerful leaders are self-aggrandizers who exploit and prey on those below—the conflict view (Haas, 1982). Johnson and

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Earle conclude that both views are correct, and thus that both things are happening in social evolution. I am more inclined to focus on the self-aggrandizing side of things, but the integration side cannot be ignored. There is little that is new in Johnson and Earle’s contribution, with the exception of their three-fold typology. Much of their understanding of premodern social evolution seems to me to be about right, but their typology is not an improvement over what has come before it. Indeed, it seems to be a regressive move, because they incorporate into a single level, especially the regional polity, societies that differ enormously in scale and size, despite the similarities. At the very least, chiefdoms and states need to be distinguished, because in the latter political leaders have a monopoly over the means of violence, whereas in the former they do not. The consequences for subordinated classes are quite different in each case. Attention should also be called to the work of Robert Bates Graber. In his book A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution (1995), Graber, an avid follower of Carneiro, attempts to develop a theory of social evolution in highly mathematical terms. This theory makes population pressure the “prime mover” of evolution. I myself had some difficulty with all of the mathematical formulas, but more mathematically inclined social scientists who are interested in social evolution should consult it. 11. Ekholm and Friedman have continued this line of thinking in their Global Anthropology (2006), but that book was still in press at the time of this writing and thus a discussion of it could not be included here.

Chapter Nine

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his chapter returns to the discussion of the sociological revival of evolutionary theorizing begun in Chapter 7, looking first at the materialist evolutionary theory of Gerhard Lenski. It then turns to the evolutionary sociology of Jonathan Turner and Alexandra Maryanski, who have generated a similar materialist approach to social evolution but with some interesting new twists. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall, whose work is discussed next, continue in the materialist evolutionary tradition, but make a radical departure in taking world-systems rather than individual societies as their basic unit of analysis. They follow in the tradition of world-systems analysis developed by Immanuel Wallerstein. Finally, we recross the Atlantic to examine very briefly the evolutionary theories of the German sociologists Niklas Luhmann, Jürgen Habermas, and Klaus Eder. They follow in the Parsonian evolutionary tradition, but with some significant modifications.

Gerhard Lenski’s Ecological-Evolutionary Theory Although Gerhard Lenski is professionally identified as a sociologist and has long been recognized as one of that discipline’s leading thinkers, his ideas bear the unmistakable imprint of anthropological influences. Lenski owes most to the mid-twentieth-century architects of the evolutionary revival, Childe and White in particular. As a sociologist who came of age during the period when Talcott Parsons dominated sociological theory, Lenski’s ideas unsurprisingly reflect some elements of Parsonian functionalist evolutionism. This aspect of his thinking, however, is clearly subordinate to the materialism of Childe and White. 192

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 193 Lenski’s first work from an evolutionary perspective was Power and Privilege (1966). This book, a landmark in sociological theory, was an effort to develop a general theory of social stratification by drawing extensively on ethnographic, historical, and sociological data from a wide range of societies. Buoyed by the success of this work, Lenski went on to elaborate and develop more thoroughly many of the evolutionary ideas in it, some of which were more implicit than explicit. With the publication four years later of Human Societies (1970), Lenski established himself as a major evolutionary theorist. This book has been revised numerous times, with coauthors added, and a tenth edition is now in print (Nolan and Lenski, 2006). Although Lenski has tinkered here and there and revised his thinking with respect to various details, and although he has changed the theory’s name from (plain old) evolutionary theory to ecological-evolutionary theory, the fundamentals of the basic model remain largely unchanged. I shall first look at the classic theory as it was formulated in 1970 and compare Lenski’s evolutionism to both Parsons’s and Harris’s. Then I shall examine the revisions and updates that Lenski has made over the years.

Lenski’s Basic Theory Lenski has been especially insistent on developing an evolutionary theory of human societies that has close parallels with evolutionary theory in biology. Theories of biological evolution, he suggests, must deal with four basic phenomena: biological continuity, innovation, extinction, and evolution. A theory of sociocultural evolution must then identify and try to account for the processes of continuity, innovation, extinction, and evolution as they occur within human societies. Sociocultural continuity is, of course, the maintenance of the basic fabric of a society over time, and it occurs primarily through the socialization process. Sociocultural innovation is the introduction of new social or cultural elements through invention, discovery, or diffusion. Sociocultural extinction occurs at two levels, what Lenski calls intrasocietal and intersocietal selection, and these selection processes are claimed to be directly analogous to natural selection. Intrasocietal selection is a process whereby particular elements within societies are selected as a result of human choices and actions. Intersocietal selection occurs when some societies prevail over others, most commonly through military means. Finally, we have sociocultural evolution, obviously the most important phenomenon to be accounted for by an evolutionary theory. For Lenski, evolution is that process whereby human societies increase their capacity to mobilize energy and information in adapting to their environments. The influence here of Leslie White is unmistakable. Lenski points to several significant differences between biological and social evolution, such as the lack of any biological counterpart to the process of cultural diffusion, or the fact that biological evolution can never occur in the conscious or deliberate manner that often characterizes social

194 ✻ Chapter 9 evolution. Yet the parallels between the two forms of evolution are clearly of considerably more interest to Lenski, and so much so that he suggests that “sociocultural evolution is, in essence, an extension of the process of organic evolution” (1970:60). Four basic similarities between biological and social evolution are stressed. In the first place, genes have a strict analogue in human populations, these being symbols and symbol systems. Like genes, symbols store and transmit information relevant to the process of adaptation to the environment. Second, human societies are the functional analogue of species. Third, the processes of continuity, innovation, and extinction are basic to both forms of evolution. And finally, social and biological evolution are both complex processes of long duration that are “characterized by the progressive emergence of organizations which possess ever greater capacities for the mobilization of energy and information (1970:61). Lenski has taken pains to dissociate himself from any sort of unilinear evolutionism, and this leads him to make another comparison between social and biological evolution. Lenski closely follows Sahlins in asserting that, like biological evolution, social evolution has both specific and general dimensions. Specific evolution, it will be recalled, is the process whereby societies radiate along many lines. General evolution, on the other hand, is the overall movement of societies along a continuum, which for Lenski is the increasing capture of energy and information. Despite his acceptance of this distinction, however, it is clear that Lenski is mainly interested in the latter evolutionary process, for this is what dominates his writings. Not only is there an overpowering concern with progress in his work—indeed, virtually an equating of the concepts of evolution and progress—but again and again we find Lenski referring to “the” evolutionary process. This kind of emphasis in his work has even led some scholars, other evolutionists included, to suggest that Lenski’s theory is a type of developmentalism. Gertrude Dole, for instance, has cited Lenski’s statement that “there is an inner dynamic within human societies that prevents them from becoming completely stable” (1970:80; cited in Dole, 1973:259). Along similar lines, Lenski has commented that the course of societal evolution is “indicated by its inner characteristics” (1976:555). However, once one places Lenski’s phrases “inner dynamics” and “inner characteristics” within their proper contexts it becomes quite clear that he is not referring to any sort of transcendent process that drives social evolution from beginning to end. With respect to the phrase “inner dynamic,” he simply means that humans are curious creatures with strong exploratory inclinations, and that these inclinations inevitably lead them to discoveries, inventions, and innovations that alter social and cultural patterns. In regard to “inner characteristics,” it is obvious that all Lenski intends is “that characteristics of a variable, or of a system, at one time have consequences for its characteristics at some later time (1976:555).

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 195 It makes little sense, then, to associate Lenski with the doctrine of developmentalism. In point of fact, his evolutionism is predicated upon an ordinary causal conception of evolutionary change that is stated in the most direct and฀unambiguous฀terms.฀On฀what฀kind฀of฀causal฀conception฀does฀he฀rely?฀ Lenski has adopted White’s tripartite division of societies into technology, social organization, and ideology, and has claimed technology as the principal determinant of the other components. Technology is far more likely than the other societal components to be an autonomous source of change, he says, and when technological changes occur they exert strong pressures on the other components to change correspondingly. The nature of these changes in social organization and ideology are many and varied, but Lenski points to five that he regards as especially important. First, technological advance generates a more efficient utilization of the environment and this leads to a growth in population. Second, technological advance allows for more permanent and elaborate settlement patterns. Third, increasing technological capacity allows for a general increase in a society’s economic productivity and therewith the possibility of greater economic and political inequalities. Fourth, increasing technological sophistication fosters increased societal differentiation and specialization. Finally, accompanying technological advance is a general increase in the amount of leisure time people have, and this time can be put to use in various noneconomic activities that lead to the elaboration of nonmaterial culture. Lenski has steadfastly rejected the label technological determinist, but it is clear that the operative word is determinist, not technological. For Lenski, determinism is something of a dirty word because he thinks it implies a complete causal determination by one factor. He stresses that his model of causation is probabilistic rather than deterministic. By and large, he is faithful to this model, but it is clear that he gives much greater causal weight to technology and technological change than to any other factor. He says so outright in numerous places, but it is also highly apparent from his evolutionary classification scheme. The system that Lenski settled upon at an early point and has never modified at all is a slightly reworked version of a typology developed by Walter Goldschmidt (1959), who based his own typology on Morgan’s nineteenth-century scheme. Lenski’s scheme categorizes societies according to their mode of subsistence technology and recognizes four major types of societies: hunting and gathering, horticultural, agrarian, and industrial. Hunting and gathering societies depend for their existence on the hunting and trapping of wild game and the collection of wild plant foods. They have no agriculture, or have developed it in only a rudimentary way. Two types of hunting and gathering societies are distinguished. Simple hunting and gathering societies have as their best weapon only a wooden spear, but advanced hunting and gathering societies have acquired both the spear-thrower and the bow and arrow. Horticultural societies depend on cultivation and often on domesticated animals, with the land being cultivated in the form of gardens using hand

196 ✻ Chapter 9 tools. These societies are also divided into simple and advanced types. Simple horticultural societies have no metal tools and the wooden digging stick is the basic cultivating implement. Advanced horticultural societies are those that have acquired metal tools, especially the hoe, for cultivation. Agrarian societies also depend upon agricultural methods for their subsistence, but their members cultivate large fields rather than small garden plots, and the land is cultivated through the use of the plow and draft animals. Again we see a division into simple and advanced subtypes, with simple agrarian societies lacking iron tools and weapons and advanced agrarian societies possessing them. Finally, Lenski speaks of industrial societies, which have evolved to energy and information levels far beyond anything previously seen on earth. Specifically, industrial societies have substituted machine power for human power in the work process and are characterized by the factory system and mass production. In addition to these major societal types, Lenski identifies several minor types. These include fishing societies, nonagricultural societies that specialize in fishing rather than hunting; herding societies, or those that specialize in animal tending in dry environments not well suited for agriculture; and maritime societies, or those that have specialized in seafaring commercial trade, such as the ancient Phoenicians. A central aspect of Lenski’s evolutionism is his emphasis on the progressive character of social evolution. Indeed, Lenski’s definitions of progress and evolution are almost identical. These involve, as we have already seen, the increasing capacity of societies to mobilize energy and information in adapting to their environments. Lenski makes it clear, though, that the conception of progress he advocates is not to be confused with progress in the realms of human happiness and morality (1970:69–70): Many people challenge the thesis that there has been progress in human history. They insist that it is impossible to show that modern man is happier or more moral than his prehistoric ancestors. This is a serious misunderstanding, however, of what modern evolutionists mean by progress. When evolutionists use this term today they are referring primarily to technological advance, and secondarily to certain other very specific and limited forms of organizational and ideological advance that are by-products of technological advance.

If progress consists, then, primarily of technological advance, what does such advance bring in its wake that allows us to say that a more efficient form of฀societal฀adaptation฀has฀been฀achieved?฀In฀essence฀we฀have฀already฀answered฀ this question in mentioning what Lenski regards as the most significant consequences of technological change. With technological advance, people need not work as hard or as long and thus have more leisure time to devote to activities that promote important developments in the realm of nonmaterial culture (e. g., art, religion, political administration). Furthermore, the more efficient use of the environment that accompanies technological

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 197 advance allows population to grow, and this population increase can have positive consequences for further technological advance simply because it increases the number of people available to make inventions and discoveries. Because technological advance increases a society’s overall level of economic productivity, especially the size of its economic surplus, the possibility also exists for creating new organizational forms that themselves increase the overall level of societal functioning. However, even though Lenski does attempt to define progress in an ethically neutral way, he cannot resist the temptation to ask whether or not technological progress has in fact led to ethical progress. Does technological฀progress฀lead฀to฀greater฀freedom,฀justice,฀morality,฀and฀happiness?฀His฀ answer is somewhat complicated. Taking freedom first, Lenski reminds us that it can refer to more than just political freedoms or individual autonomy. It also involves freedom from the limitations imposed by nature and a rudimentary technology. In this sense, hunter-gatherer societies have been the least free, and freedom has been increasing with the shift to horticultural, agrarian, and industrial societies. But with respect to political freedom the matter is somewhat different. Here the evolutionary history of freedom appears to be curvilinear, declining with the development of horticultural and agrarian societies but increasing dramatically with industrialization and the democratic revolution that has followed in its wake. As for justice, Lenski sees a long-term, if erratic, trend toward increasingly formal and impersonal systems of justice that have had positive consequences for individuals. In hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies lacking any formal mechanisms of social control or dispute resolution, retribution for perceived wrongs were constant and often led to prolonged feuds. But gradually formal mechanisms of social control appeared involving codes and laws, courts, and adjudication of alleged wrongdoings by disinterested third parties. As in the case of political freedom, Lenski sees the relationship between technological advance and morality as curvilinear. With the shift to horticultural societies, warfare increased, and with the emergence of agrarian societies there were “new forms of military savagery—plundering, burning, and raping of conquered communities, for example—and battles themselves became more deadly” (1970:475). Moreover, “as class differences within societies became more pronounced, immorality in intragroup relations increased. The history of every agrarian society is replete with instances of exploitative and brutal treatment of the lower classes” (1970:475). But with the development of industrial societies, many of the forms of cruelty common in agrarian societies have been eliminated, and people enjoy much greater physical safety and material well-being. Even here, though, new forms of cruelty have emerged—germ warfare, napalm, gas chambers, and nuclear bombs.

198 ✻ Chapter 9 In terms of happiness, Lenski points out that the enormous extension of the lifespan with industrialization has undoubtedly contributed to an increase in happiness. He also sees happiness as being correlated with the quantity of goods and services people are able to consume, and thus industrialization has been positive in this sense as well. But this does not mean that people in the past were unhappy, and in the end what counts most in terms of material possessions is the degree of inequality in their distribution. Invoking the classic sociological concept of relative deprivation, Lenski avers that unhappiness stems primarily from individuals’ having much less than those they see around them on a regular basis and thus can compare themselves directly to.

A Critique Lenski’s theory is a dramatic improvement over the idealist evolutionism of Parsons. There are, however, some difficulties that cannot be overlooked, three of which seem most important. The most serious concerns Lenski’s conception of evolutionary causation. Although Lenski recognizes other causes of social evolution, in particular ecological and demographic factors, it is clear that technological change is social evolution’s prime mover. Lenski devotes a great deal of attention to showing empirically the strong associations between modes of subsistence technology and various elements of social organization and ideology, and he is frequently concerned to explain why these associations should prevail. Unfortunately, he is seldom able to demonstrate the actual causal role of technological advance. This is quite evident throughout Human Societies, but it is found most clearly in one of his separately published empirical papers (Heise, Lenski, and Wardwell, 1976). On the basis of a factor analysis of world ethnographic data demonstrating the central importance of technology in the organization of human societies, Lenski concludes that technology is a principal causal agent in human affairs. But this conclusion is methodologically inadmissible. Factor analysis can only show patterns of relationships among variables, leaving the question of causation completely open. There is little doubt that technological advance is a crucial aspect of social evolution. However, it is likely that technological change is just as often, if not more often, a result of other evolutionary changes as a cause of them. But this empirical problem aside, Lenski does not give us a compelling theory of technological change. For the most part, he appeals simply to processes of invention and discovery, assuming that, given enough time and enough people putting their heads together, technological breakthroughs will eventually occur. For Lenski, technology reduces largely to knowledge or information, which grows and expands as a result of human exploration, experimentation, and manipulation. Thus, hunter-gatherers began to adopt agricultural methods of making a living when they finally understood the basics of plant

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 199 and animal domestication. Early horticulturalists elaborated these methods by learning about new tools and techniques. They invented metallurgy and hoes and became advanced horticulturalists. Eventually they acquired the knowledge of how a plow could be fashioned and draft animals taught to pull it, and they became agrarian cultivators. And ultimately humans learned how to construct machines that could replace human muscle power, and this led to a revolution that allowed people to develop industrial societies. Lenski’s view of technological change and its role in social evolution might be labeled “Socratic”: The society that knows the good chooses the good. Not only is technological change the result of increased knowledge, but this new knowledge is obviously seen as beneficial and is put to use as soon as it is acquired. But it is difficult to reconcile this view with evidence of technological inertia in many preindustrial societies, evidence that had begun to accumulate even before Lenski wrote Human Societies. According to the archaeologist Mark Cohen (1977), it is likely that hunter-gatherer societies understood the basics of how plants and animals could be domesticated perhaps tens of thousands of years before they finally put this knowledge to use. And contemporary hunter-gatherers have often lived in contact with agricultural populations but not adopted their agricultural practices. Richard Lee (1979) asked the !Kung San of southwest Africa why they did not plant crops like their neighbors, and their answer was, “Why should we plant when there are so many mongongo nuts฀in฀the฀world?”฀Moreover,฀instances฀have฀been฀reported฀in฀which฀agricultural populations using the plow have abandoned it and substituted shifting cultivation using hoes or digging sticks when land became more abundant and population density was low, the reason being that shifting cultivation is much less labor intensive than plow agriculture (Boserup, 1965). It is clear that Lenski’s Socratic view of technological change is closely bound up with his progressivist view of social evolution: New technologies lead to a whole series of improvements in the human condition, such as a higher standard of living, a more secure and reliable food supply, a decrease in the workload, and an increase in the availability of leisure time. In Lenski’s defense, this view was the standard wisdom, derived from Childe, White, and archaeology and history, at the time Lenski was first formulating his ideas. For the most part, Lenski took over what a number of prominent scholars had already been saying about the benefits of technological change. But this old-fashioned view is now known to have serious limitations (which Lenski himself has come to realize, as I try to show below). Research over the past three decades suggests that hunter-gatherers work less and enjoy more leisure time than the members of more technologically advanced societies, and that agricultural populations seem to suffer from more nutritional inadequacies than do hunting and gathering populations. In many respects, hunter-gatherer populations may be better off in a material sense than the average peasant in agrarian societies of the past. (For a review of evidence, see Sanderson [1999b] and Sanderson and Alderson [2005].)

200 ✻ Chapter 9 A second difficulty concerns Lenski’s claim that social and biological evolution are very similar in that both involve increasing information, and his correlative claim that perhaps the most critical feature of social evolution is increasing information. I have strong reservations about these contentions. The informational analogy that Lenski draws between biological and social evolution has always seemed to me somewhat forced. It is true that DNA is information, and it is also true that biological evolution seems to involve an increase in DNA content or genomic size. However, it is being discovered that the extent of this increase is not nearly as great as previously anticipated (see Chapter 10). So that is one problem with Lenski’s point about information as the essence of evolution. The problem is only compounded when one seeks to draw too close a comparison between social and cultural information and biological information and to see social evolution as largely about increasing information. Social and cultural information are totally different in nature from biological information, and not only that, but the process of social evolution is about much more than informational increase. It is also about—indeed, it is primarily about—the qualitative transformation of societies and other social systems and the human relationships that occur within them. There is nothing in the concept of information, however conceived, that captures these qualitative transformations. Lenski (1992) has criticized me rather severely for ignoring the role of information in social evolution, but I hope the arguments above make it clear why I have done so. A final difficulty with Lenski’s evolutionism, although perhaps a less serious one than the first two, concerns his view that long-term social evolution has produced not only technological progress, but organizational and ideological progress as well. In this sense, Lenski’s evolutionism bears some similarities to Parsons’s. Many of Lenski’s examples of organizational and ideological “advances” are the same as those stressed by Parsons: money and markets, monotheism, Protestantism, occupational specialization, modern mass education, and several others. Lenski seems to imply that commercialism is better than the lack of it, that monotheism is better than polytheism or animism, that Protestantism is an improvement on Catholicism, that specialized occupations are better than unspecialized ones, and that mass educational systems are better than elite ones (or none at all). And he seems to imply as well that bigger populations are better than smaller ones, that permanent settlements are better than nomadic ones, that multicommunity societies are better than those with only a single community, that the accumulation of property is a good thing, and that the rituals and ceremonies of hunter-gatherers are less “enriching” than the rituals and ceremonies of more technologically advanced societies. If so, numerous objections can be entered, but perhaps the most significant is this: As evolutionary psychologists and other Darwinian social scientists have been telling us in recent years, humans evolved to live in very small-scale groups of perhaps a few dozen members (Massey, 2005). Modern urban-industrial societies are something

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 201 of an anomaly. Are we better off living in this type of society than in our “ancestral environment,” when everyone was a hunter-gatherer surrounded by฀a฀small฀network฀of฀individuals,฀most฀of฀whom฀were฀close฀kin?฀Certainly฀ in a material sense we are: We enjoy a much higher standard of living, live much longer, are much freer from disease, and so on. But the modern urban-industrial environment also creates all kinds of pressures, stresses, and strains for which our ancestral brains are poorly adapted. In any event, to speak of the organizational and ideological changes that have been a part of long-term social evolution as “advances” is very much a question of one’s values. It is difficult to find a value-neutral set of criteria for judging these organizational and ideological changes. But let me end on a more positive note. In the 1960s Lenski broke ranks with most sociologists in seeing sociology as a terribly limited discipline in its narrow focus on a single society (or, in some cases, a single type of society, modern industrial society). He dared to remake sociology back into what it once was, the comparative study of the full range of human societies. (Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century, and Leonard Hobhouse and William Graham Sumner in the early twentieth, for example, were doing just that.) He has performed an extremely valuable service in attempting to derive a comprehensive theory of human society from a vast array of ethnographic, historical, and sociological data, and his evolutionary theory of social stratification developed in Power and Privilege is one of the most important theories in twentieth-century sociology (Collins, 2004). His social evolutionism provides a powerful foundation on which to build, and, as I shall discuss below, he has built on it himself and modified it in certain positive ways.

Lenski versus Harris Patrick Nolan (1984) has suggested that, despite some major differences, the evolutionary models of Lenski and Marvin Harris are reconcilable. Both are materialist theories that identify the major outlines of social evolution in similar terms, and thus both recognize broadly similar directional trends in history. However, the way in which these trends are explained and their significance evaluated is quite different for these two thinkers. For Lenski, social evolution is driven by human imaginativeness and inventiveness. People are motivated to find new technologies because they recognize the limitations of their situation and want to overcome them. When new technological possibilities are recognized, they are readily implemented because they are seen to produce a more efficient societal adaptation. Each successive stage in the development of technology, social organization, and ideology represents an increase in the overall adaptive efficiency of society. Harris would agree with little of this. Technological change occurs not because of the simple invention or discovery of new ideas, but primarily because environmental depletions necessitate intensification. People intensify

202 ✻ Chapter 9 production, including technological intensification, in order to keep things from getting worse, not to attain a better life or to increase their society’s adaptive efficiency. But most of the time things actually do get worse, and the record of the past 10,000 years of social evolution is in many ways a record of cultural regression—of greater workloads and less leisure time, of declining standards of living that reach their nadir in agrarian civilizations, of increasing economic and political inequalities, of the growth of various forms of oppression and exploitation, and ultimately of the possibility of ecological catastrophe and nuclear annihilation. Lenski’s and Harris’s evolutionary models are thus in some ways based on fundamentally opposing assumptions and conclusions. To try to bring such opposing models together would prove very difficult indeed. Nevertheless, Lenski has actually shifted over time somewhat in the direction of Harris, which I think is a very positive development.

Update 2005 Lenski has pointed out many times that the evolutionary process is itself constantly evolving. Happily, the same can be said of his social evolutionism. Although his overall theoretical model remains essentially unchanged, Lenski has been reading the literature and has been open to new lines of thought. In successive editions of Human Societies he has changed some of his positions on specific matters, and in 2005 he tried to pull everything together by summarizing and updating his thinking in a book entitled Ecological-Evolutionary Theory.฀What฀is฀new฀in฀Lenski’s฀thinking? First there is the new name, ecological-evolutionary theory. This is significant because Lenski now seems to want to give ecological and demographic factors somewhat greater weight in social evolution, including technological evolution. As he puts it, “genetically based population pressures have probably been one of the most powerful spurs to human creativity and societal change” (2005:58). Lenski identifies Harris’s cultural materialism as the theoretical approach closest to his own, and at one point even identifies Harris as himself an ecological-evolutionary theorist.1 The encounter with Harris has seemingly caused Lenski to question the old-fashioned views of Childe and White on which he initially relied. This greater appreciation of the role of population growth is reflected in Lenski’s treatment of hunter-gatherers and the shift to domestication. In the fourth edition of Human Societies (Lenski and Lenski, 1982), Lenski’s outdated view of hunter-gatherers as poverty-stricken wretches who have to work day in and day out just to eke out a bare subsistence was finally abandoned. In adopting a much more positive view of hunter-gatherers based on the research evidence produced by such anthropologists as Marshall Sahlins (1972), Mark Cohen (1977), and Richard Lee (1979), Lenski was also forced to alter his explanations of the origins of agriculture so as to give

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 203 a significant role to population pressure. However, he very cleverly saved his technological argument by linking population growth to earlier (20,000 BP) technological changes in hunter-gatherer societies. And in 2005 he says this (2005:91): Over the years, various attempts have been made to explain why human societies made the shift from hunting and gathering to plant cultivation and animal domestication as their basic mode of subsistence. At one time this was regarded as an obvious matter and merely the result of the natural human desire for a better way of life. [This is precisely the view that Lenski himself took prior to 1982!] In recent decades, however, that view has been all but abandoned as scholars have gained a better appreciation of the attractions of the hunting and gathering way of life . . . and the costs entailed by a shift to plant cultivation and animal domestication.

And there are some other new wrinkles. Lenski has made two new applications of ecological-evolutionary theory, one to explain the origins of ancient Israel and another to explain differences in developmental levels in Third World countries. Lenski (2005) notes that Israel began in the hill country of Palestine in the thirteenth century BCE. This was an area that was previously sparsely settled, in contrast to the much more densely settled fertile lowlands. Several technological developments made possible an explosive growth of population in the environmentally less desirable hill country. The Hittite monopoly over iron came to an end, and iron tools became available to Hebrew peasants. Iron axes and plow tips were highly advantageous in the clearing of scrub forest and plowing the land. Iron tools also made it possible to build cisterns for storing water. Moreover, rock terracing was begun, which made it possible for farmers to conserve water, control soil erosion, and keep the loss of top soil on hilly slopes to a minimum. Lenski views early Israel as a classic example of a subtype of agrarian society known as a frontier society. It was highly egalitarian and had a republican form of government. However, in time these institutions were given up and Israel became much more stratified and developed a monarchy, with Saul and David being Israel’s first kings. Lenski argues that the frontier society model, a special theory within ecological-evolutionary theory, can explain why this institutional evolution occurred. He argues that (2005:159–160) the frontier society model provides an explanation, rooted in the experience of other frontier societies, of why Israel so quickly abandoned the distinctive institutional system it initially created (e. g., why it abandoned republican government and adopted a monarchical form of government; why it abandoned the militia system and adopted a professional army; and why it shifted from a decentralized religious system involving many scattered local shrines, each with its own resident priests, to one increasingly dominated by a single royal temple and a high priest).

204 ✻ Chapter 9 Frontiers, frontier values, and frontier institutions are transitory phenomena, as [Frederick Jackson] Turner and others have observed. Once the wilderness is conquered and population and wealth increase, the foundations of the libertarian and egalitarian spirit are slowly eroded, more conventional values take their place, and institutional changes become likely.

This may all be well and good, but Lenski is not finished. He goes on to try to explain why so many of the characteristics of the faith of the early Israelites have been retained in modern Judaism. Here he invokes the principle, which he claims is a fundamental part of ecological-evolutionary theory, that “the past is not dead history,” but rather living material that can continue to exercise an influence long into the future. I shall not follow the details of Lenski’s argument here, because it is speculative. I shall simply note that the so-called principle that “the past is not dead history” is hardly unique to ecological-evolutionary theory. Indeed, it is a principle that not only any type of social evolutionist (including Talcott Parsons) could readily agree with, but a principle that any antievolutionary, antinomothetic historian could agree with. To make ecological-evolutionary theory this broad makes it not only of limited use but also essentially unfalsifiable, an outcome certainly unintended and unwanted by Lenski since he has always had a very strong commitment to the tenets of scientific method. Lenski has also applied ecological-evolutionary theory to understand differences in developmental levels in the contemporary Third World. Here he makes technology critical once again, invoking the distinction between what he calls industrializing horticultural and industrializing agrarian societies. He argues that those less-developed countries that have attempted to industrialize on an agrarian base should have fared better than those that have never gotten beyond a horticultural mode of subsistence. Using multivariate analyses, Lenski tests this proposition and finds substantial support for it. Industrializing agrarian societies are significantly further ahead of industrializing horticultural societies on a number of standard development indicators. He then goes on to see how this ecological-evolutionary interpretation matches up with its closest competitor, Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system theory. Ecological-evolutionary theory turns out to be a much better predictor of a society’s developmental level than its position within the world-system hierarchy. I am not especially surprised at world-system theory’s poor showing here, since I have recently begun to see serious problems in that approach (Sanderson, 2005b). However, there is one nagging problem, which Lenski himself anticipates. The horticultural-agrarian divide in contemporary less-developed countries essentially comes down to a division between sub-Saharan African societies and those in Asia and Latin America, and it is well established that sub-Saharan Africa lags far behind the other continents and is actually falling further and further behind over time. It could be that there is something

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 205 unique to sub-Saharan Africa quite apart from the absence of the plow that is responsible for its unusually low developmental level. For example, George Ayittey (1998) roots sub-Saharan Africa’s problems in the extremely high levels of corruption in the region’s states, what he calls the “vampire state.” And there are a host of other variables that Lenski does not control for, and thus his analysis, though possibly correct, must remain inconclusive. In addition to these two new applications, Lenski has revamped an old one. In his original work, Lenski took the conventional sociological view that the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries marked the critical divide between traditional and modern societies. This view has been sharply challenged by Wallerstein and others, who locate the critical divide some two or three centuries earlier with the rise of Western European capitalism. After many years of clinging to the traditional view, Lenski has now come to see that the Industrial Revolution only makes sense in terms of the earlier transition to capitalism. What฀led฀to฀the฀rise฀of฀the฀West?฀For฀Lenski฀the฀single฀most฀important฀ factor was the discovery and conquest of the New World. In particular, the discovery of gold and silver in the New World and its export back to Europe led to a tremendous increase in the money supply, which became a huge stimulus to European trade and commerce. But why was Europe the first to discover฀the฀New฀World?฀Unsurprisingly,฀for฀Lenski฀the฀answer฀is฀essentially฀ technological. With the invention of the mariner’s compass, and major improvements in European shipbuilding, “western European sailors increasingly ventured out into open seas for longer periods” (2005:179). Lenski summarizes his position as follows (2005:181): [T]he basic causal sequence appears to have been initiated by (1) advances in the technologies of navigation and water transportation beginning late in the twelfth century, which stimulated the many voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century and made the discovery of the New World possible, and (2) subsequent advances in military technology, in combination with the tremendous impact of diseases brought to the Americas by Europeans, which made the conquest of these two vast continents possible; (3) this, in turn, provided western European societies with a wealth of new resources that (4) vastly increased the money supply, stimulated trade and commerce, led to the rapid expansion of markets, and strengthened the merchant class while weakening the old landed aristocracy, thus (5) laying a foundation for revolutionary advances in agricultural and industrial technology in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, which (6), in combination with the wealth of resources controlled by western societies, became the basis of their vastly expanded power, prestige, and wealth in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

One problem with the technological part of Lenski’s argument is that China already possessed some of this technology, and had ships of comparable, if not greater, seafaring ability, yet chose in the fifteenth century to

206 ✻ Chapter 9 withdraw its ships from their extensive seafaring. As for the discovery and conquest of the New World, this was undoubtedly important and in much the way that Lenski suggests. But I think this can only be part of the story. A good deal more was involved, as I shall suggest when I outline my own theory of the rise of the West in Chapter 12. Originally, Lenski had accepted the widely endorsed view of Max Weber that the Protestant ethic was one of the most important causes of the rise of Western capitalism, but he has now essentially abandoned this view, and wisely so I think (cf. Delacroix and Nielsen, 2001; Sanderson and Roberts, 2004). He suggests that the Protestant ethic was, at best, a minor cause, and probably not even that. A new work ethic did emerge in Europe in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, but this would have happened, he argues, even without the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism largely validated the new work ethic that was emerging, and, had it not done so, Lenski thinks that the new ethic would very likely have been validated on other grounds. It seems to me that this is just the right conclusion to draw, given how good humans have shown themselves to be at finding virtues in necessities. In summary, Lenski’s recent evolutionism is, if not really a new evolutionism, at least an improved evolutionism. It has been moving in the right directions, even if not far enough or fast enough, and even though it still leaves some things to be desired.

Jonathan Turner’s Institutional Selectionism Jonathan Turner (1995, 2003) is one of the latest sociologists to develop a general theory of social evolution. Turner’s theory is a type of functionalist theory, but it goes beyond traditional functionalism in making the concept of social selection central. For Turner, there are two forms of selection that operate in social evolution, Durkheimian selection and Spencerian selection. In Durkheimian selection, population growth leads to increased material and moral density, which in turn lead to increased competition for resources. Increased competition leads to increased niche formation, which produces increased social differentiation. This, of course, is Durkheim’s classic argument in The Division of Labor in Society. Spencerian selection, which Turner regards as the more common of the two, works somewhat differently. The starting point is the same—population growth—but in this case the growth of population, along with new functional problems from the internal and external social environment, lead to increased logistical loads. These increased loads generate selection pressures for new social structures that are better able to handle the loads than old structures. As more new structures emerge, social differentiation has occurred. Spencerian selection pressures are themselves of two types, first order and second order. First-order selection pressures come

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 207 from the external environment, which includes both the physical and biotic environment and geopolitical relations with other societies. Second-order selection pressures arise from the internal or sociocultural environment—from the increased demands created by new social structures. In Turner’s theory, the explanandum is the institutional differentiation of society, and there are five basic macrosocial forces that are involved. These are summarized in Table 9.1.฀How฀are฀these฀forces฀causally฀related?฀Population growth sets everything in motion by increasing the values of each of the other four forces, and as these forces increase in scale and scope, selection pressures are created for institutional differentiation. However, Turner’s causal model is a recursive rather than a simple linear one, for increases in production, regulation, distribution, and reproduction feed back to increases in population, and institutional differentiation itself feeds back to increase the values of all five macrosocial forces. Turner diagrams his model as shown in Figure 9.1. Exactly฀ what฀ does฀ institutional฀ differentiation฀ consist฀ of?฀ For฀ Turner,฀ there is a core of six basic institutions: economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education. The economy evolves as a result of selection pressures generated by the forces of production and distribution. It is the most fundamental institution because it deals with the key problem of human survival and physical well-being. Being fundamental, the economy exerts profound effects on the other institutions. Turner rejects economic determinism, but does say that “if we know how economic activity is organized, we can make fairly accurate predictions about the structure and operation of other institutions” (2003:58). The primary selection pressures producing kinship institutions are the regulation of sexual and mating behavior, care of the young, transmission of culture to the next generation, provision of social and emotional support, and social placement of new members of society. Thus have arisen norms of family size and structural organization, residence and descent, authority, and marital formation and dissolution. Religion as an institution was selected for primarily as a means of reinforcing institutional norms, regulating socialization and social placement, legitimating tension-producing social inequalities, and alleviating personal anxiety and tension. Looming large in the case of religion is the fact that people everywhere “experience uncertainty, concern over the unknown, powerlessness, unpredictability, and anxiety—a byproduct of having a large brain that can remember the past, ponder the vicissitudes of the present, and worry about the future. In providing a cosmology of the sacred and supernatural, religious beliefs have had the ability to alleviate or mitigate these multiple sources of tension” (2003:75). The polity is about leadership, decision making, and the consolidation of power. As populations grow and systems of production and distribution expand in scale, the problems of social coordination and control increase

Table 9.1. Turner’s Basic Macrosocial Forces Population

The absolute number, rate of growth, composition, and distribution of people.

Production

The acquisition of resources from the environment and their processing into food, technology, and other useful or necessary commodities. Production consists of five elements: Technology: Knowledge concerning how to manipulate the physical and social environment. Physical capital: Implements, and money for buying these implements, used to acquire and process resources. Human capital: Knowledge and skills possessed by individuals. Property: Socially created rights to possess and use objects of value. Entrepreneurship: Mechanisms for organizing technology, physical capital, human capital, and property for acquiring resources and converting them into commodities.

Distribution

Infrastructures for moving or allocating resources, information, and people in space, and the exchange of resources, information, and people.

Regulation

The consolidation and centralization of power along several bases. Consolidation refers to which bases of power are mobilized and to what extent, whereas centralization refers to the degree of concentration of decision-making prerogatives among actors. There are four bases of regulation: Coercive power: The ability to compel others to do what powerful actors desire. Symbolic power: The capacity to manipulate values and ideologies in order to regulate the actions of others. Material power: The use of material incentives or disincentives as means of controlling others. Administrative power: The use of organizational structures to regulate the actions of others.

Reproduction

The procreation of new members of a society and the transmission of culture to these new members; also includes the creation and maintenance of sociocultural systems that sustain life and social order.

Source: Turner (2003), Table 1.1, and pp. 7–12.

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 209 increases values of

increases values of

I

Production Population

increases values of

Reproduction

generate se/ectian pressures for

Institutional differentiation

Regulation Distribution decreases potential for increases values of

Disintegration of population

Figure 9.1 Turner’s Theory of Institutional Differentiation Source: Turner (2003), Figure 1.4, p. 20.

dramatically as a result of these first-order selection pressures. But political institutions must also respond to various second-order selection pressures, such as growing inequalities and their conflict-generating potential. Leadership is most effective if leaders can consolidate their power along coercive, symbolic, material, and administrative lines, and this consolidation (along with growing centralization) is a basic feature of political evolution. Systems of law develop at more advanced stages of social evolution when selection pressures emanating from all five macrosocial forces exceed the regulative capacities of the polity alone. The principal selection pressures leading to the establishment and evolution of legal systems are the structural coordination of political actors and the various units of political systems, the legitimation of power and inequality, and the preservation, codification, and integration of cultural symbols. Education in preindustrial societies was relatively undeveloped because selection pressures for the social reproduction of the population were relatively weak. However, in more recent times these pressures have intensified. The selection pressures that led to the initial formation of educational systems as distinct institutions derived primarily from the need of the state to consolidate its power and to legitimate inequalities. But there were also selective pressures for the expansion of formal educational systems. The most significant of these pressures have been economic reproduction (teaching knowledge and skills), political reproduction (teaching citizenship), cultural reproduction (teaching the broader culture of the society), the accumulation and storage of knowledge, and social placement (sorting individuals into occupational roles).

210 ✻ Chapter 9 Turner then traces out the institutional differentiation of societies using the same basic scheme as Lenski, that is, hunter-gatherer, horticultural, agrarian, and industrial societies. He examines in detail the fundamental changes undergone by each of the six institutions from one evolutionary stage to another. For example, in looking at the evolution of religion, Turner employs the evolutionary scheme developed by the anthropologist Anthony Wallace (1966). Wallace conceives of religion as a constellation of “cult institutions,” which are religious rituals that are rationalized by certain types of religious beliefs and supported by a given social group. The simplest cult institutions are individualistic. Here, individuals perform their own rituals, such as Trobriand sailing magic, Naskapi hunting rituals, and Plains Indian vision quests. Another simple form of cult institution is the shamanic. In this type of cult institution, part-time religious practitioners thought to have special powers—shamans—perform special rites for clients, often for some sort of compensation. In communal cult institutions, bodies of laymen perform rituals for specific social groups, such as age grades, particular kinship groups, or secret societies, and sometimes for the whole community. Communal cult institutions include agricultural and other calendrical rituals, ancestor worship, totemic and puberty rituals, and others. In communal cult institutions there is no specialized priesthood or religious hierarchy, but in ecclesiastical cult institutions such phenomena are present. Here a sharp division emerges between a formal priesthood trained in highly specialized religious knowledge, which it monopolizes and provides to laypersons in what are often highly elaborate rituals. Ecclesiastical cult institutions may be devoted to the worship of a pantheon of high gods or to a single high god. Turner notes that in hunter-gatherer societies one normally finds only individualistic and shamanic institutions. There may be some calendrical rituals, but most rituals are performed on an ad hoc basis. In simple horticultural societies, communal cult institutions are usually well developed and exist in addition to individualistic and shamanic practices. More advanced horticultural societies have all of these things, plus often a hierarchy of fulltime religious specialists, elaborate symbols and artifacts representing each aspect of the supernatural realm, and specialized buildings, such as temples, for the performance of ecclesiastical rites. In agrarian societies, ecclesiastical institutions dominate; they often become more bureaucratically organized and exert a great deal of influence in the economic and political realms. In industrial societies, ecclesiastical institutions continue to dominate, but with the constant formation of new religions and thus increasing religious diversity and conflict. A type of “modern religion” develops alongside traditional ecclesiastical institutions. In this modern religion, the coherent and elaborate cosmology of traditional ecclesiastical institutions crumble, as do traditional religious moral codes, and they are replaced by beliefs and codes that are much looser and more flexible.

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 211 Although Turner’s theory of social evolution is clearly functionalist in most respects, it has avoided the most serious difficulties with Parsonian functionalist evolutionism. It is a largely materialist theory, with population growth and economic production being given pride of place as the most important determinants of other aspects of social evolution. Moreover, Turner’s emphasis on social evolution as a process of institutional differentiation differs significantly from Parsonian theory in terms of how this differentiation is explained. For Parsons, the explanation is teleological, with increased differentiation being driven by the goal of increased adaptive capacity, whereas for Turner the explanation is in terms of ordinary efficient causes. And for Parsons, adaptive capacity increases in absolute terms, whereas for Turner more differentiated structures are more adaptive only in a relative sense, that is, in terms of the demands imposed by new logistical loads. Turner claims that his theory is functionalist but with a conflict slant. However, it is difficult to find much conflict theory in it. For example, it is not difficult to agree with Turner that religion performs the functions he says it does, but there is more going on in religion, and in religious evolution, than that. In recent research I have done on religious evolution (Roberts and Sanderson, 2005), it was found that the transition to ecclesiastical religions depended most on the development of intensive agriculture and writing and record keeping. Intensive agriculture seems necessary to produce a large enough economic surplus to support a full-time cadre of priests, and writing is critical to the elaboration and monopolization of religious knowledge and rituals. The high level of differentiation represented by a full-time priestly hierarchy, I suspect, is much more a function of the interests of priests themselves than any benefits accruing to the masses. This can be seen in its most extreme form in the evolution of Christianity, the Catholic Church in particular. Think of the enormous power the Church achieved in the Middle Ages and the power it still has today. Think of the extraordinary power of the Pope, of the College of Cardinals, and of the enormous symbolism, the pomp and circumstance, that surround the priestly hierarchy at the highest levels. Turner is aware of all of this of course, and would probably agree with much of what was just said. But there should be more of that sort of emphasis in his explanation of social evolution. Relatedly, Turner also gives too much weight to Spencerian selection at the expense of Durkheimian selection (which might also be called Darwinian selection). Much social differentiation results from individuals and groups finding new niches rather than from new logistical loads. Many examples can be given, but some of the best involve economic institutions. For instance, in advanced industrial economies there are now highly specialized businesses that sell only a single product, or a single type of product, and the formation of such businesses has nothing to do with increased logistical loads. It is a Darwinian process of the creation and occupation of new niches. Similarly, at the level of the world-economy, there is now intense competition that produces not only new niches for nation-states; existing niches are abandoned

212 ✻ Chapter 9 by certain types of nation-states and other types of nation-states come to fill them. Advanced industrial countries make much less steel than they used to, for instance, with much of the world’s steel now being produced in lessdeveloped countries such as Brazil. Again, this is a process of Durkheimian or Darwinian competition that has nothing to do with increased logistical loads in the world-economy as a whole. Like Carneiro, Turner is a largely Spencerian evolutionist. Both Carneiro and Turner emphasize growing social complexity, or increasing differentiation, as the key feature of social evolution, and both emphasize population growth as a key determinant. But this aside, there is obviously more than one theoretical path out of Spencer. Carneiro has chosen to emphasize the more conflict elements in Spencer, whereas Turner has developed the more functionalist side.

Maryanski and Turner’s Normative Evolutionism In collaboration with Alexandra Maryanski, Turner has developed an intriguing interpretation of some of the most important changes in the human condition over the past 10,000 years—from the transition to agricultural societies to modern industrial and postindustrial societies (Maryanski and Turner, 1992). This effort is not a scientific theory devoted to explaining the course of social evolution so much as it is a normative theory that seeks to understand how social evolution has affected one very important dimension of human life. Maryanski and Turner’s argument rests on a specific understanding of human nature, and this part of the argument is supplied mainly by Maryanski. As much a primatologist as a sociologist, Maryanski looks at social ties among our hominoid relatives and ancestors and concludes that, although these species are highly social, social bonds are nevertheless relatively weak. Contemporary apes, and our ape-like ancestors, were characterized by low-density social networks, low sociality, and a high level of individualism. When early hominids moved out of the forest into the savanna—a much more predatorridden environment—there was a need for more cohesive and tightly knit groups, and human symbols and culture emerged to provide this. However, the genetic heritage toward strong individualism was nevertheless retained. The authors argue that in the ancestral environment, in which humans survived entirely by hunting and gathering, social life was organized so as to maximize individual autonomy (cf. Gardner, 1991). They describe huntergatherer life as typically relaxed and harmonious and as generally lacking in strong social constraints. Leaders seldom have any power to compel the actions of others, and people follow their advice only if they have confidence in their judgment and decision-making abilities. Kinship systems are usually highly fluid and flexible, and the nuclear family predominates.

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 213 Eventually, however, hunter-gatherers were forced, largely by population pressures and resource scarcities, to settle down and begin farming the land. Horticultural societies emerged. With larger and denser populations, humans faced new adaptive problems. One of the solutions to these problems was the formation of much larger kinship groups based on unilineal descent. In creating complex lineages and clans, humans entered the first phase of what the authors call social caging, because these lineages and clans tend to be highly restrictive of human behavior, using “residence, descent, and authority to aggregate individuals and to constrain their social behaviors by dictating the rights and obligations of each kinship position within a greatly extended network of ties” (1992:103). If horticultural societies created the cage of kinship, then the transition to chiefdoms, and then eventually full-fledged states, created a new social cage, the cage of power. Societies became highly stratified, with a small ruling elite at the top and a powerless mass of peasants or commoners at the bottom. Maryanski and Turner view these highly stratified societies as imposing terrible burdens on the masses and as restricting their behavior in numerous ways. However, they see the cage of power as somewhat less confining than the cage of kinship, both because revolt is possible and because economic specialization and the expansion of markets create opportunities for individuals to escape their constraints, or at least to reduce their severity. What฀then฀of฀the฀transition฀to฀modern฀capitalist฀and฀industrial฀societies?฀ Here the authors see humans becoming gradually emancipated from both the cage of kinship and the cage of power. Industrial societies, and so-called postindustrial societies even more so, are liberating, and thus have created the conditions whereby humans can regain much of the individual autonomy and freedom that they had in hunter-gatherer days. Maryanski and Turner recognize that their view of industrial capitalism goes against the grain of much classical social theory, and indeed of much modern sociology. They comment that (1992:167–168) much of sociology involves a critique of industrial society. How can this be so in฀light฀of฀the฀fact฀that฀such฀a฀society฀is฀more฀liberating฀than฀its฀predecessors?฀ Part of the answer resides in the exploitative nature of early industrial capitalism—as Marx so powerfully documented and as contemporary Marxists, who still hold to Marx’s collectivist utopia, continue to assert. Another part is a historically based naïveté, or at least selective interpretation, of horticultural and agrarian systems. Marx’s intellectual companion, Friedrich Engels (1845), for example, portrays past societies with a romanticism that stands in stark contrast to his realistic and brutal description of early industrialism in Manchester, England. Or, to take another example, Jürgen Habermas (1962) portrays “the public sphere” of cafes, conversation, and discourse of preindustrial systems with an equal romanticism that is then juxtaposed to a picture of domination and colonization by economic and political forces in more contemporary societies. . . .

214 ✻ Chapter 9 Still another part of the explanation of why sociologists remain critical of modern society lies in the misinterpretation of modern industrial systems as creating Max Weber’s “iron cage of bureaucracy” and other constraints that control, regulate, and depersonalize social life. Further confusing matters, and juxtaposed to this dreary Weberian scenario, is postmodernism, where just the opposite condition of no constraint and integration is portrayed. And, finally, the answer lies in a bias toward collectivism and against individualism in contemporary social theory. Marx and Marxists certainly viewed collectivism as more basic to human needs than the individualism evident in market-driven systems. Similarly, Durkheim . . . advocated another form of collectivism, based on common ideas representing society and institutionalized rituals directed toward such symbolic representations of society.

Maryanski and Turner’s argument in behalf of the individualistic nature of humans certainly rings true in the sense that humans notoriously do not like to be dominated. Evidence for this comes not only from the extraordinary frequency of revolts and rebellions throughout human history, but also from the vigorous resistance of hunter-gatherers to allowing one or a few individuals to compel their behavior (Gardner, 1991). Of course, it is equally true that humans, or at least many of them, like to dominate and control others, but that is another matter for another time. In light of these facts, Maryanski and Turner’s analysis of the benefits of modern capitalism and industrialism should stand as an important corrective to the widespread sociological tendency to see in modern society new and even worse forms of social caging than existed in the preindustrial world.

World-System Theory and Social Evolutionism In the mid-1970s Immanuel Wallerstein (1974a, 1974b, 1979, 1980, 1989) developed a new paradigm within historical sociology, world-system theory, which has had an enormous influence in several of the social sciences (cf. Sanderson, 2005b). The theory was developed to explain the emergence and development of capitalism over the past 500 years. The most fundamental principle of this theoretical perspective is that within this span of time societies have not been autonomous units, but rather have been imbedded in networks of economic exchange—world-systems—that determine the fate of their constituent units. Few of Wallerstein’s followers and detractors have thought of world-system theory as an evolutionary type of theory, and some have seen it as explicitly antievolutionary. Piet Strydom (1992), for example, contends that Wallerstein “decisively rejects” evolutionism. But I shall contend that Wallerstein is in fact an evolutionist, and very decidedly so. What has thrown people off the track about Wallerstein involves his rejection of one particular type of evolutionism, what he has called the developmentalist perspective, by which he

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 215 means functionalist evolutionism (and its modernization variant) and certain rigidly unilinearist versions of Marxian evolutionism. As he has said, “What thus distinguishes the developmentalist and the world-system perspective is not liberalism versus Marxism nor evolutionism versus something else (since both are essentially evolutionary)” (1979:54; emphasis added). An evolutionary theory is one that defines some general directional trend in history. The history Wallerstein is interested in is that of capitalism since the sixteenth century, and for him capitalism (as a world-system) most assuredly has an overall directionality. Along what lines is the capitalist world-system evolving?฀Wallerstein฀has฀identiied฀ive฀major฀trends:฀increasing฀mechanization of production, increasing commodification of the factors of production, increasing proletarianization of the labor force, increasing contractualization of relations between individuals and groups, and increasing polarization of more developed and less developed regions. These trends are part of an overriding general trend, the deepening of capitalist development, a process that derives from the accumulationist motivations of capitalist entrepreneurs. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall were among the leading early proponents of Wallerstein’s world-systemic view of historical change. However, as social evolutionists, and as historical sociologists highly acquainted with anthropology, archaeology, and history, they have sought to generalize the world-system concept in both time and space. They have argued that world-systems have been in existence long before the modern capitalist worldsystem, and that long-term social evolution needs to make the world-system the basic unit of theoretical and empirical analysis. Cultural materialism plays a major role in their thinking, as does some aspects of the structural Marxist evolutionism of Jonathan Friedman, but they give these perspectives a unique world-system twist. Chase-Dunn and Hall define world-systems as “intersocietal networks in which the interactions (e. g., trade, warfare, intermarriage, information) are important for the reproduction of the internal structures of the composite units and importantly affect changes that occur in these local structures” (1997:28). World-systems have cores, peripheries, and semiperipheries, which are regional differences in levels of development among the constituent units of the system. When more developed units (cores) do not dominate less developed units (peripheries), then core-periphery differentiation is said to exist. By contrast, when cores dominate peripheries and there are relations of unequal economic exchange between them, the structure takes the form of a core-periphery hierarchy. The authors identify three major types of world-systems: kin-based worldsystems, tributary world-systems, and the modern capitalist world-system. Kin-based world-systems are intersocietal networks in which the linkages among the system’s units are primarily kinship networks, and the system is held together through kinship linkages (e. g., marital alliances) along with normative integration. Kin-based systems have core-periphery differentiation, but no core-periphery hierarchies (or only minimally developed hierarchies).

216 ✻ Chapter 9 Tributary world-systems are intersocietal networks in which surplus products are created and extracted from peripheral units by core units, thus creating unequal exchange and a core-periphery hierarchy. Tributary world-systems are subdivided into four different subtypes: primary state-based world-systems, such as ancient Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley civilization, ancient China, and pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru; primary empires in which several previously autonomous states have become unified through conquest (e. g., Old Kingdom Egypt, Chou China, Teotihuacán); multicentered world-systems consisting of complex interactions among empires, nonimperial states, and peripheral regions (e. g., the Near East, India, Mesoamerica, Peru); and commercializing state-based world-systems, which are tributary systems characterized by unusually high levels of commodification (e. g., ancient Rome). The modern capitalist world-system, which has only existed since the sixteenth century, is one in which land, labor, wealth, and all other economic goods are commodified, price-setting markets exist, and capital accumulation is the major aim of economic production. What then accounts for the transition from one type of world-system to another?฀The฀authors฀formulate฀a฀demographic฀and฀ecological฀model฀that฀is฀ derived from the work of Harris, Carneiro, and Mark Cohen. In Chase-Dunn and Hall’s formulation, this model holds basically something like the following: Population growth leads to environmental degradation, which then leads to population pressure, which then leads to emigration, which leads to circumscription, which in turn leads to conflict, hierarchy formation, and intensification. In this model, emigration, conflict, and intensification all work to reduce population pressure. To make this model a little tighter and make some of the relationships a little more logical, I would reformulate it as follows (I do not think this violates Chase-Dunn and Hall’s basic argument): Population growth and consequent population pressure lead to environmental degradation; this then leads either to emigration, or, if that path is blocked by circumscription, to social conflict, hierarchy formation, and intensification. The authors call this an iteration model, because the process cycles back on itself again and again to produce escalating evolutionary changes. Now this model will do a fairly good job of explaining the first transformation the authors look at—the transition to tributary world-systems—but it will not work for the modern capitalist transition. Not only will it not explain that transition, it will not, despite what is claimed by the authors, account for the continued evolution and expansion of the capitalist world-system over the past 500 years. Here is how the authors characterize and explain the formation of the modern capitalist world-system (1997:189–190): What occurred in Europe after the extremely decentralized feudalism of the later centuries of the first millennium C.E. was the formation of a regional core within which capitalism eventually became the predominant mode of accumulation. This was made possible by both the long development of capitalist

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 217 institutions in the commercializing Afroeurasian PGN [prestige goods network] and the particular position that Europe occupied in that larger system during the period of regional core formation and capitalist transformation. Capitalist institutions were highly developed in the Hellenistic Mediterranean and in the Roman Empire. Capitalist markets, money, contract law, and the law of private property were all institutional developments that were well elaborated in Rome. The reemergence of capitalist commodity production during the European Renaissance rediscovered these institutions and made effective use of them in the construction of a strongly capitalist system. The weakness of territorial states in Europe was a function of the demise of the (western) Roman Empire and the Muslim blockade. This weakness of centralized states made it possible for capitalist city-states to bunch closely to one another and to develop a strong regional system of commodity production and commercial finance. Though the existence of capitalist city-states was not new, their density in a small region in which there were no large tributary states was unusual. When larger states did emerge in Europe they combined tributary logic with a dependence on capitalism. Perry Anderson (1974a) has characterized the “absolutist” European states as “feudalism writ large.” Although these states used feudal forms of legitimation and organizational ideology (the benefice and the fief), the monarchs were often in debt to relatively autonomous merchants and financiers. Their abilities to make war on one another were constrained or facilitated by their access to resources controlled by these financiers. The key to the emerging . . . predominance of capitalism was not the unique cultural and organizational characteristics of European feudalism—either its “parcellization of sovereignty” (Anderson 1974a) or the “normative pacification” of Christianity (Mann 1986). Rather, it was the context of European feudalism—a very decentralized, weak tributary mode of accumulation—embedded in the market forces of the Afroeurasian PGN that allowed capitalism to displace the tributary mode of accumulation. It was not the fall of the East but rather the continued strength of tributary states in West and East Asia that prevented capitalism from becoming predominant there. Europe was in the right place at the right time to host the rise of capitalist predominance.

This explanation is similar in several important ways to my own (see Chapter 12) and, thus, I think it is fairly close to the mark. However, it is very difficult to see how this argument fits within the authors’ iteration model. They try to fit it in by saying that both environmental and social circumscription have been important stimuli in the formation of the system and its continued evolution—that just as some tributary states, such as the Roman Empire, needed continual expansion in order to survive, capitalism has needed it a fortiori. Capitalism must constantly create new markets, and one major way of doing this is through geographical expansion. This is indeed correct, but the logic behind the geographical expansion of capitalism is not circumscription in Carneiro’s ecological sense, which is what is emphasized in their iteration model. It is not because space is limited and population pressure great that capitalism expands; rather, it expands because of the logic of ceaseless capital

218 ✻ Chapter 9 accumulation, something entirely different. Note also that the authors claim that the failure of capitalism to become predominant in Asia was due to the constraining influence of powerful tributary states, a point with which I fully agree and that forms a part of my own theory. But nowhere in the iteration model is there any mention of this as a causal factor. In short, the modern capitalist world is driven by the desire of capitalists to accumulate capital, and population pressure and ecological degradation have little to do with it. In fact, from a capitalist point of view population growth is actually desirable because it increases the number of consumers of commodities. Once we are within a capitalist system, the rules of the game change, and Chase-Dunn and Hall’s model does not allow for this. This is why I will claim in Chapter 12 that more than one theory is needed to explain the great social transformations of world history. An additional element of Chase-Dunn and Hall’s explanatory model that they feel is crucial concerns the role of the semiperiphery as the main source of innovation. Most of the technological and hierarchical innovations, they contend, come from the semiperiphery because core states tend to get bogged down in doing things in older ways. These ways work well for a time—which is what allows core states to become core states in the first place—but eventually they lose their effectiveness. Newer technologies and organizational structures are created and implemented by semiperipheral challengers in order to displace core states. In this regard, for example, Europe as a whole was semiperipheral in the sixteenth century within a larger world-system in which Asia was dominant, and it was Europe’s semiperipheral position that contributed to its eventual displacement of Asia. Chase-Dunn and Hall’s emphasis on the semiperiphery as the “seed-bed of change” is interesting for several reasons, not least because it is perhaps the most recent version of Elman Service’s Law of Evolutionary Potential (and its predecessors in Veblen, Trotsky, and Spencer). However, a definitive empirical test of Chase-Dunn and Hall’s contention is thus far lacking. Impressionistically, there are numerous examples of less developed societies innovating and overtaking more developed ones. However, innovation often comes from within more developed societies, such as in the case of England, a core capitalist society in the early modern world, displacing the Netherlands in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries as the dominant state within the world capitalist system. Thus, the matter cannot be properly settled until someone conducts a more systematic empirical test or set of tests.

In the Parsonian Tradition Despite the strong criticisms that have been made of Parsonian evolutionism, that evolutionary tradition has by no means died out. It lives on in the thinking of a number of scholars, especially several German sociologists. In

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 219 his The Differentiation of Society, Niklas Luhmann (1982), himself a former student of Parsons, seems to have borrowed heavily from his mentor. There are strong emphases, for instance, on the adaptive significance of universalistic symbolic codes, on the evolutionary importance of stratification, and on the emergence in modern times of increasingly “open” stratification systems. Most importantly, and as the title of Luhmann’s book indicates, it is social differentiation that is held up as the key to evolutionary changes. Parsonian evolutionary ideas have also been preserved in the works of Jürgen Habermas, who has developed other aspects of Parsonian evolutionism. Habermas’s major contribution to a theory of social evolution is his Communication and the Evolution of Society (1979) (some of these ideas are developed more fully in his later highly celebrated The Theory of Communicative Action [1984, 1987]). He intends his evolutionary theory to be a “reconstruction” of historical materialism, thus regarding himself as still working within the Marxian tradition. But this is extremely difficult to accept, for there is very little traditional Marxism (by whatever interpretation) remaining in Habermas’s mature thought. On the contrary, we find him recommending the cognitive-developmental psychologies of Piaget and Kohlberg and the idealist assumptions of Parsons as proper foundations for a theory of evolution. Just as Piaget and Kohlberg claim that individual cognitive and moral development progress through an invariant sequence of stages, so Habermas claims that societies progress through an invariant stage sequence in which they achieve more adequate modes of “communicative action.” This is given an interesting Parsonian twist so that modes of communicative action are seen to be closely intertwined with normative structures and modes of social integration. Societies, in short, go through an “evolutionary learning process” in which they respond to “evolutionary challenges” and enhance their overall adaptive capacity by producing more adequate cognitive and moral structures, which for Habermas are basically worldviews. Habermas marks off four major evolutionary stages. Neolithic societies are dominated by mythological worldviews and by the legal regulation of social conflict in terms of a preconventional morality. Early civilizations also have mythological worldviews, but these now play important legitimizing roles for positions of authority. Conflict is regulated by a conventional system of morality in which rulers represent and administer justice. Developed civilizations have broken with mythological thought and have begun to develop rationalized worldviews. Conflict is still regulated by a conventional morality, but this is embodied in systematized law rather than attached to the person of the ruler. Finally, modern societies are grounded in postconventional political and legal principles and a universalistic doctrine of social legitimation. The similarities between this scheme and Parsons’s idealist evolutionary scheme are striking, and there is no doubt that Habermas has borrowed extensively from Parsons in this regard (despite blending in strong cognitivedevelopmental elements). And like Parsons (and Piaget and Kohlberg as

220 ✻ Chapter 9 well), there is no doubt that Habermas’s theory rests on a historicist or developmentalist explanatory framework. Habermas tells us again and again that there is a developmental logic to the cognitive and moral structures that individuals learn and that are transferred to societies in the form of worldviews. Each successive societal worldview is not only a more adequate structure for integrating society and solving its adaptive problems, but indeed for Habermas seems to arise precisely because it enhances the adaptive capacity of society. As in the case of Luhmann, Habermas maintains a certain distance from Parsonian evolutionary ideas. Unlike Luhmann, he rejects the concept of differentiation as an evolutionarily meaningful one (although he does sometimes smuggle it back in in markedly Parsonian ways). In addition, his theory is not associated with as uncritical a view of evolutionary progress as Parsons’s. As the leading living representative of the old Frankfurt School, Habermas is obviously much more aware than Parsons of the disagreeable features of modern capitalism. In the main, however, the Parsonian heritage in Habermas’s evolutionism is unmistakable. When you stop to think about it, this is nothing short of astonishing for someone who started out as a Marxian critical theorist and who has continued to see himself as “reconstructing” historical materialism.2 One of Habermas’s most important protégés is Klaus Eder, who early on actually collaborated with Habermas. However, over the years he has become more critical of Habermas’s evolutionism (Strydom, 1993). One criticism of Habermas is that he confused individual ontogenesis and social evolution. (This is essentially the same point I made above in characterizing Habermas’s evolutionism as a form of developmentalism.) Eder also claims that Habermas limited himself to constructing ideal stages of social evolution and concentrated on postulated evolutionary potentialities rather than actual processes of historical change. Eder’s (1992) own theory of social evolution turns out to be remarkably Hegelian, and in two fundamental senses: It is an idealist theory, and it postulates contradictions as the mechanisms of social evolution. Social evolution is intertwined with a collective learning process, and this learning process has been especially pronounced since the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment associations (Aufklärungsgesellschaften) that emerged at this time were committed to new forms of discursive communication devoted to free thinking, speech, and association. Social reality is communicatively constituted and consists of contradictions on three levels: (1) contradictions between individual actors communicating with each other; (2) contradictions between groups engaged in classifying and reclassifying each other; and (3) contradictions built into the processes of development that are the structural effects of the first two types of contradictions. Social evolution is the result of the combination of all three types of contradictions. Eder even goes on to give all of this a sort of Darwinian twist, such that the first set of contradictions functions as a mechanism of mutation, the second set as a

Sociological Evolutionism: II ✻ 221 mechanism of selection, and the third set as a mechanism of reproductive isolation serving to stabilize the new social system that has emerged. Eder (1999) points out that premodern societies learned, but slowly, and only with the development of modern societies was the notion that societies learn “thematized”—only then did we begin “to learn that societies learn.” In traditional societies there were theories about history that helped to shape history. Specialists in ideas were usually religious functionaries—Buddhist monks, Vedic priests, and so on. But modern societies replaced God with new specialists in ideas, secular intellectuals. Modern society became the learning society par excellence. Collective learning processes are of two types: substantive learning, which involves the accumulation of stocks of knowledge; and rule learning, which is “learning how to learn.” After trying to characterize how societies learn, Eder raises the question as to why they learn. His answer is that societal learning springs from a need and desire to overcome uncertainty. Modern societies are high-risk societies with high levels of uncertainty; thus the particularly strong need to learn, and to learn how to learn. But if societies learn, Eder wonders, then “why is the world฀so฀hard฀to฀change?”฀One฀reason,฀he฀contends,฀is฀that฀too฀much฀learning can be confusing and often generates consequences that are outside of human฀intentions.฀Perhaps,฀then,฀we฀should฀stop฀our฀learning?฀But฀no,฀says฀ Eder, it is too late for that. We have no choice but to live in a learning society and to try to control the unintended consequences of learning.3 But there is another reason why the world is hard to change that receives very little attention from Eder: Societies are not just networks of ideas, information, or discourse, but of contrasting and conflicting material interests, and in my judgment it is these, far more than anything else, that shape social evolution, generate unintended consequences, and make the world hard to change in preformulated ways. Yet perhaps the main difficulty with Eder’s theory, aside from its idealism and its invocation of Hegel’s mystifying notion of contradictions, is that it is essentially a normative rather than a scientific theory. Eder remains within the tradition of critical social theory, whose purpose is embodied in Marx’s famous fifth thesis on Feuerbach: The point is to change the world rather than simply understand it. But if the world is so hard to change, could another reason be that some theories of social evolution฀have฀irst฀failed฀to฀adequately฀comprehend฀it?4

Notes 1. As already noted, Harris is not an ecological-evolutionary theorist in Lenski’s sense. He gives ecological factors a much larger role in social evolution than Lenski, and he restricts the meaning of “ecological” to the physical and biotic environment, whereas for Lenski, “ecological” is used in a much broader sense. For Lenski, the term has a much more general meaning that just as often refers to relations among

222 ✻ Chapter 9 societies as to relations between humans and the natural environment. (This is the legacy of Amos Hawley, who is cited frequently by Lenski, a thinker whose ideas are far removed from Harris and the cultural materialists.) And inexplicably, Lenski fails to mention my evolutionary materialism (Sanderson, 1999b) when he considers alternative theoretical approaches to social evolution. I say “inexplicably” because this approach builds on both Harris and Lenski himself and its existence could not possibly have escaped Lenski’s attention. Indeed, in the book in which my approach was originally most fully developed, Lenski was one of three scholars to whom the book was dedicated. Lenski does cite Social Evolutionism twice, once to complain that I misrepresented his work and a second time to criticize me for advocating Eldredge and Gould’s (1972; Gould and Eldredge, 1977) punctuated equilibrium theory of biological evolution as an appropriate foundation for a theory of social evolution. Trouble is, this is the exact opposite of the position I took and maintain to this day (see Sanderson [1990:207–208] or Chapter 12 of the present work). Upon rereading and reflection, I confess that I was overly harsh in my critique of Lenski in Social Evolutionism and have tried to correct for that in the present book. But it appears that misrepresentation can be contagious. 2. Habermas’s work suffers not only from the serious deficiencies of Parsonianism, but also from the inadequacies of Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning. The years have not been kind to Kohlberg. Not only do his stages not represent an invariant sequence, but most people even in modern societies do not think at a postconventional level. Indeed, the majority think at the “lower” stage in the conventional level (Stage 3), and people seem to use different stages of reasoning at different times and in different situations, including preconventional (Stage 2) reasoning. For excellent critiques of Kohlberg from the perspective of sociobiology or evolutionary psychology, see MacDonald (1988) and Krebs (2005). 3. This emphasis on collective learning processes as a key feature of social evolution strongly recalls Hobhouse’s evolutionism, but I have never seen any references to Hobhouse in any of Eder’s works (or in Habermas’s). This may be due not only to the long passage of time, but to the fact that Eder is in the Germanic intellectual tradition whereas Hobhouse, in spite of his proximity to Hegelianism, was part of the Anglo-American tradition. 4. As a riposte to Eder and the critical theorists more generally, I offer, for lack of a better term, what I will call Sanderson’s first thesis on critical sociology: “Critical sociologists today seek only to change the world; the point, however, is first to understand it.” It should be pointed out that not all German social evolutionists think like Eder. Indeed, in a recent excellent overview of theories of social evolution, the German sociologist Peter Meyer (2004) does not mention them even once. He concentrates his attention on the works of Carneiro, Lenski, Maryanski and Turner, and myself. He is even open to the sociobiologists’ insistence that social evolution is subject to major biological constraints (Sanderson, 2001), which would no doubt be Eder’s worst nightmare. How many฀more฀social฀evolutionists฀are฀there฀like฀Meyer฀in฀Germany?฀Probably฀not฀many,฀but฀ no doubt a few. For example, Manuela Boatc¢, a Romanian who teaches in a German university, is indeed much closer to Meyer than to Eder. Her doctoral dissertation (earned at a German university and of very recent vintage) (Boatc¢, 2003), cites, inter alia, Tylor, White, Steward, Sahlins, Service, Harris, Lenski, Wallerstein, Chase-Dunn and Hall, and myself—but not Eder. (However, I do note that, unlike Meyer but like Eder, Boatc¢ has a political agenda that is very much preoccupied with changing the world.)

C h a p t e r Te n

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism

T

he relationship between social and biological evolutionism has long been a matter of considerable interest to social evolutionists, and there has frequently been a desire to ground social evolutionary theories in concepts and principles that spring from evolutionary biology. In this chapter I look at three critical concepts that are shared by both social and biological evolutionism—those of adaptation, differentiation, and progress—and examine how they have been both conceptualized and evaluated by evolutionists on both sides of the aisle. Are they legitimate concepts in evolutionary theorizing and,฀if฀so,฀what฀kinds฀of฀cautions฀are฀necessary฀in฀their฀employment?฀At฀the฀ end of the chapter, I turn to a brief consideration of attempts to formulate Darwinian theories of social evolution.

The Concept of Adaptation in Biological and Social Evolutionism The Concept of Adaptation in Evolutionary Biology The concept of adaptation was crucial to Darwin’s original theory of natural selection and has continued to play a critical role in contemporary Darwinian thinking. The concept is widely employed by evolutionary biologists, and so much so that the search for the adaptive features of biological traits has become something of a preoccupation (Futuyma, 1986). However, some evolutionary biologists have advocated caution. In his classic Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966), George Williams warned his fellow biologists that the concept is an onerous one that should be used only when truly necessary. 223

224 ✻ Chapter 10 Williams argued that it was being abused by its wholesale and casual use, as well as by the absence of sufficiently rigorous criteria for determining the extent to which biological traits could be called adaptations. But by far the harshest critics of the concept have been Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, whose “The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme” (1984) has become a classic. Gould and Lewontin do not reject the concept’s usefulness and indeed admit that numerous features of organisms have undoubtedly arisen as adaptations. As Lewontin notes, “It is no accident that fish have fins, aquatic mammals have altered their appendages to form finlike flippers, ducks, geese, and seabirds have webbed feet, penguins have paddlelike wings, and even seasnakes, lacking fins, are flattened in cross-section” (1984:247). What they object to is the “vulgarization” of the concept—the assumption that all traits everywhere are adaptations—an outcome they believe to be guided more by ideology than by properties inherent in biological organisms themselves. Indeed, they suggest that the intense commitment to the concept of adaptation—a phenomenon they label the adaptationist program—is driven by Panglossian concerns, and therefore often amounts to nothing but Kipling’s famous “just-so stories.” (Remember that Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss held the view that, in human society and life in general, everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. This is the basis for Gould and Lewontin’s claim that the adaptationist program is ideologically rather than scientifically driven.) In attacking what they perceive as the uncritical and indiscriminate employment of the adaptation concept, Gould and Lewontin are obviously suggesting that many features of organisms arise in nonadaptive ways. They formulate an alternative evolutionary model emphasizing the concept of Bauplan, or the basic body plan of an organism. Organisms exist as basic irreducible wholes, they claim, and any attempt to decompose them into their individual parts, and to claim that it is these parts that individually evolve (as those who follow the adaptationist program do), does violence to the very nature of organisms. Organisms evolve as whole structures, they suggest, and many of their traits exist because they are integrated elements of the whole organism, not because they are adaptations to the external environment. The evolution of any trait is therefore constrained by the Bauplan of the organism, a constraint that Gould and Lewontin think “may hold the most powerful rein of all over possible evolutionary pathways” (1984:266). An important weakness in Gould and Lewontin’s position has been identified by Elliott Sober (1984). Sober notes that Gould and Lewontin fail to distinguish between adaptation and adaptedness, and thus automatically assume that the former implies the latter. Adaptation, for Sober, is a concept that should be used to indicate what an organism does in response to certain selection pressures, and thus an adaptation is a trait produced by natural selection. Adaptedness, by contrast, is essentially equivalent to fitness and refers

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 225 to a particular end result of the existence of a certain trait. Thus conceived, adaptation is a concept that refers to the origin of a trait, whereas adaptedness refers to the kinds of consequences that any trait, whatever its origin, generates. Conflating these two processes produces enormous confusion because, as Sober suggests, paradoxically “a trait can be an adaptation without marking an improvement in adaptedness; conversely, it can enhance its bearer’s level of adaptedness without being an adaptation” (1984:196). For example, the human appendix is (or presumably once was) an adaptation, but it is not (or is no longer) an adaptive trait (Shanahan, 2004). Sober’s distinction is a critical one with crucial implications for debates about the merits of the adaptation concept, not only for theories of biological evolution, but for theories of social evolution as well, as we shall see. Gould and Lewontin’s argument should sensitize us to the need to avoid any sort of “panadaptationism”—the assumption that all biological traits are adaptations. (It is fairly easy to think of traits that are not adaptations; for example, the sound made by the heart when it beats is not likely an adaptation, nor is the red color of oxygenated blood [Shanahan, 2004].) However, most evolutionary biologists seem to think that the authors have engaged in overkill. Most evolutionary biologists are not panadaptationists; they recognize that some traits are not adaptations and may simply be “hitching a ride” alongside traits that are adaptations. Although adaptationism is the reigning paradigm in evolutionary biology, it is more a methodological than an empirical adaptationism (GodfreySmith, 1999, 2001; Shanahan, 2004). That is, in investigating biological traits, evolutionary biologists are guided by the assumption that the traits in question are likely to be adaptations and seek to determine their adaptive significance and what selective forces would have favored them. As the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (1983) has suggested, it is the first task of the evolutionary biologist to determine how any given biological trait arose through natural selection. However, if an extensive investigation fails to produce results, then the biologist should entertain the possibility that the trait arose in some other fashion, including even by chance (cf. Shanahan, 2004:166). The concept of adaptation, with the qualifications just noted, therefore remains alive and well in evolutionary biology. However, there is still a nagging question that has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, and that concerns the unit of selection, i. e., what it is that does the adapting. Darwin’s view was that the individual organism was most often the unit on which selection operated, but he seemed to entertain the possibility that in some cases selection may involve entire groups or populations of organisms. The first neo-Darwinist to make a major case for such group selection was V. C. Wynne-Edwards (1962). Wynne-Edwards was especially interested in the densities of animal populations and suggested that some commonly observed animal behaviors, such as territoriality, arose because of their capacity to maintain populations at suitable levels. These behaviors therefore had to be explained as adaptations occurring at the level of the group or population as a whole, not at

226 ✻ Chapter 10 the level of individual organisms. Wynne-Edwards noted, for example, that many bird populations form aggregations in the evening. The function of these aggregations was to determine numbers and density relative to available resources, and to make necessary adjustments so that the group as a whole would benefit. Wynne-Edwards’s group selectionist argument was attacked rather quickly. John Maynard Smith (1964) argued that all of Wynne-Edwards’s empirical data could be explained just as easily in terms of selection operating on individual organisms (Shanahan, 2004). George Williams (1966) was extremely suspicious of Wynne-Edwards’s explanation, and of group selectionist explanations in general, holding that on grounds of both scientific parsimony and available evidence group selection should rarely if ever be invoked. In essence, Williams contended that adaptations that benefit groups are simply the statistical summation of adaptations occurring at the level of individuals or, more precisely, the genes that constitute individuals. Similar conclusions have been reached by William Hamilton (1964) and Richard Dawkins (1976). Hamilton introduced the concept of inclusive fitness to explain the puzzle of altruism as an evolutionary trend among many species, in particular the elaborate altruism of the eusocial insects. He proposed that selection operated at the level of the gene and that the maximization of inclusive fitness—the total representation of copies of an organism’s genes within a population—selected for altruism toward close relatives, even to the point of the organism’s surrendering its own life. Dawkins generalized Hamilton’s notion of genic selection by arguing that organisms were nothing but “gene machines”: structures designed for the perpetuation of the genes composing them. Although by 1970 it seemed that the notion of group selection was all but dead, it refused to die, and in the 1970s and 1980s was revived in new forms (Shanahan, 2004). One of the major leaders of the group selection renaissance was David Sloan Wilson (1975, 1980, 1983). A major impediment to the acceptance of Wynne-Edwards’s group selection model was the assumption that individuals would sacrifice themselves for the good of the group. Except in cases where the members of a group are very highly related, it would seem to be an evolutionary impossibility for such self-sacrifice to occur, since genes for self-sacrifice would have extremely low (or no) survival value. Wilson sought to get around this difficulty by proposing two forms of group selection, strong selection, in which a trait that confers a fitness advantage upon the entire population imposes a fitness disadvantage upon an individual organism, and weak selection, in which a trait that confers a fitness advantage upon the entire population does not involve any self-sacrifice on the part of an individual organism. Wilson thought that weak group selection was both possible and actual. However, evolutionary biologists still highly skeptical of group selection argued that what Wilson was calling weak group selection was actually just

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 227 another form of individual selection, what is known as frequency-dependent selection (Maynard Smith, 1982). This type of selection occurs when a trait’s fitness is influenced by how frequently it occurs within a population. That is, a trait that is common in a population can be fitness enhancing for both individual organisms and the population as a whole (Shanahan, 2004). Wilson has continued his strong advocacy of group selection and even extended it to social evolution (Sober and Wilson, 1998), as we shall see shortly. However, the debate over the level of selection has become more complicated and philosophically and conceptually abstract. Some have suggested that the unit of selection problem can only be resolved by distinguishing several kinds of entities that are involved in the selection process: replicators, interactors, beneficiaries, and manifestors of adaptations (Hull, 1988; Lloyd, 2000; Shanahan, 2004). Some would say that only genes, as bits of DNA, can be replicators (copiers), whereas organisms are the units that serve as interactors—units that engage the environment and other organisms. But entire groups or societies may manifest or display adaptations, and they may be and sometimes are beneficiaries of these adaptations. Others scholars, such as Stephen Jay Gould, have suggested that selection operates at several different levels simultaneously, “including genes, demes, species, and clades” (1982:384). Sterelny and Kitcher (1988:358) advocate a similar type of pluralist position, claiming that there “is no privileged way to segment the causal chain and isolate the (really) real causal story. . . . We are left with the general thesis of pluralism: there are alternative, maximally adequate representations of the causal structure of the selection process” (quoted in Shanahan, 2004:82). And Sober and Wilson (1998) now also favor a multilevel selectionism. Let me conclude this discussion of the unit of selection problem, however inadequately, by stating a position that may be little more than a bias: Selection cannot occur beyond the level of genes or organisms because only they can be discrete enough units to be either replicators (transmitters of genetic information) or interactors (entities that engage the environment and attempt to survive and find mates). Maynard Smith says that the notion of group selection is problematic because groups “do not chew or gallop or keep warm or bear their young alive; only individual animals do these things.” Similarly, Richard Dawkins says that “complex adaptations are in most cases not properties of species; they are properties of individuals. Species don’t have eyes and hearts; the individuals in them do.” And Mayr notes that traits that are most likely to be considered properties of populations or species, such as modes of dispersal or colonization, are in fact just the properties of individual organisms taken in the aggregate. Populations of organisms are not sui generis, i. e., they cannot exist independent of their constituent members, and thus they cannot be interactors in any strict sense. And, if this is true, it must be true a fortiori for species and clades. Group selection is therefore untenable, at least in its strong form;

228 ✻ Chapter 10 in its weak form it is much less problematic because here groups are mere beneficiaries of traits that are properties of individual organisms. I shall carry over this position into the discussion of adaptation and units of selection in social evolutionism.

The Debate over Adaptation in Social Evolutionism Although it is risky for a sociologist to try to adjudicate these complex and technical debates among evolutionary biologists, we can learn much from a recognition of them. Most importantly, we should learn that strong criticism of the adaptation concept does not imply the need to abandon it. Evolutionary biologists critical of the concept—including Gould and Lewontin, its staunchest critics—do not recommend that it be given up, only that it be used in a cautious and discriminating manner. And, again, let us not forget that this sort of cautious and discriminating adaptationism is overwhelmingly the reigning paradigm in evolutionary biology today. For this reason it is rather surprising to learn that many critics of the sociological version of the concept conclude that the concept’s weaknesses render it sterile, and thus that it must be jettisoned. Irving Zeitlin (1973), for example, views the concept as inextricably tied up with functionalism and its errors and therefore suggests that it has no place in social science. Anthony Giddens (1981, 1984) draws a similar conclusion on the basis of a considerably more extensive critique of the adaptation concept. Giddens sets forth three basic objections to the concept and its employment by social scientists. First, he suggests, the concept tends to be used so broadly and vaguely that it produces more confusion than illumination. He complains that it is frequently an extremely diffuse notion that is meant to include all possible influences on a society and its transformations and that, as such, it is essentially useless. Ironically, he also complains that in some cases the concept is used too narrowly (1984:234–235): Where “adaptation” is specified with some degree of precision . . . and where what is adapted to is also clearly delimited, the notion is manifestly inadequate as a general mechanism of social change. If environment means “natural environment,” and if “adapting” to it means responding to distinguishable changes in that environment in ways which have this effect of modifying existing organic or social traits, “adaptation” simply is much too narrow to be a creditable candidate for such a mechanism. It can be made plausible only by expanding one or both aspects of its meaning—by including other societies (i. e., the “social environment”) within the term “environment” and/or by including as “adaptation” more or less any major social process which seems to further the chances of maintaining a society in something like a stable form. Once that has been done, however, the concept becomes so vague that it is useless as a means of explaining anything at all.

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 229 Giddens’s second objection to the concept involves his association of it with functionalist modes of explanation. He suggests that explanations of social phenomena that rely on the concept of adaptation inevitably end up as nothing but tautologies. For example, the concept of superior adaptive capacity may be invoked to explain why a particular society, or a particular feature of a society, has survived or emerged. But then when we inquire into the reasons why a particular society is said to have superior adaptive capacity, we discover that it is because it or a particular feature of it has survived or emerged. Advocates of the concept of adaptation thus generally fail to provide an acceptable criterion for judging a social phenomenon’s adaptive capacity. Finally, Giddens contends that the concept of adaptation always implies the existence of a universal human desire for mastery of and domination over nature. He believes that evolutionary theories employing the concept (virtually all such theories, he suggests) explain basic evolutionary transformations, especially technological ones, as springing from this desire for mastery. But there is no such desire, he claims, because there is abundant evidence that the members of many preindustrial societies often actively resist technological advance or incorporation into more technologically advanced societies. Since the desire for mastery is a culturally specific rather than a universal human desire, the evolutionists’ concept of mastery cannot be a legitimate basis on which to rest explanations of historical change. Giddens’s objections to the adaptation concept do have some force. There are indeed dangers in the use of the concept in the social sciences, just as there are in biology. In many social-scientific theories, adaptation is often employed much too vaguely and loosely, and it is clear that it sometimes ends up producing explanations that are tautological. It is also true that the concept has been a central one within functionalism and that there is a close association between “adaptation” and “function.” Moreover, Giddens is right to note that some social evolutionists employ the concept in a way that does assume a universal human desire for mastery—it was central to Marx’s, Hobhouse’s, and Sumner and Keller’s thinking, for example, and more recently to the very different evolutionary approaches of Childe, White, Parsons, and Lenski—and I agree with him that it is unlikely that there is such a desire. However, I think that the problems to which Giddens points are not inherent in the adaptation concept itself, but spring from the particular uses to which it has been put by various social scientists, some evolutionists included. I therefore believe that Giddens has substantially overstated his case.1 The concept has risks and has been abused, but it is a good—indeed, I shall argue, necessary—one that we would be foolish to abandon. With this idea in mind, let me review how the concept has been used by different social evolutionists with an eye to learning from their mistakes (and their insights as well) and to developing a coherent and workable concept of adaptation.

230 ✻ Chapter 10 Of the evolutionary theorists discussed in this book, Talcott Parsons clearly stands out as a thinker whose use of the concept of adaptation is highly vulnerable to Giddens’s objections. I have already argued that Parsons’s concept of adaptive capacity is so terribly vague that its utility is called seriously into question. Parsons tells us that adaptation occurs in regard to the environment, but his notion of environment is so fuzzy that the entire claim seems almost meaningless. Moreover, Parsons’s usage of the adaptation concept is obviously permeated by functionalist notions. Parsons is a thoroughgoing “sociological group selectionist,” as one would expect from a thinker so hostile to any form of utilitarianism (cf. Haines, 1987). For him, it is a society (or an institutional segment thereof) that does the adapting. It is also clear that Parsons makes no distinction whatsoever between adaptation and adaptedness, the former being completely merged into the latter. (Sober’s point that this distinction is critical in evolutionary biology should logically be extended to social evolutionism.) In essence, not only do Giddens’s criticisms apply well to Parsons’s evolutionism, but so by implication do Gould and Lewontin’s. Parsonian evolutionism is as good an example as one can find of a social evolutionary version of the adaptationist program and the “Panglossian paradigm.” As for the notion of a universal desire for mastery, this too plays a fundamental role in Parsons’s evolutionism. However, this idea is in some respects even more fundamental to materialist versions of evolutionism. Marx’s evolutionism, and most modern versions of evolutionary Marxism, are just dripping with a notion of mastery. For Marx, the problem for societies with a primitive communal mode of production is that the technological means are insufficient to produce a decent life, and the transition out of primitive communism is primarily through increasing technological sophistication and mastery of the environment. The most positive feature of capitalism is that it enhances technological capacity, and thus makes possible a socialism in which there will be abundance for all. Under socialism, humans not only become masters of their environment, but masters of their society as well. In the technological evolutionism of Childe and White we also find the concept of mastery taking center stage. The very title of Childe’s first major evolutionary work, Man Makes Himself, is indicative of his belief in a general human desire for mastery as a guiding force in social evolution. The same idea is present in White’s evolutionism, although perhaps more implicitly. White’s general evolutionary law makes increasing energy capture basic to evolutionary advance, and he often appears to assume that the movement of societies to higher levels of energy capture results from a generalized human desire for control over nature.2 In addition, it seems clear that both Childe and White have merged adaptation and adaptedness. Although both recognize a number of negative consequences of technological and social evolution, both clearly view technological advance as producing net benefits for the members of societies

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 231 in general. However, as we have already seen, White’s failure to distinguish adaptation from adaptedness led him to a major reversal of his theoretical position toward the end of his life. He eventually concluded that the story of cultural evolution was not a story of increasing human adaptedness at all, but rather one of increasing misery, oppression, and exploitation. This led him to conclude that culture itself was not adaptive and could not be analyzed as such. But as I noted in Chapter 6, this extreme conclusion was completely unnecessary. White could simply have concluded that cultural traits arose as adaptations—that is, from the aims of particular individuals to satisfy various needs and wants—but that these traits often did not lead to the results originally intended. Or, alternatively, he could have concluded that some traits arose as adaptations and did indeed lead to adaptedness for some individuals and groups, but that the same traits imposed penalties on (and thus were maladaptive for) other individuals and groups. But White did not reach either conclusion because of his confusion of adaptation and adaptedness. When we turn to students and followers of White, we find much the same emphasis. In his essay on specific and general evolution, Sahlins claimed that general evolution leads to an increase in “all-round adaptability.” As Sahlins uses it, the concept of general evolution not only merges adaptation and adaptedness, but also rests on an implicit assumption of a general human desire for mastery.3 Lenski’s evolutionism rests on the same employment of the adaptation concept, but much more explicitly. For Lenski, social evolution is fundamentally rooted in the desire of humans to gain control over their environments, and technological advance is what allows them to do this. Lenski’s whole discussion of technological change is strongly oriented toward what he perceives as its positive features, and thus technology as a human adaptive means is closely intertwined with the notion of adaptedness. Moreover, in Lenski’s evolutionism the unit that is doing the adapting is always a sociocultural system as a whole, and thus Lenski is also a sociological group selectionist. Despite the fact that White was his mentor and a strong adaptationist, Carneiro seldom uses the concept of adaptation and seems uncomfortable with it, saying that (2003:179) making adaptation coextensive—even coterminous—with evolution has its problems. It implies, for example, that the better adapted a society, the more evolved it is. By this logic, if the Paiute can be shown to have been better adapted to their environment than the Aztecs were to theirs—and the Paiute survived while the Aztecs succumbed!—then one would have to conclude that the Paiute were more evolved than the Aztecs, a dubious proposition to say the least.

This is a rather curious statement, and it is noteworthy for failing to ask “better adapted in what sense?” or “better adapted to what?” But we can see from

232 ✻ Chapter 10 the statement why Carneiro largely avoids using the concept. His alternative is simply to talk of evolution as producing increasing complexity and leave it at that. Remember that for Carneiro, evolution, or at least political evolution, is a process of conquest of the less powerful by the more powerful; his theory of political evolution is a conflict theory that has little room for the notion of adaptation. And if there is little room for adaptation, then there is also little room for selection. (Although, given Carneiro’s emphasis on population pressure and resource scarcity as driving evolutionary forces, one cannot help but think that the notions of adaptation and selection are still there implicitly.)4 In Jonathan Turner’s evolutionism, the concept of adaptation is seldom employed, but his notion of increasing institutional differentiation resulting from increasing logistical loads and more intense selection pressures certainly implies the concept. Turner also accepts sociological group selection, but not as the only form of selection; selection operating on individuals is operating as well. Turner is a multilevel social selectionist. In Chase-Dunn and Hall’s world-systemic evolutionism, the concept of adaptation is also seldom used, but, again, like Turner, it is clearly being implied. Indeed, it has to be given their explicit indebtedness to Harris and the cultural materialists. However, as thinkers significantly influenced by the Marxist tradition, they clearly recognize that new adaptations often lead to serious maladaptive consequences for many individuals. They thus keep adaptation and adaptedness apart. (Maryanski and Turner obviously do as well with their notion of the types of social caging that restrain natural human individualism in horticultural and agrarian societies.) In the evolutionary theories of Habermas and Eder, there is no explicit notion of adaptation, but their stress on collective learning processes clearly implies that some sort of social improvement is possible, and sometimes actual. It is hard to say whether Eder has a concept of mastery, but his notion that societies learn, and eventually learn that they learn, seems to imply a version of it. So far we have seen that many social evolutionists have used the concept of adaptation in the dubious ways that Giddens suggests. However, in the evolutionism of Marvin Harris we see a rather different picture—an evolutionism that is remarkably free from the difficulties of the adaptation concept. Although Harris (1979, 1999) accepts that group selection can and does occur in some instances, and although in his early work he often produced group selectionist (functionalist) explanations (Sanderson, 2006a), after about the mid-1970s he shifted to a largely individual selectionist position. Harris comes the closest of any major contemporary evolutionist to producing an evolutionary model that is the social-scientific equivalent of genic or organismic selection. Harris also clearly distinguishes between adaptation and adaptedness, though without using the terms as such. In fact, the major evolutionary model that he presents in Cannibals and Kings assumes that much of social

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 233 evolution is a story of decreasing benefits for the majority of persons, even though the evolutionary transformations in question result from the efforts of individuals to satisfy their various needs and desires. Harris has carefully avoided the trap into which White fell at the end of his career. For example, horticulturalists may have a lower standard of living than hunter-gatherers, but the first hunter-gatherer communities to make the transition to domestication did so because they were attempting to cope with increasing population pressure and environmental degradation. Likewise, most people in societies practicing plow agriculture may have a lower standard of living than those in horticultural societies, but the adoption of the plow was an adaptation arising from the need to intensify production in order to arrest declining agricultural yields from horticulture. It is also obvious that Harris is not assuming any sort of universal desire for mastery that drives social evolution. In fact, his whole evolutionary model rests on very different notions. The universal human desires—in Harris’s terminology, biopsychological constants—that most affect the course of social evolution are the desire to maximize calories and nutrients and the desire to save time and energy doing burdensome work—a so-called Law of Least Effort (Zipf, 1965). Harris sees preindustrial societies being governed by a kind of “technological inertia” that arises from people’s recognition that more intensive technologies require greater time and energy inputs. People will generally increase their time and energy expenditure only when they are compelled to do so, either by declining living standards or the compulsion of political elites. For Harris, then, preindustrial social evolution is guided by anything but a drive for mastery. This drive seems to play a strong role in modern industrial societies, and among preindustrial political and economic elites, but as such it is context-specific rather than universal and context-free.5 My grand conclusion is thus that, even though many social evolutionists have used the adaptation concept in questionable ways, these usages are not inherent in the concept itself. Harris has demonstrated that the concept can be used to great effect if it is done judiciously. Indeed, my argument is that the concept is not only useful, but absolutely essential for understanding social evolution. The key is not to abandon it, but to be aware of its dangers and therefore to specify it as precisely as possible. This means, as Hallpike (1986) has suggested, specifying such things as the trait whose existence one wants to explain, the specific adaptive value the trait is said to confer, the individual or individuals for whom the trait is said to be adaptive, and so on. In Chapter 12 I shall attempt to carry out a detailed systematization of the concept in the context of presenting my comprehensive theory of social evolution. I might also add that making adaptation a central concept in the study of social evolution has another advantage, although Giddens and other antipositivists would not acknowledge it as such. This advantage is that of

234 ✻ Chapter 10 contributing to the unity of science—to consilience in Edward O. Wilson’s (1998) sense. Like the concept of evolution (which, it hardly needs saying, contributes mightily to consilience), the concept of adaptation has proved itself too fruitful in evolutionary biology, and too fruitful as well in the social sciences, to be abandoned. But before concluding this section, something more explicit needs to be said about the unit of selection in social evolution. If we are to talk of adaptation,฀what฀is฀it฀that฀does฀the฀adapting?฀Obviously฀from฀what฀has฀been฀said฀ above, I reject group selectionist arguments in social evolutionary theories just as I do with respect to biological evolution. And the reason is essentially the same: Like populations or species of organisms, societies are not discrete enough entities to constitute units of selection. I would put the matter this way: Groups or societies can be and indeed are “carriers” or “vehicles” of adaptations, but they cannot be “replicators,” “selectors,” or “interactors.” Only individuals can replicate, select, or interact. Two of the most vigorous advocates of group selection in social evolution are Sober and Wilson (1998), who, as we saw earlier, are strong advocates of group selection (and multilevel selection) in biological evolution. Sober and Wilson often invoke as examples of group social selection competition between lineages and clans, or between entire communities, in which one group is defeated at the hands of the other. In particular, they cite the defeat of the Dinka at the hands of the Nuer, even though the latter were at an overall numerical disadvantage. Because of their segmentary lineage system of kinship organization, the Nuer could actually put together a larger fighting force, and this allowed them to be victorious. But I would strongly question this as a form of group selection even though it might qualify as an example of Lenski’s intersocietal selection. The reason is simple. The attempt of one group to defeat another ultimately springs from individual drives and motives for military aggression, and thus what Sober and Wilson are calling group selection is just aggregated individual selection. As Marvin Harris (1979:61; emphasis added) puts it, group selection is merely a catastrophic consequence of selection operating on or through individuals. Cultural evolution, like biological evolution, has (up to now at least) taken place through opportunistic changes that increase benefits and lower costs to individuals. Just as a species does not “struggle to survive” as a collective entity, but survives or not as a consequence of the adaptive changes of individual organisms, so too do sociocultural systems survive or not as a consequence of the adaptive changes in the thought and activities of individual men and women who respond opportunistically to cost-benefit options. If the sociocultural system survives as a result of patterns of thought and behavior selected for on the individual level, it is not because the group as such was successful but because some or all of the individuals in it were successful. Thus a group that is annihilated in warfare can be said to have been selected for as a group, but if we want to understand why it was annihilated, we must examine

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 235 the cost-benefit options exercised by its individual members relative to the options exercised by its individual neighbors.

In other words, we would need to understand not only why individual Nuer wanted to go to war against individual Dinka, but why individual Nuer chose to organize themselves into a segmentary lineage system and individual Dinka did not. Sober and Wilson also give great emphasis to the fact that in all societies there are powerful social norms that are backed up by sanctions, seeming to think that this could only have occurred through some sort of group selection. By their reasoning, apparently if norms are imposed on the entire group then group selection has to be at work. Referring to complexes of norms and other institutional arrangements, the authors even go on to say that “human social groups are so well designed at the group level that they must have evolved by group selection” (1998:191). If ever a statement qualified as a non sequitur, this one is surely it! In my view, this claim is essentially the equivalent of the utterly specious claim made by antievolutionary advocates of “intelligent design” that organisms reveal such complex design that they could only have been designed by an intelligent designer! It is undeniable that there are many cultural traits and social behaviors that benefit entire groups, but this alone is not sufficient evidence of group selection, or at least strong group selection. Individuals often create norms that they impose on themselves as well as everyone else because they benefit in the long run from the existence of those norms. Individuals often share and do for others because such apparently altruistic behavior brings longterm benefits for those who share. Ultimately, what Sober and Wilson fail to distinguish is traits or behaviors that have the consequence of benefiting entire groups and traits or behaviors that are originally chosen or performed in order to benefit the group. If they wish to call the former group selection, fine by me, so long as we specify that it is only group selection in its weaker form. The latter, strong group selection, is extremely unlikely to occur, not only because of the inherently self-interested nature of humans, but because, as Harris has put it, “Altruism, to be successful, must confer adaptive advantages on those who give as well as on those who take” (1979:61).

Biological and Social Evolution as Processes of Differentiation The concept of differentiation or increasing complexity is another concept that has played a major role in the thinking of many biological and social evolutionists. As we have already seen, for Parsons it is the master concept, and it also is the main explanandum for Jonathan Turner. For my part, I think that both thinkers, Parsons in particular, overrate the importance of differentiation as an evolutionary process. I am willing to concede that

236 ✻ Chapter 10 there has been an overall trend toward increasingly differentiated societies throughout history, but, as Charles Tilly (1984) and Anthony Smith (1973) have noted, dedifferentiation is also an important social process, and many social transformations have had essentially nothing to do with differentiation. It is by no means clear that differentiation is necessarily any more important than other features of social evolution, and it is often less important. On the other hand, differentiation does seem to be important enough as an evolutionary process to need some sort of systematic explanation. And this seems to be true in the biological realm as well as in the social. Let us look first, then, at what evolutionary biologists have had to say about growing complexity in organisms before looking at social evolutionists’ various concepts of increasing social complexity.

Differentiation as an Aspect of Biological Evolution Increasing complexity is widely regarded by biologists as an important evolutionary process, and it is often explained in terms of its adaptive significance. For example, in Jeffrey Wicken’s (1987:179) view, “Complexity, even where only weakly functional, provides structural possibilities for new levels of functionality.” A similar view has been taken by G. Ledyard Stebbins (1969, 1974). Stebbins points out that most biological evolution consists of modifications at the same level of organizational complexity, and that the shift from one level of complexity to another is relatively rare. Darwin himself was fully aware of this process, since he represented evolution as a branching shrub rather than a tall narrow tree. Nevertheless, shifts to higher levels of complexity have occurred, and Stebbins regards them as quite significant. In order to explain these shifts, Stebbins formulates a principle that he calls the principle of the conservation of organization. This principle holds that “whenever a complex, organized structure or a complex biosynthetic pathway has become an essential adaptive unit of a successful group of organisms, the essential features of this unit are conserved in all of the evolutionary descendants of the group concerned” (1969:124–125). What this seems to mean is that biological evolution places a floor on the degree of complexity that has been achieved at a certain point in the evolutionary process, and this floor creates possibilities for evolution to higher levels of complexity. These possibilities are occasionally realized because of the adaptive significance of more complex structures, that is, more complex structures permit organisms to achieve greater adaptive radiation and evolutionary dominance. Wicken and Stebbins see the evolution of biological complexity as adaptive, but not all evolutionary biologists agree. Most notable in this regard are Saunders and Ho (1976, 1981, 1984), who claim that complexity and fitness are independent evolutionary processes and must be explained differently. Even if it could be shown that biological evolution led to increased fitness (a notion about which they are highly skeptical), they contend that such increasing fitness could not explain increasing complexity. Their alternative to

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 237 this common sort of explanation is a disarmingly simple one: Complexity increases in biological evolution because it is easier to produce than the reverse. As they put it, “The trend toward increased complexity . . . is a consequence of the tendency of a complex system to permit the addition of components more readily than their removal” (1984:136). When new components are added to an organism, then there is a process of self-organization that occurs in which the components become highly integrated. As a result, “it will be more difficult to remove components and still have a well-functioning entity than it will be to add components” (Shanahan, 2004:238). John Maynard Smith (1988:221) takes a similar view, commenting that “since the first living things were necessarily simple, it is not surprising that the most complex things alive today are more complex than their first progenitors.” Maynard Smith regards this explanation of increasing complexity as both “obvious” and “uninteresting” (Dawkins, 1997; Shanahan, 2004). Stephen Jay Gould is also aligned with this type of explanation. As a leading opponent of the adaptationist program in evolutionary biology, Gould regarded increasing complexity as largely forced movement away from simple beginnings rather than the attainment of something more adaptive or advantageous (Shanahan, 2004). According to Shanahan (2004), what Saunders and Ho, Maynard Smith, and Gould have in common is the notion that increasing biological complexity is merely the result of passive forces, not of adaptation and natural selection. To make matters even more complicated and unsettled, other evolutionary biologists take the even more extreme position that increasing complexity is not a prominent aspect of biological evolution. There is thus really nothing there to be explained in the first place. J. Wynne McCoy (1977), for example, suggests that, although organisms can be ordered in terms of their complexity, this order often is unrelated to the sequence in which they actually evolved. McCoy concedes that evolution does involve increasing complexity to some extent but claims that evolutionary processes that have nothing to do with growing complexity are at least as important. (This is the same argument that Tilly, Anthony Smith, and I have made with respect to social evolution.) George Williams (1966) has also questioned the extent to which biological evolution displays increasing complexity. “Is man really more฀complex฀structurally฀than฀his฀piscine฀progenitor฀of฀Devonian฀times?”฀ Williams asks (1966:42). He goes on to assert that, in a comparison of mammals and fishes, a mammal is more complex on some dimensions (such as brain structure), but a fish is more complex on other dimensions (such as integumentary histology). Moreover, “What the verdict after a complete and objective comparison would be is uncertain” (1966:43). Levins and Lewontin (1985) take an even more extreme view, contending that the view that evolution is associated with increasing complexity has no basis at all. They suggest that the concept of complexity can be given different theoretical meanings, and that even if its meaning can be agreed on the difficulties of measuring

238 ✻ Chapter 10 it and assessing trends regarding it are overwhelming. In the end they reject the utility of the concept of increasing complexity altogether, claiming that it originates not in science but in bourgeois ideology. (The authors are Marxists who subscribe to something they call “dialectical biology,” and are kissing cousins to Stephen Jay Gould, another Marxist whose ideological inclinations have strongly colored his biological thinking.) One of the difficulties we face in discussing complexity in biological evolution is that there is no consensus as to how it should be defined. Usually, however, it means the number of parts an organism has and the number and nature of the interconnections among these parts. However, very recently a number of biologists and information theorists have tackled this problem by defining complexity as genomic complexity—the number of genes an organism contains—and performing computer simulations designed to see if increasing genomic complexity is real. Adami, Ofria, and Collier (2000) deliberately sidestep the question of structural and functional complexity in order to concentrate on genomic complexity. For them, the physical complexity of the genome is a matter of the number of functional base pairs in a DNA sequence. They created self-replicating “digital organisms” within computer programs that were designed to track what happens to these “organisms” over time. They found that complexity steadily increased. They claimed to observe the rise of increasingly complex genomes that “stupefy us with their intricacy and an uncanny amalgam of elegant solutions and clumsy remnants of historical contingency” (2000:4467). And the authors seek to explain this growing complexity in natural selectionist terms (Adami, 2002). Natural selection is said to act as a filtering mechanism, something akin to a semipermeable membrane that allows information to flow into the genome but stops it from flowing back out. More generally, they invoke “Maxwell’s Demon” to explain increasing genomic complexity. This was a thought experiment involving a hypothetical entity created by the nineteenth-century mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell in order to refute the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the tendency of closed physical systems to evolve toward maximum entropy. Thus Maxwell’s Demon invokes processes that are negentropic, or that involve increasing complexity and organization rather than increasing randomness and lack of organization. How similar this is to what Saunders and Ho may be saying is difficult to say. (Best to let the specialists in evolutionary biology and information theory tackle that one.) Using genome size as a measure of biological complexity has, however, been challenged. Szathmáry, Jordán, and Pál (2001) suggest that it is a fairly poor measure, pointing out that the worm Caenorhabditis elegans contains 18,424 genes, Drosophilia melanogaster (the fruit fly) 13,601, the plant Arabidopsis over 25,000, and humans approximately 35,000. The authors go on to suggest that a better measure of complexity is the number of generegulation networks and the connections among them. Unfortunately, they

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 239 do not run any computer simulations designed to determine if complexity measured in this fashion would also regularly increase. But it would probably be a safe bet that it would. Is฀there฀a฀grand฀conclusion฀to฀be฀drawn฀from฀all฀this?฀For฀a฀sociologist฀with฀ limited familiarity with evolutionary biology, attempting such a conclusion is both difficult and risky. Perhaps the safest thing to say is that the issue is still very much an open one, both in terms of how important increasing biological complexity is as a general trend and, if it is important, how it ought to be explained. It would probably be foolish to conclude otherwise.

Explaining Social Differentiation Let us take shelter, then, in more familiar territory. As already indicated, I think it is safe to assume that increasing differentiation is a general trend in social evolution, but at the same time many social evolutionists have concentrated too much attention on it. But for the sake of argument let us say that it is one important trend in social evolution and that, as such, calls for an฀explanation.฀What฀are฀the฀possibilities?฀I฀see฀the฀following฀ive: 1. Differentiation is not only the master trend in social evolution, but it is both the explanandum and the explanans. It “explains itself” in the sense that growing differentiation is an overpowering force that, like a gigantic flood, sweeps away everything in its path. Differentiation increases because it leads to higher and higher levels of adaptive capacity, and societies are “goaloriented” systems that regulate themselves in ways so as to produce adaptive improvements. This, of course, is the argument of Talcott Parsons and fellow travelers. I have already subjected this argument to severe criticism in Chapter 7 and rejected it. 2. Growing social differentiation results from the increased logistical loads initiated by population growth and the new functional problems that arise from the external and internal environments. Increased logistical loads lead to selection pressures for the development of new social structures that are more capable of handling the increased loads than old structures. This is the kind of functionalist argument favored by Jonathan Turner, and also to some extent by Johnson and Earle (1987, 2000) for preindustrial social evolution. 3. Increased differentiation results from the new niche formation that springs from an increase in the intensity of social competition. This is Durkheimian or Darwinian selection, also favored by Turner, but as a process secondary to number 2 above. 4. Increased differentiation is a result of the economic and political interests of elite social groups, and is therefore a function of power relations. This argument has been developed at length by Dietrich Rueschemeyer in his book Power and the Division of Labor (1986), and, in a different guise, by Robert Carneiro in his theory of political evolution. Rueschemeyer’s argument is deliberately

240 ✻ Chapter 10 aimed at functionalist explanations of social differentiation. He claims that when the goals of powerful social groups are better facilitated by more complex social structures, such structures tend to arise as a direct result of the actions of elites. The complex division of labor associated with modern industrial capitalism, for example, is adjusted to the needs of capitalists for productivity and profit. Likewise, the world-economy of which Wallerstein and others speak is an extremely complex system that has resulted from the economic and political power of the most powerful groups in the most powerful nation-states. While admitting that differentiation is a common feature of social evolution, Rueschemeyer also insists that stagnation and dedifferentiation are important evolutionary processes. These too, he suggests, are to be explained primarily in terms of power relations. The technological stagnation—or at least the slow rate of technological change—of most large-scale agrarian states, for example, resulted primarily from a lack of interest of agrarian elites in technological change. Such change was not necessary to the satisfaction of their economic interests, and in some cases might even have undermined those interests. Devolutionary reversals of differentiation, such as the collapse of agrarian empires, have occurred as a result of drastically changing balance-of-power relations. Carneiro’s theory of political evolution bears certainly similarities to Rueschemeyer’s type of argument. Remember that for Carneiro the keys to political evolution are population growth, warfare, and environmental circumscription. More complex political structures evolve when less complex societies run out of land and attempt to conquer other societies in order to gain access to their land. Tribes conquer other tribes and eventually form simple chiefdoms, and when these chiefdoms conquer other chiefdoms more complex chiefdoms result. When chiefdoms at very high levels of complexity invade and conquer each other, states are eventually formed. 5. Increased social differentiation occurs because it is easier to add components to a social structure than to remove them. This, of course, is the argument of Saunders and Ho transferred to social evolution. In their words (1976:382): Societies also evolve . . . and the general pattern is the same. . . . [S]o long as changes occur in a relatively piecemeal and uncoordinated fashion, the complexity of a society (as measured by, say, the number of distinct occupations) is likely to increase. The present-day highly complex industrial society is not necessarily fitter or in any sense better than the simple agrarian society from which it evolved and to which some would like it to return, but this return is unlikely to happen other than by some cataclysmic or revolutionary upheaval.

Inasmuch as I have already rejected the first of these arguments, what then฀of฀the฀other฀four?฀I฀am฀inclined฀to฀say฀that฀both฀the฀second,฀third,฀and฀ fourth will explain the bulk of the differentiation process. Although in Social

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 241 Evolutionism I rejected all functionalist arguments and favored the power relations argument and the passive evolution argument, I would now accept Turner’s (and Johnson and Earle’s) tempered functionalist argument and largely reject the passive evolution argument. The passive evolution argument may be right as far as it goes, but it doesn’t really tell us very much; by itself it cannot take us very far. However, I want to temper Turner’s functionalism even more. Turner accepts that social selection occurs at both the individual and the social level, and he would no doubt regard his theory of differentiation as involving group selection. However, I would claim that Turner’s explanation can be reformulated in purely individual selectionist terms. Societies experience increased logistical loads, which often require more differentiated structures to handle them. But it is the individual members of these societies who recognize what is going on (although often only dimly) and choose to build the new structures that are required. Societies are self-regulating only in the sense that they involve conscious, thinking individuals who seek adaptive solutions to new functional problems. Thus, I would reformulate Turner’s functionalist argument as a form of what I have elsewhere (Sanderson, 2001:22–23) called functional analysis, which is in essence a form of individualist functionalism. What I am getting at can be better explained by taking some examples. Starting at the preindustrial level, the first societies that have any degree of differentiation beyond that based on simple age and sex distinctions are simple chiefdoms. These are hierarchical societies in which a paramount chief, usually in collaboration with a number of subchiefs, rules over a mass of commoners, directs their labor, extracts surplus production from them, and, almost always, engages in warfare with neighboring chiefdoms. A critical question concerns the motivations of individuals to become chiefs. The answer, I think, is that chiefs are self-aggrandizers: They are individuals who are imbued with well-above-average tendencies to seek status, wealth, and power. However, in order to retain their chiefly status, chiefs are normally obligated to perform a variety of managerial functions that involve, for the most part, economic coordination, although they can delegate some of this management to subchiefs. Even though chiefs may benefit disproportionately from their status, their actions may nonetheless prove beneficial to the large mass of the population, especially in cases in which chiefs manage such things as irrigation works that are important to the average person’s cultivation of his land. Thus, differentiation into chiefdoms may result from both powerseeking and the need to manage increased logistical loads. The common people may benefit, even though chiefs may benefit more. Consider, for example, Johnson and Earle’s (2000:279–280) description of the Trobriand Islanders, a society organized as a relatively simple chiefdom: Why did the incipient stratification and institutionalization of political hierarchies฀evolve฀in฀the฀Trobriands฀and฀not฀in฀seemingly฀similar฀societies?฀For฀two฀

242 ✻ Chapter 10 reasons, deriving respectively from the political economy and the subsistence economy. First, in the political economy, the social differentiation inherent in the institutionalized leadership on the Trobriands is underwritten by differential access to the means of production and distribution. . . . Thus the control over production and exchange, made possible by control over capital, has led to social stratification and a self-perpetuating elite. Yet as Malinowski . . . was quick to recognize, chiefs are equally indispensable in the daily lives of the Trobrianders. Characteristically, small islands are ecologically unstable and poor in resources. As a risk management strategy, Trobriand chiefs act as “tribal bankers,” investing the surplus made available in a normal year or a good year in capital equipment such as canoes, in foreign trade for nonlocal materials and craft goods, in the political ceremonies that determine individual and group status, and in wealth valuables. In a bad year, when there is no surplus, the chief’s management of production guarantees a sufficiency for subsistence needs. Chiefs also, by establishing and maintaining foreign trade relationships through the kula exchange system, provide access to markets essential for the smooth operation of the local economy. . . . In simplest terms, the subsistence economy of the fragile and isolated Trobriand Islands could not be successfully intensified without leadership to manage the production cycle and external exchange.

But the Trobriand Island chiefdoms were small potatoes compared to the highly complex chiefdoms that developed in Polynesia, especially in Hawaii. Here the self-aggrandizement of the paramount chiefs was far greater, and their power to control others especially great. Hawaiian chiefdoms contained a paramount chief, district chiefs, and many community chiefs organized into a complex hierarchy. Competition for chiefly offices was intense because the rewards were great. Chiefs engaged in opulent displays of status and wealth, and even began to adopt the elaborate trappings of European royalty once the Europeans landed on their islands. Yet at the same time chiefs exercised important managerial functions in an economy that had become increasingly complex over time, in large part because of intense population pressure and land scarcity. As Johnson and Earle comment (2000:291–292): The chief’s control of the basic productive resource of agricultural land was particularly clear when the chief’s land manager organized the construction of capital improvements such as irrigation canals, terraces, or fish ponds. Subsistence plots in irrigated or terraced lands, with their high productivity, were allocated to commoners in exchange for a commitment to work on adjacent land owned by the chief. Each irrigation system was thus a mosaic of chiefly lands providing for political finance and commoner allotments providing for subsistence. An ideology of reciprocity between chiefs and commoners was thus established; commoners labored for the chief as a kind of “rent” for their subsistence plots.

Thus the highly complex chiefdoms of Hawaii evolved as a result of both chiefly self-aggrandizement and the increased logistical loads and selection

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 243 pressures stemming ultimately from population pressure in island environments. Both a functionalist and a power conflict argument are needed to make sense of the entire evolutionary process. However, Johnson and Earle do point out that, especially in the more complex chiefdoms, the issue of control, as distinct from management, seems to loom larger. That is, where particular selection pressures favored the differential control of productive resources, chiefs were more likely to come to power and to use their economic control to enhance their power. They exercised managerial functions, but these functions took a backseat to their self-aggrandizing aims. And as chiefdoms evolved into states, these yet more complex social structures seemed to be determined even more by considerations of power than by those of management. Historical agrarian states, when compared to modern states, had much lower levels of internal differentiation, and the overall differentiation of the society over which these states ruled was also comparatively low. To a very large extent, the state created officials who were charged with the responsibilities of extracting rent, taxes, and labor services from the bulk of the population, but for the most part left the common people alone. However, where major improvements in agricultural production were necessary to support growing populations, the state might get more directly involved in the subsistence economy. In this regard, Johnson and Earle focus in particular on the Inka state of pre-Columbian Peru. They note that this state has been pictured by conflict theorists as run by ruthless exploiters and by functionalists as controlled by beneficent managers, but that, in fact, it was something of both. They point out that the Inka state was heavily involved in agricultural intensification through irrigation, terracing, and the draining of fields, and thus provided considerable benefits for the mass of the population. But in the final analysis (2000:329): All states are stratified. They have to be, because the very institutions of state that are necessary to prevent economic chaos are based on a reliable income for finance. This income is only possible with economic control, and that control translates into rule by an elite, whether socially, politically, or religiously marked. At the state level, stratification appears to be inevitable. . . . [S]tates can be formed only where two sets of conditions are present: high population density, with explicit needs for an overarching system of integration; and opportunities for sufficient economic control to permit the stable finance of regional institutions and to support a ruling class.

What฀then฀of฀the฀evolution฀of฀modern฀states?฀These฀states฀have฀become฀ differentiated on a scale unimaginable in even the most complex states of the historical agrarian world (such as the Roman Empire). And most of this differentiation has occurred within the last century or two. Modern states are massive institutions with an enormous range of officials and an enormous number of functions (cf. Sanderson, 1999b:289–294). Between 1800

244 ✻ Chapter 10 and 1900, central government expenditures in the four most economically developed nations—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—increased on average some 19-fold. But between 1900 and 1988, the extent of the increase was far greater—some 792-fold. These figures somewhat overestimate the growth in the size of modern states because they do not control for price inflation and population growth. On the other hand, the figures refer only to central or federal government expenditures. When these are added in, and state spending is calculated as a percentage of national income, we see that average total state spending in the same four countries was already 26.3 percent in 1950 and increased to 43.3 percent by 1988—nearly half of national income (Sanderson, 1999b). What have these massively larger states been spending their revenues on?฀Earlier฀states฀were฀primarily฀war฀machines,฀with฀some฀75 percent of all state expenditures in the largest European states and the United States in 1760 devoted to military purposes (Mann, 1993). However, by 1910 this had declined to some 25 percent, leaving 75 percent of state expenditures for civilian purposes (Mann, 1993). Looking only at central government expenditures for the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and West Germany, in 1975 the respective figures were 14 percent for military purposes and 86 percent for civilian (Lane, McKay, and Newton, 1991). As for how this 86 percent was being spent, central government expenditures as a percentage of total central government expenditures were apportioned as follows: social security, 37 percent; health, 14.2 percent; economic development, 9.8 percent; education, 4.3 percent; and housing, 2.5 percent (Sanderson, 1999b). It is obvious, then, that by the latter part of the twentieth century central governments (and state and local governments too, for that matter) were spending massive amounts of money for the benefit of the large mass of the population, thus showing that the modern state has grown primarily in response to the growing demands deriving from the increasing empowerment of subordinate classes. Here, then, we have a power relations theory of differentiation, but one in which it is subordinate rather than dominant classes that have been the source of influence. And this has been the case because of widespread and large-scale democratization, a process driven by growth in the size and power of working classes and by mass education and the expansion of literacy (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, 1992; Sanderson, 1999b, 2004). However, it has not been solely a matter of responding to the demands of subordinate classes. States have played a larger and larger role over time in economic development—in assisting their national capitalists in maximizing productivity and profits—and capitalists have increasingly looked to the state for economic assistance. So the power of elites has been involved after all.6 Before closing this discussion of differentiation, we should take note of the fact that, not only is growing differentiation not a constant, but it has its

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 245 dark, maladaptive side. Throughout history, highly complex societies have collapsed many times and either disappeared entirely or devolved to much lower levels of complexity. According to Joseph Tainter (1988), when a complex (especially state-level) society collapses, some or all of the following things generally happen: authority and centralized control break down; smaller states emerge within the formerly unified territory and frequently contend with one another for control; large-scale construction projects, such as monuments and roads, are halted; palaces and central storage facilities are abandoned; subsistence needs formerly provided by the central government come to be provided at local levels; technology reverts to simpler forms; populations decline in number and density; and many settlements are completely abandoned. The most spectacular instances of collapse, such as that of the Roman Empire, have occurred in agrarian civilizations, but collapses have also occurred in chiefdoms of various degrees of complexity (Diamond, 2005). And, although no industrial society has yet collapsed, there is no reason in principle why this could not happen in the future (and eventually it very likely will). The most interesting thing about Tainter’s analysis is his explanation of why complex societies collapse: It is precisely because they are complex! Complex societies are extremely costly to maintain, and many eventually discover that these costs can no longer be borne. Although complexity is highly functional for elites, and in many cases also for the masses, once costs escalate to a certain level a point of diminishing marginal returns sets in that weakens a society and makes it highly vulnerable to any stresses or shocks. Although I am somewhat reluctant to use Hegelian terminology, complexity creates its own dialectical contradictions: The more a society invests in complexity, the higher the costs and the more difficult it becomes over time to pay them. Social evolution thus proceeds from lower to higher costs, a process that Tainter regards as an “immutable fact.” And once these costs pass a certain threshold, they become unbearable and the weakened society enters a phase of decline and eventually devolves into something much smaller and much simpler, a process that is often rapid but sometimes, as in the case of ancient Rome, long and drawn out. Our natural tendency is to view collapse as a bad thing—indeed, as catastrophic. And in some ways it is. However, throughout history most complex societies have been much more beneficial for their elites than for the masses. Indeed, they are often maladaptive for the masses, who are the ones who pay most of the costs of complexity. In this light, collapse and dedifferentiation can actually be viewed positively, as Tainter explains (1988:198): Complex societies . . . are recent in human history. Collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. The notion that collapse is uniformly a catastrophe is contradicted, moreover, by the present theory. To the extent that collapse is due

246 ✻ Chapter 10 to declining marginal returns on investment in complexity, it is an economizing process. It occurs when it becomes necessary to restore the marginal return on organizational investment to a more favorable level. To a population that is receiving little return on the cost of supporting complexity, the loss of that complexity brings economic, and perhaps administrative, gains.

Ester Boserup (1965) has called attention to the fact that, although technological advance is a general trend in social evolution, there are sometimes devolutionary reversions to simpler forms of technology. In her view, technological advance, or at least the advance of basic subsistence technology, is primarily a response to population pressure and declining living standards rather than the acquisition of new knowledge. Boserup has shown that there have been a number of societies that, because of declining populations, or because they were relocated by governments from areas of high population density to areas of lower density, actually engaged in technological deintensification. For example, they gave up plow agriculture, with its high time and energy costs, and reverted to horticulture using hand tools and slash-andburn shifting cultivation. What Tainter and Boserup are describing does not, however, contradict the kind of selectionist argument for increased differentiation favored by Turner. As shown earlier in Figure 9.1, increasing differentiation occurs because of increased selective pressures resulting from increased logistical loads. However, Turner’s model fully allows for the possibility that these logistical loads may be too great, or that a society’s capability of responding to them insufficient, for increased differentiation to occur. When that happens, dedifferentiation, often in the form of rapid and massive collapse, is the outcome. There are important lessons to be learned from the works of Tainter and Boserup. The most important is that social differentiation is not an unmixed good or an inexorable force. Although a general trend in social evolution because of increased logistical loads, intensifying competition, or the aims and goals of elites, increased differentiation is associated with numerous costs. Sometimes people choose not to pay those costs—and sometimes the choice is made for them by circumstances they cannot control!

Evolutionary Progress Of all the concepts that theories of biological and social evolution share, that of progress is in some ways the most important. At least it is the most fascinating. The question of whether evolutionary transformations are tantamount to some sort of betterment or improvement has been a fundamental one that has preoccupied both biological and social evolutionists for generations. Here I discuss the contrasting views that evolutionary biologists and

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 247 social evolutionists have taken regarding the concept of progress. I hope to show two main things. First, the leading evolutionists in biology and social science have tended to be progressivists, although both areas have had their share of nonprogressivists or even antiprogressivists. Second, even though I come to no definitive conclusions regarding biological progress, I will contend that social evolution shows evidence of progress, but in a curvilinear fashion. Most preindustrial social evolution has been retrogressive for the vast majority of persons, but with the emergence of industrial capitalism in the past two centuries progress has occurred for a large number of people in a variety of ways.

The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology An historical assessment of the fate of the concept of progress among biological evolutionists฀should,฀obviously,฀begin฀with฀Darwin.฀Was฀Darwin฀a฀progressivist?฀ The traditional answer is that he was not. Ernst Mayr (1982), for example, argues that Darwin objected to any interpretation of evolution that saw it as based on some sort of intrinsic tendency to perfection. Stephen Jay Gould (1977) also views Darwin as opposing the idea of progress. He makes much of Darwin’s famous caveat to himself to “never say higher or lower” in regard to organisms, and he believes that Darwin’s notion of fitness was a purely local and situational one that could not be used to characterize species over the long term. In recent years, however, the tide has turned against this interpretation. Elliott Sober (1984) claims that Darwin never did totally proscribe the notion of progress, and in fact that he wanted to find a way to characterize and demonstrate it. Sober suggests that Darwin’s attitude was one of caution, not rejection. Robert Richards (1988) goes much further, contending that Darwin held such a strong belief in progress that he “crafted natural selection as an instrument to manufacture biological progress and moral perfection” (1988:131). In opposition to the traditional view that Darwin and Herbert Spencer were miles apart in their thinking about progress, Richards claims that they were actually very much in accord. To support his interpretation, Richards quotes liberally from various of Darwin’s works, especially his early notebooks but also from Origin. Richards is able to produce a large number of passages in which Darwin clearly seems to be arguing for a general process of improvement in the evolution of life. Michael Ruse (1988) takes a similar view, which he openly confesses is a complete reversal of his original view of Darwin. Ruse now claims that it is foolish to believe that Darwin was anything but a progressivist, for he adhered to a doctrine of progress just as fervently as did his predecessors and contemporaries. Ruse finds fewer quotes than Richards to bolster his case, but he places great reliance on the closing lines of Origin. Here Darwin uttered words that have become extremely famous and quoted time and again (Darwin, 1964[1859]:490; quoted in Ruse, 1988:103):

248 ✻ Chapter 10 Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

And there are other passages in Origin in which Darwin clearly seems to express himself as a progressivist. Here are three: In one particular sense the more recent forms must, on my theory, be higher than the more ancient; for each new species is formed by having had some advantage in the struggle for life over other and preceding forms. If under a nearly similar climate, the eocene inhabitants of one quarter of the world were put into competition with the existing inhabitants of the same or other quarter, the eocene fauna or flora would certainly be beaten and exterminated (1964[1859]:337). The inhabitants of each successive period in the world’s history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so far, higher in the scale of nature; and this may account for that vague yet ill-defined sentiment, felt by many paleontologists, that organisation on the whole has progressed (1964[1859]:345). And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection (1964[1859]:489).

Unfortunately for Darwinian exegetes, Darwin makes other statements that seem to indicate rejection of the idea of biological progress. For example in his B Notebook he says the following: “It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another.—We consider those, where the cerebral structure/intellectual faculties most developed, as highest.—A bee doubtless would where the instincts were” (quoted in Shanahan, 2004:176). It might be argued that this was an early view held by Darwin that he later rejected, since the B Notebook was composed in 1837–1838. But that will not do, for Darwin makes much the same point in the third edition of Origin, published in 1861 (Shanahan, 2004), and in the sixth edition, published in 1872, we find this statement: “To attempt to compare members of distinct types in the scale of highness seems hopeless; who will decide whether a cuttlefish be higher than a bee, that an insect which the great Von Baer believed to be ‘in฀fact฀more฀highly฀organised฀than฀a฀ish,฀although฀upon฀another฀type’?”฀ (quoted in Shanahan, 2004:190). Darwin clearly believed that it was perfectly legitimate to speak of limited forms of progress. If we observe two different species of birds, for example,

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 249 one of which actually evolved from the other, and with the latter outcompeting and eventually displacing the former, then it is perfectly reasonable to speak of progress as having occurred. For Darwin, the critical question was whether it was possible to speak of a much more general form of progress—progress across taxa that may be separated by many millions of years of evolutionary history. There is the rub. Timothy Shanahan (2004) has proposed an ingenious solution to the exegetical difficulties posed by Darwin’s seemingly contradictory statements. Shanahan argues that, from the very beginning, Darwin wanted to find a way to defend the idea of general biological progress over the eons. He contends that the statements made by Darwin in which he appears to be rejecting the idea of general progress—e. g., “who will decide whether a cuttlefish be฀ higher฀ than฀ a฀ bee?”—were฀ intended฀ only฀ as฀ epistemological assertions calling attention to the difficulty of comparing widely divergent organisms. In Shanahan’s (2004:192) words, Darwin thought that “it will not always be possible in practice to make such determinations, and that the actual ranking of organisms as ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ (should one wish to undertake such a task) need not correspond exactly to any traditional ‘scale of nature.’” Nevertheless, Shanahan argues that, over time, Darwin eventually settled upon a criterion whereby widely divergent organisms could be compared on a scale of progress: It is none other than the old friend we just visited in the last section, the degree of differentiation of parts and their specialization! In support of his claim, Shanahan cites the following passage from The Descent of Man, one of Darwin’s most mature works published in 1871: The best definition of advancement or progress in the organic scale ever given, is that of Von Baer; and this rests on the amount of differentiation and specialisation of the several parts of the same being, when arrived, as I should be inclined to add, at maturity. Now as organisms have become more slowly adapted by means of natural selection for diversified lines of life, their parts will have become, from the advantage gained by the division of physiological labour, more and more differentiated and specialised for various functions . . . and thus all the parts are rendered more and more complex. But each organism will still retain the general type of structure of the progenitor from which it was aboriginally derived. In accordance with this view it seems, if we turn to geological evidence, that organisation on the whole has advanced throughout the world by slow and interrupted steps (Darwin, 1871, vol. 1:211; quoted in Shanahan, 2004:193).

We cannot be certain, but I am inclined to think that Shanahan’s solution works. Darwin recognized the difficulties of comparing widely different species, but nevertheless found a way of doing it and was, in fact, a committed progressivist. But฀ what฀ of฀ more฀ recent฀ biologists?฀ Let฀ us฀ consider฀ irst฀ some฀ of฀ the฀ architects of the modern synthetic theory, or neo-Darwinism, that began

250 ✻ Chapter 10 to emerge in the 1930s and 1940s. It would be hard to find a more fervent progressivist than Julian Huxley (1953, 1962). Huxley saw progress as a general characteristic of the whole course of biological evolution, and in a decidedly Darwinian way. Progress mainly involved the production of increasingly differentiated and highly specialized organisms. More differentiated organisms function more efficiently and have a greater independence of the environment, which is especially important because it provides the basis for further evolutionary breakthroughs. The greatest improvements in biological evolution, according to Huxley, have occurred with respect to the nervous system, improvements that have been carried to their highest level in humans. Huxley sometimes wrote as if he thought humans were the aim and goal of evolution. G. Ledyard Stebbins (1969, 1974) held a view similar to Huxley’s, though perhaps less extreme. Recall that Stebbins viewed the occasional transition to a higher level of organizational complexity as occurring because of its adaptive possibilities. This is certainly a notion of progress, because more complex and internally diversified organisms are being judged as superior to others in terms of their capacity for dominance and further evolutionary advance. Another leading architect of the modern synthesis, George Gaylord Simpson (1949), was also a progressivist, although in a more tempered way than either Huxley or Stebbins. Simpson identified several criteria as possible indicators of progress, one of which was increasing complexity. However, Simpson thought that this was a poor criterion for marking progress because increasing complexity is only roughly correlated with the actual course of evolution. Moreover, “within this broad picture correlation of complication and progress becomes quite irrelevant as regards particular cases. It would be a brave anatomist who would attempt to prove that Recent man is more complicated than a Devonian ostracoderm” (1949:253). Another criterion proposed by Simpson was evolutionary dominance, but Simpson turned out to be suspicious of this criterion as well. The reason is that several different phyla can be dominant at the same time, each in its own particular sphere. Simpson ended up suggesting that there is only one truly adequate criterion of biological progress: the expansion of life. We can say progress has been occurring, he believed, because throughout biological history there has been a general tendency for life to expand and fill up all the livable habitats of the earth. Many might say that this criterion is subjective, but if so Simpson would readily agree. Whereas Huxley thought that progress could be assessed objectively, Simpson’s view was that it could only be determined by the identification of a specific criterion, and this was inherently a subjective process for any biologist (Shanahan, 2004). Moving up to more recent generations of evolutionary biologists, we find that Francisco Ayala (1974) takes a view very similar to Simpson’s. Like Simpson, he holds that the most reliable criterion for marking biological progress

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 251 involves the expansion of life. For Ayala, this means four things: expansion in the number of kinds of organisms; expansion of the total number of individual organisms of all kinds; expansion of the total bulk of living matter; and expansion in the total rate of bioenergetic flow. Ayala believes that the expansion of life in these ways is a good thing because life itself is a good thing; hence, more of it is better than less. (It should be noted that this criterion for progress is the biological equivalent of Childe’s and White’s criterion for social progress—more on this in the next section.) To his credit, Ayala, like Simpson, does not pretend that his criterion for progress is an objective one, and, also like Simpson, declares that any criterion anyone could ever produce would necessarily be based on the particular biologist’s values. The two most celebrated evolutionists of the most recent generation have been Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. Both have displayed extraordinary brilliance as theoreticians and researchers and have been the two leading popularizers of evolutionary biology. But they have held radically divergent views on a range of topics. For his part, Dawkins has been a very strong advocate of biological progress. Dawkins (1989, 1992, 1997) has rejected the idea that progress can be identified with increased complexity, arguing instead that progress is (1997:1017; quoted in Shanahan, 2004:214) an increase, not in complexity, intelligence or some other anthropocentric value, but in the accumulating number of features contributing towards whatever adaptation the lineage in question exemplifies. By this definition, adaptive evolution is not just incidentally progressive, it is deeply, dyed-in-thewool, indispensably progressive. It is fundamentally necessary that it should be progressive if Darwinian natural selection is to perform the explanatory role in our world view that we require of it, and that it alone can perform.

Perhaps I am missing something, but this seems like simply a somewhat more elegant way of saying that biological progress involves increasing complexity. If I am missing something, then Shanahan is as well, for he arrives at the same conclusion: “What would ‘an accumulating number of features contributing toward adaptive fit by increasing the numbers of features which combine together in adaptive complexes’ be฀if฀not฀increasing฀complexity?”฀ (2004:218). Be that as it may, there is more. Dawkins has been a major promoter of the notion of “evolutionary arms races,” which involve the coevolution of predators and prey. If a cheetah, say, becomes slighter faster, then the antelopes that it preys on tend to become faster in order to escape predation. This in turn will make the predators even faster, resulting in yet faster antelopes, and so on. Clearly progress has been occurring in this process; the progenitors of faster antelopes would no longer stand a chance of escaping the faster cheetahs if they happened to fall into competition with them. However, this is still progress on a limited scale, relative rather than overall or absolute progress. Undaunted, Dawkins claims that a more general form

252 ✻ Chapter 10 of biological progress may be seen in “watershed events” or “evolutionary breakthroughs” that create conditions for still new evolutionary possibilities. This phenomenon Dawkins (1989) has called the evolution of evolvability (Shanahan, 2004). Among the more recent generation of evolutionary biologists opposed to the notion of progress can be included George Williams, Levins and Lewontin, and, most ferociously, Gould. Williams (1966) finds all of the criteria that have been proposed as markers of progress wanting. Williams’s discussion of three of these criteria are deserving of special mention. As for the criterion of increasing complexity, we have already seen that Williams is skeptical that it is an actual empirical evolutionary trend. With respect to the accumulation of more genetic information—genomic increase—Williams is also dubious that this is an empirical trend. Rather, what we see is “a history of substitutions and qualitative changes in the germ plasm, not an increase in its total content” (1966:42). Finally, and most importantly, Williams notes that the criterion of improved adaptive fit, proposed by a number of biologists (including, of course, Dawkins), flounders in the face of enormous evidence that animal species generally regarded as “lower” or “less advanced” often have exceptional adaptive capabilities. Indeed, these capabilities often equal or exceed the adaptive capabilities of animals regarded as “higher” or “more advanced.” Evolution has involved, Williams claims, largely a substitution of one type of adaptation for another, not some sort of steady accumulation of adaptive capabilities. The antiprogressivists Levins and Lewontin (1985) dwell on the inherent subjectivity of the concept of progress, noting that no evolutionary trend can be regarded as progressive except in terms of some underlying theory of value. Since there is no way to measure progress objectively, evolutionary biologists who believe in progress do so simply on the basis of hidden cultural biases. And then there is Gould, a close colleague of Levins and Lewontin. He takes no prisoners, saying that the concept of biological progress “is a noxious, culturally imbedded, untestable, nonoperational, intractable idea that must be replaced” (1988:319). Timothy Shanahan (2004:208–212) points out that Gould has, in fact, five basic objections to the concept of progress: 1. Anthropocentrism. Humans have a natural (but insidious) tendency to place themselves at the top of the evolutionary hierarchy, and they are highly attracted to the idea of progress because they are arrogant egocentrists. 2. No Inherent Thrust. The idea of progress implies some sort of inexorable thrust to evolution, when in fact the most prominent characteristic of evolution is its contingency. In his book Wonderful Life (1989), Gould interpreted the evolutionary significance of the fossils recovered from the Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rockies. These 500-million-year-old fossils revealed numerous “weird” organisms that seem to defy adaptationist explanations. Instead, these organisms appear to indicate that an almost unlimited range

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 253 of organismic designs is possible, none of which has any adaptive superiority over the others. 3. Random Motion. Evolution is not movement toward anything, but rather movement away from something, and that something is simple beginnings. Because life started out simple, it became more complex because that was the only possibility. 4. Biotic Domination. Many of the oldest and simplest forms of life continue to survive alongside the most complex and recent. The earth is still full of bacteria, worms, insects, and so on, which in fact dominate, numerically speaking, more complex forms. 5. Full House. There is a “full house” of almost infinite biodiversity, and it is this, rather than some sort of movement to “higher” things, that should be the focus of attention.

Can฀we฀answer฀Gould?฀Yes,฀and฀rather฀easily.฀First,฀It฀is฀indeed฀true฀that฀ humans are anthropocentric, and that they have a bias to think in progressivist terms, whether of life or of human society. But this is not a compelling argument against progressivism, unless we wish to elevate “guilt by association” to the status of some sort of epistemological principle. (I am reminded here of the popular expression, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”) Moreover, we can easily turn the tables on Gould. He is a Marxist with strong political biases, and these biases have clearly influenced his theorizing about evolution. He is biased against the idea of progress in any of its forms, biological or social, because he is an opponent of “bourgeois society,” in his judgment a major source of the idea of progress. Second, it is simply false to claim that a commitment to progress implies an “inherent thrust” to evolution. This is a figment of Gould’s imagination, and is reminiscent of the claims of antievolutionary social scientists that evolutionary theories are inherently developmentalist, historicist, and teleological. As for the “weirdness” of the Burgess Shale fossils, and Gould’s conclusion that this demonstrates contingency and undermines adaptationist arguments, I would simply say that “weird is in the eye of the beholder.” Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that Gould has sought adaptationist explanations for the Burgess Shale organisms. As we all know, if you fail to look for something you are pretty unlikely to find it (occasional serendipity notwithstanding). Third, even if it is true that, since organisms started out simple they could only have evolved toward complexity, this proves nothing, since increased complexity need not be a relevant criterion of progress. Fourth, a person of Gould’s extraordinarily intellect should really know better than to say that, because simple and ancient life forms survive alongside complex and recent forms, the concept of progress is undermined. This kind of argument has been used by so-called scientific creationists and intelligent design advocates to attack evolutionism and promote their own religious agenda—an agenda that Gould himself has fought long and hard (and very successfully) against. It is common knowledge that simple and ancient forms

254 ✻ Chapter 10 survive alongside recent and complex ones because species find niches that allow them to continue. Besides, most of the simple and ancient life forms that once existed no longer exist. They went extinct long ago. Finally, the “full house” argument has no real bearing on the question of progress. It simply expresses one of Gould’s own values, and Gould held his values about as strongly as a person could. Shanahan notes that the antiprogressivists in evolutionary biology seem to outnumber, and by a wide margin, the progressivists.7 He quotes Matthew Nitecki: “The concept of progress has been all but banned from evolutionary biology as being anthropomorphic or at best of limited and ambiguous usefulness” (Nitecki, 1988a:viii; quoted in Shanahan, 2004:221). But science is not a matter of what the majority thinks. Theories do not become true because they are the ones that get the most votes. After all, the majority once thought the earth flat; everyday experience suggested to nearly everyone at the time that this was patently obvious. I lack the expertise to come to a definitive conclusion, but I would argue that the only criterion of progress that is at all objective is whether, as Darwin put it so well, the existing inhabitants of the world, or some portion of it, would beat and exterminate the inhabitants of some ancient geologic era, at least if they were subjected to the same environmental conditions. Subjective criteria of progress, such as the expansion and diversification of life—E. O. Wilson’s (1986) biophilia—have little or no meaning. We need an objective criterion, and Darwin has฀given฀us฀the฀best฀possible฀one.฀But฀can฀we฀enact฀it,฀put฀it฀into฀practice?฀It฀ would seem to be impossible to design an empirical test of it. All we are really left with is some kind of Gedankenexperiment. My conclusion from this thought experiment is that Darwin was probably right, and biological progress exists in this sense. But this is nothing more than an educated guess.8 Can we do better with฀respect฀to฀the฀question฀of฀whether฀social฀evolution฀produces฀progress?

Progressivism and Antiprogressivism in Social Evolutionism If the idea of progress has been all but banned from evolutionary biology (and I am not so sure that is really the case), it is still alive and well among social evolutionists. Since we have already looked at the views of the leading social evolutionists on the problem of progress, only a brief recapitulation is necessary. The classical evolutionists were, with the partial exception of Sumner and Keller, all strong progressivists. They were not the untempered advocates of progress they have commonly been made out to be, but they were firm believers in progress nonetheless. Even Marx and Engels were no exceptions. Marx and Engels obviously had a different evaluation of the society in which they lived than did the others, as well as a very different conception of how it had gotten to be what it was, but the nineteenth-century current of progressivism clearly affected them strongly.

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 255 When we turn to the major figures of the evolutionary revival, we again encounter progressivist thinking. Steward formally dissociated the concepts of evolution and progress, and thus it would be difficult to think of him as a progressivist. But Childe and White clearly were, and in much the same manner. Both linked social progress to technological change by arguing that more advanced technologies permitted larger numbers of people to survive. (This seems to be more or less the social-scientific equivalent of the “expansion of life” as a criterion of biological progress.) Their Marxist leanings also taught them that technological changes were associated with increases in class struggle and in oppression and exploitation, but their recognition of these outcomes never undermined their formal progressivist views. They seemed to believe that, on balance, social evolution produced improvements in the human condition. (Or at least this is what White thought before his sudden reversal at the end of his life in 1975. But I think that it is White’s views throughout most of his career that we should really pay attention to. The later dramatic change of viewpoint was an anomaly.) The students and followers of Childe and White have, unsurprisingly, also been progressivists. This is true of the early Sahlins, and especially of Service and Lenski. Service’s theory of the origin of the state explicitly points to increasing benefits to society as a whole with the rise of the state. Lenski is by and large a progressivist, linking progress primarily to technological advance and secondarily to increasing complexity and other organizational changes. However, Lenski is not an untempered progressivist. He takes an essentially curvilinear view of progress: Things went downhill in many ways with the transition to horticultural and agrarian societies, with progress resuming after the rise of industrialism. Carneiro is surprisingly silent on the question of progress. He insists that evolution is change in a direction of increasing complexity, but it is extremely difficult to find in his writings judgments about whether evolution produces betterment or improvement. Political evolution is a response to the problems of population pressure in circumscribed฀environments.฀But฀is฀it฀good?฀Carneiro฀doesn’t฀really฀say;฀his฀ interest seems to be the scientific explanation of evolution, not the making of judgments about it one way or the other. (Since Carneiro’s theory of political evolution assumes that more complex structures emerge through political conquest and that people will never surrender their autonomy voluntarily, in this sense he might be regarded as a type of antiprogressivist.) Chase-Dunn and Hall endorse a limited sort of progressivism, but, as thinkers heavily influenced by the Marxian tradition, emphasize the oppressive and exploitative character of tributary world-systems and the modern capitalist world-system. Chase-Dunn explicitly favors the eventual abandonment of capitalism and the transition to a socialist world state (Boswell and ChaseDunn, 2000; Chase-Dunn, 2003). Maryanski and Turner are also, much like Lenski, “curvilinear progressivists.” The societies that best fit humans’ strong propensities for individual autonomy are hunter-gatherers and modern

256 ✻ Chapter 10 industrial societies. Horticultural societies constrain individuals by complex webs of kinship, whereas agrarian societies constrain them through the use of despotic power. As for Habermas and Eder, they are not explicit about progress but would seem to think that it occurs to some extent in the form of collective societal learning—even though “societies are hard to change.” The most extreme progressivist among contemporary social evolutionists is clearly Parsons who, of course, linked progress to increasing social differentiation. Parsons was not only an extreme progressivist, but his conception of progress was closely intertwined with a developmentalism. For him, there exists some sort of inner dynamic to human social life that generates increasingly improved social arrangements, societies with enhanced “adaptive capacity” or “functional efficiency.” Other than Chase-Dunn and Hall, the most antiprogressivist recent social evolutionist is Marvin Harris. For Harris, much of human history over the past 10,000 years is a record of retrogression rather than progress: of declining living standards, increased workloads, increased inequalities, and increased oppression and exploitation. The very nature of the most powerful constraints operating on human societies has made it difficult for humans in most societies to do much more than struggle vigorously to keep the quality of life from getting worse. However, as a non-Marxist, Harris has not been antiprogressivist with respect to modern industrial capitalism. Although hardly a conservative apologist for capitalism, Harris recognizes that the shift to industrial capitalism has reversed the process of declining living standards and by and large produced a better life for the majority of people in industrial societies. In this sense, Harris could be called a “curvilinear progressivist” like Lenski. Yet this is not completely accurate, for Harris gives much more emphasis to the retrogressive features of preindustrial social evolution than Lenski, and he is also more critical of modern industrialism than Lenski (see, especially, Harris, 1981). What฀to฀conclude฀on฀social฀progress?฀My฀view฀is฀that฀the฀concept฀of฀progress can be legitimately applied to the analysis of social evolution, but with two provisos: First, if we are going to talk in terms of progress, then all of the major periods of social evolution must be analyzed in terms of the degree of progress (or retrogression) of each relative to previous periods; second, whether progress has occurred can only be determined by reference to an objective criterion or set of criteria (subjective notions of progress are of no value and should be of no interest, since they are largely individual preferences that cannot produce high levels of consensus among scholars). I conceive of two possible objective criteria: ฀ •฀ Progress could be said to have occurred if social evolution leads to societies that display greater functional efficiency than their predecessors. I reject this as a criterion because it invokes a strong form of functionalism and thus an illegitimate group selectionism.

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 257 ฀ •฀ Progress can be said to have occurred if social evolution leads to an improved ability of humans to meet their most important needs and desires, in particular those needs and desires that are universal and thus part of human nature. I regard this as the single valid criterion for assessing progress.

The question is then, what set of universal human needs are part of human฀ nature?฀ Below฀ I฀ suggest฀ sixteen.฀ Needs฀ 1–4 are Marvin Harris’s universal biopsychological needs (with slight modifications). Needs 5–16 are based on Arnhart (1998) and my own understanding of human nature acquired after devoting many years to studying the thoughts and actions of humans across all major societal types and throughout history (Sanderson, 2001). 1. People seek diets that provide more rather than fewer calories, animal proteins, and nutrients. 2. People prefer to minimize the amount of time and energy they expend engaged in work they find burdensome or unpleasant. 3. People are highly sexed and receive great pleasure from sexual intercourse, most commonly heterosexual intercourse. 4. People need love, affection, esteem, and approval from their fellow humans and will generally act so as to maximize the amounts they receive. 5. People value romantic mating apart from its purely sexual component, and both men and women avidly seek such mating relationships. 6. People value good health and physical and mental well-being and are happier to the extent that they have these things. 7. People value life and desire a long and complete life. They are happier when they are able to live out their natural lifespan. 8. People value beauty in the human body, especially because beauty is a reliable sign of health and vigor. 9. People desire material possessions that save time and energy and that, in general, make life easier, more enjoyable, and more gratifying. 10. People desire individual autonomy and will generally behave so as to minimize the social constraints that others might seek to impose on them. 11. People value justice in social relationships, especially as it is expressed through reciprocity (receiving benefits in return for benefits given, receiving compensation for harm done to self or kin, etc.). 12. People value (not necessarily fully consciously) reproductive success in existing and future generations. 13. People value familial bonding and kin relations and generally seek to maximize the amount of contact they have with kin, especially close kin. The familial bonds most highly valued and sought are those between parents and children. 14. People value close personal friendships and are happier when they have numerous such relationships. 15. People (or at least many people) seek social status or rank, wealth, and power and frequently act so as to increase the amounts of these attributes they can attain. However, at the same time (with certain important exceptions) people

258 ✻ Chapter 10 dislike the status-, wealth-, and power-seeking behavior of others, especially when this works to their disadvantage, and thus seek to minimize the amounts of these attributes others attain. The greater the competition among individuals for status, wealth, and power, and the greater the unequal distribution of these attributes, the greater the degree of social tension and conflict, which people dislike and, other things equal, prefer to minimize. 16. Although people’s most important goals and desires are material in nature, they also desire more abstract things, such as understanding the nature of the world and the meaning of life, artistic expression, and musical expression.

This list is not regarded as definitive or exhaustive. It is, however, thought to be an extremely useful list. I shall not attempt to assess in this chapter the extent to which social evolution over the past 10,000 years has been progressive in terms of these criteria. At this point I merely note the criteria I contend should be used. I shall postpone this assessment until Chapter 12 in order first to have a chance to present my comprehensive theory of social evolution.

A Note on Darwinian Theories of Social Evolution In recent years a number of social scientists have attempted to draw directly on Darwinian natural selection theory to formulate theories of social evolution. Donald Campbell (1965, 1975) presented a “variation-and-selective-retention” model. Sociocultural variants, occurring in a “chancelike” or “blind” fashion, inevitably arise and the most adaptive variants survive and spread. Some years later John Langton (1979) produced a similar argument, as did L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman (1981), who attempted to employ the concepts of sociocultural mutation, selection, transmission, and drift to explain social evolution. More recently, W. G. Runciman (1989, 2001) has developed a much more sociologically interesting variant of Campbell’s model. Runciman’s model is an improvement on Campbell’s, I think, for three main reasons: He recognizes that new cultural variations can be either accidental or deliberately intended, insists that a selectionist theory must answer the question “What are novel social practices selected for?”,฀and฀gives฀a฀central฀role฀to฀the฀power฀ of elite groups to select practices that are adaptive or beneficial for them.9 Along similar lines, so-called coevolutionary or dual inheritance theories have been formulated. These theories assume that there are two systems of inheritance, one genetic and one cultural, that are interwined but also somewhat independent. Boyd and Richerson’s (1985, 2005; Richerson and Boyd, 2005) dual inheritance theory is perhaps the best known. Selection and transmission operate on both systems, independently and together. Biological selection and transmission influence culture, but much cultural

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 259 selection and transmission operate in ways that have nothing to do with genetic fitness, or that are even genetically maladaptive. William Durham (1991) has presented a somewhat different gene-culture coevolutionary theory. Durham sees five fundamental ways in which genes and culture coevolve: (1) genes may exert a direct influence on certain crossculturally universal behaviors; (2) cultural practices may lead to genetic changes in human populations; (3) cultural practices may enhance genetic fitness; (4) cultural practices may have no bearing on genetic fitness; and (5) certain cultural practices may actually have genetically maladaptive consequences. A major difference between Durham’s theory and Boyd and Richerson’s is that Durham sees maladaptive genetic consequences of cultural practices as much less common than Boyd and Richerson do. Durham argues that the most common form of gene-culture coevolution is the third.10 Most recently, some British anthropologists have attempted to develop what they call a phylogenetic approach to social and cultural evolution (e. g., Mace, Holden, and Shennan, 2005). This approach draws an analogy between societies or cultures and species and treats evolution as a Darwinian branching shrub. Drawing on phylogenetic models of linguistic evolution, the approach attempts to trace the diversification of cultures or cultural traits from a common root—for example, the abandonment of matrilineal descent by African populations that have taken up cattle keeping. Evolutionary processes can often be described in terms of processes that are very much like natural selection, and, indeed some of the classical evolutionists often did something like that (Carneiro, 1985). But there are a number of problems with these approaches. One is the assumption that cultural variants are akin to genetic mutations in that they arise randomly. It is undoubtedly much more common for cultural variations to arise purposively, that is, through human intentions. A more serious problem has been identified by Carneiro (1985): Such theories will always be incomplete. As he points out, natural selection is only a mechanism, not an actual determinant; it says something about how evolution may occur, but nothing about why it occurs. Runciman’s natural selectionist argument escapes this problem to some extent in identifying the power of dominant groups as a critical determinant; however, this is far short of what is needed, for that can only be part of the story. Indeed, much social evolution has occurred in thousands of societies over thousands of years under circumstances in which there were no groups with more power than other groups! Natural selectionist theories also fail to deal effectively with the central problem that has preoccupied social evolutionists for some two centuries, viz., describing and explaining long-term evolutionary processes. Such theories often trivialize important evolutionary phenomena or restrict themselves to the relatively trivial. I would judge Runciman’s natural selectionist theory to be the best of the lot, but there is a problem with it apart from his overemphasis on the role of the interests of powerful groups in creating the main

260 ✻ Chapter 10 selection pressures. Runciman’s analyses are theoretically interesting and often persuasive, but in most instances he provides no actual evidence to support his claims. Since there is no real empirical testing, his arguments are highly vulnerable to the charge of being “just-so stories,” a criticism Runciman himself actually anticipates (Runciman, 2001:21). Dual inheritance theories also seem to be unable to deal with long-term social evolution. In the case of Boyd and Richerson and Durham, there is not even an attempt to analyze long-term social evolution. Indeed, Boyd and Richerson explicitly and proudly disavow such a goal.11

Notes 1. Another major attack on the concept of adaptation has been made by Hallpike (1986), who perpetuates many of the same misconceptions about the concept as Giddens. He claims, for instance, that it is inherently functionalist and that it implies a universal human drive toward mastery. He also mistakenly believes that the concept implies an adaptedness of outcome, and that this outcome will tend to be optimal. In contrast to Giddens, however, Hallpike suggests that the concept of adaptation should not be abandoned entirely. Even though it has no application to primitive societies (where the “survival of the mediocre” obtains), it does apply to more advanced ones, because “functional and adaptive efficiency is actually an emergent property of society” (1986:122). Such misconceived views lead Hallpike to the formulation of a functionalist and strongly idealist version of evolutionism that is remarkably ethnocentric. The reason “survival of the mediocre” obtains in primitive societies, he claims, is because they face low levels of competition and thus little or no selective pressure. But Albert Galloway Keller (1931) long ago took exactly the opposite position: that competition and adaptive selection are more intense the more primitive the society, and that it is civilization that actually relaxes selection pressures, often leading to counterselection of various types. Recall also from Chapter 5 that Keller remarked that many primitive customs may appear nonsensical and inexplicable on first sight, but that closer examination will generally reveal their adaptive nature. Harris (1974) has done something very similar with respect to the “riddles of culture,” cultural patterns that anthropologists had heretofore thought mysterious and unintelligible. The evidence, I think, is much more on Keller’s and Harris’s side than on Hallpike’s. 2. However, there is some evidence that White may not always have believed this. For example, he does not explain the Neolithic Revolution as resulting from the invention or discovery of the techniques of domestication, but rather from an ecological disequilibrium that compelled hunter-gatherers to change their mode of production. White tells us that pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers already had acquired knowledge of domestication but failed to put it to use. Thus he could hardly have believed unreservedly in a universal human desire for mastery. 3. Sahlins later strongly repudiated this view and all types of evolutionism. After a visit to Paris and Lévi-Strauss in the late 1960s, he became “infected” with French structuralism (cf. Sahlins, 1972, 1976, 2000). 4. In fact, about the same time that he wrote his famous article on the origin of the state, Carneiro wrote a short encyclopedia article on the concept of cultural

Evolutionary Biology and Social Evolutionism ✻ 261 adaptation, noting simply that culture in all of its manifestations is adaptive in the sense that it contributes to security and survival (Carneiro, 1968b). He also noted that there is competition and selection among cultural traits such that more adaptive traits will gradually displace less adaptive ones. 5. The desire for mastery among political and economic elites may indeed spring from a universal human desire or set of desires, viz., the desires for status, wealth, and power. Giddens would probably reject the universality of this set of desires as well, but in any event it is something different from the desire for mastery, and its universality is much better supported by the ethnographic and historical record (Sanderson, 2001). 6. We have been talking only of the most advanced industrial countries, but much the same process of state growth and differentiation has been occurring throughout the capitalist semiperiphery and periphery. Between 1910 and 1970, government revenues in core countries increased from 13 percent of national income to 31 percent. For the semiperiphery the respective figures were 9 and 29 percent, and for the periphery 10 and 25 percent (Boli-Bennett, 1980). The increase in the size of modern states is thus a truly global phenomenon. The reasons for the expansion of semiperipheral and peripheral states are undoubtedly similar to the reasons for the expansion of core states. However, semiperipheral and peripheral states face a “logistical load” not faced by core states: that of catching up economically with the core. Therefore, much state expansion in semiperipheral and peripheral states has been devoted to considerations of capitalist development. This is based on the logic set forth several decades ago by Alexander Gerschenkron (1962) to the effect that the more a country lags in economic development the greater the role the state must play in its development. Indeed, John Boli-Bennett (1980) found that the more integrated a semiperipheral or peripheral state was into the world-economy, the greater the extent of its expansion. 7. Michael Ruse (1988) has traced evolutionary biologists’ views about progress from Darwin to the present. He agrees that Dawkins is a progressivist (pretty much a nobrainer), regards E. O. Wilson as a progressivist (reasonable enough), but, astonishingly, also regards Gould as a progressivist (apparently some sort of “closet progressivist”). Ruse recognizes that Gould has made many statements in which he forcefully rejects any sort of progressivism. However, Ruse points out that Gould thinks of evolutionary processes as occurring in a hierarchical fashion— that is, as involving levels starting with molecules and moving through genes, cells, organisms, populations, species, clades, and phyla—and that the very notion of hierarchy implies a notion of advance or progress. He also points to Gould’s Marxism, noting that Marx and Engels were certainly progressivists and that Gould is steeped in the same European intellectual traditional that Marx and Engels represented and came out of (Hegelian philosophy). I do not find these arguments persuasive; to me, they seem like special pleading and overinterpretation of what Gould means by hierarchical thinking in biology. Shanahan (2004) provides an excellent, much more detailed, and (in my judgment) much more accurate discussion of evolutionary biologists’ views on progress throughout the entire history of evolutionary biology (see, especially, pp. 173–294). The collection edited by Matthew Nitecki (1988b) includes essays by biologists and philosophers of biology on both sides of the progress debate. Most of the essays take either an antiprogressivist position or one that grudgingly concedes a limited form of progress. These essays are by Hull, Provine, Ruse, Maynard Smith, Wiley, and Gould. 8. My conclusions on progress represent a radical departure from the conclusions I drew in Social Evolutionism. There my position was much closer to that of the

262 ✻ Chapter 10 biological antiprogressivists, even Gould. In the intervening sixteen years, I have had much more time to think about this matter and now regard my earlier views as naïve and poorly thought out. These earlier views were also biased by my own political views at the time, which were much more left-wing and “antibourgeois” than they are now. As we will see, I have undergone a similar change in my thinking regarding the question of progress in social evolution, and for essentially the same reasons. 9. A selectionist theory invoking Darwin has also been developed by David Rindos (1985, 1986). Rindos invokes undirected variation and selective retention, but, quite unlike other Darwinians, draws heavily on Boas, Lévi-Strauss, and the later (structuralist) Sahlins. Selection processes are all about symbols. In his attempt to link Darwinian selectionism and cultural ideas or symbols, Rindos’s arguments are somewhat reminiscent of those of Eder. Thomas Dietz and Tom Burns have also tried their hand at Darwinizing social evolution (Dietz and Burns, 1992; Burns and Dietz, 1992; Dietz, Burns, and Buttel, 1990). Unfortunately, like Rindos and Eder, they end up trying to join Darwinian selectionism and cultural idealism. What evolves are rules and systems of rules. As I reflect on these “Darwinian” theories, I get the nagging sense that I have somehow inadvertently stepped into a small wormhole and that Talcott Parsons is still hard at work in his office in William James Hall. 10. These Darwinian and dual inheritance theories are highly reminiscent of the ideas of Sumner and Keller discussed in Chapter 5, especially as they were developed by Keller in Societal Evolution. The similarities are closest in the case of Boyd and Richerson. In many ways their work is a reinvention of the wheel first forged on Keller’s anvil. They do not cite Keller, and have only one minor reference to Sumner, a mere mention in a footnote of his discussion of ethnocentrism in Folkways. They are either unfamiliar with Keller’s selectionism or find no reason to acknowledge it as an important intellectual precursor. 11. It is clear that Boyd and Richerson are interested in microevolutionary rather than macroevolutionary changes (Carneiro, 2003)—in divergent rather than parallel and convergent evolution. Since they are not attempting to explain parallel and convergent macroevolution, it therefore seems rather unfair to criticize them for not doing so, and this point should be extended both to Durham’s work and to the recent phylogenetic models of cultural evolution (since they too are concerned mainly with divergent microevolution). Suffice it to say that, nonetheless, these theories are important enough in their own right to deserve a much more detailed exposition and critique than is appropriate here. In a future work I hope to be able to do these things. In Social Evolutionism, I did provide a much more detailed exposition and critique of Boyd and Richerson (Durham’s major work, Coevolution, had not yet appeared). I have to admit that I took Boyd and Richerson severely to task for not being able to explain long-term social evolution, not recognizing at the time that their models were never intended to do so. This, of course, was unfair, but I can only plead that I did not know it was unfair! I also criticized Boyd and Richerson for giving far too much weight to the role of biological selection in determining cultural selection. I now wince when I reflect upon this criticism, first because it misrepresents their argument—in fact, they downplay the role of biological selection in order to emphasize the substantially autonomous role of cultural selection—and, second, because (assuming I am now interpreting them correctly) I would now criticize them for exactly the opposite—for giving insufficient weight to biological selection in determining cultural selection! These are some additional reasons why I want to consider their ideas in much more detail in a future work.

Chapter Eleven

Contemporary Antievolutionism

E

volutionary theories of human society are not fashionable among social scientists in the early twenty-first century. Although major evolutionary theories continue to be developed, the voices of the antievolutionists are louder and stronger and are heard with more approval. At least this is the situation in sociology, where evolutionism is often assumed to be associated with repudiated doctrines of developmentalism and functionalism. In anthropology the intellectual climate is more receptive to evolutionism, though even there antievolutionary currents are strong (cf. Johnson and Earle, 1987:vii), and former evolutionists like Sahlins have come forth to confess their sins. Three of the leading antievolutionists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are Robert Nisbet (1969), Maurice Mandelbaum (1971), and Anthony Giddens (1981, 1984), many of whose objections to evolutionism we have already encountered. Close study of their work, and of that of other antievolutionary social scientists, suggests eight major criticisms that are currently advanced against social evolutionism. These criticisms and their principal advocates may be listed approximately as follows: 1. Evolutionary theories depend upon a developmentalist explanatory logic, a conception of causation that is illegitimate (Nisbet, Mandelbaum, Giddens). 2. Evolutionary theories have an endogenist bias in that they frequently fail to give proper attention to the role of external influences, such as cultural diffusion or war, in producing the changes that societies undergo (Nisbet, Mandelbaum). 3. Evolutionary theories are ahistorical and rely on an illegitimate methodological procedure known as the comparative method (Nisbet, Mandelbaum). 4. Evolutionary theories have a strong tendency to merge progression with progress, and thus convert statements about evolutionary stages of development

263

264 ✻ Chapter 11

5. 6.

7.

8.

into normative statements implying a betterment or improvement in societal functioning and the quality of social life (Giddens, Collins [1988]). Evolutionary theories depend on a specious concept of adaptation (Zeitlin [1973], Giddens, Hallpike [1986]). Evolutionary theories give no place to human agency, and thus conceive of history as taking place “without a subject” and “behind the backs” of its participants (Giddens). Evolutionary theories engage in the fallacy of homological compression, which is the tendency to imagine a direct correspondence between stages of social evolution and stages in the development of the human personality (Giddens). Evolutionary theories assert a directionality to historical change that does not exist (Nisbet, Mandelbaum, A. Smith [1973]).

This chapter systematically explores the nature of these criticisms and shows that they are either misconceived or highly exaggerated. Enough has already been said about the first, fourth, and fifth criticisms, so I will concentrate on the others. (The second and third criticisms have also been discussed previously, but a brief recapitulation and extension of my arguments may be helpful.)1

Evolutionism and External Influences In Chapter 3 we encountered the claim of Boas and his followers that the classical evolutionists ignored the facts of diffusion, which in the words of Lowie “played havoc with any evolutionary scheme.” As we noted, Leslie White demolished this claim with respect to the evolutionary theories of Morgan and Tylor (and by implication with respect to evolutionary theories in general). Morgan and Tylor were not only well aware of the facts of diffusion, but had an explicit conception of how these facts could be squared with an evolutionary perspective. Diffusion was a highly selective process, they said, and societies accepted or rejected elements of other cultures according to their own needs and cultural outlooks. A society may be able, for example, to take from another what it would otherwise be forced to develop on its own. In looking at another major classical evolutionist discussed in this book, Herbert Spencer, we find a perfect willingness to entertain the role of external influences in social evolution. For example, in discussing the evolution of polytheistic religions, Spencer argued that there were two different paths that societies took in this direction, one endogenous and the other exogenous. One exogenous path to polytheism was warfare and external conquest. A conquering society might leave an existing deity of the conquered society in place and simply add its own to the mix. With further conquests, more gods could be added such that entire pantheons of gods would be formed. Spencer put it this way (1895:738–739; emphasis added):

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 265 A genesis of polytheism, and of polytheistic priesthoods, equally important with, or perhaps more important than, the foregoing [endogenous genesis] . . . accompanies conquest. The over-runnings of tribe by tribe and nation by nation, which have been everywhere and always going on, have necessarily tended to impose one cult upon another. . . . Not destroying the worships of the conquered, the conquerors bring in their own worships—either carrying them on among themselves only, or making the conquered join in them.

Spencer contended that some of the most famous polytheistic religions, such as those of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, and Incas, emerged in this manner. Spencer even went so far as to list three additional causes of polytheism, one of which involved a form of diffusion: “The spreading reputations of local deities, and the consequent establishment of temples to them in places to which they do not belong, is one of these causes” (1895:739). So Spencer, like Tylor and Morgan, was clearly an evolutionist who saw both exogenous and endogenous forces operating in the evolutionary process. Hobhouse, Sumner and Keller, and Westermarck also acknowledged the importance of external influences, often citing specific instances. For example, Keller (1931) gave numerous examples of diffusion, saying, “The spread of any civilization, Oriental or Occidental, has been, of course, a transmission of the mores” (p. 320); that even though the ancient Romans did not try to assimilate their provinces, many of the provincials, “observing the obvious superiorities of the Roman industrial and military organizations, imitated and fell in with these” (p. 321), after which they began to see certain advantages to Roman language and laws, and as a result copied them as well; and that, in their trade with societies in the East, the Greeks, Phoenicians, Venetians, and Genoese were interested only in their own economic benefits, but after the introduction of products from the East they then copied much of the technology, thus “modifying at length the whole societal structure of the West . . . by gradually transmitting to it . . . the mores of a more advanced civilization” (p. 321). Keller then went on to generalize the point, contending that trade has always been the “handmaiden of civilization.” At one point he even favored a diffusionist hypothesis over one emphasizing parallel evolution. Speaking in particular of the early anthropogeographers, he said (1931:332; emphasis added): Anthropogeographers are evolutionists. . . . They specialize in parallelisms, for they are intent upon showing that similar societal forms spring up independently under similar types of environmental influence. However, it is clear enough that peoples have borrowed mores from one another, as well as developed them for themselves. Parallelisms in the mores are genuine only where isolation is certain, so that acculturation cannot occur. As the constant tendency of civilization is to break down isolation, parallelisms become rare as civilization rises to heights. Indeed, the presumption is then against parallelism.

266 ✻ Chapter 11 And Westermarck said that “nothing is more certain than that the various races of men have borrowed from each other many of the arts and crafts, their ideas, customs, and institutions” (1922a:2). Like other evolutionists, he saw diffusion and independent evolution working together to produce the social and cultural patterns we observe in the world’s societies: “I cannot find that there is any reasonable ground for quarrelling between the ethnological school, which particularly studies the influence that one people has exercised upon another owing to contact of their cultures, and the evolutionary school” (1922a:6). Westermarck’s opposition to diffusionist arguments was restricted to making them bear most of the weight of explanation. Nonetheless, contemporary antievolutionists like Nisbet and Giddens are latter-day Boases who are convinced that all versions of evolutionism are committed to a doctrine of endogenism. Nisbet goes on to claim, against evolutionism, that “significant change is overwhelmingly the result of . . . factors inseparable from external events and intrusions” (1969:180). But like the Boasians earlier in this century, Nisbet and Giddens have set up a false dichotomy. It may well be the case that the most objectionable forms of contemporary evolutionism, such as Parsonian evolutionism, are largely endogenist. (Given the developmentalist structure of Parsonian฀evolutionism,฀what฀else฀would฀be฀expected?)฀It฀may฀even฀be฀the฀ case that other less objectionable versions of contemporary evolutionism incline toward endogenism. But all of these more suitable versions of evolutionism give considerable weight to various kinds of external factors in evolutionary change. White and Lenski, for instance, explicitly recognize the role of external factors again and again, and in those versions of evolutionism that I have assessed as the very best (the theories of Carneiro and Harris), the role of external factors is considerable. In fact, Carneiro’s theory of the origin of the state gives external factors major consideration. Carneiro does not conceive of social evolution as a process that goes on purely or mainly within a society as a self-contained evolving whole. On the contrary, political evolution is critically dependent upon intersocietal contact, mainly in the form of warfare and political conquest. And what would Nisbet, Mandelbaum, and Giddens make of the฀ evolutionism฀ of฀ Chase-Dunn฀ and฀ Hall?฀ Here฀ we฀ have฀ two฀ strongly฀ committed social evolutionists who not only recognize the importance of external factors, but give them much more importance as evolutionary forces than internal factors. Chase-Dunn and Hall’s world-systemic evolutionism makes a shambles of the criticism that evolutionary theories of society are inherently endogenist. The claim, then, that evolutionary theories are flawed because they are endogenist theories will not hold up to careful examination. There is no inherent connection between an evolutionary perspective and an endogenist one.2

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 267

Evolutionism and the Comparative Method Another objection to evolutionary theories that has continued to be raised is also one that was made famous by the Boasians. This is the claim that evolutionary theories rest upon an illegitimate methodological device: the comparative method. Boas himself made this claim, and it was widely repeated by his students. This methodological objection is a key element in Nisbet’s rejection of evolutionary theories. Nisbet objects to the comparative method for the same basic reason the Boasians did: the belief that taxonomic schemes constructed out of cross-sectional data cannot legitimately be made to yield conclusions about actual historical change or process. As he puts it (1969:196–197): Where฀in฀this฀series฀of฀asserted฀developmental฀steps฀is฀the฀process฀of฀change?฀ The answer is plain. There is no change; only a succession of conditions . . . drawn from all possible periods of history and all possible areas of the earth, and then arranged in a series bearing as much relationship as possible to the actual historical series in the West but synchronized also with the logico-spatial series that inevitably yields the widest variation. What we have, in fact, in the so-called developmental series is a finely graded, logically continuous series of “stills” as in a movie film. It is the eye—or rather, in this instance, the disposition to believe—that creates the illusion of actual development, growth, or change.

The answer to this objection was given in Chapter 3 and need only be briefly recapitulated. True enough, the comparative method, which is indeed widespread among social evolutionists, depends upon a willingness to assume that a particular classification system that is not in itself historical corresponds well to what actually happened historically. But the employment of the method is justified on a number of counts. First, the same type of method has been widely used in the physical and biological sciences, and under conditions in which precisely the same degree of inference is required. Since it has produced intellectually satisfying and justifiable results in those sciences, there is no compelling reason why its application in the social sciences should be banned. Second, use of the method is often necessary because the actual observation of historical change over long periods of time is usually difficult, and in many instances impossible. Failure to use the method means that social evolutionists will be condemned to ignore huge quantities of ethnographic data, and will also be forced to try to explain world-historical social changes using the limited amounts of truly historical data available to them. Third, the inferences that are required in employing the method can be justified to the extent that evolutionary classification schemes constructed from crosssectional data correspond well to independently derived schemes that are themselves historical—schemes produced by archaeologists and historians.3 Fourth, caution is obviously called for in use of the comparative method,

268 ✻ Chapter 11 and any good method can be abused. But the level of caution recommended by the Boasians and contemporary antievolutionists like Nisbet is obviously inimical to intellectual progress in any field. In conclusion, as I claimed in Chapter 3, the comparative method is in principle sound and can appropriately be used by social evolutionists so long as certain considerations are made. The comparative method is a substitute for what would be a better method—a historical or diachronic method—but is essential when the availability of historical data is limited (cf. Chrisomalis, 2006).

Evolutionism and Human Agency An important objection to social evolutionary theories we have not considered thus far involves how such theories conceive the role of human subjects in historical change. Giddens has suggested that evolutionism is an extreme form of objectivism that gives no role whatever to humans as agents of history. Evolutionary theories see history as “subjectless”—as occurring “behind the backs” of its participants. One of Giddens’s most important contributions to recent social theory is his attempt to give the concept of human agency a central role. He faults social theories like functionalism and structuralism for having no concept of agency and for assuming that social systems have their own logic, one that the human participants therein can neither understand nor influence. Individuals are knowledgeable actors who act in the world in ways that shape it, and social theory must not only take this into account, but must make it a crucial assumption. Theories like phenomenology and ethnomethodology do so, he says, but in much too extreme a fashion. They end up committing the opposite error, that of seeing social life as the product of unconstrained human intentions. What both functionalism and structuralism on the one hand, and phenomenology and ethnomethodology on the other, fail to recognize is the “duality of structure”: that social life is the outcome of the simultaneous operation of intention and constraint, which are recursively implicated in each other. Giddens, of course, has developed a social theory—structuration theory—that explicitly gives the duality of structure center stage. As we have seen, Giddens puts evolutionism into the same objectivist category as functionalism and structuralism, and faults it thereby. I think that Giddens is right for some versions of evolutionism. However, there is nothing inherent in evolutionism that makes it a form of objectivism, and I wish to argue that the very best versions of evolutionism are actually built on a notion of the duality of structure, although not in the very same way that Giddens conceives of this concept. Of the classical evolutionary theories, the selectionism of Sumner and Keller does explicitly deny human agency a role in the process of variation, selection, and evolution. For them, the evolutionary process is largely

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 269 unconscious and impersonal. However, they do not visualize individuals as mere pawns. It is individuals who are the creators of the variations on which selection acts, even if their creations are seldom preplanned, thought out, or even consciously recognized as such (although Sumner and Keller do acknowledge that deliberate and intentional variations do occur at the higher stages of social evolution). And even though the authors claim to be employing a model of “impersonal causation, operating in accord with undeviating law” (Keller, 1931:79), what they are really arguing against is not the role of individuals per se, but rather the historian’s model of “Great Men” as the purely voluntaristic authors of historical change. In the end, their theory is not some sort of extreme objectivism. However, in the more recent theories of Parsons and White we do encounter such an objectivism. The entire corpus of Parsons’s social theory rests upon a highly reified social system in which individual actors are but “carriers” or “bearers” of the properties of the system. This reified view of social life is thoroughly present, of course, in his evolutionism. It is societies that differentiate, adapt, and have identities of themselves. If ever an evolutionism were an extreme form of objectivism, Parsonian evolutionism is it. In a sense much the same can be said of White’s materialist version of evolutionism. As in the case of Parsons, White’s evolutionism is really just a part of his more general social theory, and that social theory is resolutely objectivist and determinist. In many of the essays collected in The Science of Culture (1949b), White is at pains to show that culture has a logic of its own that determines the thoughts and beliefs of the individual participants in it. White’s determinism, and its connection to his evolutionism, is nowhere more apparent than in his essay “Man’s control over civilization: An anthropocentric illusion,” the mere title of which tells you virtually all you need to know to understand his position. In this essay he says the following (1949b:358): “Man is wholly at the mercy of external forces, astronomic and geologic. . . . And so it is with culture. Belief in our omnipotence has, as Durkheim says, always been a source of weakness to us. But we are now discovering the true nature of culture and we can in time reconcile ourselves to this extrasomatic order as we have to the astronomic, geologic, and meteorologic orders.” For White, then, humans are anything but knowledgeable agents whose actions create the world in which they live. Since it would be tedious to carry out a detailed exegesis of all the major versions of social evolutionism on this matter, suffice it to say that most social evolutionary theories have probably tended toward this objectivist position, although in most cases not in such an extreme way. Yet there is one major version of evolutionism that, despite widespread assertions to the contrary, does not do so. This is Harris’s materialist evolutionism. I believe that this version of evolutionism is completely consistent with Giddens’s dictum that “human history is created by intentional activities but is not an intended project” (1984:27).

270 ✻ Chapter 11 At first blush Harris’s evolutionism appears to be a hard form of objectivism and determinism, and indeed it is usually thought of as such. After all, in Cannibals and Kings Harris tells us that, “In my opinion, free will and moral choice have had virtually no significant effect upon the directions taken thus far by evolving systems of social life” (1977:xii). But a careful look at Harris’s main arguments will show that he is no objectivist who sees humans as mere “bearers” of cultural patterns that have their own autonomous logic. Consider, for instance, the fact that Harris is primarily an individual rather than a group selectionist, a point emphasized in Chapter 8. Sociocultural patterns emerge and are transformed according to choices made by individuals, and these choices, Harris believes, are made largely according to rational cost-benefit considerations. Yet these choices are not “free,” because they are constrained by the nature of humans as biopsychological organisms and by the material conditions of human existence. What we end up with looks to me startlingly like a version of Giddens’s duality of structure in which the extremes of voluntarism and determinism are simultaneously avoided. Indeed, as Harris declares (1979:60): It is essential to the task of constructing cultural materialist theories that one be able to establish a link between the behavioral choices made by definite individuals and the aggregate responses of sociocultural systems. One must be able to show why one kind of behavioral option is more likely than another not in terms of abstract pushes, pulls, pressures, and other metaphysical “forces,” but in terms of concrete biopsychological principles pertinent to the behavior of the individuals participating in the system.

Tom R. Burns and Thomas Dietz (1992; Dietz and Burns, 1992), in their Darwinian rule-based evolutionary selectionism (see Chapter 10, note 9), emphasize the role of agency in a manner similar to Harris. They could not be more explicit, claiming to “doubt that an evolutionary theory that does not incorporate a concept of agency could provide an adequate view of human life and the sociocultural systems in which it is embedded” (Burns and Dietz, 1992:275). They seek to relate a notion of agency to different types of evolutionary selection: People—especially elites—actively work to maintain, change, or replace rules. We refer to this conscious, agentic selection of rules by individuals with power as p-selection. [A] second type of selection [is] selection by social structure, or s-selection. This operates on the basis of (1) populations of actors utilizing certain more or less shared social rules, and (2) particular social structural arrangements. In the first case, actors respond to “options” in ways that select in the aggregate—for example, the market response of a population with certain preferences and strategies. . . . Some s-selection is the intended consequence of structural design—typically the work of elites who codify rules and sanctions that are

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 271 regularly activated and applied in response to particular actions (and to the strategies, rules, and forms in back of these). For example, market systems may be established (as in contemporary Eastern Europe) with a view to making enterprises more efficient, more innovative and oriented to consumers. In other words, s-selection may be the institutionalized version of p-selection. However, s-selection may also be the result of unintended consequences of planned institutions . . . and elite policies. Modern political and economic institutions are designed in part to operate selectively, to encourage and select certain patterns of action. But institutional arrangements invariably have unanticipated and unintended consequences. In part, the context of operation varies. Thus, s-selection may operate in ways that were never envisioned or anticipated by the institutional designers and elites responsible for the institutions (Burns and Dietz, 1992:266–267).

Theorists closely familiar with Giddens’s notion of agency and structure will immediately realize that he could not have put it better himself. But as thoughtful sociological theorists, Burns and Dietz realize that agency is always a constrained agency. Agency should be thought of as a continuous rather than a categorical phenomenon, they contend, noting that all actors possess at least some agency and that no actor ever has total agency. In this regard, they identify three major types of constraints on agency: 1. Within any given natural environment and mode of technology, certain activities are either physically impossible or extremely unlikely to be produced or, if produced, maintained. For example, deciding that lead in drinking water is harmless is certainly physically possible, but the physical consequences of such a belief will be such that the belief’s persistence will be at an enormous selective disadvantage. 2. The existence of certain rules in a culture makes the creation of other rules extremely unlikely. Certain “cultural admixtures” are highly improbable. For example, strong beliefs in female inferiority and the uncleanness of female genitalia, as in certain Arab and African cultures, make the idea that women should control the content of religious ritual virtually impossible. 3. The action of individual agents is limited by other individuals who have the power to exercise positive sanctions for behavior they approve of or that supports their interests and negative sanctions for behavior they dislike or that undermines their interests. For example, the likelihood of Ford Motor Company workers engaging in violent strikes in the year 1910 was dramatically reduced by the power of Henry Ford and his fellow capitalists, as well as by their control over the police.

The first constraint mentioned by Burns and Dietz is especially interesting because it is strikingly similar to Harris’s claim that, whereas nature may be indifferent to whether God is seen as a bloodthirsty cannibal (as among the Aztecs) or a loving father (as in the Judeo-Christian tradition), nature is by no means “indifferent to whether the fallow period in a swidden field is one

272 ✻ Chapter 11 year or ten” (1979:57). Thus, like Harris, Burns and Dietz realize that good social theorizing, including evolutionary theorizing, must seek a proper balance between individual choice and material and social constraint. Although the agentic conceptions of Harris and Burns and Dietz may not be agentic enough to satisfy Giddens—Giddens’s critics have often pointed out that his human agents have a surprising amount of freedom for a theorist who wants to avoid slanting social theory too far to the subjectivist side (cf. Callinicos, 1985)—the point is that Harris’s and Burns and Dietz’s evolutionisms are in principle the kind of social theory that Giddens’s claims we need (and I strongly agree with Giddens that we need such a theory). This being the case, evolutionism per se cannot be faulted as inherently prone to unacceptably objectivist and determinist forms of theorizing. Giddens has once again committed a version of the fallacy of composition—of assuming that what is true of some of the parts must be true of the whole.

Evolutionism and Human Psychology There is another criticism of evolutionary theories that I have encountered only in Giddens, although I suspect it is more widely shared by antievolutionists. This is the problem that Giddens refers to as homological compression, by which he means the tendency “to imagine that there is a homology between the stages of social evolution and the development of the individual personality” (1984:239). More specifically, it is often “supposed that small, oral cultures are distinguished by forms of cognition, affectivity or conduct found only at the relatively early stages of the development of the individual in more evolved societies. The level of complexity of societal organization, for instance, may be supposed to be mirrored by that of personality development” (Giddens, 1984:239–240). Giddens admits that the tendency toward homological compression does not necessarily stem directly from evolutionism itself. However, since it is often associated with it, it is therefore a “danger” to which evolutionism is especially฀subject.฀Is฀Giddens฀correct?฀He฀certainly฀seems฀to฀be฀for฀at฀least฀ some of the classical evolutionists, Spencer in particular, although it is extremely difficult to imagine such a difficulty being associated with the work of Marx and Engels. Among earlier social thinkers, the problem of homological compression is actually most strongly associated with the work of Lucien LévyBruhl (1923), who is not generally thought of as a formulator of evolutionary theories (which is not to say that he was not some sort of evolutionist in his outlook). But Lévy-Bruhl’s basic notion—that people in societies at simple levels of technology and social organization are characterized by “prelogical” forms of thinking—has been severely criticized and largely abandoned by modern social scientists, evolutionary theorists included. To some extent the problem of homological compression is found in Habermas’s evolutionism, where Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental psychologies

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 273 are used to develop a set of evolutionary stages. Another exception is the anthropological evolutionist Christopher Hallpike (1980), who has used Piaget’s cognitive stages to suggest that people in band and tribal societies are thinking at a “preoperational” level, in contrast to people in more evolutionarily advanced societies, who have acquired true “operational” thought. The problem is also found in Kohlberg’s work itself. In his most mature work (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984), he not only suggested that stages of moral thinking and social evolution are closely related, but actually implied that the shift to a new stage of moral thinking is a necessary basis for the transition to a later stage of social evolution. It might also be argued that Parsonian evolutionism has this kind of tendency, given Parsons’s extreme ethnocentrism, idealism, and progressivism, but if so it is much less obvious. But apart from these instances, I think it would be extremely difficult to locate a tendency toward homological compression in the other contemporary evolutionists we have explored in this book. It is certainly not found in the works of the students and followers of Childe, White, and Steward, and it is extremely dubious that it can be located in Childe, White, and Steward themselves. In fact, I am reasonably confident that all of these thinkers would strongly repudiate any connection between stages of social evolution and stages of the development of the individual personality. In the final analysis, then, the danger to which Giddens refers, while not nonexistent, is scarcely one to provoke much anxiety.

Evolutionism and Directionality As noted in Chapter 1, a crucial element of an evolutionary theory is the postulation of a certain degree of directionality to historical change. This is roughly equivalent to saying that evolutionary theories are those that discern and attempt to explain patterns of historical change that are common to a large number of societies. And it is a trump card in the suit of antievolutionists that history reveals no patterns of change, or at least no patterns of sufficient generality to justify the claims of social evolutionists. Robert Nisbet, for instance, claims that “long-run directionality tends to be in the beholder’s eye, not in the materials themselves” (1969:284). Nisbet is a latter-day historical particularist, and it is this particularism that is the guiding element in his onslaught against social evolutionism. Is long-run฀directionality฀merely฀in฀the฀eye฀of฀the฀beholder?฀Gerhard฀Lenski฀ (1976) is incredulous at such a suggestion. He tries to turn the tables on Nisbet by suggesting that what we find in history depends largely on what we are looking for, and that if we are already convinced that something is not there then we will certainly not be able to find it (or not recognize it even when it is staring us right in the face). Regarding the presence or absence of long-term historical trends he writes the following (1976:554):

274 ✻ Chapter 11 Even if one limits one’s study to European history, the presence of long-term trends is clearly evident—trends that have endured for 500 years or more: growth in numbers, growth especially of urban populations, increasing division of labor, increasing monetization of the economy, growth of trade and commerce, shift in employment from primary to secondary to tertiary industries, increased production of goods and services, growth in the power of the state, and increased bureaucratization, to name but a few of the more obvious. Perhaps it should be added that these trends are by no means trivial matters. On the contrary, they constitute the foundation of what can only be described as a revolution in the conditions of human life.

If we shift our focus to precapitalist and preindustrial historical trends, then we find several major instances of parallel evolution. The Neolithic Revolution occurred independently in at least five different regions of the world at approximately the same time in human history, and this after some three million years in which humans lived as hunters and gatherers. This was an evolutionary trend of momentous significance (cf. Cohen, 1977), and its consequences for the societies that emerged from it were remarkably similar. Another great evolutionary trend was the origin of the state, which occurred several thousand years later in essentially the same regions that were the original centers of the transition to Neolithic communities. The parallels that can be identified in this process are truly remarkable (cf. Adams, 1966; Wenke, 1990) and surely give the lie to the notion that long-run trends are merely in the eye of the beholder. The third great transformation in human history is the one that Lenski was referring to above: the transition from feudalism to capitalism. As the world-system and dependency theorists remind us, this transition has produced very uneven consequences in different regions of the world, but the expansion and evolution of the capitalist world-economy has certainly marked a directional trend if there ever was one. And in many ways this directional trend has continued many of the trends of the precapitalist and preindustrial era: expanding populations, growth of trade and commerce, concentration and centralization of political power, increase in social and economic inequalities, and so on. If the notion of directionality is taken to refer to some sort of single master trend that alone summarizes all of human history, then it immediately loses its usefulness.4 Lenski himself attempts to identify such a trend, which he refers to as growth in the store of information humans have available to them. And Parsons finds a single master trend in increasing differentiation.5 But the notion of such a trend is too general, too abstract, to have much value. In using the notion of directionality, we must be on guard against the tendency toward a kind of simplistic unilinearism. This is a very real tendency to which some of the classical evolutionists were certainly subject, and toward which modern evolutionists like White and (especially) Parsons are also inclined. It has been said many times before, but it bears repeating that we must constantly be alert to the distinction between general and specific evolution or,

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 275 in Harris’s terminology, parallel, convergent, and divergent evolution. No one has done more in this regard than Harris himself, whose evolutionary studies give important weight to all these types of evolution. I have no illusions, however, that these last remarks will satisfy committed historical particularists like Nisbet. With Lenski, I believe that such thinkers find no patterns in history because they don’t want to find them. In this regard, consider the recent work of Michael Mann. In the first volume of his projected three-volume The Sources of Social Power (1986), Mann claims that an evolutionary view of world history has validity up through the Neolithic Revolution, but after that general social evolution comes to an end. From this point on, Mann becomes an avowed historical particularist in his analysis of world-historical social transformations. In analyzing the rise of civilization and the state, for example, he claims that, since there were “only” six instances in which such a social transformation occurred independently, this process cannot be represented in evolutionary terms. What a truly remarkable assertion฀this฀is.฀“Only”฀six฀instances?!฀To฀most฀anthropologists฀and฀archaeologists,฀ six independent instances is of startling significance and can only be understood in evolutionary terms. Mann’s refusal to see it that way—one wonders how many independent instances he would require in order to declare the transition to civilization and the state an evolutionary phenomenon—only seems to make sense if we assume that he has started out with particularist assumptions and is intent on proving them in the end. But in closing this chapter let me say something in favor of the particularists. While I do not share their overall view of history, I do not wish to bar particularistic historical studies themselves from the court of evolutionism, broadly conceived. Social evolution involves transformations of markedly different levels of generality. In this regard, Harris calls our attention to (1968:645) a continuum involving degrees of abstraction away from the description of specific cases. At one end of this continuum there is the evolutionary transformation which is characterized by or known through one case. For example, one might want to consider the development of a four-caste apartheid system (Africans, Europeans, Coloreds, and Asians) as an evolutionary product peculiar to South Africa. . . . On a slightly higher level of generality, we may note the evolutionary products characteristic of several societies within a single culture area. The peculiar Australian specialty involving eight marriage sections is an evolutionary product of the transformation of two- and four-section systems. . . . Finally, there are the universal evolutionary products such as the nuclear family incest taboo or the belief in animism. All of these categories can be expanded or contracted indefinitely in accordance with the amount of ethnographic detail which is required before we are willing to grant that two instances are the “same” or different. . . . By

276 ✻ Chapter 11 ignoring millions of trivial differences, in order to emphasize a few significant similarities, we arrive at such theoretically vital notions as egalitarian societies, state organization, feudalism, capitalism, or oriental despotism. Conversely, with a sufficiently intense historical-particularist mandate, we may prove to our satisfaction that the state of affairs in eleventh century France had no parallel anywhere else in Europe, much less in Japan or West Africa. The . . . failure . . . to grasp the epistemological issues which underly our judgments concerning evolutionarily significant similarities and differences goes a long way toward explaining the prolongation of . . . controversy beyond useful limits.

As Harris is suggesting, it is fruitless to argue that unique social transformations should not be called social evolution, and thus that evolutionists should not study them. What distinguishes an evolutionary perspective is not its refusal to recognize and appreciate the historically unique. Rather, it is its refusal to believe that the historically unique is of greater intellectual significance than the historically general. Evolutionists do not use their concern with the general to deny the particular. Particularists, however, do use the particular to deny the general, and it is this—not the existence or importance of the particular per se—that constitutes the rub for social evolutionists.6

Notes 1. Nisbet’s Social Change and History (1969), the best known of the contemporary onslaughts against evolutionism, also contains numerous other criticisms of evolutionary theories. Nisbet asserts, for instance, that fixity is more common than change and thus that evolutionary theories start from the wrong assumption about what needs explaining; that evolutionary theories are inextricably linked to a metaphor of organismic growth; and that all evolutionary theories are essentially alike. These criticisms and others have been effectively answered by Lenski (1976), and they are so wide of the mark that I do not wish to take up space to pursue them here. (Nisbet’s most absurd suggestion is that evolutionary theories must be rejected because they cannot explain historical events like the New York Giants’ winning the National League pennant in 1951. It is truly scandalous that anyone would think this could possibly constitute a valid objection to social evolutionism.) Although Nisbet is a scholar of the first rank, much of Social Change and History is a good example of sloppy thinking in the extreme. 2. Actually, the terms internal and external with respect to this whole debate are rather misleading, and proof once again that a false dichotomy has been created. As Christopher Chase-Dunn (personal communication) has suggested, the critical question is “internal or external to what?” Since the very best evolutionary theories talk about evolving systems at a variety of different levels (i. e., individuals, groups, societies, constellations of societies), the whole notion of “internal versus external factors” becomes rather meaningless. 3. This is in fact generally the case. The great expansion of archaeology in recent decades has not only vindicated the use of the comparative method, but has actually

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 277 rendered it less essential. As Lenski (1976) points out, much evolutionary theorizing now rests on a firm bedrock of prehistorical data. 4. Even to the extent that we can identify overall trends in human history, the concept of directionality need not be limited in its application to such general trends. The concept can also be used to refer to processes that occur within particular phases of the entire flow of history. In this sense one might more accurately speak of “directionalities” rather than “directionality.” But to do so does not vitiate a claim to be practicing evolutionism. An excellent example of what I have in mind is the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974a, 1974b, 1980, 1989). As pointed out in Chapter 9, Wallerstein is engaged in an evolutionary (i.e., directional) analysis of one phase of history: the emergence and expansion of modern capitalism since the sixteenth century. 5. Ironically, despite his vehement antievolutionism, Anthony Giddens has also identified such a trend. In his A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (1981), and again in his general theoretical work The Constitution of Society (1984), Giddens tries to capture the flow of human history in terms of a notion of increasing time-space distanciation. Time-space distanciation involves the “stretching” of social institutions through time and space. This means, in essence, that societies with high time-space distanciation are spread over larger geographical areas and have developed greater capacities for concentrating power and storing information. Giddens distinguishes three basic forms of human society in terms of their level of time-space distanciation. Tribal societies are non–class-divided societies regulated by kinship and the power of tradition. Class-divided societies are typified by the agrarian civilizations. In them social class divisions exist, but class is not the central organizational principle of the society. Class societies, which have existed only since the advent of modern capitalism, have class divisions, and these divisions are the central organizing feature of the society. As we move from tribal to class-divided to class societies, the level of time-space distanciation increases. Giddens insists, however, that the relationship between these types of society is not an evolutionary one. Rather, the societies relate in terms of what he calls time-space edges. The societies do not represent a temporal progression throughout history, for all coexist at the same time. Class-divided societies did not replace tribal ones entirely, nor have class societies entirely displaced class-divided societies. As for the movement from one type of society to another, Giddens says that this has occurred through what he refers to as episodic transitions, which are “processes of social change which have a definite direction and form, analysed through comparative research, in which a major transition takes place whereby one type of society is transformed into another” (1981:82). While this definition sounds amazingly like one for the word “evolution,” Giddens insists that no evolutionary notion is implied. There is nothing inevitable about such transitions, he says, and they have no transhistorical causes; therefore they are different from the kinds of changes implied by evolutionists. Frankly, it is very difficult to see how Giddens has improved on what he has identified as some of the major weaknesses of evolutionism, or indeed how he has been able to avoid an evolutionary perspective at all (cf. Wright, 1983:24–34). Despite Giddens’s disclaimers—which largely reflect a distorted view of what an evolutionary theory is—his theory of time-space distanciation is evolutionary. In fact, it is difficult

278 ✻ Chapter 11 to resist the conclusion that what Giddens has essentially done is invent a novel and pretentious language to redescribe processes long familiar to many social evolutionists. Another sociologist who seems to be an evolutionist in spite of himself is Michael Mann (1986). Despite his explicit antievolutionary pronouncements, one of his major arguments is that history reveals a steady increase in the concentration of power, or increasing “power capacity.” A steady increase in societal power capacity sounds strikingly like an evolutionary phenomenon if ever I saw one. In fact, it is a major component of Giddens’s time-space distanciation version of “evolutionism.” The economic historian Graeme Donald Snooks counts as another recent scholar whose explicit antievolutionism seems in contradiction to the way he actually thinks of the overall flow of history. Snooks (1996, 1997, 1998) has written a trilogy of books outlining the principles of what he calls “Big History.” In these books, Snooks seeks to do not only the impossible, but the unthinkable: construct a single theoretical model that is capable of explaining not only all of human history and prehistory but all of the most important transformations that have occurred on earth over the past four billion years! If we take Snooks at his word, he is a staunch antievolutionist. For him, the idea of social evolution is a myth, and he is out to destroy it. But in using the term social evolution he seems to mean some sort of unilinear process that never reverses itself or veers off in any other direction, a formulation that has never been held by a single evolutionist anywhere at any time! Such a statement only shows that Snooks is woefully ignorant of the literature on social evolution and theories of it. What he is describing in his analysis of world historical change is an evolutionary process—a somewhat messy evolutionary process, but an evolutionary process nonetheless. Snooks formulates four main “dynamic strategies” that societies use to increase wealth and to prosper economically: the family multiplication strategy, the conquest strategy, the commerce strategy, and the technological strategy (discussed at some length in Sanderson, 1997, 1999c). The reason I claim that Snooks is an evolutionist malgré lui is because his four dynamic strategies are not randomly strewn throughout history, but have a temporal order approximately as follows: family multiplication > conquest > commerce > technology. Although the sequence is rough, what we are left with is a notion that certain kinds of strategies are associated with certain historical periods. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a type of evolutionism, whether one recognizes or wants it or not. Two other practitioners of “Big History” are Fred Spier (1996) and David Christian (2004). Neither of these scholars seems nearly as allergic to the term “social evolution” as Snooks, and they too are engaged in a kind of evolutionism, what we might call a “superevolutionism.” However, the problem with their works is that there cannot possibly be any theoretical principles common to physical, organic, and social evolution—or at least not any meaningful ones. Any attempt to formulate such principles would take us all the way back to Spencer’s utterly vacuous Law of Evolution and beyond. The books make for interesting reading on a descriptive level, but social scientists looking for something theoretically interesting that is germane to their own fields are advised to start with the chapters that begin the discussion of actual human history. In this regard, Christian’s book is excellent. (Snooks’s books are also very much worth reading, full of all kinds of interesting and important insights.) 6. This is a good point at which to stress that, contrary to what many historical sociologists apparently believe, there is no inherent incompatibility between so-called historical sociology and an evolutionary perspective. (Historical sociologists often

Contemporary Antievolutionism ✻ 279 see the difference as involving a focus on concrete historical situations or events versus a focus on ahistorical abstraction using some sort of comparative methodology.) Indeed, they are overlapping and mutually reinforcing at the very least and, as we have seen in the cases of Wallerstein and Chase-Dunn and Hall, sometimes one and the same thing. As additional examples, consider two major works in historical sociology, Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966) and Perry Anderson’s famous pair of books, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (1974a) and Lineages of the Absolutist State (1974b). These works can be interpreted as being, at the very least, good examples of a kind of Stewardian multilinear evolutionism. They may even implicitly contain a more general commitment to an evolutionary perspective (see, for Moore, D. Smith [1984:313]; and, for Anderson, Fulbrook and Skocpol [1984:197–202]). Thus it is incorrect (or at least an exaggeration) to say that an evolutionary analysis does not involve careful study of concrete historical cases.

C h a p t e r Tw e l v e

Evolutionary Materialism: A General Theory of Social Evolution

As we have seen, the numerous approaches to social evolution that have

been developed over the past 150 years vary greatly in terms of their underlying assumptions, explanatory logic, and many other dimensions, and all have strengths and weaknesses. I have already indicated that I think the best of these to be Harris’s cultural materialist version of social evolutionism. But even Harris’s approach leaves some things to be desired. Most prominently, although it is well suited to deal with the kinds of evolutionary phenomena of most concern to anthropologists and archaeologists—for example, the origins of agriculture, the emergence of social stratification, and the evolution of chiefdoms and states—it applies far less well to the evolutionary phenomena that most interest sociologists and world historians, viz., the continuing evolution of agrarian civilizations after their initial emergence and the evolution of modern world capitalism and industrialism. Harris and other cultural materialists have not been nearly as effective as they could have been in explaining such things as the rise and fall of imperial dynasties, the commercialization of agrarian states, the rise of Europe to world dominance after the sixteenth century, or the evolution of the contemporary world economic system. This is not surprising, since the cultural materialists are cultural anthropologists or prehistoric archaeologists whose expertise lies primarily in societies organized at the level of bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and, to some extent, the very first states. It is therefore to be expected that historical sociologists and world historians, whose expertise lies in the past century, past few centuries, or, at best, past five millennia, would do better where the anthropologists and archaeologists do worse but would do worse where the anthropologists and

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archaeologists do better. It is largely a matter of the way in which academic disciplines have become hermetically sealed off from one another in the last century. What is needed is a comprehensive theoretical model that can successfully explain the entire range of evolutionary phenomena from the simplest hunter-gatherer bands to the modern global economy. Who is most฀likely฀to฀be฀able฀to฀build฀such฀a฀model?฀The฀answer฀is,฀an฀intellectual฀ maverick who happily ignores disciplinary boundaries and who has spent decades reading the literature in all of the requisite disciplines. The present author is such a maverick. I have spent many years developing the comprehensive evolutionary model that I think is needed, which I call by the name of evolutionary materialism. I contend that this model can successfully explain, at least at a general and fairly abstract level, the most crucial evolutionary events in world history: the worldwide origin of agriculture beginning just over 10,000 years ago; the worldwide transition to civilization and the state beginning some 5,000 years ago; the evolutionary dynamics of agrarian civilizations; the rise of modern capitalism in Western Europe and Japan starting about 500 years ago; the evolution of the modern world-system in which virtually all of the world’s societies now participate; and the emergence of the basic institutional features of modernity. The main parent theoretical tradition of evolutionary materialism is Harris’s cultural materialism. It also resembles Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory, but with much less emphasis on technology as a determinant and with far more attention to the role of demographic, ecological, and economic factors. Evolutionary materialism also borrows some of the still valid elements of Marxian theory (especially its world-system variant), and also blends in certain features of Weberian historical sociology, interpreted as a version of conflict theory à la Randall Collins (1975, 1986a, 1986b). A few other theoretical notions also go into the synthesis. Evolutionary materialism is an example of what I call a theoretical strategy, which is very similar to what others have variously called a paradigm (Kuhn, 1970), a research program (Lakatos, 1970), a research tradition (Laudan, 1977), or a research strategy (Harris, 1979). A theoretical strategy is a highly abstract set of assumptions, concepts, and principles designed to serve as a broad theoretical guide to explaining empirical reality. It functions as an orienting device for the formulation and empirical assessment of theories. As such, it contains numerous smaller-scale theories, which are limited and specific propositions (or sets of propositions) designed to explain specific phenomena. All of the theories within a given theoretical strategy are similar in that they spring from the same underlying foundations. However, these theories may be and sometimes are inconsistent or even mutually contradictory. Commitment to a theoretical tradition does not imply commitment to any particular theory within that tradition. It is the theories that really count in the end, because it is they that are focused on the particular content of what we want to explain, and it is they that are directly subjected to empirical testing. Theoretical strategies are tested, but only indirectly through the

282 ✻ Chapter 12 testing of their constituent theories. A good theoretical strategy is one that has generated many empirically successful theories and is capable of being extended to larger and larger bodies of empirical phenomena. It should also be parsimonious—simple and economical in its employment of assumptions, concepts, and principles—and provide a coherent and unified picture of the world in the sense that it brings into sharp relief the interconnectedness among the phenomena it studies. And, crucially, it should explain all (or at least most) of what its rival strategies can explain, and more besides. It should perhaps be stressed that as I have developed and applied it, evolutionary materialism is conceived to be primarily oriented to the study of long-term sociohistorical development rather than to the myriad evolutionary events that form all of the details of social evolution. I think this strategy does have considerable applicability to the great variety of evolutionary events. However, to be fully useful in this way, various aspects of the approach would have to be worked out in more detail. As applied to long-term sociohistorical development, however, I like to think that evolutionary materialism is a very comprehensive and useful guide. Evolutionary materialism is presented in its most recent incarnation below, in detailed propositional form, as I think any proper theoretical strategy should be. Along with the propositions, I present brief summaries of supporting evidence that has been presented in much greater detail in other publications (see, in particular, Sanderson, 1995b, 1999b; Sanderson and Alderson, 2005).

The Theoretical Strategy of Evolutionary Materialism 1. The Nature of World Historical Social Evolution 1.1. World history reveals social transformations and directional trends of sufficient generality such that typologies of social forms can be fruitfully constructed. These directional sequences of change constitute the bulk of what is known as social evolution. Social evolutionists concentrate on general and repeatable patterns of social evolution, that is, on parallel and convergent evolution. (Parallel evolution involves directional sequences in which societies evolve along similar lines and at similar rates; convergent evolution occurs when societies that are initially dissimilar evolve along lines that make them increasingly similar.) However, social evolutionists show due respect for the unique and nonrecurrent in world history. The unique and nonrecurrent may legitimately be called social evolution (i. e., divergent evolution) so long as they mark out a directional sequence. Divergent evolution should be explained by using the same general explanatory principles designed to explain parallel and convergent evolution. The first great evolutionary transformation in world history was the Neolithic Revolution, which ushered in agriculture and settled village life. This was the first great instance of parallel evolution in world history. The

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Neolithic Revolution occurred independently in several major regions of the world—Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Mesoamerica, South America, and North America—and also in many different subregions within each of these regions (Fagan, 1989; Wenke, 1990; Cohen, 1977). The fact that the transition to agriculture and settled village life was made independently in region after region all over the world, and the fact that these transitions occurred at remarkably similar times, is extremely strong evidence for parallel evolution. Such a dramatic worldwide directional trend can only be accounted for in evolutionary terms (Cohen, 1977). Within a few thousand years most of those regions of the world where the Neolithic occurred evolved the much more complex and elaborate forms of human society that we know as civilization and the state. Once again we have a major example of parallel evolutionary trends from many different world regions and subregions, and a phenomenon that can only be understood as evolutionary in nature (Fagan, 1989; Wenke, 1990; Harris, 1968, 1977; Carneiro, 1970). The agrarian civilizations that evolved after 5000 BP became the dominant form of society of their time. After the evolution of this kind of society, social evolution essentially slowed its pace, and no fundamental evolutionary transformations out of the agrarian stage occurred until just the last few centuries (Lenski, 1970). However, a careful scrutiny of the “evolutionary logic” of agrarian civilizations reveals some surprises. The great agrarian societies were not simply characterized by a kind of “stagnation” associated with a cyclical process of dynastic rise and fall. They underwent various forms of social growth in terms of technological advancement (Lenski, 1970, 2005; Mann, 1986), growth in the size and scope of political empires (Taagepera, 1978), and increasing commercialization and urbanization (Wilkinson, 1992, 1993; Chandler, 1987; Sanderson, 1995c, 1999b). These processes of social growth over several millennia provided an important foundation for the emergence of the modern world in the last few centuries (Sanderson, 1999b). In other words, there were definite directional trends even in an epoch of world history normally regarded as primarily one of stasis. I regard the third great evolutionary transformation in world history as the rise of modern capitalism after the sixteenth century. It is usually assumed that this was an occurrence unique to Europe, but a remarkably similar transition to capitalism occurred at approximately the same time in Japan (Sanderson, 1994b, 1999b). The rise of capitalism is the whole context for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of the modern world (Wallerstein, 1974a, 1974b). The evolutionary logic inherent in capitalism—the ceaseless accumulation of capital—has brought into existence the major features of the modern world, and so we find a remarkable parallel evolution of the basic institutional characteristics of modernity: industrialism, the nation-state, parliamentary democracy (although totalitarianism for awhile in socialist states), class stratification with substantial mobility levels, mass education, and advanced science and technology.

284 ✻ Chapter 12 1.2. Social stasis, devolution, and extinction are basic facts of world history that should not be ignored by social evolutionists. Stasis involves the preservation of the basic patterns of a society; devolution involves a retrogression to an earlier historical state or evolutionary stage; extinction involves the elimination of a society, either through the biological extinction of its members or its social and cultural absorption into another society. The existence of stasis, devolution, and extinction does not undermine an evolutionary interpretation of world history, and these processes should be explained in terms of the same basic evolutionary principles that are used to account for parallel, convergent, and divergent evolution. Many societies of a preindustrial and precapitalist character have survived into the twentieth century, and some remain. The record of extinction, of course, is well known, and has been assembled by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists. Devolution is a less common feature of world history, but the agrarian epoch reveals much of it. The great agrarian civilizations and states had a remarkable tendency to spectacular collapse. This phenomenon has been carefully studied by Tainter (1988), Yoffee and Cowgill (1988), and Diamond (2005), among others. Tainter’s theory—which fits very well within the overall framework of evolutionary materialism—holds that the collapse of agrarian civilizations results from the enormous investment in technological, economic, and political infrastructure. The massive infrastructure that is created leads to costs that eventually can no longer be met, and the whole system ultimately fails. Diamond’s work, most of which is compatible with evolutionary materialism, emphasizes by contrast environmental mismanagement and degradation as the forces that most likely produce collapse. 1.3. World historical transformations, whether parallel, convergent, or divergent, do not represent the unfolding of predetermined patterns or intrinsic tendencies; that is, they are not teleological processes. Instead, they represent the grand aggregation and multiplication of the actions of individuals and groups in concrete historical circumstances as these individuals are responding to a multiplicity of biological, psychological, and social needs (see Section 3). Social evolution is to be accounted for using the sorts of ordinary causal explanations that are basic to science as a mode of inquiry. This proposition is a foundational statement that cannot be tested empirically, at least not directly. However, it can be made highly plausible through the demonstration of the range of basic causal mechanisms that drive social evolution. For this, see Propositions 3.1 to 3.5 below.

2. The Substance of Social Evolution 2.1. Social evolution involves processes that occur within social systems of all levels, for example, dyads, age sets, kinship groups, social classes, complex organizations, societies, and intersocietal networks. Although it is studied mostly at a macrosociological level, social evolution also occurs at the simplest microsociological

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level. Macrolevel social evolution represents the temporal and spatial aggregation of microlevel evolutionary events. It is clear enough that, when societies evolve, all of their basic features undergo modification, usually as “packages” of institutions and organizations. This is not likely to be in dispute. However, the additional claim that macroevolution is aggregated microevolution is difficult to demonstrate empirically, but a plausible case can at least be made. We can take as one example the prevalence of intense forms of reciprocity and sharing in hunter-gatherer societies. One interpretation of this practice is that it is a strategy of variance reduction resulting from the severe temporal and spatial fluctuation of resources commonly found in hunter-gatherer environments (Wiessner, 1982; Cashdan, 1985; Winterhalder, 1986a, 1986b). People establish and follow strong norms of giving and sharing because it is in their long-run self-interest to do so, that is, because they must depend intimately on one another during times when they have little. This is a social pattern that involves the entire society, but it evolved as a result of selection at the level of individual benefit. Alternative explanations are that it represents a form of “tolerated theft” (Blurton Jones, 1987), or, using the costly signaling theory of Zahavi and Zahavi (1997), a form of status competition in which the most skilled hunters are “showing off” and advertising their suitability as mates (Hawkes, 1993; Sosis, 2000; Smith and Bliege Bird, 2000; Bliege Bird, Smith, and Bird, 2001). Whatever the explanation turns out to be, note that all of these explanations assume that sharing behavior is the aggregate effect of the actions of individuals acting in their own interests. Another good example is the origin of agriculture. This important shift in subsistence technology was motivated by everyone’s self-interest in the sense that individuals were striving to prevent living standards, already in decline, from dropping any lower. It was, quite literally, the “gut-level” interests of each individual acting in concert with other individuals that brought about this evolutionary transformation in the structure of society. Or consider the evolution of the state. The state arose as a result of the long-term accumulation of changes in political behavior, especially the political relations between leaders and followers. These changes in the behavior of individuals toward one another were probably so small from one generation to the next that people may have been only dimly aware of what was happening (Harris, 1977). The emergence of the first states was a long-term historical process with dramatic consequences for political life, but this process could only have occurred as the result of changes in individual behavior from generation to generation. The evolution of the state over thousands of years was but the temporal aggregation of small changes in the behavior of millions of individuals. The expansion of modern systems of mass education is perhaps a classic example of how the aggregation of individual behavior produces large-scale macrosocial effects. Much of the expansion of systems of mass education in

286 ✻ Chapter 12 the modern era has resulted from the competition among individuals for places in the system of privilege and prestige (Collins, 1979). It is simply individuals striving to satisfy their economic self-interest that drives the process forward. The rise of modern parliamentary democratic governments affords another good example. Parliamentary government, and to some degree constitutional liberties, favored the interests of individual capitalists, whereas mass suffrage was in the economic and political interests of members of the working class (and actually a threat to capitalist elites) (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, 1992). Thousands or millions of individuals acting collectively in order to satisfy their individual desires brought these things about. We can even say that the evolution of the modern world-system itself was the result of the actions of billions of individuals over a long expanse of time. Of course individuals acted as members of classes, interest groups, governments, and various other social groups, but these collectivities were the result of the aggregation of individual interests. One of the ways in which social evolution is very much like biological evolution is that both are driven by the behavior of individual organisms acting in their interests. Long-term outcomes result from the long-term aggregation of individual behavior. Neither evolutionary process must be reified. 2.2. Increasing social complexity or differentiation is a basic evolutionary process. However, much social evolution involves transformations that have little or nothing to do with differentiation, and dedifferentiation is an important evolutionary (more accurately, devolutionary) process. Differentiation is only one of numerous important evolutionary processes. It has become very clear that considerable social evolution can be described as a process of growing complexity and the differentiation of organizations and institutions. However, there are important evolutionary events that have nothing to do with complexity. For example, the transition from feudalism to capitalism cannot be meaningfully described as a process of growing complexity. This transition represented a shift from one qualitative mode of economic organization to another. Even if we admit that capitalism did ultimately inaugurate a much more complex mode of social life, the transition from feudalism to capitalism in itself is not a matter of growing complexity. By concentrating only on complexity, we lose much information about the process of social evolution. As a second example, consider the shift from the premodern to the modern family system. The important differences between premodern and modern family structures are primarily qualitative rather than quantitative and have little if anything to do with complexity. For example, one major change in the transition to the modern family was what Edward Shorter (1975) has called “the rise of domesticity,” or the increasing separation of the family as a private unit from the outside world (see also Stone, 1977). There have also been major changes in the nature of intimate relationships

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in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with the matter of complexity (Giddens, 1992; Coontz, 2000, 2005). The matter is similar with respect to the evolution of gender roles, human sexual behavior, and numerous other social phenomena. Evolutionary transformations in these areas cannot be captured in the slightest by talking about a continuum of increasing complexity. The evolution of the modern state was, in a very real sense, a process in which the state grew enormously in size, scale, and complexity (Sanderson, 1999b). This is one of the most striking aspects of the evolution of the modern world. However, some aspects of recent political evolution do not involve increasing complexity in any particularly significant way. The evolution of modern democracy, for example, represented the emergence of a new form of government that contrasted markedly with the monarchies and other despotisms of the long agrarian era. In many ways the most important evolutionary transformations are often those that involve qualitative shifts rather than quantitative shifts in the direction of greater complexity. 2.3. Social evolution is both analogous and disanalogous to biological evolution. The major similarities between social and biological evolution are that both are adaptational processes (see Section 4) and that both exhibit general (parallel and convergent) and specific (divergent) patterns of change. The basic differences between social and biological evolution are: 2.3.a. Biological evolution consists mainly of divergent evolution (cladogenesis), whereas social evolution is more frequently marked by parallel and convergent evolution. The divergent character of biological evolution has been well established by evolutionary biologists. That parallelism and convergence dominate social evolution is a highly contentious statement about which social scientists will vehemently disagree. The problem is to a large extent a matter of just what is said to count as parallelism, convergence, or divergence. For example, Michael Mann (1986) has claimed that the origin of the state cannot have been an evolutionary process because it occurred in only half a dozen or so instances. For Mann half a dozen instances is not impressive, but for many anthropologists and archaeologists, such as Marvin Harris (1968) and Robert Carneiro (1970), half a dozen instances is a striking parallelism. Mann (1993) also claims that the development of the modern state is not a simple “onward-and-upward” story of the increasing size and scale of the state. Yet that is exactly what it looks like to me, as it has to numerous others (Sanderson, 1999b:289–294). To some extent this is a “beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder” phenomenon. This point is not easily settled, but I would claim that, at a minimum, there is enough parallelism and convergence in social evolution to show that it is indeed different in fundamental respects from biological evolution. Demonstration of the amount of parallelism was given in the discussion of Proposition 1.1.

288 ✻ Chapter 12 2.3.b. The genetic variations that provide the raw material for biological evolution arise randomly, but the variations in human thought and action on which social evolution operates arise primarily in an intentional and purposive manner. There is no strict equivalent to genetic mutation in social evolution. The randomness of genetic variations has been conclusively established by evolutionary biologists and geneticists. There is obviously no strictly equivalent process in social evolution. However, the issue arises as to whether sociocultural variations are random or deliberate and purposive. That many of them are the latter is beyond doubt. This is especially the case with respect to the evolution of technology (Lenski, 1970, 2005), but the same point also holds for the evolution of the basic institutional sectors of human societies. But there is an important difference between saying something is deliberate and purposive and saying it is clearly recognized by the individuals who are carrying it out. A good example concerns the process of industrialization. What we now call the Industrial Revolution could only be named, and thus clearly recognized, long after the fact. People were only dimly aware of just how dramatic were the changes that were occurring, and could only see that in retrospect. Nevertheless, the actions of various individuals—capitalists, inventors, workers, etc.—were certainly not random in any meaningful sense. People knew what they were doing, and they were doing it deliberately, but the process as a whole was not intended or deliberate. Anthony Giddens (1981, 1984) argues that society is the result of human intention but is not an intended project. That is precisely the point I am making, and that makes social evolution different in one crucial respect from biological evolution. 2.3.c. As a consequence of 2.3.a and 2.3.b, if we started biological evolution all over again, we would likely get very different results. By contrast, if we started social evolution over again, we would likely get very similar results. Social evolution therefore has a determinate and predictive quality that is lacking in biological evolution. The first part of this statement is established biological knowledge. The second part has not been conclusively established by social scientists, but it follows logically from point 2.3.b above. Moreover, the frequency of parallelism and convergence in social evolution, and the relative infrequency of such processes in biological evolution, are evidence in support of this part of Proposition 2.3. 2.3.d. Although both biological and social evolution are gradual processes (see Section 7), social evolution is extremely rapid compared to biological evolution. This is exceptionally easy to document. The earth is about 5 billion years old, and life apparently originated on it approximately 3½ billion years ago. From that point until about 600 million years ago, not much biological evolution occurred. Then, with the so-called Cambrian explosion (Gould, 1989), life began to proliferate, diversify, and evolve in earnest. By almost anyone’s standards, this process of evolution has been extremely slow. By contrast, the bulk of social evolution has been compressed into a period

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of about 10,000 years. Within this period of time we see the shift from nomadic hunting and gathering bands to settled, autonomous agricultural villages; the shift from autonomous agricultural villages to centrally organized chiefdoms; the shift from chiefdoms to agrarian states; and the shift from states to multistate empires (Sanderson, 1999b). We also see during the long era of the agrarian civilizations, as mentioned earlier, a process of technological change, growth in the size of empires, expansion of the size and density of trade networks, and large-scale urbanization. In the last 500 years the world has been radically transformed by the rise of modern capitalism and the emergence of a highly industrialized, global order. This should be sufficient to show how much faster social evolution is than biological evolution, and how it undoubtedly must operate on the basis of different mechanisms. 2.3.e. There is no biological counterpart to the social evolutionary process of diffusion. Self-evident. 2.3.f. Natural selection operates to a substantial extent in social evolution, but as such is only a process, not an actual cause, of evolution. Social evolutionists cannot stop their analyses with the identification of social evolution as a process of natural selection, but must proceed to identify the specific causal factors that operate within the context of the process of natural selection. Natural selection can at best identify a “how”; it cannot identify a “why.” Much of social evolution may occur, in a general way, as a process of natural selection. Charles Tilly (1990) has shown that the evolution of national states in Europe after the fifteenth century was a kind of selection process. Once one society had adopted such a political form, its advantages were such that other societies had to adopt it or suffer enormous consequences, possibly including extinction. Tilly’s argument seems eminently reasonable, but if we were to stop there—to his credit Tilly doesn’t—we would fail to learn what we really need to know: why the very first national state was created when and where it was. It is only by knowing this that we can actually understand the basic causes of the evolution of the national state. Because of the limited explanatory relevance of the concept of natural selection in social evolution, Darwinian theories of social evolution are of limited utility. Unfortunately, as Carneiro (2003) has pointed out, many scholars seem to apply them almost slavishly, probably because of the overwhelming success of Darwinism in evolutionary biology. Scholars have trouble resisting trying to apply highly successful theories even in realms where their applicability is limited (or sometimes nonexistent). 2.4. The differences between social and biological evolution are great enough to require that social evolution be studied as a process in its own right, not merely in terms of an analogy with biological evolution.

290 ✻ Chapter 12 This proposition logically follows from the basic differences between biological and social evolution stated above. 2.5. The coevolution of genes and culture is a real and important process, but most social evolution neither produces nor results from changes in gene frequencies. However, the human genetic makeup exerts a significant set of constraints on social evolution (see Section 4.7). Excellent examples of the coevolution of genes and culture have been provided by Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson (1985), by Marvin Harris (1985), and William Durham (1991) concerning the evolution of dairying and milk drinking in prehistoric northern Europe, and by Pierre van den Berghe and Peter Frost (1986) with respect to the fact that upper social strata all over the world tend to be lighter in skin color than subordinate classes. Coevolution is certainly a real phenomenon. However, it constitutes only a small portion of social evolution, and there is little evidence that social evolution is associated with dramatic changes in gene frequencies. Indeed, most social evolution has been far too rapid for this to be possible. As noted earlier, most social evolution has occurred within the past 10,000 years, and this is much too brief a time for any major biological evolution to have occurred. 2.6. Social evolution is a process entirely separate from the psychological development of the individual. Any analogies that might be drawn between social evolution and individual ontogenesis are merely that—analogies. Individual ontogenesis and social evolution are not causally related. There really should be no need in the late twentieth century for this proposition, which few social scientists would dispute any longer, but Giddens (1984) has made the assertion that theories of social evolution tend to see social evolution as a process intertwined with the psychological development of the person. I think Giddens is beating a dead horse and that few social evolutionists would any longer accept such a notion. (But see Hallpike, 1980.) On the other hand, there can sometimes be a problem because scholars looking at the two processes from the other direction—that is, psychologists making inferences about social evolution—sometimes do see the two processes as intertwined. The developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1981, 1984), for example, asserts that stages of moral development are intertwined with stages of social evolution, and that the former have been driving the latter. Although I know of no evidence to support this notion, unfortunately this has not prevented theorists such as Habermas from trying to build on Kohlberg’s ideas.

3. The Principal Causal Factors in Social Evolution 3.1. The principal causal factors in social evolution are the material conditions of human existence, that is, the demographic, ecological, technological, and economic

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forces at work in social life. Demographic factors are those involving the size, density, sex and age ratios, rate of growth, etc., of populations, and population pressure (density within the context of technological capacity and resource availability) is the most significant demographic force in social evolution. Ecological factors involve all aspects of the natural or physical environment, especially as these interact with technology and demography. Technological factors are the tools, techniques, methods, and inventories of practical knowledge available to the members of a society. Economic factors involve the modes of social organization whereby people produce, distribute, and exchange goods and services. Economic factors involve both subsistence economy (production of the basic means of subsistence at the household level) and political economy (production and exchange of goods and services for economic gain). The evidence for this proposition is enormous, but because of space limitations I shall provide only three illustrations. The first great social transformation in world prehistory, the Neolithic Revolution, seems most clearly linked to population growth and subsequent population pressure. This type of argument has been favored by numerous scholars (e.g., Pryor, 1986; Redding, 1988; Johnson and Earle, 2000) but has been developed most thoroughly and carefully by Mark Cohen (1977). Cohen argues that a general theory of the Neolithic is demanded by the striking parallelism it displays. Cohen’s argument is that prehistoric hunter-gatherers had long understood the basics of agriculture but had failed to implement it because their food supply was sufficient to satisfy their basic needs. Over time, however, with the growth of population a disequilibrium between hunter-gatherers and their environments emerged, and they had to begin the shift to agriculture to produce the greater amounts of food needed to feed larger and denser populations. Population pressure was also involved in the rise of civilization and the state (Johnson and Earle, 2000). Perhaps the most widely favored theory is that of Robert Carneiro (1970, 1981a, 1987), which makes population pressure, warfare, and environmental circumscription the basic causal factors. Carneiro argues that the first states arose in environments that were highly circumscribed, or that prevented the movement of people beyond their borders. Circumscribed regions would not pose a problem for human adaptation so long as populations were sparse. If one group attacked another, the second could simply move elsewhere. But as population density grew this would become more difficult, and eventually there would be no escape from invading groups. Warfare would then lead to political conquest, and increasingly complex and powerful political systems would be created, the culmination of which would be states and multistate empires. Economic motivations may also have been important in the rise of states inasmuch as state-level polities tend to favor the interests of economic elites much more than the interests of the rest of the population. States are powerful vehicles for the accumulation and preservation of wealth. As for the rise of modern capitalism, material factors have been crucial here too. Capitalism as a mode of production arose first in northwest Europe

292 ✻ Chapter 12 and Japan around the sixteenth century. I contend that capitalism arose first in these regions because they had the most suitable preconditions for capitalist development. Five factors were critical (Sanderson, 1994b, 1999b). First, Japan and the major European capitalist countries (especially England and the Netherlands) were small in size and thus were able to avoid the large costs of systems of transportation and communication that large centralized empires, such as those of China and India, incurred. Second, Japan and the European countries were located on large bodies of water and thus could concentrate on maritime rather than overland trade. Maritime trade is much more efficient and permits a much greater volume of trade, and hence high levels of commercialization. Third, the temperate climates of Japan and Europe meant that these regions were not suitable for establishing an economy based on raw materials production for export of the type that Europe was to develop in her colonies. One of the secrets to Japan’s capitalist development has undoubtedly been that it never became a colony of Europe and thus could harness its resources for its own development. Fourth, there is the factor of population growth. Both Europe and Japan experienced major increases in population during the periods in which they were shifting toward capitalism, and such growth led to increased urbanization and an expansion in the potential size of both the labor force and economic markets. Finally, and most importantly, Europe and Japan both had feudal politico-economic systems (Anderson, 1974b). The importance of these is that they were highly decentralized systems of political economy that permitted an unusual amount of freedom to mercantile classes. Mercantile activity could get a much firmer foothold in these regions than in such large bureaucratic empires as China and India, where merchants were held on a much tighter leash. These five factors operated within the context of a major world-historical trend, that of expanding world commercialization (Sanderson, 1994b, 1999b). For some 4,500 years prior to the sixteenth century CE, world trade grew in size, complexity, and density. Trade was at first local, then regional, and then extended throughout large portions of the globe. By about the period 1000–1500 CE the level of world commercialization had built up sufficiently to trigger a capitalist explosion in those regions that had the most suitable preconditions. A kind of “critical mass” of commercialism had been reached. 3.2. These causal factors operate probabilistically—in the long run and in the majority of cases—and allowance is made for “superstructural feedback.” It is not being claimed that the material conditions of human existence determine, by themselves, all social evolution. It is only claimed that the bulk of long-term evolution, and especially the most significant transformations, are rooted in material factors. Plenty of allowance is made for nonmaterial conditions to operate causally. For example, Christianity arose, at least in part, out of the exploitation and oppression of Jews in the Roman Empire

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(Harris, 1974), but once it evolved it gradually began to exert its own force as a significant causal agent in the world. Likewise, parliamentary modes of government began to emerge in conjunction with the rise of capitalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and after the middle of the nineteenth century much of the Western world began to adopt systems of universal suffrage in conjunction with their parliamentary regimes. The rise of democracy seems to have been rooted in changing material conditions, but who would deny the force democratic ideals have been in the world after they began to blossom?฀As฀a฀third฀example,฀if฀we฀look฀at฀the฀systems฀of฀mass฀education฀in฀ the modern world, they seem to have been a product of the desire of rapidly growing nation-states to socialize the individual into the role of citizen, but much of their expansion has been a self-reinforcing process rooted in the widespread belief that education provides necessary occupational skills for an industrial economy (Collins, 1979). In addition, some credence can be given to the argument made by Toby Huff (1993) that cultural differences between Western Europe on the one hand and China and the Arab world on the other accounted for the tremendous spurt in Western science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the relative stagnation and decline of science in the other two civilizations. I would not go as far as Huff does with this argument, for economic considerations indisputably played a major role in Western scientific advance, a role that Huff fails to acknowledge. Nonetheless, the West possessed a cultural distinctiveness that is perhaps traceable as far back as the ancient Greeks. 3.3. The material conditions of human existence have the causal significance they do because they relate to basic human needs concerning the production of subsistence and the reproduction of human life. Human needs relating to production and reproduction have an “ontological priority” that translates into a causal priority. This is a nonempirical, ontological proposition that is used as a grounding assumption. It is not subject to empirical evaluation. 3.4. Which of the material conditions of human existence, or which combination of these conditions, is most causally important varies from one historical period and one evolutionary stage to another, and therefore cannot be stated on a priori grounds. The precise identification of the causal significance of the material conditions of human existence, alone or in particular combinations, is a matter for empirical study. We can use the examples given with respect to Proposition 3.1 to illustrate this point. The Neolithic Revolution seems to have been rooted fundamentally in changing demographic conditions. The rise of civilization and the state was also rooted in demographic change, but other factors, such as environmental conditions (geographical circumscription) and warfare (a nonmaterial condition) played an important role. Moreover, it is likely that changing economic conditions and the emergence of more intensive forms of class stratification were a significant part of the process (Sanderson, 2001). As for the rise of

294 ✻ Chapter 12 capitalism, I have conceptualized this phenomenon as being driven by a great historical economic process, expanding world commercialization, working in conjunction with such material conditions as size, geography, climate, population growth, and feudal politico-economic arrangements. The large-scale industrialization process that has been such a dramatic feature of the development of capitalism was driven, I contend, primarily by economic interests and the logic of capital accumulation, not by population pressure as thinkers like Boserup (1965) and Wilkinson (1973) have argued. Different evolutionary events require different theories, and it is always an empirical question which of the four major material conditions, or which combination or permutation of conditions, may be operative in a particular instance. 3.5. Different types of social systems in different historical eras and at different evolutionary stages embody different “evolutionary logics.” The driving engines of social evolution differ from one social-systemic type (historical era, evolutionary stage) to another. There is no such thing as a universal cause of social evolution. The causes of social evolution are themselves evolving phenomena. A few brief examples should suffice. Hunter-gatherer and horticultural systems seem to have a strong aversion to basic change, a kind of “evolutionary inertia.” They change only by disruption from the outside, or from factors such as population growth or ecological degradation that disequilibrate them. Their evolutionary logic is a deeply conservative one, and thus in actuality an “antievolutionary logic.” The long agrarian epoch that ranged from about 5000 BP until the last few centuries also contained a kind of inertia based on the dominance of the economy by landlords. Perhaps the dominant tendency in agrarian societies was that of dynastic cycles—the constant rise and fall of empires. However, agrarian societies were changing, and in ways that we have come to appreciate only recently. But they were changing slowly, and much more so than would have been anticipated on the basis of the pace of social evolution between the Neolithic and the rise of the state. Finally, with the rise of modern capitalism after the sixteenth century a whole new evolutionary dynamic was introduced into the world. Capitalism has been by far the most fast-paced mode of production in history. Its evolutionary logic is not demographic or ecological or even technological, but primarily economic: It is premised on the ceaseless accumulation of capital. This evolutionary logic is such that the pace of social evolution is accelerating by leaps and bounds, and so much so that contemporary humanity has become vertiginously disoriented by it (Harvey, 1989).

4. The Adaptational Character of Social Evolution 4.1. Much social evolution results from adaptational processes. The concept of adaptation is necessary to explain many evolutionary processes (explanatory adaptationism),

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but it is also a useful starting point for evolutionary analyses quite apart from its explanatory significance. Even when evolutionary events are not adaptations, the concept of adaptation retains a heuristic significance because it helps us gain more insight into evolutionary phenomena than would otherwise be possible (methodological adaptationism). This is a grounding assumption used to orient evolutionary analyses. It is not a causal proposition to be empirically evaluated. 4.2. The individual is the basic unit of adaptation; any social pattern said to be an adaptation for a group or society as a whole is so only as the result of the statistical aggregation of individual adaptations. Social groups and societies cannot be adaptational units because they are not sufficiently discrete or bounded to act as such. Only concrete, flesh-and-blood individuals can be adaptational units, because only they have needs and wants. If it is objected that social groups or societies do in fact have needs and wants, this is the case only insofar as those needs and wants are needs and wants of their constituent members. This is to some extent a logical and definitional statement that is used as a grounding assumption. Logically, groups and other social entities above the level of the individual cannot be units of adaptation or selection because they are not sufficiently concrete. It is legitimate to speak of so-called group selection only if it is weak group selection that is implied. Weak group selection involves entire groups or populations benefiting from a social practice that has been selected for at the level of the individual. Strong group selection, in which the group is the actual unit of selection or adaptation, is declared extremely dubious on logical grounds because of the problem of concreteness or boundedness. The statement is difficult to evaluate empirically, but it can be done to some extent. For example, take the well-known practice of extensive meat sharing among hunter-gatherers. As we saw earlier, this has been explained by some anthropologists as a form of reciprocal altruism resulting from temporal variations in hunting success, as a form of tolerated theft, or as a form of status competition. Although weak group selection is clearly at work since entire communities benefit from the sharing, all of the explanations suggested above assume selection and adaptation at the level of the individual. And all of the explanations involve detailed empirical analyses carried out over long periods of time in which ethnographers are trying to determine the motives of individuals to engage in this behavior. The result is not firmly conclusive, but it is highly suggestive. 4.3. Adaptation must be sharply distinguished from adaptedness. Adaptation is the process whereby individuals originate (inherit, borrow) social patterns that are devoted to meeting various of their needs and wants (it refers to the origin or persistence of a social pattern). Adaptedness involves the extent to which a social pattern actually benefits the individuals who originated (inherited, borrowed) it. That is, it

296 ✻ Chapter 12 refers to the consequences of a social pattern, which may or may not have originated as an adaptation. This is a definitional statement rather than a causal proposition. Logically, adaptation and adaptedness must correspond initially, but this correspondence may be broken with the elapse of time. See 4.4 and 4.5 below. 4.4. Many adaptations that lead to adaptedness in the short run may become nonadaptive or maladaptive in the medium or long run. The whole process of the intensification of economic production that is such a major part of long-term social evolution illustrates this notion perfectly. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers gradually gave up the foraging way of life as a result of population pressure, ecological degradation, and declining standards of living. The shift to agriculture was highly adaptive for them. However, the adaptation was short-lived, because agricultural populations soon came to exert a debilitating effect on the environment. A more regular food supply allowed population to grow more rapidly, and population pressure soon became a serious problem once again. The solution was to intensify the agricultural system, but this adaptation soon led to difficulties that had to be counteracted. The whole process of the evolution of modes of subsistence technology has been one in which people have, like Alice in Wonderland, had to run faster and faster just to try to stay in the same place, and yet for the most part they fell ever further behind. The new adaptations they chose worked for awhile, but soon people become hoist on their own petard. The Industrial Revolution, which arose primarily as an adaptation on the part of capitalist entrepreneurs to increasing productivity and profits, has led to adaptedness for those entrepreneurs, as well as over time for the vast majority of the population in the form of dramatic increases in the material standard of living. Nevertheless, industrialization has maladaptive consequences in the form of increasing environmental degradation. The high birth rates of peasants in preindustrial and contemporary Third World countries can be regarded as adaptations to the economic or demographic circumstances in which they live. People may desire many children because of their value as farm and household workers (Harris and Ross, 1987), or because high infant mortality rates cause people to have a large number of children to replace those who suffer premature death (Sanderson and Dubrow, 2000). High fertility may thus be adaptive for any particular peasant couple in the short run, but in the long run it may be maladaptive for peasants in general if it leads to high rates of population growth that eat up whatever economic gains are otherwise made. Another example concerns Randall Collins’s demonstration of the role of credential inflation in educational expansion in the contemporary United States and other industrial societies. Individuals choose education as a means of economic success, but as more attain higher levels of schooling the value of diplomas and degrees is cheapened, leading to the need to stay in school

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even longer. A positive feedback spiral is generated that drives large segments of industrial societies to invest more money and more time in educational attainment. As in the case of the intensification of production, individuals begin running as fast as they can just to stay where they are, and thus a maladaptive and “irrational” element is introduced into behavior that was highly “rational” to begin with. 4.5. The extent to which adaptations lead to adaptedness varies greatly from one set of individuals to another. The more complex and unequal a society, the more this rule of thumb applies. Adaptations that are adaptive for the members of dominant groups, for example, may be nonadaptive or even maladaptive for the members of subordinate groups. In complex agrarian and industrial societies that are highly class divided, many features of social life derive from the needs and desires of dominant groups and work to their advantage. Caste rules regarding ritual purification, for example, benefit dominant castes at the expense of subordinate ones. In agrarian societies, which are normally intensively male dominated, elaborate ideologies of male supremacy, along with such practices as the veiling and seclusion of women and female circumcision, benefit men and often tremendously disadvantage women. (Examples like this can be multiplied endlessly.) Moreover, throughout most of the past 10,000 years of human history the standard of living has been declining for the majority of human populations but improving for a minority, that is, for social, economic, and political elites (Cohen, 1977). Marvin Harris notes that the “more hierarchical the society with respect to sex, age, class, caste, and ethnic criteria, the greater the degree of exploitation of one group by another and the less likely it is that the trajectory of sociocultural evolution can be calculated from the average biopsychological utility [average adaptedness] of traits” (1979:61–62). This means that the more hierarchical the society, the more the trajectory of sociocultural evolution is determined by the needs and wants of elite groups. 4.6. Adaptations may arise in response to either the physical and biotic environment, the social environment, or both. Many adaptations arise in response to any number of features of the total social environment. The total social environment exerts powerful constraints on the nature of the adaptations that are likely to arise. The total social environment makes some adaptations possible or likely and renders others impossible or unlikely. Most of the subsistence intensification process in long-term social evolution has been an adaptational process with respect to the physical and biotic environment. Much of the rest of social evolution, however, has been a matter of new adaptations arising with respect to particular social conditions. To a large extent, the increasing embracement of capitalist economic practices by European feudal landlords was an adaptive response to their declining

298 ✻ Chapter 12 economic fortunes (Wallerstein, 1974a, 1974b). The creation of mass educational systems in modern industrial societies was an adaptation to the need of state leaders for a responsible and enlightened citizenry. Mass democracy was an adaptation from the standpoint of the working class’s desire for greater economic power and control over their work environment. The granting of huge amounts of aid and loans by the United States government to South Korea in the 1950s and 1960s was adaptive from the standpoint of the former’s desire to keep the latter within the capitalist fold. The skyrocketing divorce rate of recent decades can also be seen as a type of adaptational phenomenon. I would argue that the divorce rate soared in these decades primarily as a result of changes in the sexual division of labor. The movement of married women with children into the labor force in large numbers increased women’s level of economic power, which gave women options previously unavailable. One of these options was to end unhappy marriages with greater and greater frequency (Cherlin, 1992). 4.7. When identifying a social trait as an adaptation it is necessary to specify the particular need or set of needs that are the basis for the origin of the trait. There is a basic set of human needs and drives that constrain social evolution in major ways. The most important of these needs and drives are (Harris, 1979:62–64; Sanderson, 2001): 4.7a. The desire to consume high levels of calories, nutrients, and animal proteins. 4.7b. The desire for life and a long and complete life. 4.7c. The desire for good physical and mental health and well-being. 4.7d. The desire to consume material possessions that make life easier, more enjoyable, and more fulfilling. 4.7e. The drive—I say “drive” rather than “desire” because it is to a substantial extent unconscious—to maximize reproductive success in existing and future generations. This fundamental human drive—one of the two most fundamental of all human drives (the other being that indicated in 4.7a)—has three corollaries, 4.7f, 4.7g, and 4.7h. 4.7f. The desire for sex, most often heterosexual sex. 4.7g. The desire for romantic mating apart from its purely sexual component. 4.7h. The desire for familial bonding, especially parent-child bonding, and to maximize relations with kin, especially close kin. 4.7i. The desire for beauty in the human body. 4.7j. The desire for love, affection, esteem, and approval. 4.7k. The desire for numerous close personal friendships. 4.7l. The desire for status, wealth, and power. 4.7m. The desire for individual autonomy and thus for minimizing the social constraints placed on one’s behavior. 4.7n. The desire to minimize time and energy expended in performing burdensome work.

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4.7o. The desire for justice in social relationships, both personal and impersonal. 4.7p. The desire for nonmaterial modes of abstract expression as represented by cosmic understanding, art, literary forms, and music. 4.8. Individuals who originate (inherit, borrow) adaptations are often attempting to create optimal solutions. However, in many instances they are content with a satisfactory, rather than optimal, way of meeting their needs and wants. In other words, adaptations may result from either “optimizing” or “satisficing” efforts. This is not really a proposition subject to empirical verification, but, again, a guiding premise. Like the concept of adaptation itself, this notion is a heuristic device. 4.9. The concept of adaptation implies no universal tendency toward human mastery that is the driving engine of social evolution. It has become very clear in recent years that the drive for “mastery” is basically absent in many preindustrial societies. What we find in such societies among the bulk of the population is a conservative attachment to existing forms of technology and social life. There seems to be a tremendous “technological inertia” among hunter-gatherers, and in horticultural and agrarian societies as well. But while a drive for mastery does not appear to be a human universal, it is also not a purely socially conditioned motive. It most likely results from the universal human desire for status, wealth, and power, and as such begins to emerge with the development of highly stratified societies. Something resembling the drive for mastery (a rudimentary version of it, perhaps) may be present in simple, small-scale societies—I am thinking of the Melanesian “big man” who is a political leader and economic organizer. In chiefdoms it appears much more visibly, as chiefs appear to want to be “masters of their own domain” in a fundamental political sense, and in the agrarian states and civilizations a drive for mastery is fundamental to the behavior of ruling elites. This is illustrated, for example, by the frequency of political conquest, by the building of elaborate monumental architecture, and so on. The drive for mastery is most vigorously expressed in the age of modernity. This drive is best exemplified by the ceaseless accumulation of capital and the intensity of technological advancement that are the hallmarks of the modern world. 4.10. Adaptedness is not necessarily a quality that increases throughout social evolution. Throughout social evolution, adaptedness—social progress—may increase, decrease, or remain the same. Which of these is occurring can be assessed by a limited number of objective criteria, which essentially involve the satisfaction of the universal human needs and wants specified in 4.7 above. Recent anthropological and archaeological research shows that prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations were better nourished than later agricultural populations (Cohen and Armelagos, 1984; Sanderson, 1999a, 1999b). A very good empirical case can be made that the standard of living for a majority of

300 ✻ Chapter 12 the population actually declined with the shift from hunting and gathering to horticulture, and fell again with the transition from horticulture to intensive agriculture. A very good case can also be made for increases in the workload and in the alienating character of work, for a shift from highly egalitarian to highly stratified and tension-ridden societies, and for a movement from highly democratic arrangements—in bands and many tribes everyone participates in decision making—to various forms of tyranny and despotism (Sanderson, 1999a, 1999b). Thus in some respects the level of adaptedness has actually declined during long-term social evolution. Actually, history reveals a mixed bag with respect to adaptedness, but the point is that it cannot simply be assumed that later social forms are automatically more efficient and organizationally superior, for in many instances this is not the case.

5. Agency and Structure in Social Evolution 5.1. Human individuals are egoistic beings who are highly motivated to give priority to the satisfaction of their own needs and wants. They seek to behave adaptively by maximizing the benefits and minimizing the costs of any course of action (or at least generating more benefits than costs). This egoistic and adaptive behavior must be a central focus of evolutionary analysis. Although many sociologists argue that self-interested behavior is culturally conditioned, any careful and objective inspection of the world’s societies through time and space shows that most human behavior is motivated by the pursuit of self-interest. That the individual organism is highly self-oriented should be obvious to any parent undertaking the socialization of a child, and it should also be obvious that even the most intensive forms of socialization cannot eliminate the desire of people to give priority to their own interests. Much behavior that is altruistic at the phenotypic level leads many social scientists to believe that the motives for the behavior are also altruistic. But this is seldom the case, and most cooperation is of the kind known as antagonistic cooperation or enlightened self-interest. A classic example involves hunter-gatherer reciprocity. The intensive cooperation among the members of hunter-gatherer bands is driven by their own self-interest, for they depend intimately on one another for survival, and phenotypically selfish behavior will be suicidal in the long run. Once we leave hunter-gatherer society, we find many more instances of phenotypic selfishness, and in direct proportion to the level of evolutionary development of a society. Cooperation and phenotypic altruism are still more prevalent than phenotypic selfishness in simple horticultural societies, but phenotypic selfishness begins to rear its (ugly) head. In more advanced horticultural societies this type of behavior is much more common, and is frequently associated with hereditary class inequalities. By the time we get to agrarian societies, extreme forms of phenotypic selfishness are strongly associated with high levels of exploitation and

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oppression of the many by the few. Selfishness is not some sort of product of modern capitalism, as many sociologists would have us believe. Genotypic selfishness is universal and operates in the social evolutionary process just as it does in the process of biological evolution. It frequently leads to forms of cooperative behavior, and by no means produces only conflict, exploitation, and domination; but it is the fundamental assumption from which any evolutionary analysis must start. The phenomena of social evolution are inexplicable on any other assumption, as I hope the theoretical and substantive discussions of this book have demonstrated. 5.2. Nevertheless, individuals acting in their own interests create social structures that are the sum total and product of these socially oriented individual actions. These structures are frequently constituted in ways that individuals never intended. Therefore, individually purposive human action always has many unintended consequences. Social evolution is driven by intentional human action, but it is to a large extent not itself a purposive or intentional phenomenon. To illustrate this point, we can refer back to the examples of high birth rates among contemporary Third World peasants and the pursuit of higher and higher levels of schooling in modern industrial societies. Here we find classic instances of the sum of individual action producing structures and effects that are unintended and unwanted. Other examples are not difficult to find. The actions of modern capitalists led to the formation of a large working class, which capitalists required in order to continue and enhance the process of capital accumulation. Yet the working classes of the major advanced capitalist societies fought for, and eventually attained, mass suffrage as a means of promoting their economic interests. Capitalists did not intend this, probably did not expect it, and certainly did not want it. It was a by-product of the very process of capitalist development (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, 1992), and has certainly required capitalists to make adjustments in their accumulation strategies. Also, consider the enormous effort engaged in by the United States after World War II to help rebuild Japan, and the enormous amount of money in the form of loans and aid given to South Korea during the same period. These latter nations have benefited enormously from the United States’s actions, and in fact probably far more than the United States ever intended, for they have become serious economic competitors of the United States. Social evolution continually leads to outcomes never expected or desired. As Anthony Giddens (1984) has so eloquently put it, society is the result of human intention but it is not an intended project. 5.3. The social structures that individuals create through their purposive action reflect back upon them in the sense that they create new sets of constraints within which individually purposive action must operate. Social evolution represents the long-term consequences of the dialectical interplay between human agency and social structure.

302 ✻ Chapter 12 The Neolithic Revolution resulted from the agency of individuals who were trying to prevent further declines in living standards due to population growth. However, once the transition to fully agricultural societies had been achieved, a situation was created in which individuals had committed themselves to a more intensive form of subsistence adaptation. There was no turning back, and now populations grew faster than they did previously, which led to new forms of environmental degradation that necessitated new forms and levels of productive intensification. These new waves of intensification produced even more dramatic ecological and economic effects, which led to further waves of intensification, and so on throughout the past 10,000 years. Humans created modern industrial technology as an act of agency (the desire of capitalists for greater productivity and profits), and now this technology has the potential to bring about the death of capitalism. Here we find humans constantly acting as agents in pursuit of their interests, yet constantly being constrained by the results of their previous actions or those of their ancestors. This gives the lie to the widespread social-scientific belief that social evolution is some sort of deterministic process having nothing to do with individual choice and action. 5.4. Human agency is never something that occurs “freely.” All purposive human action is constrained by both the biopsychological nature of human organisms and by the social structures that prior generations of individual actors created through their actions. Agency, therefore, is never to be taken to be action that is “free” or “voluntary.” This is really an ontological rather than an empirical proposition, and is used to orient analysis. It simply notes that all individual action occurs within a context that is constantly evolving and constantly constraining action (cf. Burns and Dietz, 1992; Dietz and Burns, 1992).

6. The Units of Social Evolution 6.1. Although individuals are the units of selection or adaptation, they are not the units of actual evolution. The units of evolution are necessarily social groups, structures, and systems at all levels of size, complexity, and inclusiveness. It is they that evolve, even though they do so only through the purposive actions of individuals. As asserted previously, individuals are the basic units of adaptation. However, because individuals must live socially and interact with others to satisfy their individual needs, they create groups and societies of various types, and it is these groups and societies that do the actual evolving and that are the focus of evolutionary analysis. This proposition is essentially ontological rather than empirical. 6.2. Much social evolution is endogenous to societies as politically and geographically bounded systems. However, societies are seldom closed off to interactions with, and influences from, other societies. Societies are frequently integrated into larger intersocietal

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networks or “world-systems” that greatly affect their evolutionary dynamics. The probable existence and nature of these intersocietal networks must always be taken into consideration in evolutionary analysis. Social evolution occurs both endogenously (as the result of forces within a society) and exogenously (as the result of intersocietal relations), and neither of these can be causally privileged on a priori grounds. Determining the balance of endogenous and exogenous forces occurring at any given time and place is an empirical matter that must be pursued case by case. In some instances, it is the intersocietal network that is the basic unit of social evolution, within which societies evolve only as parts of the whole. In other instances, any existing intersocietal networks may be relatively inconsequential for the evolution of individual societies. Most often, social evolution results from a combination of endogenous and exogenous forces. Ever since the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (1974a, 1974b, 1980, 1989) it has become clear that much social evolution occurs as the result of the effects of large-scale intersocietal networks within which individual societies are located. This has especially been the case since the emergence of the world capitalist system in the sixteenth century. At earlier stages of social evolution endogenous forces may be of greater significance, but even here intersocietal forces are often important, as the work of Frank and Gills (1993) and Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) has shown (see also Sanderson, 1995c; Denemark, Friedman, Gills, and Modelski, 2000). This proposition is simply a procedural one that asks social scientists to be sensitive to the existence of both endogenous and exogenous forces, and their interaction, in social evolution.

7. Tempo and Mode in Social Evolution Darwin was a committed gradualist with respect to biological evolution. Gradualism is the notion that evolution proceeds by means of the accumulation of small, step-by-step changes rather than by saltations, or large-scale leaps. Ever since the development of the modern synthetic theory in the 1930s and 1940s, gradualism has been the prevailing wisdom, despite a few dissenters (e. g., Goldschmidt, 1940). In the 1970s, gradualism was attacked by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould (1972; Gould and Eldredge, 1977; cf. Stanley, 1979), who attempted to replace it with a model they called punctuated equilibrium. This model assumed that throughout most geological time nothing much is happening. Species remain much as they are, and thus a state of equilibrium prevails. However, from time to time this static situation is “punctuated” by dramatic evolutionary shifts from species to species, clade to clade, and phylum to phylum. Eldredge and Gould claimed that punctuated equilibrium is much better supported by the fossil record than gradualism, for what is observed in that record is long periods of stasis interrupted every so often by dramatic and often rapid evolutionary changes. A common misunderstanding of punctuated equilibrium theory, sometimes actually made by the theory’s originators themselves, is that it refers to the rate

304 ✻ Chapter 12 or speed with which evolutionary events occur. But this is a separate matter. Although evolutionary punctuations, were they to occur, would be (relatively speaking) rapid, gradual changes can also be rapid. Indeed, gradual changes can occur at virtually any rate, from the very slow to the very rapid. The issue is not the speed or pace of change, but its magnitude. Punctuated equilibrium theory remains very much a minority position within evolutionary biology (cf. Stebbins and Ayala, 1981; Charlesworth, Lande, and Slatkin, 1982; Futuyma, 1986), even though in his last major book Gould (2002) was still pushing it hard and claimed that it had gained considerable acceptance. It is true that the fossil record does show long periods of no change interrupted by what appear to be short bursts of rapid change. However, this rapid change can still be gradual, and very likely is. Be that as it may, the historical sociologist Randall Collins (1988) has suggested that the punctuationalist theory may be a much better model for long-term historical change than a gradualist model. As he remarks, “Historically, major changes in societies have often occurred ‘catastrophically’ rather than gradually. Not only revolutions but even more importantly, wars and conflict in general have played a major part in affecting the form of the state, the economy, religion and culture, the family, and other social institutions” (1988:34). But I think that Collins has made the classic error of mistaking punctuated evolutionary changes for rapid changes. I do not think that punctuated equilibrium theory works any better for social evolution than it does for its biological counterpart. I therefore formulate the following propositions. 7.1. Social evolution proceeds through the gradual accumulation of (normally) small, step-by-step changes. The Neolithic Revolution affords an excellent example. The term “revolution” is actually misleading with respect to time, for the Neolithic was in fact a very gradual (and very slow) process. For several thousand years prior to the Neolithic we find throughout the world hunter-gatherer societies gradually intensifying their foraging practices, and the move toward agriculture occurred in a very piecemeal way. Hunter-gatherers would begin practicing some agriculture while continuing to live mainly by foraging, and then over time they gradually replaced foraging with cultivation. The shift from complete reliance on hunting and gathering to complete reliance on agriculture usually took several thousand years in all of the regions of the Neolithic (cf. Harris, 1977; M. Cohen, 1977; Wenke, 1990; Sanderson, 1999b:20–52). The emergence of civilization and the state was also a process that occurred piecemeal over thousands of years, and political evolution had to pass through a chiefdom stage before the level of the state was reached (Carneiro, 1981a). But first there were simple chiefdoms of relatively small size (perhaps only 1,000 members), then somewhat larger and more complex chiefdoms (perhaps 5,000–25,000 members), and then onto the political stage came the largest and most complex chiefdoms (up to 100,000 members). States

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passed through various stages of size and complexity in their evolution as well (Sanderson, 1999b:53–95). During the long era between the rise of the earliest states and the emergence of modern capitalism, little that can properly be called social evolution occurred, although there was quantitative social growth in such things as population, world commercialism, the size of political units, the scale and scope of warfare, and the level of technology (especially military technology). However, these changes occurred piecemeal as well, and it took some four and a half millennia for a qualitative shift to a new mode of social and economic life to occur (Sanderson, 1999b:96–133). The rise of capitalism in the West beginning in the sixteenth century was, at least in part, the result of the gradual increases in world commercialization that had been occurring for thousands of years. Western Europe was not feudal one year and capitalist the next. In fact, no historian or historical sociologist could date this transition with any precision at all. Although Wallerstein chooses the sixteenth century as the great dividing point, it has become increasingly apparent that gradual but very important changes of a capitalist or commercial nature were occurring in Western Europe for hundreds of years before this time, and that these changes paved the way for the more dramatic developments of the sixteenth century. It was once thought that the Middle Ages were largely a time of stasis, but we now know that Europe in 1400 CE was different in many fundamental respects from what it was in, say, 900 CE. No stasis there. Indeed, one scholar (Lopez, 1976) has spoken of a “commercial revolution of the late Middle Ages”—from 950 to 1350 CE—but of course the term “revolution,” as in the case of the Neolithic, is misleading (Sanderson, 1999b:134–180). Even changes that are especially dramatic, such as major social revolutions, have occurred gradually, even though obviously very rapidly. The processes that led, for example, to the French Revolution of the eighteenth century, and the Russian and Chinese revolutions of the twentieth, were step-by-step changes that took years to unfold. And the same is true of such Third World revolutions as those in Cuba in 1959 and Nicaragua and Iran in 1979 (Sanderson, 2005a). There may be a sudden collapse of the old government and a sudden seizure of power by the revolutionaries, but the changes that led up to those events were gradual, step-by-step changes. 7.2. The rate or pace of gradual social evolution varies from the extremely slow to the very rapid. The rate or pace of social evolution varies enormously. Theoretically, changes can be slow or fast in any historical era. And slow changes can give way to more rapid ones, only for the pace of change to become slower yet again. 7.3. Social evolution at earlier stages and historical periods is slower than evolution in more recent times and at later stages. Social evolution is itself an evolving process whose pace has accelerated over time.

306 ✻ Chapter 12 As we have already indicated, the pace of the Neolithic was generally quite slow, taking thousands of years, but once the transition to full reliance on domestication was reached, things accelerated. Agricultural intensification quickened as populations grew, and the first chiefdoms emerged. Chiefdoms developed fairly rapidly into states, and states, as conquest organizations virtually by definition, often became multistate empires very quickly. But there was a slowing of change after the rise of the first states and empires. Then, as noted above, in the late Middle Ages, and especially after the sixteenth century, the pace of change accelerated enormously. The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century speeded up the process even more, and in the early twenty-first century we are now witnessing a vertiginous rate of change as capitalism continues to globalize. This pace of change will continue to accelerate unless or until something stops it—for example, massive environmental degradation and resource depletion, or nuclear holocaust.

8. Methods of Studying Social Evolution 8.1. The comparative method is an important and often essential tool of evolutionary analysis. This method involves ordering synchronic data into typologies that are assumed to reflect an actual historical transition from one evolutionary stage to another. This method is justified to the extent that an evolutionary typology can be independently corroborated by historical and prehistorical data. Earlier it was pointed out that evolutionary schemes built by using the comparative method do in fact closely correspond to our understanding of social evolution derived from archaeological and historical data. The use of the comparative method as a device for the study of social evolution has therefore clearly been vindicated. 8.2. For evolutionary analyses, diachronic (historical and prehistorical) data acquired by historians and archaeologists are preferable to synchronic data. Diachronic methods are more suitable for evolutionary analysis when they can be employed. For this reason, social evolutionists have relied increasingly in the past few decades on the use of prehistorical and historical data, and less on the comparative method. There is now a large mass of prehistorical and historical data suggesting that world history can certainly be intelligibly interpreted in evolutionary terms. A great many of these data have been discussed in this book. Very recently, Stephen Chrisomalis (2006) has developed a new diachronic method that looks extremely promising as a supplement to the comparative analysis of ethnographic cases. Chrisomalis has used it in a provocative and compelling way to look at some features of linguistic evolution. Time will tell the extent to which this method can profitably be used. The method seems sound, but finding appropriate data for its employment will be a challenging task.

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8.3. Evolutionary analysis is not something separate and distinct from historical analysis. On the contrary, it is a form of historical analysis. Just as much as archaeologists and historians, social evolutionists must spend time analyzing concrete historical and prehistorical cases in detail. This is a methodological proposition not subject to empirical scrutiny in the usual sense. It simply states that the analysis of concrete historical events is not something to be left to historians, the vast majority of whom are idiographic in outlook. The examination of particular historical cases and events is an important part of evolutionary analysis. Social evolutionists have engaged in many historical analyses of concrete events, such as the rise of modern capitalism, the creation of the modern state, the evolution of democracy in Western Europe and North America, the creation of systems of mass education, the rise of science in seventeenth-century Europe, the rise and fall of British hegemony in the world-system, and the rapid ascent of South Korea in the world-system between 1950 and 1980 (Sanderson, 1999b; Lenski, 2005). 8.4. In the final analysis, proper evolutionary theorizing requires the extended acquisition and synthesis of data from ethnographic, archaeological, historical, and sociological sources. Each of these contributes vitally to the development of evolutionary theories about world history over the very long term. By this point this proposition should be self-evident.

In What Way and When May Social Evolution Be Progressive? As suggested in Chapter 10, it is possible to assess the extent to which longterm social evolution has produced human progress if we are careful to specify a set of objective criteria for doing so. This allows us to avoid subjective value judgments that cannot form the basis for consensus on the issue of progress (e. g., some people like the commercialism of modern capitalism, whereas others dislike it). In that chapter, I suggested sixteen criteria for assessing progress. These are the most fundamental categories of human desire, the most fundamental goals that humans seek. They were recapitulated in the previous discussion of evolutionary materialism, Sections 4.7a through 4.7p. As scholars such as Lenski and Turner have suggested using similar criteria, the relationship between social evolution and human progress is often curvilinear, with retrogression after the transition to tribes, chiefdoms, and states, and then dramatic progress in the past two centuries with the evolution of advanced industrial capitalism. Let us look at these criteria one by one. Because of space limitations, I shall concentrate on just nine of them, and have selected those nine that would probably be widely regarded, by both scholars and laypersons, as the very best indicators of progress.

308 ✻ Chapter 12 1. The desire to consume high levels of calories, nutrients, and animal proteins. For most of the history of anthropology, anthropologists regarded hunting and gathering as a very poor way to live, with people having to work long and hard just to eke out a bare existence. But in the 1960s, with new studies of hunter-gatherers, this idea began to be challenged, perhaps most strongly by Marshall Sahlins (1972), with his notion that hunter-gatherers constituted “the original affluent society.” By this he meant that their needs and wants were quite limited and that they were able to satisfy them with a minimal expenditure of time and energy. Sahlins cited previous ethnographic data, largely from research on Australian aboriginal societies, to support his claim, but much more has been accumulated since then. Then, in the 1980s, several biological anthropologists began to produce so-called paleopathological studies—studies of physical indicators of morbidity in ancient bones and teeth (Cohen and Armelagos, 1984). These studies consistently showed that ancient hunter-gatherers were better nourished than later agricultural populations and suffered from a lower incidence of disease (cf. Sanderson, 1999b:337–339). Agricultural intensification was largely a result of population pressure and declining living standards, and the archaeological and historical record generally indicates that the most agriculturally intensive societies—agrarian societies with a large dependent peasantry—have the lowest living standards of all types of societies for the majority of the population. Compared to the average hunter-gatherer, the average agrarian peasant ate fewer calories and less meat and had a less balanced diet. What of the past two centuries with the development of industrial societies?฀The฀clear฀pattern฀is฀toward฀greater฀and฀greater฀calorie฀consumption.฀For฀ example, the economist Robert William Fogel (2004) shows that in France in 1705, daily calorie consumption per capita was about 1,657, but that number had increased to 2,480 by 1850 and to 3,465 by 1989. The figures are similar for Great Britain. Britons were consuming a daily average of 2,095 calories in 1700, 2,857 by 1905–1913, and 3,149 by 1989. These figures are paralleled by figures throughout Western Europe and North America. In the Third World calorie consumption has also shown a clear upward trend. For the Third World as a whole, average daily calorie consumption per person in 1970 was 2,118, and that number had increased to 2,621 by 1995 (Rosen, 1999), an amount that is perfectly adequate to maintain good health. And throughout the world people have not only been consuming more calories, but also eating more meat and more balanced and nutritious meals. The overall trend in the consumption of calories, animal proteins, and nutrients is thus clearly curvilinear over the past 10,000 years. 2. The desire for life and a complete and long life. During nearly all of the past 10,000 years of social evolution from huntergatherer bands to the eve of modern industrial society, there was little change

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in how long people lived. Hunter-gatherers are estimated to have lived, on average, to perhaps 30 (Angel, 1975). In agricultural societies of all types, the lifespan at birth usually vacillated around 35 (Cohen, 1989; Sanderson, 1999b; Sanderson and Alderson, 2005). But since the eighteenth century there has been a dramatic increase in the lifespan (Fogel, 2004). In England, the average lifespan at birth was 32 in 1725, but it rose to 48 in 1900 and to 76 in 1990. In France, the average lifespan was 26 in 1750, but that grew to 46 by 1900 and to 77 by 1990. Americans lived to only about 43 in 1850, but to 48 by 1900 and to 76 by 1990. We even see a similar pattern for Third World countries. In India in 1900 the average lifespan at birth was 27 in 1900, 39 in 1950, and 59 in 1990. In Egypt, the lifespan increased from 42 in 1950 to 60 in 1990, and in China during the same period the increase was even more dramatic, from 41 to 70. Life expectancy at birth in the Third World as a whole was only 41 in the early 1950s, but by 1997 it had reached 65 (and 70 if the special case of sub-Saharan Africa is excluded) (Sanderson, 2005b). One of the two major reasons people have lived longer in all these places is because they have been eating much more food and much more nutritious food. The overall trend is therefore one of little change in the length of human life from 10,000 years ago until about 200 years ago, and especially 100 years ago, when the lifespan began to increase dramatically to the very high levels it has reached today. 3. The desire for good physical and mental health and well-being. The other reason the lifespan has increased dramatically in the past two centuries involves major advances in biomedical science: Many diseases have been conquered and the incidence of many others has been greatly reduced. The most dramatic advances have come since early in the twentieth century, especially with the development of a huge range of “wonder drugs” and other medicines, especially the antibiotics, that have greatly reduced the incidence of the most virulent diseases (i. e., the mass contagious diseases that were the scourge of high-density agrarian societies, such as smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, and the like; cf. McNeill, 1976). There have also been dramatic improvements in the prenatal and medical care of infants and small children, with correspondingly dramatic reductions in the rates of infant and child mortality, both in the advanced industrial countries and in the Third World. For example, for a sample of ten European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, and Switzerland), the infant mortality rate in 1880 averaged 195 per 1,000 babies born, but that rate declined to 90 by 1938 and all the way to 8 by 1995 (Bairoch, 1988; World Bank, 1997). In 1890, average infant mortality for seven Third World cities (Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt; Colombo, Ceylon; Bombay, India; Singapore, Malaysia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Montevideo, Uruguay) was 317, but this enormous rate declined to 97 by

310 ✻ Chapter 12 1950 (Bairoch, 1988). The rate for the same six countries declined much further by 1995, all the way to 31. The average rate for Third World countries in 1995—60—is, in fact, much lower than the rate for the United States and the most developed countries in Western Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, which hovered around 160 (World Bank, 1997). There have also been major advances in the past half-century in the understanding and treatment of serious mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and depression. Significant amelioration of these disorders has occurred primarily as a result of the introduction of a wide range of new drugs (the antidepressants and antipsychotics in particular). People have received substantial relief from these disorders, and the rate of hospitalization for mental disorders has dropped sharply. The long-term pattern of progress in health therefore seems to be largely curvilinear. 4. The desire for material possessions that are labor saving and that make life more gratifying, interesting, and enjoyable. If we want to measure the overall standard of living by looking at the production of labor-saving devices and luxury goods, we see an overall upward-trending curve rather than the more familiar curvilinear pattern. Hunter-gatherers have very few possessions. Indeed, in most cases these possessions would only be detrimental, because most hunter-gatherers are highly mobile and carrying numerous possessions around would be a serious burden. Horticulturalists generally live in villages that are at least semipermanent (i.e., some moving of gardens, and eventually villages, does occur over time), and thus they can more easily accumulate material possessions. But there is little indication that they have much more than most huntergatherers (if we exclude land itself as a possession). With more advanced horticultural societies and chiefdoms, material possessions begin to increase significantly, but most of these are restricted to the chiefly elite and are largely luxury goods rather than labor-saving devices (since chiefs usually perform no real labor). In agrarian societies, property becomes much more significant and substantial, but again the most important and valued possessions are monopolized by elites. The peasant masses may have more possessions than people in prior societies, in the form of better dwellings, household property, and other goods, but these possessions are still quite limited. But in the past two centuries progress in the acquisition of material possessions and overall wealth has been enormous. Capitalist societies, after all, are devoted to the production of goods for mass consumption. Goods that make life easier and more enjoyable have been produced on a huge scale: automatic washing machines and dryers, gas or electric stoves, refrigerators, automatic dishwashers, flush toilets and indoor plumbing, telephones, electricity and electrical appliances of many types, radios, televisions, cameras, stereo equipment, automobiles, jet airplanes, and then later Xerox machines,

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personal computers, fax machines, and assorted electronic gadgetry. And of course, there has been a continual technical upgrading of all of these things: automobiles that go faster and run more smoothly, airplanes that fly faster and farther, stereo equipment that reproduces music with greater fidelity, and on and on. To measure the total production of these goods, economists created the indexes known as Gross National Product (GNP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The total and per capita increases in these indexes have been enormous in the past century. They have been greatest in Western Europe, North America, and Japan, but they have also occurred in most of the Third World (sub-Saharan Africa being the one major exception). The per capita GNP or GDP is one of the very best measures of a country’s standard of living. Paul Bairoch (1988) has estimated per capita GNPs for developed and less developed countries going all the way back to 1800. For the developed world as a whole, per capita GNP (in constant 1960 U.S. dollars) was only $200 in 1800, but that figure had climbed to $475 by 1900, to $1,125 by 1950, and to $2,920 by 1980, a nearly fifteen-fold increase. For the Third World as a whole, it was $170 in 1800, still $170 in 1900, and only $220 in 1950. However, since 1950, and especially in the past three decades, there have been major developmental gains in the Third World. In 1950 (using constant 1993 U.S. dollars and PPP, or Purchasing Power Parity, measures), the Third World as a whole had a per capita GNP of $920, but by 2000 this had increased dramatically to $3,406, nearly a quadrupling (Bhalla, 2002). The standard of living in many Third World countries today is higher than it was for the developed countries just a century ago. So the standard of living has been increasing dramatically in the more advanced countries for two centuries, and for the less developed world in the past half-century. Commenting on the truly staggering standard of living achieved in most of the advanced industrial countries today, Fogel (2004:71) says that we have become so rich that we are approaching saturation in the consumption not only of necessities, but also of goods recently thought to be luxuries or that existed only as dreams of the future during the first third of the twentieth century. Today there is an average of nearly two cars per household in the United States. Virtually everyone who is old enough and well enough to drive a car has one. In the case of television, there are 0.8 sets per person (2.2 per household). In some items such as radios, we seem to have reached supersaturation, since there is now more than one radio per ear (5.6 per household). The level of saturation for many consumer durables is so high that even the poorest fifth of households are well endowed with them.

So there has been an overall upward curve for some 10,000 years, but the curve sloped upward only slightly until the past two centuries. After 1800 it began a dramatic, and after 1900 or 1950 a meteoric, upward rise.

312 ✻ Chapter 12 5. The desire to enhance status, wealth, and power for oneself and one’s close kin, but at the same time the desire to minimize the same strivings in others and thus minimize the amount of social tension produced by high levels of inequality. Hunter-gatherer societies are the most egalitarian of all societies (Woodburn, 1982). They are highly notable for their antagonism to the status strivings of others, and they use all kinds of techniques—leveling mechanisms—to hold these to an absolute minimum (Lee, 1978, 1990). Most hunter-gatherers lack distinctions of wealth and distinct classes, and even differences of prestige and esteem are held to a minimum. The most inegalitarian hunter-gatherers are those that have enough material abundance to allow them to store food (Testart, 1982, 1988), but most hunter-gatherers are not of this type. With the transition to agriculture and the ability of people to produce economic surpluses, status strivings became much more prominent and much harder to control. In many horticultural societies, “big men” emerged to boast of their own abilities and accomplishments. In time these big men gave way to chiefs, much more powerful men who exerted much more control over the production process and who extracted wealth from the mass of the population. Distinct social classes of a highly hereditary nature began to form. Society was divided into a ruling elite and commoners. Eventually, chiefdoms evolved into states, and social and economic inequalities grew much wider. Extremely wealthy nobilities lorded it over a large and often landless peasantry, and the polarization between rich and poor became extreme (Lenski, 1966; Sanderson, 1999b; Sanderson and Alderson, 2005). But with the transition to industrial societies this retrogressive trend toward greater inequalities and greater exploitation and oppression was gradually reversed (Lenski, 1966). The inequalities of modern industrial societies are still wide and deep, but they are much less significant than those of agrarian societies of the past. The most widely used measure of income inequality is the Gini coefficient. Fogel (2004) has shown that, in England, the Gini coefficient was approximately 0.65 around 1700, fell to about 0.55 by around 1900, and then fell considerably further, to 0.32, by 1973. A similar trend can be found in all of the advanced industrial countries; the average Gini coefficient in 2001 for ten Western European societies plus the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan was 0.31 (Sanderson and Alderson, 2005). Fogel also assesses inequality by looking at the gap in life expectancy between the British elite and the population as a whole. For the cohort born in 1875, this gap was 17 years, but by the end of the twentieth century it had declined to only 4 years. Fogel looks as well at data on height. Around 1815, an average adult male member of the British working class was some 5 inches shorter than an average adult male of the British elite. Today, however, the gap is only about 1 inch. Finally, Fogel looks at the incidence of homelessness. Around 1850 in Western Europe, about 10–20 percent of the population was officially classified as homeless vagabonds and paupers, and the figure was about the same for people living in major United States

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cities. Yet today only about 0.4 percent of the U.S. population is officially classified as homeless. All of this is real progress indeed, and progress in one of the areas of human life that matters the most. It is often said that, with capitalist globalization in recent decades, inequality has increased on a world scale. However, the most reliable studies indicate that this may not be true. Glenn Firebaugh and his coworkers have shown, in a series of very painstaking studies, that global inequality increased up through the early 1960s, but then began to level off and in the past twentyfive years or so has actually declined (Firebaugh, 1999, 2000, 2003; Goesling, 2001; Firebaugh and Goesling, 2004). Firebaugh and colleagues measure global inequality by looking at a combination of within-country and betweencountry inequalities, and by using PPP measures of GNP or GDP in order to take into account what a given unit of currency will actually purchase in a particular country. They found that, conceptualizing global inequality in these ways, between 1980 and 1998 the Gini coefficient declined from .512 to .478, the Theil index (similar to the Gini coefficient) from .582 to .503, and the mean logarithmic deviation from .634 to .483. Overall, then, the trend in social and economic inequalities, like most of the trends we are discussing, has been curvilinear: retrogression for thousands of years, and then progress in much more recent times. 6. The desire for individual autonomy and thus for minimizing the social constraints placed on an individual’s behavior. I have no reason to disagree with the assessment of Maryanski and Turner (1992) that here we find another curvilinear pattern. Hunter-gatherers are notably highly individualistic, with few constraints placed on individual freedom (other than expected conformity to basic societal norms and values). With the evolution of horticultural societies large kinship groups began to place more and more constraints on individual action, to regulate it more and more closely, and with the rise of powerful chiefdoms and states the mass of the population became highly constrained by the power of politicoeconomic elites. Then, with industrialization and the development of advanced industrial societies, individualism has again come to the fore and people have thrown off the shackles of (often) oppressive kin relations as well as the shackles of despotic power with the rise of constitutional democracies. 7. The desire to minimize time and effort expended in performing burdensome work. Burdensome work is work that people generally do not find very pleasant to perform. Sex is work in the sense that it involves the expenditure of time and energy, but it is not a burdensome activity, except for the sexually indifferent or repressed. Painting, sculpting, writing books, and composing and playing music are also not burdensome work for those who have a talent and inclination for such activities. But most work involved in getting daily subsistence is burdensome, and it is this kind of work that people want to

314 ✻ Chapter 12 minimize. If I have to carry water two miles each day in order to have some to drink, I will find that very burdensome. If I am a farmer and have to perform 10 hours of backbreaking labor a day in my fields and tending my animals, I will find that burdensome work. But if I can stop at the local supermarket and buy a few things for dinner on the way home—or, better yet, buy some prepared foods and heat them up in the microwave in 5 minutes after I get home, or eat in a nice restaurant—I will definitely prefer that. And so will most humans everywhere. (Those individuals who love to cook, however, will not.) How long and how hard have humans had to work getting subsistence in฀different฀modes฀of฀production฀throughout฀history? Sahlins’s original affluent society thesis held that hunter-gatherers have limited wants and needs and can generally satisfy them with a minimum of effort. This indeed appears to be true. Sahlins himself had no quantitative data on actual work patterns and relied largely on ethnographic descriptions of work habits among various Australian aboriginal societies. Since that time, anthropologists have engaged in much more systematic studies. The anthropologist Richard Lee (1979) was a pioneer in keeping detailed logs on how much time hunter-gatherers spend in various subsistence activities, in his case the !Kung San of southwestern Africa. His studies showed that the !Kung were spending only about 17 hours a week in subsistence activities, if we exclude food processing and cooking. Since Lee had studied a group of !Kung only during the dry season, John Yellen (1977) studied another group of !Kung during the wet season and found that they worked more hours than Lee’s group. But if we average Lee’s and Yellen’s figures, the number is still only about 25 hours a week spent by each adult getting subsistence. James Woodburn’s (1968) ethnographic research among the Hadza, another African hunter-gatherer society, indicated to him that they had an enormous amount of leisure time and thus spent few hours obtaining food. Studies of the Aché of Paraguay show that they work much longer—perhaps some 40–50 hours per week in subsistence activities—but the Aché are atypical for hunter-gatherers because they live in a tropical forest in which game is relatively scarce, which requires them to spend much more time searching for it (Hill, Kaplan, Hawkes, and Hurtado, 1985). What฀then฀of฀agricultural฀societies฀at฀various฀levels฀of฀intensiication?฀In฀ her classic work The Conditions of Agricultural Growth (1965), Ester Boserup convincingly showed that as agriculture became more technologically intensive, the workload systematically increased. Small-scale horticulturalists using slash-and-burn techniques, long fallowing of garden plots, and frequent shifting of gardens work the fewest hours. As horticulturalists intensify production, usually as the result of either population pressure or environmental depletion, they reduce the length of the fallow period and have to spend time cutting down secondary forest growth. They may also have to begin terracing and irrigating previously uncultivated land. These activities require longer hours and more onerous work. With the shift to permanent cultivation of

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fields and the plow, Boserup indicated, people work much longer and harder. In fact, Boserup has shown that people will revert to simpler methods of production—from intensive agriculture to slash-and-burn cultivation, for example—when land (for whatever reason) becomes more plentiful. Boserup did not provide detailed quantitative data on workloads, but Wanda Minge-Klevana (1980) has done just that, and her data bear out Boserup’s conclusions. Minge-Klevana conducted time-allocation studies in a number of contemporary horticultural societies (those using shifting cultivation and hand tools only) and intensive agricultural societies (those with permanent cultivation of fields using plows and draft animals) and has shown that people work much longer (and undoubtedly much harder) in more intensive agricultural societies. She found that total work time (work both inside and outside the home) averaged about 41 hours a week per adult in horticultural societies but 72 hours a week in intensive agricultural societies. As for changes in the workload with the transition from societies in which most people live by intensive farming to modern industrial societies, in which most people work in factories or offices, Minge-Klevana has shown that people in industrial societies still work fairly long hours. Looking at the United States and several Western and Eastern European societies, she calculated that the average work week for men (counting work both inside and outside the home) was between 46 and 57 hours and for employed women between 56 and 78 hours. Of course, these figures include all the time people spend in domestic work, child care, buying and preparing food, getting to and from work, and so on, and thus are inflated relative to the earlier figures we cited on agricultural societies. Fogel (2004) provides us with a rather different perspective. Looking at U.S. male household heads only, he shows that the amount of time they spent per day in earning an income (calculated in terms of a seven-day week) was 8.5 hours in 1880 but only 4.7 hours in 1995 (and he projects a further decline to 3.8 hours by 2040). He also shows that the amount of time available for leisure activities was only 1.8 hours a day in 1880 but increased to 5.8 hours a day in 1995 (with a projection to 7.2 hours a day by 2040). It therefore appears that people in modern industrial societies are working a lot less and having much more leisure time than both people in early industrial societies and, especially, people in agrarian societies of the past. Fogel also notes that a dramatic change has occurred in recent decades in advanced industrial societies: retirement, and increasingly early retirement. As he points out, in 1890 retirement was rare, with most workers dying while they were still in the labor force (remember that in the United States in 1900 the average lifespan was only 48). But retirement has now become commonplace in both the middle and the working class, and people are retiring at earlier and earlier ages. Two decades ago the standard retirement age was 65, but that has been dropping steadily and is now approaching 60,

316 ✻ Chapter 12 especially for upper-middle-class and professional workers. Fogel predicts that the standard retirement age will soon be 55. Marx and other critics of capitalism thought that the major form of social conflict in the nineteenth century was class warfare between capitalists and workers. To a large extent they were right but, as Fogel points out, “the specter that now haunts [the advanced industrial] nations is not class warfare but intergenerational warfare” (2004:66). It has become common knowledge that in the United States the Social Security System has begun to enter a crisis. With more and more people retiring at earlier and earlier ages, eventually there will not be enough money in the system to provide for those who want to retire. The problem will only intensify in coming years, and some sort of major reform is obviously needed to avoid what people will come to regard as catastrophic results. In sum, then, people in hunter-gatherer and modern industrial societies seem to have the lightest workloads and the most discretionary or leisure time. Horticulturalists work longer, and peasants and other farmers in agrarian societies work the longest of all. The evolution of the workload over the past 10,000 years reveals a curvilinear pattern of retrogression and then rapid and massive progress in the past century or two. 8. The desire for justice in social relationships, both personal and impersonal. In most bands and tribes, there are no laws or even any person or group with the power or authority to make and enforce decisions. There may be leaders who give advice, but their decisions are seldom binding. Justice is therefore a largely private and informal matter. Recall that in Chapter 5 we discussed Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg’s (1965[1915]) findings on the administration of justice in preliterate societies. In hunters of all types, 95 percent relied exclusively or predominantly on private justice—direct personal redress of wrongdoings. This can involve indemnity payments, or so-called expiatory fights, but it also very frequently involves “an eye for an eye”: If you kill a member of my kinship group, I in turn will kill a member of yours. This often escalates into blood feuds, and thus the absence of a person or group (such as a tribal council) that can make binding decisions represents a serious political weakness in small-scale bands and tribes. With the overall evolution of societies, there have been pronounced changes in the administration of justice in the direction of a shift away from private and toward public justice. Hobhouse et al. found that only 5 percent of hunting societies had any public administration of justice, which means the presence of a leader or tribal council with the binding authority to settle disputes. However, among small-scale horticulturalists and pastoralists, 39 percent had public administration of justice, and among more complex and intensive horticultural and pastoral societies, the majority of which are organized into chiefdoms of some sort, the figure was 66 percent. And in the most intensive agricultural societies that are organized into states, public administration of

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justice occurs in 100 percent of them because states, by definition, exercise a monopoly over the means of violence. These changes represent an important form of social progress because they minimize or prevent escalating cycles of personal violence and retribution. Life becomes much more secure against the murderous, treacherous, or thieving intentions of others. But the rise of powerful chiefs is a double-edged sword. Chiefs play important roles as settlers of interpersonal conflict and rectification of wrongdoings, and also as managers of increasingly complex economic systems, but there is a clear downside as well to the rise of chiefly power. (Recall that Hobhouse et al. found that in only 15 percent of all hunting societies do chiefs have a great deal of power and in 56 percent they have none [–41% great over none]; for simple horticultural societies the respective figures are 48 and 19 percent [+29% great over none], and for more advanced horticultural societies 64 and 6 percent [+58% great over none].) Chiefs are able to abuse their authority to their own ends, and often do so. In the words of Marshall Sahlins (1958, 1963), they “may eat the powers of government too much”—demand too much work and too much surplus production from commoners, which they then appropriate and use to create and maintain the material trappings of chiefly rank. Or they may exercise autocratic power that is greatly resented. In chiefdoms, especially larger and more complex chiefdoms, a substantial political and economic gap opens up between chiefs and commoners, and many injustices come to be imposed on the latter by the former. In the ancient chiefdoms of Hawaii, for example, paramount chiefs had life-and-death power over commoners and could kill them with impunity for failure to obey certain commands. However, lacking a true monopoly of power, chiefs had to tread carefully. If they went too far in “eating the government’s powers,” if they became too autocratic or too arbitrary in their decisions, or if they killed one too many commoner one too many times, they could be deposed or even killed. Many a chief who has abused his power too much or too often has suffered a fatal result. All of this is taken to much greater lengths in states. Here there is a real monopoly of the means of violence by the representatives of the state. With the rise of state-level political institutions, there was a sharp decline in levels of interpersonal violence, especially male-on-male violence. In this sense, states have led to a higher level of justice by means of providing even greater security against bodily harm (as well as against other serious offenses) than chiefdoms. But states were and are even more of a double-edged sword than chiefdoms. They could and did impose many economic disadvantages and political injustices on the average person. Even if states dramatically reduced male-on-male killing, they led to ever greater injustices of their own. Most preindustrial states have been extremely autocratic. There are courts and laws, but how the courts are run and the laws applied can be arbitrary and violate widely agreed upon conceptions of what is just. Moreover, preindustrial states were almost always aligned with the dominant economic class in

318 ✻ Chapter 12 society, which was most often a landlord class, and assisted this class in its subjugation and exploitation of the peasant or slave masses. The state could also appropriate the labor of large numbers of people for public works projects, the so-called corvée, and could tax the masses to death. Gerhard Lenski shows the extremes to which taxation could be taken (1966:269; emphasis added): During the period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, for example, the Turks imposed approximately eighty different types of taxes and obligations. These included one known as the “tooth tax,” which was leveled on a village by the Turks after they had eaten and drunk their fill, ostensibly for the wear and tear sustained by their teeth during the meal. The cruelest tax of all was the ispendzh, which required that every five years a certain number of the finest Christian children were taken either for slavery or for service in the Corps of Janissaries.

And, since it monopolized the means of violence, the state claimed the “legitimate” right to kill for its own ends, and often did so. In sum, the most unjust societies in history, except for the totalitarian Communist or Leninist states of the twentieth century, have been large-scale agrarian states of the past, especially those that Karl Wittfogel (1957) called “Oriental despotisms.” With the development of industrial societies in the past two centuries, the autocratic features of states have been greatly diminished and a form of representative democracy has evolved, slowly but surely, first in Western Europe and the settler colonies that hived off from Great Britain (the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), then in Japan, and then eventually in the most economically developed Third World countries (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, 1992; Sanderson, 1999b:295–304, 2004; Sanderson and Alderson, 2005:134–139). Democracies are governments that have parliamentary or congressional bodies that make the laws, the free and fair election of government officials to office by the adult population, and the granting of constitutional liberties and rights to the mass of the population. The earliest democracies were restricted in various ways: Only men could vote, often there were property qualifications for voting, and in the United States only whites could vote. Gradually these restrictions came to be lifted so that suffrage was granted to the entire adult population without restriction. Unrestricted democracy is now the basic form of government throughout Western Europe and North America, and in such Asian societies as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Since Third World countries have come to democracy very late, most are still either undemocratic or have only restricted democracies, but a new wave of democratization began in this part of the world in the 1980s (Kurzman, 1998; Green, 1999; Doofenspleet, 2000). It is to be expected that democratization will gradually become less restricted in these restricted democracies, and that democratic governments will eventually emerge in most currently authoritarian Third World states.

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One of the main causes of the democratization of the past two centuries was the formation of an industrial working class that could successfully fight for the establishment of the right to vote in order to promote its economic interests, along with the growing inability of autocratic governments to prevent this from happening (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, 1992). The growth of mass education and the spread of literacy also seems to have been an important factor, because literate and better educated citizens are more politically aware and better able to organize themselves into movements that can fight for greater democratization (Sanderson, 2004). Democracy may also have spread by diffusion within intersocietal networks (Wejnert, 2005). Less democratic countries that have important economic and political linkages with more democratic countries, especially when these linkages are formal in nature, seem more apt to adopt democratic institutions. Marxists have often downplayed the significance of modern democracy, claiming that it is largely a sham because the only real democracy is one in which there is economic equality and everyone can participate in economic decision making. But I find this completely unpersuasive. I have already stated that the desire for individual autonomy and freedom from social constraints is a basic feature of human nature and a key criterion for assessing whether progress is occurring in social evolution. A great deal of evidence, both systematic and unsystematic, strongly suggests that people value autonomy—liberty and freedom—very highly and rate it as much more important than economic equality. It is the institutionalization of liberty and freedom that is the greatest achievement of modern democracies. More to the point of Item #8, modern democracies, with their courts, laws, and moral and legal principles, institutionalize much more justice in human relationships than was ever possible in the autocratic states of the past. In this sense, they represent a major form of political progress relative to the past 5,000 years. So once again we see a curvilinear pattern, but in this case an even more complex one. With the transition to chiefdoms and states, justice increased in some ways but declined in others relative to hunter-gatherer bands and simple horticultural tribes, but justice has fairly consistently been on the march again with the development of modern industrial societies. In modern democracies, individuals have strong protections from the state against individual wrongs done to them, and the highly autocratic features of earlier forms of the state have been greatly reduced. 9. The desire for nonmaterial modes of abstract expression as represented by cosmic understanding, art, literary forms, and music. Throughout history and in all types of human societies, people have been able to engage in these modes of expression. All societies have art, music, and belief systems devoted to cosmic understanding and the meaning of the universe and human life in it (religion, philosophy, or science). Literature in its true sense is, of course, limited to societies that have developed or

320 ✻ Chapter 12 acquired writing, but even preliterate societies have “literary” forms of an oral nature (storytelling, myths, legends, and so on). But as societies became more stratified and hierarchical, certain forms of abstract expression came to be increasingly monopolized by elites. Religion in bands and tribes is mass religion in which the whole community participates equally, but with the emergence of agrarian civilizations and the development of writing, ecclesiastical religions began to form in which small priesthoods monopolized religious knowledge and ritual, and the masses were relegated largely to the role of mere consumers of that knowledge and ritual (Wallace, 1966; Roberts and Sanderson, 2005). Ecclesiastical religions dominate in the modern world, but since the Protestant Reformation there has been more direct involvement of the masses in their own religious affairs. And it can be argued that in very recent times, especially in the United States, there has emerged a kind of “spiritual democracy” based on a high level of religious individualism (Wuthnow, 2003). The earliest beginnings of philosophy and science can be dated from the first civilizations about 5,000 years ago, but philosophy did not start to become highly systematic until the formation of early Greek society in the seventh century BCE. And it was an elite, not a mass, institution. As for science, it was also pursued in a serious, albeit highly limited, manner by the ancient Greeks (Clagett, 1955; Price, 1975), but its real development had to await the Arabs after the eighth century CE, the Chinese after about the tenth century (Huff, 1993), and, especially, Western Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (but with some important stirrings several centuries earlier) (Bernal, 1965; Huff, 1993; H. F. Cohen, 1994). Scientific careers have become much more open to a wide swath of the highly intelligent citizenry, but science is still an elite institution in all modern societies (and, given its intellectual demands, has to be), and public understanding of science is limited (and in the United States often truly dreadful). The arts are still dominated by elites, but there is now mass consumption of art and music (especially popular art and music) in all modern societies, at least on the part of those who choose to so consume. In the Western world we still revere a handful of great masters (e. g., Rembrandt, Brueghel, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, and Pollock in painting; Shakespeare, Dante, Voltaire, Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, and Joyce in literature; Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Stravinsky, and Wagner in music), but most people now listen to popular rather than classical music, and it is consumed on an enormous scale. American popular music has swept throughout the globe and is favored almost everywhere over local musical forms. Modern societies have also seen the development of systems of mass education, and, of course, there is near-universal literacy in the advanced industrial societies and increasingly high rates of literacy in the rest of the world. Compare this to preindustrial agrarian societies, in which only a tiny elite received any education or could read and write. For example, in ancient

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China for hundreds of years, there was an elaborate educational system, but it was limited to a tiny fraction of the population (or was the only means of entry into the gentry). It was both extremely difficult to get into and extremely difficult to earn a degree once one had been admitted. Passing the rigorous examinations of this system was a strict requirement for most forms of political office (Collins, 1977). The first universities in the Western world were established at Cambridge and Oxford in the twelfth century, but they were distinctively elite institutions (and, indeed, in many ways remain so to this day). Large numbers of students did not begin to attend universities until the twentieth century, and really only after the middle of that century. In conclusion, it is difficult to identify any unambiguous trend in modes of abstract expression in long-term social evolution. Humans have always been able to engage in these basic forms of human symbolic expression, even if elite-mass cleavages opened up in agrarian civilizations of the past and elites tended to monopolize the “higher” forms of such expression. With modern capitalism and industrialism there has been something of a return to mass participation. So a kind of curvilinear trend may be evident here as well.

Conclusion: The Quality of Life in Different Social Systems To sum up, I think the following highly general conclusion can be drawn. Humans have evolved brains and bodies over the past several hundred thousand years, especially since the advent of anatomically modern humans about 150,000 years ago, to live in hunter-gatherer societies of a few dozen members, with most people being related by kinship. Compared to life in modern industrial societies, life was harsh in these early societies, but the people living in them at the time would not have regarded it as particularly so (since they had nothing better to compare it with), and certainly not nearly as harsh as we pampered and affluent members of advanced industrial societies would regard it. Looking back at hunter-gatherer societies from our own vantage point, we see the huge distance that has been traveled in terms of affluence and material standards of living. But ancient hunter-gatherers themselves could not have foreseen even living by simple horticultural methods, let alone living in enormous societies of tens or hundreds of millions of people who earn their livings through factory, office, or service work and who have opportunities for material consumption and personal self-fulfillment utterly unimaginable 10,000 years ago. So, all things considered, living by hunting and gathering was not that bad a life if we situate it within its historical context. It certainly was not an idyllic paradise—a primitive Garden of Eden—but it worked reasonably well most of the time. Despite periods of hunger, and sometimes starvation, people generally ate an adequate number of calories and a lot of animal protein, and usually enjoyed good nutrition. They had to move around a lot, but that was natural to them anyway (only we moderns today would see that as a

322 ✻ Chapter 12 significant problem). They had few social and economic inequalities and the tensions that go with them, and no one could try to lord it over anyone else and get away with it. Life wasn’t that bad. But, as we know, there is no free lunch—at least not forever. There was a fly in the ointment. With plenty of space and plenty of plants and game animals, hunter-gatherers didn’t need to worry too much about numbers. Their populations grew, but because a lot of space was available when camps got too large some people just packed up and started a new one somewhere else. But, in time, the numbers got quite large, and the space and flora and fauna became increasingly scarce. Living standards dropped, and thus was agriculture born, first as a kind of simple horticulture. This, too, wasn’t a particularly bad way to live, although we have been learning in recent years that early farmers must have accumulated a lot of garbage and not quite known what to do with it, so just lived amidst it. Evidence also suggests that conflict and warfare intensified in horticultural societies, as did other forms of social tension. Life wasn’t quite as good as the old days of mobile hunting and gathering with a lot of room and a lot of plants and animals to eat. And then numbers continued to grow and the land got even scarcer. Simple horticultural societies gave way to more advanced horticultural societies that cultivated the land more intensively and that often had new tools, such as hoes, for cultivation. Villages and communities got larger and denser. Big men of yore started acting like chiefs, and then in due course actually became chiefs. Oppression and exploitation emerged for the first time in human prehistory. Warfare became endemic, as chiefs vied with each other for power, and chiefdoms conquered and absorbed other chiefdoms, making chiefdoms even larger. Social constraints increased, and “justice” was dispensed with a heavier and more arbitrary hand by those with real power. In time, the most advanced horticultural societies were faced with such large numbers of people and such limited land that they had no choice but to turn to permanent cultivation of the land, and to invent plows and domesticate animals to pull them. Agrarian societies formed, and with them came powerful landlords who often ruthlessly exploited a large peasant class, pushing them hard and extracting a lot of surplus production from them. And in the political sphere, the state emerged. Now things got really bad for most people. People’s lives were constrained by their landlords and by powerful states as well, which often ruled them in despotic form and appropriated their labor by putting them to work in huge gangs building many types of monumental architecture: pyramids, tombs, cathedrals, roads, great walls, and so on. Life was bad. Peasants usually ate poorly; they usually ate little meat, and their excessively starchy diets tended to be monotonous and unvarying (Lenski, 1966). They often lived in shacks made of wood or mud and worked extremely long hours. In harsh winters they had trouble keeping warm (in Russia, the peasants slept on their stoves). Moreover, with population densities now much greater, people not only suffered from the tensions and irritations of crowded living,

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but the high densities invited in unwelcome guests in the form of terrible contagious diseases, and so illness and disease increased (McNeill, 1976). In medieval Europe, for example, the Black Death—bubonic plague— killed off a third or more of the European population in the mid-fourteenth century, and it returned to Europe again and again to wipe out large segments of the population. And plague and other contagious disease was widespread in Asia too; in fact, the Black Death started in Asia and came to Europe largely by way of merchant ships (Kelly, 2005). Life in the cities of the agrarian world must have been hellish for much of the population much of the time, what with the crowding, the disease, the poor diets, and something else not yet mentioned: the general nastiness and downright cruelty of people toward one another. One gets the impression from reading about life for most people in preindustrial cities that human sympathy was often in short supply, that life was often cheap, and that people were often mean and brutish to each other as a matter of course (see Charles Dickens, English Victorian novelist). It is not difficult to conclude that the agrarian societies of the past must have been the worst kinds of societies in which humans have ever lived. With the rise of capitalism in sixteenth-century Europe and Japan, things began to improve, but first they got worse in several respects. As Europe and Japan were making the transition from a largely feudal agrarian society to an increasingly commercialized and urban society, the process of transition created enormous difficulties. People got uprooted from the land and everything they knew and packed into cities in which they had to do work that was totally unfamiliar to them and that seemed quite inhumane and oppressive: working in factories, cleaning sewers, removing garbage, and numerous other forms of work that we pampered narcissists of today would look upon with horror were we suddenly forced to do them under the same kinds of conditions. We can get a pretty good idea of the extremely low quality of life for most people just by looking at some statistics on longevity in European cities of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In Stockholm between 1725 and 1830, the lifespan was less than 20; in Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century, in the 20s; in Geneva before 1725, less than 30; in London in 1604, 18; in Manchester, England, in the 1840s, 38 for “gentlemen,” 20 for traders, and a mere 17 for unskilled workers; in Sheffield, England, in the 1860s, between 32 and 35; in Irish cities in the 1830s, about 24 (Cohen, 1989; Sanderson, 1999b:347). And infant mortality rates in this period were often astronomical: 480 in York, England, in the sixteenth century; over 300 in Berlin in 1880; about 290 in Amsterdam in the eighteenth century; between 289 and 358 in Geneva, Switzerland, in the seventeenth century; in several German cities in the eighteenth centuries, over 350. Life was bad. Very bad. Even throughout most of the nineteenth century, life continued to be fairly bad for most people (see Dickens again). But in the twentieth dramatic improvements were made, and we all know the story now because we told it just a short while earlier: Humans today, in the most advanced industrial

324 ✻ Chapter 12 societies but also throughout much of the Third World, eat many more calories and much more nutritious meals, live much healthier and longer lives, have material possessions and wealth on an unprecedented scale, work less and have much more discretionary and leisure time (and, in many cases, do much more interesting and creative work), experience less inequality and the social tensions that invariably accompany it, have much more individual freedom and autonomy, treat each other with much more sympathy and respect, receive much higher levels of justice in both personal and impersonal relationships, have many more opportunities to learn about themselves and the world, and have many more opportunities for self-fulfillment in a wide range of human activities (camping, boating, hiking, skiing, biking, attending lectures and concerts, watching films and plays, reading, and so on). Life is good. Or at least vastly better than it was in late medieval and early modern times, than it was throughout the 5,000 years when agrarian civilizations were the major type of social system, and even than it was in the egalitarian horticultural and hunter-gatherer societies of the distant past. So, in sum, progress has been real, but it has not been a steady, onward-andupward sort of progress over the millennia, as most people (both scholars and laypersons) have long thought and continue to think. There was a long period of retrogression, a long downward trend lasting thousands of years, before things began to move in an upward direction in very recent times. The pattern of human progress is therefore, as scholars such as Lenski and Maryanski and Turner (and, to some extent, Marvin Harris) have suggested, a curvilinear one. Figure 12.1 provides a rough graphic representation of this pattern.

325

Fun Production/ Type Fun

Production/ Type

Fun

Fun

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Hunter·Gath erer Simple Horticultural ( > 10,000 BP) ( 10,000-7500 BP)

Inte nsive Horticultural Agrarian ( 7500-5000 BP ) ( 3000 BCE1500 CE)

Early Capitali st ( 1500-1800 CE)

Modern Capitalist ( 1800 CE-presenl )

Mode of Production/ Type of Social System (Time Period)

Figure 12.1. Social Evolution and Human Retrogression and Progress

Epilogue

Explaining the Ebb and Flow of Evolutionary Theorizing

A

s noted at the very beginning of this book, social scientists have had a love-hate relationship with evolutionary theories, and these theories have ebbed and flowed for a century and a half. They were born in the nineteenth century and were extremely popular in the second half of that century, but late in the century the tide began to turn against them. In the 1890s Spencer’s reputation collapsed, and in anthropology, of course, Boas and his followers came to prominence and dominated the scene until the 1930s. Then evolutionary theories were revived in the 1930s and 1940s and became popular and influential again in the 1960s. But in the 1970s the tide turned against them once again, and, as noted in the last chapter, we are currently in an antievolutionary period. Indeed, antievolutionism is rampant today in both sociology and anthropology, especially among these disciplines’ leading thinkers. (An evolutionary perspective, I suspect, is still embraced by much of sociology’s and anthropology’s rank and file, but they are not the intellectual trend setters. See note 2.) Both fields have been beating a hasty retreat to a modern version of Boasian historical particularism, arguing that history reveals few if any directional patterns and that we must be extremely cautious about generalizations. In sociology, Weberians like Randall Collins (1986a, 1986b) and Michael Mann (1986) are highly suspicious of evolutionary thinking, as are most Weberians, but they are hardly alone. It is almost impossible to find a prominent comparative-historical sociologist who embraces any type of evolutionism. In anthropology the situation seems to be even worse, since the postmodernists, “culturalists,” and antievolutionists seem to have taken over that discipline even more than they have sociology.1 326

Epilogue ✻ 327 Why has the response to evolutionary theories displayed such an off and on฀pattern฀over฀the฀past฀century฀and฀a฀half?฀Why฀is฀evolutionism฀popular฀in฀ some฀periods฀but฀unpopular฀in฀others?฀To฀attempt฀an฀answer฀to฀this฀question, I draw on two important concepts from world-system theory, A and B phases and hegemony cycles. A and B phases are the economic expansion and contraction phases, respectively, of Kondratieff waves, an economic phenomenon postulated by the Soviet economist Nicholai Kondratieff (1984[1928]) in the 1920s and since appropriated by a variety of scholars, world-system theorists in particular. The ebb and flow of evolutionism seems to have a close association with Kondratieff waves. The A and B phases of Kondratieff waves since 1850, the real beginning of evolutionary theories of society (indeed, of the social sciences themselves), may be sketched as follows (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1979): 1850–1873 1873–1897 1897–1920 1920–1945 1945–1970 1970–present

A B A B A B

If we try to match these cycles with the ebb and flow of evolutionary thought, the result is a fairly good match: Evolutionism hits its peaks of popularity largely during periods of expansion (A phases) and moves to troughs of unpopularity during periods of contraction or slower growth (B phases). Evolutionism emerged and became extremely popular during the 1850–1873 A phase (although some major evolutionary works were written after that time, which probably means that there will normally be some time lag of intellectual phases behind economic phases). Evolutionism was starting on its first decline toward the end of the B phase of 1873–1897 (intellectual lag again). The next A phase (1897–1920) does not appear to be associated with an actual revival of evolutionism, although Hobhouse and Westermarck’s major works appeared during this time in England and Sumner and Keller’s in the United States, and all of these thinkers enjoyed strong reputations (and note that although Boasianism had come to dominate American anthropology during this time, Sumner and Keller were associated with a different discipline, sociology). The following B phase of 1920–1945 sees the collapse of Westermarck’s reputation in England in favor of the functionalism of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown (Pipping, 1982; Ihanus, 1999) and the continuing domination of Boasian antievolutionism in the United States. And then, during the A phase of 1945–1970, evolutionary theorizing rose to the peak of its popularity in the twentieth century. It is true that Childe and White wrote their first evolutionary works before 1945, but it was not until after this date that there was a widespread adoption of evolutionary

328 ✻ Epilogue theorizing and a dramatic rise in evolutionism’s popularity (as late as 1949 Steward was still extremely nervous about offending the antievolutionary gatekeepers in anthropology, which led him to be very cautious in using the concept of social evolution). We are now living in the latter part of a B phase, and it was precisely during this phase that evolutionism fell from grace again, and hard. But there is more. Hegemony cycles seem to be involved too. According to Wallerstein (1984c) there have been three major hegemons in the capitalist world-economy, Holland (the United Provinces) between 1625 and 1672, Britain between 1815 and 1873, and the United States between 1945 and 1970. The last two of these correspond both to A phases and to the two periods of greatest popularity of evolutionary thought. (And note also that the evolutionary thought in each case was produced primarily by intellectuals in the hegemonic country—by British scholars in the nineteenth century and American scholars in the twentieth.) What is the nature of the connection?฀A฀phases฀are฀periods฀of฀widespread฀popular฀optimism,฀whereas฀ B phases are more likely to be associated with pessimism; and periods in the world-economy when a hegemon reigns supreme are ones of extraordinary optimism and a feeling that all is right with the world. There is no better example than the A phase of American hegemony, the period between 1945 and 1970. And such historical periods have intellectual consequences. Because of the close linkage in people’s minds of the concepts of evolution and progress, A phases, especially when they correspond to a hegemon’s control of the world-economy, will be periods during which evolutionary ideas will seem especially attractive. B phases, by contrast, because of the pessimism and malaise they create, will seem unprogressive periods to many people, and this will carry over to the thinking of intellectuals, especially the leading intellectuals, who in all periods in all societies at all times have tended to reflect the overall outlook of their society. In contrast to A phase optimistic intellectuals, B phase intellectuals slide toward pessimism and a general skepticism of evolutionary theories, with their implication of general human progress. If the above is reasonably valid, a prediction is in order. We are now very near the end of a B phase that has been associated with a great deal of pessimism, malaise, and handwringing about the future of humanity (Patomäki, 2005). (If Kondratieff wave theory is valid, this B phase should have come to an end already, since it has been over thirty-five years since its beginning. But perhaps this one is just a little late.) Wallerstein has suggested that the next A phase in the world-economy may be the greatest of all A phases in terms of economic productivity and prosperity. The optimistic feelings this phase will undoubtedly induce may very well lead to a major revival of evolutionary thought. We could be in for a new phase in the development and widespread acceptance of one of the most important lines of thinking in the entire history of the social sciences.

Epilogue ✻ 329 Because of the probable intellectual time lag, this may not occur until some five or ten years after the beginning of the A phase—say sometime between 2010 and 2020. Unfortunately, there are other persisting reasons for malaise, such as continuing concern about the environment, the disruptive effects of massive globalization (especially what David Harvey [1989] calls time-space compression), and increasing rationalization (sensu Weber). These social trends are especially acutely felt among social scientists, and social scientists’ pessimistic reactions to them may well serve to neutralize the optimism generated by the shift to the new A phase. If this is the case, then the current antagonism (or at least relative indifference) to evolutionism will continue for many more years.2

Notes 1. Let me relate a personal incident to show how much this is the case. The first edition of Social Evolutionism was reviewed in Contemporary Sociology, sociology’s official journal devoted exclusively to book reviews, as well as in the American Journal of Sociology and Social Forces. I kept waiting to see a review in the American Anthropologist, but my wait was in vain. I finally contacted the journal’s editor about the matter, and she replied that the book review editor had not felt that my book was worthy of review. It was hard to believe. I was actually being told that a book devoted to undertaking a full-scale critical examination of one of the most important types of theory in the field of anthropology throughout its entire history did not deserve to be reviewed. This was just unimaginable. (Needless to say, when my Social Transformations appeared in 1995 and The Evolution of Human Sociality in 2001, the American Anthropologist did not review them either.) But in retrospect, perhaps I should not have been so surprised. I knew that evolutionism had become much less popular among anthropologists, but I greatly underestimated the depths to which that discipline had sunk—the degree to which it had been taken over by postmodernists and other thinkers who were hostile to science and to the employment of any type of theory even hinting at a “grand narrative.” Yet things were to get even worse. Although Contemporary Sociology reviewed Social Transformations and The Evolution of Human Sociality, the American Journal of Sociology did not, even though over the years they have reviewed numerous books on such topics as how taxi cab drivers interact with their riders, or how much doormen in New York City apartment buildings know about their tenants! It was bad enough not getting these books reviewed in the leading anthropology journal, but when one of the top sociology journals failed to do so it seemed like the unkindest cut of all. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. In his recent Ecological-Evolutionary Theory, Lenski complains that his work has been largely ignored by sociologists. When he does mention specific instances of scholars who have used it in their research, with a few exceptions the people he mentions are not sociologists or anthropologists but historians with very special interests. (Lenski once confessed to me privately that he had had virtually no success convincing his colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that his way of doing sociology was a fruitful one!)

330 ✻ Epilogue 2. But, even so, there are some good reasons for hope. A number of years ago, one of my graduate students and I conducted a survey of members of the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association concerning their theoretical preferences and their views on a variety of matters (Lord and Sanderson, 1999). They were queried about evolutionary theories, and their responses give us a bird’s-eye view of recent sociological views of evolutionism. A mere 3 percent of the theorists thought that evolutionary theories were fundamentally sound and undeserving of the criticism they had received, whereas 38 percent of the respondents thought that these theories were seriously flawed and should be abandoned. The remaining respondents who voiced an opinion (47 percent) thought that evolutionary theories were sound in principle, but that they needed considerable modification and improvement. These findings certainly show the degree of skepticism among today’s sociological theorists about evolutionary theories, just as impressionistic evidence has suggested, but at the same time they are somewhat encouraging. Almost half of the respondents were willing to endorse an evolutionary perspective at least in principle, even though the vast majority of these believed that current evolutionary theories are unsatisfactory. This gives me hope that evolutionary thinking in sociology will once again become highly regarded and seriously pursued in the future.

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Index

A and B phases, 327, 328, 329 Absolute Idea, 149 Abstract expression, 299, 319–320, 321 Accumulation, 304 Achievement, ascription and, 133, 146, 147 Adaptability: all-round, 155, 156; evolution and, 231 Adaptation, 84, 134, 144–145, 194, 237, 253; adaptedness and, 224– 225, 230–233, 295–296, 297; all-round, 155, 156; biological evolutionism and, 223–235; coherent/ workable, 229; criticism of, 228, 229, 260n1; differentiation and, 133; evolution and, 84; evolutionary theories and, 4, 264; functionalism and, 229; mastery and, 299; nonadaptive/ maladaptive, 296; optimal solutions and, 299; progress and, 156; selection process and, 227, 232; social evolution and, 223–235, 294–300; social patterns and, 296; subsistence, 302; traits and, 225, 298; units of, 295, 302; world-system theory and, 232 Adaptation and Natural Selection (Williams), 223 Adaptationism, 224;

discriminating, 228; explanatory, 294; methodological/ empirical, 225, 295 Adaptedness, 260n1; adaptation and, 224–225, 230–233, 295–296, 297; consequences and, 225; cultural evolution and, 231; social evolution and, 299, 300; social patterns and, 295 Adaptive capacity, 144–146, 178, 202, 252, 256 Advanced intermediate societies, 135 Advancement, evolution and, 141–142 Affectivity, affectivity neutrality and, 133 Affluent society thesis, 314 Agency: constraints on, 271, 302; cultural evolution and, 171; evolutionism and, 264, 268–272; social evolution and, 300–302; structure and, 271, 301 AGIL paradigm, 133 Agrarian societies, 122, 210, 281, 289; agricultural methods and, 196; changes in, 294; collapse of, 245, 284; constraints on, 256; drive for mastery by, 299; dynastic cycles of, 294; evolution of, 283, 322; industrializing, 204; male supremacy in, 297; property in, 310; simple/

advanced, 196; social life in, 297; subtype of, 203; transition from, 323 Agricultural Revolution, 119, 120, 128; cultural revolution and, 117 Agricultural societies, 302; life expectancy in, 309; nourishment in, 308; organization of, 316; transition from, 315; transition to, 212, 255 Agriculture, 23, 26, 77, 107, 124, 128, 246, 281, 282; ecological changes and, 180; evolution and, 167; horticultural societies and, 233; hunter-gatherers and, 198–199, 304; incipient, 122; intensification of, 185, 186, 243, 306, 308, 315; origin of, 285; population density and, 199; transition to, 283, 300, 312 Allen, Mitch: Carneiro and, 130n2 American Anthropologist, 329n1 American Journal of Sociology, 329n1 American Sociological Association, 330n2 Ancient Society (Morgan), 12–13, 14, 19, 20, 29, 61, 68; comparative method and, 37; Engels and, 50, 63, 65, 66; on ideas/social

355

356 ✻ Index Ancient Society (Morgan) (continued) evolution, 23; Leacock introduction to, 21; Marx and, 50, 66, 67–68; OFPPS and, 66, 67 Anderson, Perry, 183, 217, 279n6 Animism, 16, 121, 275 Antagonistic cooperation, 83, 300 Anthropocentrism, 252, 253, 269 Anthropological evolutionism, 132, 154; Marxian alternatives to, 183–188 Anthropology, 183; antievolutionism in, 326; evolutionary theories and, vii, 1; social evolution and, 8 Anthropology (Goldenweiser), 37 Anti-Duhring (Engels), 56, 62–63; Darwin and, 68; developmentalist flavor of, 65; Marx and, 73n4; nature/human history/ social life and, 63 Antievolutionism, 8, 35, 48n9, 74, 107, 263, 266, 268, 273, 328; in anthropology, 326; Boasian, 49n9, 327; comparative method and, 39–40; criticism of, 113; deconstructing, vii; reign of, 2; in sociology, 326; unilinearism and, 46n3 Antiprogressivism, 181, 247, 261n7, 262n8; progressivism and, 254; social evolutionism in, 254–258 Archaic societies, 135, 138 Arnhart, Larry: biopsychological needs and, 257–258 Ascription, achievement and, 133, 146, 147 Aveling, Edward: Darwin and, 73n5

Ayala, Francisco, 250–251 Ayittey, George, 205 Bairoch, Paul, 311 Band societies, 146, 159 Barbarism, 15, 20, 31, 67, 70, 108, 109; Later Period of, 23; Lower Status of, 13, 14; Middle Status of, 13, 14; savagery and, 46n3; Upper Status of, 13, 14 Behavior, 235, 300; constraints on, 313 Big History, 278n5 Big men, emergence of, 312 Biodiversity, 253 Biological evolution, 4, 5, 8, 27, 134, 250, 286, 303; adaptation and, 223–235; character of, 287; complexity and, 237; cultural evolution and, 177; differentiation and, 235–246; genetic variations for, 288; genotypic selfishness and, 301; punctuated equilibrium theory of, 222n1; selectionist arguments in, 234; social evolution and, 193–194, 200, 225, 288–290 Biological Spencerism, 27 Biopsychological constants, 233 Biopsychological needs, listed, 257–258 Biopsychological utility, 297, 302 B Notebook (Darwin), 248 Boas, Franz, 48n9, 262n9, 326; comparative method and, 37–38, 39; cultural development and, 40, 44, 46n3; diffusion and, 264; evolutionism of, 35, 172; historical particularism and, 44 Boasians, 42, 47n8, 268; as antievolutionists, 49n9, 327; comparative method and, 38; cultural

development and, 40; evolutionary theories and, 267; evolutionism and, 35, 40, 46nn3, 7, 74, 114; science and, 45; unilinearism and, 40, 46n3 Boserup, Ester, 246, 294, 314, 315 Boyd, Robert, 262n10; coevolution and, 290; criticism of, 262n11; dual inheritance theory of, 258, 259; microevolutionary changes and, 262n11; social evolution and, 260 Boyle, Robert, 168 Bureaucracy, 134, 214, 274 Burns, Tom R.: agency and, 270, 271–272; Darwinian selection and, 270; evolutionism of, 272; social theorizing and, 272 Cage of kinship, 213 Cage of power, 213 Campbell, Donald, 258 Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (CK) (Harris), 178, 232 Capital (Marx), 55, 59, 65, 69, 73n5; abstract theory and, 52 Capital accumulation, 56, 218, 294, 299, 301 Capitalism, 31, 58, 62, 187, 213, 240, 256, 276, 321; changes within, 65; death of, 302; European, 130n1; evolution and, 183; globalization of, 217, 306, 313; mass consumerism and, 152; as mass society, 151–152; predominance of, 217, 218; rise of, 53, 59, 179, 180–181, 205, 214, 215, 247, 281, 283, 289, 291–292, 293, 294, 301, 303, 305, 307, 323; transition to, 274, 283, 286

Index Capitalist societies: transition to, 182, 213; working classes of, 301 Carneiro, Robert, viii, 8, 154, 216, 217, 239, 259, 289, 291; adaptation and, 231; on Boas, 39; on causal role, 165–166; classical evolutionists and, 38, 40, 41; on comparative method, 38; cultural development and, 168; cultural realism and, 166; diffusion and, 43; evolutionary process and, 18, 123, 190n10; evolutionism of, 161–172, 181–182, 212; Fuel Revolution and, 129–130n1; functionalism of, 188n2; historical laws and, 167; on individuals/ historical change, 171; initial-appearance view/predominanceof-cases view and, 115; materialism of, 166; Morgan and, 22, 29; multilinear evolution and, 121; parallelism and, 287; political evolution and, 164–165, 169, 170–171, 232, 240, 255; progress and, 255; on scale analysis, 163; social evolution and, 162, 266; Spencer and, 19, 26, 31, 160–161, 161–172, 212; state origin theory and, 170; statistical laws and, 167; Steward and, 122, 162; theory of, 162–164, 266; Tylor and, 15, 21, 25, 28–29; unilinearism and, 46n3 Causation, 21, 34n6, 198; evolutionism and, 116; social evolution and, 24, 26, 290–294 Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., 258 Change: cultural, 121, 125; ecological,

180; immanent, 18; orthogenetic, 158; pace of, 305–306; societal, 18; structural, 162; systematic theory of, 133. See also Evolutionary change; Historical change; Social change; Technological change Chase-Dunn, Christopher, 8, 192, 216, 222n4, 279n6; adaptation and, 232; antiprogressivism of, 256; evolutionism of, 266; explanatory model of, 218; on internal/external, 276n2; intersocietal networks and, 303; progress and, 255; on semiperiphery, 218; world-systemic view and, 183, 187, 215 Chiefs/chiefdoms, 39, 147, 180, 240, 280, 316, 322; classification of, 78; collapse of, 245; complex, 169, 242–243, 304; control/ management and, 243; described, 157, 159; differentiation and, 241; drive for mastery by, 299; evolution of, 164, 165, 167–168, 169, 306, 312; gumsa, 185; material possessions in, 310; political/economic gap in, 317; population pressure and, 164, 243; power of, 78, 317; rise of, 313, 317, 319; simple, 241–242; social structures of, 243; warfare and, 164 Childe, Vere Gordon, viii, 7, 132, 157, 178, 199, 202, 327; adaptation and, 229, 230; adaptedness and, 230; comparative method and, 107; developmentalism and, 111–112; European civilization and, 109; evolutionism of, 108–113,

✻

357

120–121, 125, 129, 230; historical difference and, 122; historical particularism and, 109; on history, 106; Lenski and, 192; Marxism and, 112, 125–126, 130n3, 131n7; materialism of, 8, 124, 125, 154, 157, 192; multilinear evolution and, 121, 122; Neolithic Revolution and, 107; progress and, 111, 126, 128; on Savagery/ Barbarism/Civilization, 108; social evolution and, 111, 273; social progress and, 110, 251, 255; Steward and, 109, 123; technological change and, 125, 126, 181, 182, 188n1, 255; technological determinism and, 112; unilinearism of, 108; universal evolution and, 120; work of, 105–113, 182 Chrisomalis, Stephen, 306 Christian, David: Big History and, 278n5 Christianity, 136, 292; evolution of, 211; Judaism and, 139 Circumscription theory, 165 Citizenship, 136, 139, 151, 209 City, emergence of, 107–108 Civilization, 13, 14, 20, 23, 25, 31, 32, 67, 70; developed, 219; evolution of, 124, 283; fertility and, 26; forward/backward movement in, 43; population pressure and, 291; primitive/simpler cultures and, 15; rise of, 179, 275, 304; savagery and, 37; transition to, 281 Civil society, 120; statechurch and, 119 Civitas, 13; societas and, 119, 128 Class divisions, 108, 119, 277n5

358 ✻ Index Classical evolutionism, 61, 74; contributions of, 44–45; criticism of, ix; epistemologies of, 16–21; ordinary causal explanation in, 21–27 Class struggle, 55, 60 CM. See Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, 258, 290 Cognitive-developmental psychologies, 272–273 Cohen, G. A., 71n1; on Marx, 49, 50–52, 59; on Preface, 51, 52; primacy thesis of, 50, 51–52, 53 Cohen, Mark, 216; huntergatherers and, 199, 202; on Neolithic theory, 291 Collective learning, 221, 222n3 Collectivism, social theory and, 214 Collectivity-orientation: collectivity and, 133; selforientation and, 146, 147 Collins, Randall, 281, 326; credential inflation and, 296; genomic complexity and, 238; on punctuationalist theory, 304 Commercialism, 292, 307 Commercialization, 238, 294 Communication, 219, 292 Communication and the Evolution of Society (Habermas), 219 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels), 52, 59 Comparative method, 45n1, 279n6; classification system and, 267; criticism of, 37–38; defense of, 38, 39–40; evolutionism and, 36–40, 267–268; limitations of, 107; social evolutionists and, 268 Complexity, 236, 242–243, 253, 292, 304, 305; biological evolution and, 237; concept of, 169–170,

237, 238; genome size and, 238; increased, 235, 239, 252, 286, 287; organizational, 250, 272; social, 12, 240, 245–246, 272 Complex societies, 12, 245–246 Compound societies, 11, 12 Comte, Auguste, 1, 6, 10 Conditions of Agricultural Growth, The (Boserup), 314 Consanguine family, 14 Consilience, 234 Constitution of Society, The (Giddens), 277n5 Constraint, 272, 290, 298; on agency, 271, 302; on behavior, 313; social, 256, 322 Consumption, desires of, 308, 310 Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, A (Giddens), 277n5 Contemporary Sociology, 329n1 Convergent evolution, 156, 282, 284, 287, 288 Core-periphery hierarchy, 215, 216 Cosmological law, 18 Critique of Political Economy (Marx), 54 Cultivation, 314–315, 322 “Cultural causality and law: A trial formulation of the development of early civilizations” (Steward), 122 Cultural development, 40, 46nn3, 4, 5, 168; directional tendency in, 118; statistical laws of, 167 Cultural evolution, 108, 114, 115, 126, 178, 234; adaptedness and, 231; agency and, 171; Agricultural Revolution and, 117; biological evolution and, 177; causes of, 22; determinist

model of, 127; directional tendency in, 117–118; energy theory of, 118; outlines of, 2; phylogenetic approach to, 259, 262n11; as process, 169; progress and, 118; uniformities of, 43; unilinearism and, 164 Cultural legitimation, 134, 135 Cultural materialism, 173–178, 187, 188, 215, 280; assessment of, 190n9; evolutionism and, 181; functionalism and, 177; historical materialism and, 176; social evolution and, 280; sociobiology and, 189n9 Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (CM) (Harris), 173, 174, 178 Cultural patterns, 167, 270 Cultural realism, rejection of, 166 Cultural regression, 202 Cultural systems, 126, 127 Culture: “capitalistdemocratic,” 130n1; diversification of, 259; economic, 76–77, 79; historical development of, 45; ideas/individuals and, 165–166; interpretation of, 114, 115; peoples and, 113; purpose of, 118; security/survival and, 261n4; selection/ transmission and, 258; tendency of, 15; utilitarian, 126; as a whole, 115, 116 Darwin, Charles, 55, 81, 83, 236; adaptation and, 223; causation and, 34n6; fitness and, 247; gradualism and, 303; Marx and, 7, 55, 64, 69, 73n5; natural selection

Index and, 68, 262n9; progress and, 247, 248–249, 254, 261n7; social evolution and, 29, 223, 258–260, 289; Spencer and, 27, 28; Sumner and, 7, 84; teleology and, 55 Darwinism, 68–69; classical evolutionists and, 27–29; evolutionary theory and, 10; Marxism and, 50, 69 Dawkins, Richard: on adaptation, 227; evolutionary arms races and, 251–252; evolution of evolvability and, 252; genic selection and, 226; on progress, 251 Dawn of European Civilization, The (Childe), 105, 106 Dedifferentiation, 236, 240, 286 Democracy, 134; as adaptation, 298; economic equality and, 319; evolution of, 307, 318, 319; spiritual, 320 Democratization, 318, 319 Descent of Man, The (Darwin), 249 Descriptive Sociology (Spencer), 36 Desires, 261n5, 298, 299, 308–311, 312; categories of, 307 Despotism, 61, 276, 287, 300, 318 De Ste. Croix, Geoffrey, 183 Determinism, 259, 269, 272; cultural, 138; evolutionism and, 270; infrastructural, 174, 175; objectivism and, 270; productive force, 72n2; social, 138; technoeconomic, 173–174; technological, 49, 51, 52–53, 58, 60, 112, 126, 127, 195 Developmentalism, 18, 24–27, 45, 63, 65, 70, 81, 111–112, 116, 123–125, 129, 149–150, 157, 195,

215, 220; earmarks of, 19– 20; Engels and, 70, 72– 73n4; evolutionism and, 42, 184, 263; historicism and, 140; idealism and, 82; Marx and, 49–50, 52, 53–58, 70, 72n2, 72–73n4; Morgan and, 19, 21, 57, 66; progress and, 256; social evolution and, 112; Spencer and, 21, 26, 57; strong, 150; teleology and, 33n3 Development and Purpose: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Evolution (Hobhouse), 80, 82 Dickens, Charles, 323 Dietz, Thomas, 270, 271–272 Differentiation, 11–12, 18, 136–137, 220, 223, 274; adaptation and, 133; biological evolution and, 235–246; chiefdoms and, 241; collapse and, 245– 246; discussion of, 244– 245; economic, 137, 139; as evolutionary process, 235, 236; example of, 143–144; increased, 11, 239–240, 246, 286; institutional, 207, 209 (fig.), 210, 211, 286; power relations theory of, 244; process of, 19; progress and, 250; social, 148, 195, 219, 239–246, 256; social evolution and, 144, 235–246; structural, 133, 149–150. See also Dedifferentiation Differentiation of Society, The (Luhmann), 219 Diffusion, 133, 264, 266, 289; evolution and, 42–44, 46n7, 113 Directionality, 5, 277n4; evolutionism and, 273–276 Directional law, 51, 56, 65, 111, 116; explanation and, 18,

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20; and functional laws compared, 16–17 Divergent evolution, 156, 282, 284, 287; characteristics of, 173 Division of labor, 60, 298 Division of Labor in Society, The (Durkheim), 206 Dole, Gertrude, 194 Domestication, 260n2, 287, 306 Dominant class, 179; subordinate class and, 119–120 Doubly compound societies, 11, 12 Drives, 298, 299 Dual inheritance theory, 258, 260 Durham, William, 259, 260, 290 Durkheim, Émile, 1, 147, 214, 269; antireductionism and, 114; competition and, 212; evolution and, 143; mechanical/organic solidarity and, 148; Parsonian evolutionism and, 148; Westermarck and, 104n7 Durkheimians, 114, 115, 130n5 Earle, Timothy, 191n10, 239; on chiefdoms, 241–242, 243; evolutionary model of, 190n10; functionalist argument of, 241 EC. See Evolution of Culture, The Ecological-evolutionary theory, 192–206, 281 Ecological-Evolutionary Theory (Lenski), 202, 329n1 Ecology, 291; cultural, 124– 125, 172; evolutionary role for, 128 Economic conditions, 176, 291 Economic organization, 170, 271

360 ✻ Index Economic productivity, 156, 157, 195, 296; social evolution and, 211; technological advance and, 197 Eder, Klaus, 8, 222n3, 232; criticism of, 222n4; evolutionary theory of, 192; Habermas and, 220; on premodern/modern societies, 221; progress and, 256; social evolution and, 220–221 Education, 244, 296, 297, 320–321; expansion of, 285–286, 298, 307, 319; in preindustrial societies, 209 Ekholm, Kajsa, 184, 186–187, 191n11 Eldredge, Niles, 303 Elster, Jon, 56, 58; Cohen and, 53; on primacy thesis, 52, 54; on teleology, 54, 55 Endogenism, 266 Engels, Friedrich, 25, 32, 120, 172, 213, 272; Ancient Society and, 50, 63, 65, 66; Darwin and, 68; developmentalism and, 70, 72–73n4; directional laws and, 65; evolutionism and, 49, 50, 62–66; explanation and, 66; functionalism of, 188n4; Hegel and, 176; Marx and, 56–57, 63, 68, 69, 70, 73n4; material infrastructure and, 71; materialism and, 67, 129; mode of production and, 70; Morgan and, 7, 21, 50, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70; progress and, 254; on slavery/socialism, 65; social evolution and, 7, 69–70; Spencer and, 66; teleology and, 73n4 Enlightenment, 10, 30, 220 Environmental circumscription, 162, 164,

217; political evolution and, 240 Environmental degradation, 145, 218, 284, 294, 302, 306; dealing with, 233, 329; industrialization and, 296; population growth and, 190n10 Epistemology, evolutionism and, 116 Ethics, 12, 13, 75, 76, 82, 118 Ethnocentrism, 45, 141, 142, 145, 262n10, 273 Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock), 170 Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx (Krader), 61 Ethnomethodology, 268 Evolution: as cumulation, 169; declared, 42; defining, 172–173; economic, 79; as empirical process, 172; historical, 183; independent, 42, 266; as logical development, 20; main line of, 162; narrative of, 82; noncumulative character of, 169; philosophy of, 80–83; postmodern phase of, 141; scientific explanation of, 255 Evolutionary, 5, 9n2 Evolutionary analysis, 125, 140, 143, 295, 302; adaptation and, 130n3; diachronic data for, 306; egoistic/adaptive behavior and, 300; general laws and, 128; historical analysis and, 307 Evolutionary biologists, 236, 237, 252; group selection and, 226–227; work of, 225, 228 Evolutionary biology, 223, 225, 238, 239; adaptation and, 234; progress and, 247–254; punctuated equilibrium and, 304; social evolution and, 8

Evolutionary change, 21, 110, 112, 124, 125, 127, 128; directional laws of, 116; model of, 126 Evolutionary conception, 6; evolutionist conception and, 3, 7, 16 Evolutionary materialism, 8, 172–183, 222n1, 281; theoretical strategy of, 282–307 Evolutionary process, 163, 236, 268–269, 281, 286 Evolutionary sequences, 17, 36, 123 Evolutionary theories, 124, 125, 183, 193, 229, 270, 273; adaptation and, 264; comparative method and, 263; criticism of, 2, 8, 266, 272; defining, 6, 172; developmentalism and, 263; development of, 4, 9, 10, 263, 307; directional trend and, 215; endogenist bias of, 263; epistemological character of, 16; evolutionist theory and, 3; historical change and, 264; homological compression and, 264; human agency and, 264; idealizations in, 146–148; interest in, vii–viii, 7–8, 192, 328; master principle of, 133; progression/progress and, 263–264; response to, 7, 326, 327; stages of, 4–5 Evolutionary universals, 133–134, 140 “Evolutionary universals in society” (Parsons), 133 Evolutionist conception, 6; evolutionary conception and, 7, 16 Evolutionists, 9n2, 37, 158; explanatory logic of, 17; guide for, 62; Marxism

Index and, 70–71; particularists and, 276 Evolution of Culture, The (EC) (White), 115, 118, 130n5; evolutionism and, 113; impact of, 119; manuscript for, 129n1; Morgan influence on, 119; societas/civitas and, 128 Exogamy, 33n1, 167 Explanation, 34n5, 51, 66, 182, 255; developmentalist modes of, 45; directional law and, 18, 20; functionalist, 33n2; historicist view of, 111; ordinary causal, 21–27, 33–34n4 External influences, evolutionism and, 264–266 Extinction, 193, 284, 289 Family life: economic culture and, 79; religion and, 33n1 Family system, premodern/ modern, 286–287 Feldman, Marcus, 258 Feudalism, 53, 58, 60, 62, 70, 217, 276; capitalism and, 169; dissolution of, 59; transition from, 274, 286 Firebaugh, Glenn, 313 First Principles (Spencer), 19 Fitness, 226, 247, 259 Fogel, Robert William, 315; on calorie consumption, 308; on homelessness, 312; on retirement age, 316 Folkways, creating, 83 Folkways (Sumner), 83, 103n5 Ford, Henry, 271 Freedom, 30–31; evolutionary history of, 197; institutionalization and, 319 Fried, Morton, viii Friedman, Jonathan, 174, 191n11, 215; on

cultural materialism/ functionalism, 177; evolutionary phenomena and, 188; gumlao-gumsa cycle and, 185; on political breakdown, 185; precapitalist worldsystem and, 186–187; on social evolution, 186; on social relations/ production, 185; theories by, 184 Frontier societies, 203–204 Fuel Revolution, 117, 131n6 Full house, 253, 254 Functionalism, 17, 127, 157, 172, 206, 239, 241, 256, 263, 268, 327; adaptation and, 229; cultural materialism and, 177; Parsonian, 7–8, 132, 148, 154, 188–189n4, 192; rejection of, 241; social evolution and, 178, 188n2; societal conflicts/ oppositions and, 178 Functionalist evolutionism, 7–8, 152n2, 157–161, 192, 215; evolutionary changes in, 178 Functional laws, 18, 33n2, 34n6; and directional laws compared, 16–17 Gender roles, 170, 287 Gene-culture coevolutionary theory, 259 General evolution, specific evolution and, 155–156, 194 General laws, evolutionary analysis and, 128 Genomic complexity, 238 Genotypic selfishness, 301 Gens, 13, 32 Gentes, 13, 14 German Ideology, The (Marx and Engels), 51–52, 56, 60 Germs of thought, 20, 22 Giddens, Anthony, 2, 33n3, 232, 263, 269, 290; adaptation and, 228, 229,

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230, 233, 260n1; agency and, 271; evolutionary theory and, 4–5, 6; evolutionism and, 266, 268, 278n5; homological compression and, 272; social evolution and, 273; social life and, 3; social theory and, 268; on society/human intention, 288, 301; structure and, 270, 271; time-space distanciation and, 277–278n5 Ginsberg, Morris, 44, 82; on developmentalism, 81; Hobhouse and, 75, 76, 81; on justice/preliterate societies, 316; social evolution and, 80 Global Anthropology (Ekholm and Friedman), 191n11 Globalization, 306, 313, 329 Godelier, Maurice, 174, 177, 184, 187 Goldenweiser, Alexander, 40, 47n8, 48n9; comparative method and, 37, 39 Goldschmidt, Walter, 195 Gould, Stephen Jay, 237, 238, 261n7, 262n8, 304; adaptation and, 224, 228, 253; on Darwin/progress, 247; evolutionism and, 230; gradualism and, 303; group selection and, 227; Marxism of, 261n7; panadaptationism and, 225; political biases of, 253; progress and, 251, 252–253, 254 Government, 13; religion and, 137 Government slight or nil, 77 Graber, Robert Bates, 191n10 Gradualism, 303 Great Men, 165, 269 Green, T. H., 80 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 311, 313

362 ✻ Index Gross National Product (GNP), 311, 313 Group selection, 225, 230, 232, 234; evolutionary biologists and, 226–227; social evolution and, 227; strong, 235, 295; untenability of, 227–228 Grundrisse (Marx), 54, 59, 60, 61 Gumlao, gumsa and, 184, 185 Habermas, Jürgen, 8, 222n3, 232, 290; criticism of, 220, 222n2; developmentalism and, 220; Eder and, 220; evolutionary theory of, 192; evolutionism and, 219, 220, 272; Parsons and, 219–220; progress and, 256; on public sphere, 213 Haines, Valerie, 19 Hall, Thomas, 8, 192, 216, 222n4, 279n6; adaptation and, 232; antiprogressivism of, 256; evolutionism of, 266; explanatory model of, 218; progress and, 255; on semiperiphery, 218; world-systemic view and, 187, 215 Hallpike, Christopher, 233, 260n1, 273 Hamilton, William, 226 Harris, Marvin, 5, 154, 156, 216, 234, 266; on adaptation/adaptedness, 232–233; on adaptive strategies, 235; on Ancient Society/Marx/Engels, 66; antievolutionists and, 48n9; antiprogressivism of, 256; biology/culture and, 189n9; biopsychological needs and, 257–258; capitalism/imperialism and, 31; classical evolutionists and, 40, 41, 45; coevolution and, 290; comparative method and,

38; cultural evolution and, 178; cultural materialism and, 173–178, 190n9, 202, 280, 281; curvilinear progressivism of, 256; on Darwin, 28; on dialectical analysis, 176–177; diffusion and, 43; ecological evolutionism and, 221n1; Engels and, 67; evolution and, 174–175, 178, 190n10, 275; evolutionary materialism of, viii, 172–183, 269; evolutionary model of, 178–183, 201, 202; evolutionism of, 8, 172, 180–182, 232, 270, 272; functionalism of, 188–189n4; on hierarchical society, 297; historical materialism and, 176; human progress and, 324; hunter-gatherers and, 179–180; intensification model of, 161, 179; on law of gravitation, 115; Lenski and, 193, 201–202; Marxism and, 182; on Morgan, 22; multilinear evolution and, 121; nomothetic concerns and, 173; parallelism and, 287; political economy and, 174, 183; on population pressure, 180; on Sahlins, 155; on social Darwinism, 27; social evolution and, 172, 233; on social transformation, 275–276; sociocultural evolution and, 178; sociocultural systems and, 174; Spencer and, 27, 28, 34n9; on structural Marxists, 188; technological change and, 181, 201; theories of, 3, 272; on Tylor, 25; unilinearism and, 46n4; on warfare, 180, 188n4; on White/cultural development, 116

Harvey, David, 329 Hawley, Amos, 222n1 Health, progress in, 309–310 Hegel, G. W. F., 82; contradictions and, 221; developmentalism and, 140; Engels and, 176; evolution and, 140, 181; historical change and, 149–150; idealism and, 149; Marx and, 176; Parsons and, 148–150, 152n3; reason and, 149; societal evolution and, 148; world-historical individuals and, 150 Hegemony cycles, 9, 327, 328 Heyer, Paul, 68–69 Hierarchical societies, 241 Higher Hunters, 76, 77 Higher Pastoralists, 77, 78 Highest Agriculturalists, 77, 78 Hindess, Barry, 184 Hirst, Paul, 18, 19, 21, 34n5, 184 Historical analysis, evolutionary analysis and, 307 Historical change, 17, 62, 111, 113, 129, 144, 172, 229, 267; accounting for, 54; evolutionary theory and, 264; historicist/ developmentalist modes of, 149–150; individuals and, 171; laws of, 165; Marxian theories of, 184; ordinary causal concept of, 112; patterns of, 273 Historical materialism, 50, 67, 68, 175, 184, 219, 220; cultural materialism and, 176; dialectical character of, 176; evolutionism and, 49; mode of production interpretation of, 58 Historic empires, 135; evolutionary significance of, 138

Index Historicism, 16, 20, 21, 71n1; developmentalism and, 140 History, 63, 64; biological, 250; directional movement of, 150; evolution and, 114, 149, 173, 249; laws of, 166–168; Marx and, 56, 57, 58–60, 62, 183; nomothetic understanding of, 166; periodization of, 60–62; realist conception of, 112; reason and, 149; science of, 181; sociocultural, 28; as succession of generations, 56; teleological conception of, 56; written, 106. See also World history History, Man, and Reason (Mandelbaum), viii Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawney, 7, 44, 201, 265; adaptation and, 229; developmentalism and, 81, 82; on ethical development, 76; evolution and, 10, 80, 81, 327; evolution of morals and, 75–76; Ginsberg and, 75; idealism of, 82; on justice/preliterate societies/hunting societies, 316; Morgan and, 81; Nieboer and, 82; on progress, 82; social evolution and, 74–83; Spencer and, 80, 81; teleology and, 81; Wheeler and, 76 Hobsbawm, Eric, 61, 62 Homological compression, 264, 272, 273 Horticulturalists, 123, 199, 314; hunter-gatherers and, 233 Horticultural societies, 180, 197, 210, 315, 317; agriculture and, 233; conflict/warfare in,

322; evolution of, 213, 313; industrializing, 204; justice and, 316; kinship and, 256; material possessions in, 310; simple/advanced, 195–196 Horticulture, 190n10, 294; shift to/from, 246, 255, 300 Huff, Toby, 293 Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), 83, 104n6 Human Societies (Lenski), viii, 193, 198, 199, 202 Hunter-gatherers, 122, 145, 179–180, 201, 212, 274, 281, 291, 296; affluent society thesis on, 314; agriculture and, 198–199, 304; constraints on, 313; domestication and, 260n2; growth of, 322; horticulturalists and, 233; life of, 309; nourishment for, 308; population pressures and, 213; possessions of, 310; standard of living and, 299–300; subsistence activities of, 314; technological changes for, 203; technological inertia among, 299 Hunter-gatherer societies, 167, 197, 210, 285, 294, 304, 324; egalitarianism of, 312; life in, 321; simple/advanced, 195; workload of, 316 Huxley, Julian, 250 Idealism, 21, 25, 70, 149, 154, 187, 198; cultural, 3, 262n9; developmentalism and, 82; German, 132, 148; materialism and, 22, 24, 26, 80 Idealist evolutionism, 7–8, 198 Idiographic-nomothetic debate, 166

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Incipient Agriculturalists, 77, 78 Individualism, 147, 178, 313; economic, 123; religious, 136; social theory and, 214; strong, 212 Industrialization, 12, 161, 182, 197, 283, 288, 294; capitalism and, 280; environmental degradation and, 296; rise of, 179; Second, 158 Industrial Revolution, 53, 109, 117, 137, 288, 306; as adaptation, 296; capitalism and, 205; culture and, 128 Industrial societies, 167, 210; adaptation in, 298; development of, 197, 199, 308, 313, 315–316, 318; education in, 298; environmental destruction by, 145; family patterns of, 170; gender arrangements of, 170; leisure time of, 316; machine power and, 196; military organization/warfare and, 12; positive feedback spiral for, 297; social life in, 297, 321; standard of living in, 311; transition to, 212, 213, 312, 315 Inequalities, social/ economic/political, 181, 312, 313, 322 Infanticide, 177, 179, 188n4 Infant mortality rates, 296, 309, 323 Information: accumulation/ storage of, 194, 209; social evolution and, 200; sociology of, 7 Infrastructure, 188n3; causal importance of, 174–175; economy and, 182; material, 71, 182 Ingold, Tim, 116 Inherent thrust, 252–253 Institutional differentiation, 207, 210, 286; social

364 ✻ Index Institutional differentiation (continued) evolution and, 211; theory of, 209 (fig.) Institutions, 85, 235; adjustment and, 84; cult, 210; education, 207, 209; evolution of, 170; law, 207, 209; political, 207, 209, 271; selfmaintenance, 84; social, 20, 22 Intelligent design, 235, 253 Intensification, 178, 179, 180, 216, 302; agricultural, 185, 186, 243, 306, 308, 315; production, 297; subsistence, 181, 297; technological, 201–202 Intensification-depletion model, 161 Intermediate societies, 134–137, 141 Intersocietal relations, 160, 303 Iteration model, 216, 218 Johnson, Allen, 191n10, 239; on chiefdoms, 241–242, 243; functionalist argument of, 241 Judaism, 75, 204; Christianity and, 139; religious individualism and, 136; universalism of, 139 Justice, 317, 319, 322; administering, 78, 82; desire for, 299; philosophical system of, 139; private/public, 79; secular system of, 140; in social relationships, 316 Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Cohen), 50 Keller, Albert Galloway, 44, 152, 171, 327; adaptation and, 229; competition/adaptive selection and, 260n1; Darwin and, 7, 84;

evolutionary thinking of, 10, 83–94, 181; HRAF and, 83, 104n6; Law of Proportion and, 84; Malthus and, 84; population growth and, 85; progress and, 254; selectionism of, 262n10, 268; social Darwinism and, 104n8; social evolution and, 74, 269; Sumner and, 103n5; on trade, 265 Kinship, 13, 14, 67, 116, 207, 210, 257, 284, 313, 316, 321; cage of, 213; horticultural societies and, 256; importance of, 146; modes of, 123; nuclear families and, 123, 212; organization, 234; production and, 187; social life and, 135; social relationships and, 119 Kipling, Rudyard, 224 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 219; cognitive-developmental psychology of, 272–273; on moral development, 290; moral reasoning and, 222n2 Kondratieff, Nicholas, 327 Kondratieff waves, 9, 327, 328 Krader, Lawrence, 61 Labor, minimizing time/ effort for, 313–314 Lassalle, Marx letter to, 55, 69 Law, development of, 209 Law of Evolution, 11, 26, 27, 41, 63, 64, 66, 117, 278n5 Law of Evolutionary Potential, 158, 160–161, 167, 218 Law of Least Effort, 233 Law of Population, 84 Law of the Negation of the Negation, 57, 63, 64, 65, 66 Law of the Transformation

of฀Quantity฀into฀Quality,฀ 63 Leacock, Eleanor Burke, 21 Leadership, analysis of, 146–147 Lead societies, 142, 149 Lee, Richard, 199, 202, 314 Legal systems, 134, 136, 140 Lenski, Gerhard, 8, 157, 181, 183, 275; adaptation and, 229; basic theory of, 193– 198; biological evolution and, 200; critique of, ix, 198–201, 222n1; cultural materialism and, 202; curvilinear progressivism of, 255, 256; developmentalism and, 195; directionality and, 274; ecologicalevolutionary theory of, 192–206, 221n1, 281; evolutionary theory and, viii, 2, 192, 277n3; evolutionism of, ix, 132, 193, 196, 200, 206, 231; external factors and, 266; on frontier societies, 203– 204; Harris and, 193, 201– 202; Industrial Revolution and, 205; institutional differentiation and, 210; intersocietal selection and, 234; Nisbet and, 273; Parsons and, 193; political freedom and, 197; progress and, 196, 197, 307, 324; Protestant ethic/ Western capitalism and, 206; social evolutionism and, 194, 200, 201, 202, 307; on societal types, 195–196; on sociocultural evolution/organic evolution, 194; sociology and, 192, 201; on taxation, 318; technology and, 198, 199, 205–206; update on, 202–206; White and, 192 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 260n3, 262n9 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 272

Index Lewontin, Richard, 237; adaptation and, 224, 228; evolutionism and, 230; panadaptationism and, 225; progress and, 252 Life, desire for, 308–309 “Limitations of the comparative method of anthropology” (Boas), 44 Linguistic evolution, model of, 259 Literacy, 244, 319, 320 Lower Hunters, 76, 77 Lower Pastoralists, 77, 78 Lowie, Robert, 40, 43 Luhmann, Niklas, 192, 219, 220 Macroevolution, 262n11, 284, 285 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 172, 173, 189n4, 242, 327 Malthus, Thomas, 27, 83, 85, 176; Sumner and, 84 Mandelbaum, Maurice, 33n3, 189n7, 263; directional laws and, 17, 20, 65; Engels and, 63, 64; evolutionary theory and, viii, 2; evolutionism and, ix, 18, 266; explanation and, 20, 33–34n4, 34n6; functional laws and, 33n2; on historicism, 16; on Marx/developmentalism, 55; Morgan and, 19–20; Nisbet and, 19–20; on Tylor, 20–21, 24; on White, 116 Man-land ratio, 84, 85 Man Makes Himself (MMH) (Childe), 108, 112, 230; central contribution of, 106; historical difference and, 122; Neolithic Revolution and, 110; progress and, 110–111 Mann, Michael, 275, 278n5, 287, 326 Marriage: economic culture and, 79; group, 14; monogamous, 167

Marshall, T. H., 151 Marx, Karl, 2, 32, 112, 120, 172, 213, 214, 272; abstract theory and, 52; adaptation and, 229; Ancient Society and, 50, 66, 67–68; on capitalism, 59; class struggle and, 60; Darwin and, 7, 55, 64, 69, 73n5; developmentalism and, 49–50, 52, 53–58, 70, 72n2, 73n4; economy and, 22; Engels and, 56– 57, 63, 68, 69, 70, 73n4; evolution and, 60, 61; Hegel and, 176; history and, 56, 57, 58–60, 62, 183; industrial revolution and, 53; material infrastructure and, 71; Morgan and, 7, 21, 50, 61, 67–68; materialism of, 50, 67, 129, 176; periodization by, 60–62; progress and, 57–58, 254; social evolutionism and, 7, 69–70; technological determinism and, 49, 51, 52–53, 58, 126; teleology and, 51, 54, 55, 72–73n4; unilinearism and, 61, 62 Marxism, 21, 112, 125–126, 182, 219; Darwinism and, 50, 69; evolutionary, 7, 49, 230; evolutionists and, 70–71; liberalism and, 215; materialism and, 129, 148; Morganism and, 50; revival of, 184 Marxist evolutionism, 1, 50, 57, 63, 187, 215, 230 Maryanski, Alexandra, 8, 192, 222n4, 232; behavior and, 313; capitalism/ industrialism and, 213, 214; curvilinear progressivism of, 255; normative evolutionism of, 212–214; progress and, 324 Mass media, role of, 152 Mastery, 145, 299

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Material culture, 25; correlates of, 76–80; social life and, 82 Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples, The (MCSISP) (Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg), 44, 76, 81; impact of, 82; social evolution and, 80 Materialism, 8, 21, 23, 66, 67, 117, 124–129, 154, 157, 175, 181, 192; idealism and, 22, 24, 26, 80; Marxism and, 129, 148. See also Cultural materialism; Evolutionary materialism; Historical materialism Materialist evolutionism, 70, 71, 192, 269 Maxwell, James Clerk: Maxwell’s Demon and, 238 Mayr, Ernst, 225, 227, 247 McCoy, J. Wynne, 237 McNeill, William, 166 MCSISP. See Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples Medical care, 309–310 Microevolution, 262n11, 284, 285 Middle Agriculturalists, 77, 78 Militarism, 110, 122 Miller, Richard, 52, 60; on developmentalism, 72n2; on historical theories, 58; on Marx/Cohen, 53; on MPI, 58, 59; on productive forces, 59; on social transformations, 72n3 Minge-Klevana, Wanda, 315 MMH. See Man Makes Himself Mode of production interpretation (MPI), 58–59; narrower/broader versions of, 59–60 Modern Capitalist Culture, 131n6

366 ✻ Index Modernity, 137, 142; Israel/ Greece and, 136, 143; Protestantism and, 139 Modern societies, 134–137, 219, 221; evolution of, 243–244, 287; idealization of, 147; intermediate societies and, 141; transition to, 136 Monogamian family, 14 Monotheism, 16 Morality, 75–76, 104n9 Morals in Evolution (Hobhouse), 75–76, 80 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 15, 18, 195, 264; Carneiro and, 22, 29; comparative method and, 36–37; criticism of, 35, 74; Darwinism and, 28; developmentalism and, 19, 21, 57, 66; diffusion and, 43; economy and, 22; Engels and, 7, 21, 50, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70; epistemology and, 24, 72n4; ethnocentrism and, 32; evolution and, 10, 12–14, 20, 108, 140; evolutionism of, 1–2, 20, 29, 57, 69, 105, 113, 265; formulations of, 70; on germs of thought, 20; Hobhouse and, 81; on human societies/government, 13; idealism and, 21, 22; Marx and, 7, 21, 50, 61, 67–68; materialism and, 21, 22, 23, 67, 68; matrilineality/ patrilineality and, 45; natural selection and, 29; Opler and, 22, 29; ordinary causal explanation and, 24; on political society, 14; progress and, 31, 32; religion and, 16, 46n6; savagery and, 31–32; social science and, 45; societas/civitas and,

119, 128; subsistence and, 22; Tylor and, 25; unilinearism and, 41–42, 46n3, 120; White and, 22 MPI. See Mode of production interpretation Multilinear evolution, 115–116, 120, 121–122, 123, 124, 162, 163, 173, 182, 184; cultural changes and, 121; universal evolution and, 155 Murdock, George Peter, 104n6, 166, 167, 170 Muse of History and the Science of Culture, The (Carneiro), 165, 166, 171 Nation-states, 212, 240, 283, 293; evolution of, 289 Neolithic Revolution, 106, 107, 108, 159, 274, 275, 282, 291, 294, 304, 305; agency and, 302; demographic conditions and, 293; occurrence of, 283; pace of, 306; progress and, 110 Neolithic societies, 180, 219 New York Daily Tribune, Marx in, 54 Nisbet, Robert, 17, 263, 275; directionality and, 273; evolutionism and, 2, 18, 266, 267, 276n1; Lenski and, 273; Mandelbaum and, 19–20; particularism of, 273; progress and, 268 Nitecki, Matthew, 254, 261n7 Nolan, Patrick, 201 Nomothetic theories, 166, 173 Normative evolutionism, 212–214 Normative theory, 136, 221 Nuclear families, 167; kinship and, 123, 212 Objectivism, 269, 272; evolutionism and, 270 OFPPS. See Origin of the

Family, Private Property, and the State Opler, Morris: Morgan and, 22, 29; Tylor and, 24, 25, 28, 29 Ordinary causal explanation, 21–27, 33–34n4, 129 Organic evolution, sociocultural evolution and, 194 Origin of Species (Darwin), 27, 55, 247, 248; Marx and, 69 Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (OFPPS) (Engels), 63, 65, 70; Ancient Society and, 66, 67; developmentalism and, 66; Morgan and, 21 Origins of the State and Civilization (Service), 160 Owen, John, 81 Paleopathological studies, 308 Panadaptationism, 225 Parallel evolution, 110, 156, 282, 284, 287, 288, 291; characteristics of, 173; evidence for, 283 Parliamentary government, 283, 286; capitalism and, 293 Parsimony, principle of, 45, 48n10 Parsonian evolutionism, 132, 137–143, 148, 160, 192, 211, 218–221, 266, 269, 273; critique of, 150–151; expanding structure of, 152n2 Parsons, Talcott, viii, 178, 239; adaptation and, 177, 229, 230; adaptedness and, 230; adaptive capacity and, 144–146, 156; advances and, 200; AGIL paradigm and, 133; capitalism and, 220; causal explanations and, 138, 139; citizenship and,

Index 139; developmentalism and, 140; differentiation and, 143–144, 149–150, 152n1, 235, 274; ethnocentrism of, 141, 145, 273; evolution and, 140, 141, 142–143, 148, 178; evolutionary theory of, 2, 133, 138, 146–148, 150, 152n1; evolutionary universals and, 133–134; evolutionism and, 4, 132, 142–143, 172, 181, 230; functionalism of, 7–8, 148, 154, 189n4, 192; Habermas and, 219–220; Hegel and, 148–150, 152n3; historical change and, 149–150; idealism of, 148, 149, 154, 198, 219, 273; legal system and, 136; Lenski and, 193; Luhmann and, 219; Marshall and, 151; on modernity, 137; objectivism and, 269; progressivism of, 256, 273; seedbed societies and, 136; social evolution and, 133–137, 137–138, 143–148, 149, 204; theories of, 3, 192; Weber and, 149 Particularism, 135, 273, 275, 276; historical, 44, 48n9, 109, 326; universalism and, 133, 137 Passive evolution argument, 241 Pastoralists, justice and, 316 Patriarchal family, 14 Pattern variables, 133 Peel, J. D. Y., 10–11, 27, 31 Periodization, 60–62 Phenotypic selfishness, 300–301 Piaget, Jean, 219, 272–273 Political economy, 174, 182, 183, 242; decentralized systems of, 292 Political evolution, 158–160, 164–165,

170–171, 209, 255, 287, 304; conflict theory of, 232; environmental circumscription and, 240; functionalist theory of, 160, 165; population growth and, 240; resource concentration and, 165; stages of, 159; theory of, 168; warfare and, 240 Political power: concentration/ centralization of, 274; self- interested use of, 147 Political society, transition to, 14 Polytheism, 16, 264–265 Population growth, 85, 165, 179, 202, 206, 207, 218, 291, 294, 302, 306; chiefdoms and, 164, 243; controlling, 180; evolution and, 167–168, 190n10; political evolution and, 240; social evolution and, 211; technological advance and, 195, 197, 203 Population pressure, 27, 176, 179, 188, 203, 213, 218, 294, 296; agriculture and, 199, 308; civilization and, 291; dealing with, 233; evolution and, 190n10, 232; increase in, 322 Postindustrial societies, 212, 213, 323 Postmodernism, 189n9, 214, 326, 329n1 Poverty of Philosophy, The (Marx), 52 Power, 78, 213, 278n5, 312, 317; machine, 196; political, 147, 274 Power and the Division of Labor (Rueschemeyer), 239–240 Power and Privilege (Lenski), viii, 193, 201 Power relations theory, 241, 244

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Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (Hindess and Hirst), 184 Precapitalist societies, 182, 187, 284 Preface (Marx), 51, 52, 60, 61 Preindustrial societies, 299, 320; education in, 209; family patterns of, 170; survival of, 284 Preliterate societies, 320 Prestige goods network (PGN), 217 Primacy thesis, 50, 51–52 Primitive Culture (Tylor), 14–15, 16, 20; Darwinism and, 29 Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective (Service), 159 Primitive societies, 119, 134–137; intermediate societies and, 141 Principle of the conservation of organization, 236 Principles of Sociology, The (Spencer), 36 Private justice, 79 Private property, 65, 80 Production, 58–59, 72n3; access to means of, 119; forces of, 70; intensification of, 297; measuring, 310; mode of, 70; relations of, 71n1, 185, 187; stratification and, 157 Progress, 10, 20, 37, 42, 80, 126, 128, 223, 313; adaptation and, 156; advancement and, 141–142; assessing, 257, 307; biological, 247, 250–251, 252, 255; cultural evolution and, 118; defining, 197; developmentalism and, 256; dialectic of, 111; differentiation and, 250, 256; discontinuous, 82, 110–111;

368 ✻ Index Progress (continued) evolution and, 5, 30–32, 45, 113, 194, 255, 328; evolutionary, 246–258; expansion of life and, 255; historical, 57–58, 111; ideological, 200; intellectual, 25, 268; measuring, 155; moral, 4, 25; objective for, 254; organizational, 200; pattern of, 324; problems of, 43, 252, 253; relative/ absolute, 251; selection and, 81; social, 31, 40–41, 110, 251, 255, 256, 299, 317; social Darwinism and, 30; social evolution and, ix, 31, 142, 199, 200, 254–258, 262n8, 307–321, 325 (fig.); subjectivity of, 252, 254, 256; technological, 196, 197, 200; thermodynamic criterion of, 118, 130n4 Progression, progress and, 263–264 “Progress: Its law and cause” (Spencer), 11, 19 Progressivism, 23, 43, 247, 253, 273; curvilinear, 255, 256 Protestantism, 137, 320; modernity and, 139; Western capitalism and, 206 Psychology: evolutionism and, 272–273; social evolution and, 290 Punaluan family, 14 Punctuated equilibrium theory, 303–304 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), 311, 313 Purely Private Justice, 78–79 Purely Public Justice, 78, 79 Qualiied฀Private฀Justice,฀ 78, 79 Qualiied฀Public฀Justice,฀ 78, 79 Quality฀of฀life,฀9,฀256,฀ 321–324

Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R., 172, 173, 327 RAT. See Rise of Anthropological Theory, The Rationalization, 148, 329 Redistributional societies, 159 Religion, 11, 136, 179, 187, 196, 207; diffusion of, 144; ecclesiastical, 211, 320; evolution of, 16, 25, 33n1, 152n1, 210, 211; government and, 137; modern, 210; primitive, 16; rise of, 75; universalistic, 139 Reproduction, 190n9, 221, 293, 298; cultural/ economic, 209 Resource scarcity, 232, 306 Retrogression, 6, 256, 284, 316; social evolution and, 5 Richards, Robert, 247 Richerson, Peter, 262n10; coevolution and, 290; dual inheritance theory of, 258, 259; microevolutionary changes and, 262n11; social evolution and, 260 Rigby, S. H., 72n2 Rise of Anthropological Theory, The (RAT) (Harris), 173, 178, 188n4; influence of, vii–viii Rituals, 210, 211, 297 Roman Empire, 243, 292; capitalist institutions of, 217; fall of, 119, 245; legal system of, 136, 140 Rowlands, Michael, 185, 186 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, 239–240 Rule learning, 221 Runciman, W. G., 258, 259–260 Ruse, Michael, 247, 261n7 Sahlins, Marshall, viii, 8, 173, 194, 263, 317; on evolution/ adaptability,

231; evolutionism and, 154–157, 260n3; on hereditary chiefly pattern, 147; huntergatherers and, 202, 308, 314; leadership pattern analysis by, 146–147; progress and, 255; Service and, 157 Saint-Simon, 6, 10 Saltations, 303 Savagery, 15, 20, 31–32, 70, 107, 108; barbarism and, 46n3; civilization and, 37; Lower Status of, 13, 14; Middle Status of, 13; study of, 25; Upper Status of, 13 Scale analysis, 163, 164, 168–169 Science of Culture, The (White), 269 Science of society, 83–88 Science of Society, The (SOS) (Sumner and Keller), 44, 83, 103–104n5 Scientific creationists, 253 Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution, A (Graber), 191n10 SE. See Social Evolution SECP. See Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives Seedbed societies, 139 Selection, 27, 84, 221, 237, 238, 248, 259–260; cultural/ biological, 262n11; culture and, 258; Darwinian, 29, 211, 239, 251, 258, 262n9, 270; Durkheimian, 206, 211, 239; explanatory relevance of, 289; frequency-dependent, 227; genic, 226; group, 225; intersocietal, 234; intrasocietal, 193; organismic, 232; pressures, 206–207, 209; process, 227, 232; progress and, 81; social,

Index 206; social evolution and, 234, 289; Spencerian, 206, 211; strong, 226–227; transmission and, 258, 259; unit of, 225, 227, 234, 295, 302; weak, 226 Selectionism, 256, 262nn9, 10, 268, 269; institutional, 206–212; multilevel, 227 Self-orientation, collectivityorientation and, 133, 146, 147 Semiperiphery, 218, 261n6 Service, Elman, viii, 8, 154, 222n4; on Arunta, 38–39; functionalist evolutionism of, 157–161; Law of Evolutionary Potential and, 160, 161, 167, 218; Morgan and, 22; political evolution and, 158–160, 165; progress and, 255; Sahlins and, 157 Shanahan, Timothy, 237, 261n7; on antiprogressivists/ progressivists, 254; on complexity, 251; on progress, 249, 252–253 Shaw, William, 68 Shorter, Edward, 287 Simple societies, 11, 12 Simpson, George Gaylord, 250 Slavery, 53, 58, 65, 117, 126 Smelser, Neil, 133 Smith, Anthony, 143, 237; dedifferentiation and, 236; differentiation and, 144; functionalist evolutionism and, 152n2; societal specialization and, 144; sociological neoevolutionism and, 132 Smith, John Maynard, 237, 261n7; on group selection, 227; on WynneEdwards, 226 SMS. See System of Modern Societies, The Snooks, Graeme Donald, 278n5

Sober, Elliott, 224; adaptation and, 230; on Darwin/progress, 247; group selection and, 234; multilevel selectionism and, 227; on social norms/sanctions, 235; traits/behaviors and, 235 Social caging, 213 Social change, viii, 4, 5, 84, 138; adaptation and, 228; differentiation and, 144; directional, viii; general theory of, 133 Social Change and History (Nisbet), 17 Social class, 146, 151 Social conflict, 108, 126, 316 Social Darwinism, 26, 104n8, 161; evolutionism and, 27; progress and, 30 Social development, 135, 283; social evolution and, 141 Social differentiation, 148, 195, 219; explaining, 239– 246; progress and, 256 Social evolution, 7, 8, 16, 24; advanced, 134, 142; approaches to, 222n1, 280; concept of, 169, 328; consequences of, 126; criticism of, 2, 220–221, 268; decline of, 35; determinate/ predictive quality of, 288, 302; endogenous/ exogenous, 302–303; external influences in, 186, 264; long-term, 166, 215, 262n11; material conditions in, 25, 172; nonrandom/directional character of, 139; pace of, 294, 305–306; phylogenetic approach to, 259; prehistorical/ historical data and, 306; preindustrial, 239, 247; process of, 11, 166; stages of, 220; structure in, 300–302; substance of,

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369

284–290; tempo/mode in, 303–306; theory of, 3, 8, 133–137, 137–138, 222n2, 258; understanding, 70–71, 146, 233, 306–307; units of, 302–303 Social Evolution (SE) (Childe), 108, 111, 122 Social Evolutionism: A Critical History (Sanderson), ix, 240–241, 261n8; Lenski and, 222n1; review of, 329n1 Social evolutionists, 74, 236, 273, 276; comparative method and, 268; historical analysis by, 307; progress and, 254 Social Forces, 329n1 Social integration, 155; economic integration and, 123 Socialism, 58, 62, 65 Social life, 1, 63; capitalism and, 286; coercion and, 12; evolution of, 3, 11; kinship and, 135; material culture and, 82 Social patterns, 113; adaptation and, 296; adaptedness and, 295 Social progress, 31, 40–41, 110, 251, 256, 317; increase in, 299; technological change and, 255 Social relationships: justice in, 299, 316; kinship and, 119 Social Security System, crisis with, 316 Social Stratification in Polynesia (Sahlins), 156, 157 Social structure, 182, 207; agency and, 301; complex, 240 Social System, The (Parsons), 133 Social systems, 116–117; quality of life in, 9, 321–324

370 ✻ Index Social transformation, 50, 58–59, 189n5, 236, 291; forces/relations of production and, 72n3; social evolution and, 275–276; technological change and, 127; world history and, 275, 282 Societal Evolution (Keller), 44, 103n5 Societas, 13; civitas and, 119, 128 Societies: classification of, 11–12; constraints on, 256, 322; human intention and, 288, 301; interrelations between/ among, 158; learning by, 221; logistical loads for, 241; material interests of, 221; prehistory of, 15; self-regulating, 241; technology and, 198; typology of, 11–12; underdeveloped, 158 Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (SECP) (Parsons), 134–135 Sociocultural evolution, 157, 181, 193, 297; organic evolution and, 194; principal causal forces in, 182; teleological/ developmentalist conception of, 189n7; theory of, 178; trajectory of, 297 Sociocultural systems, 174, 177, 270 Sociology, 7, 11, 201; antievolutionism in, 326; evolutionary theories in, vii, 1, 154, 192; historical, vii, 214, 278–279n6, 281 SOS. See Science of Society, The Sources of Social Power, The (Mann), 275 Specific evolution, 156–157; general evolution and, 155–156, 194 Spencer, Herbert, 2, 7,

15, 29, 81, 83, 142, 201, 218, 272; capitalism/ imperialism and, 31; Carneiro and, 19, 26, 31, 160–161, 161–172, 212; classification and, 38; comparative method and, 36; cosmic evolutionary law and, 30; criticism of, 19, 74, 80; Darwin and, 27, 28; decline of, 35, 326; developmentalism and, 21, 26, 57; on differentiation, 19; Engels and, 66; evolution and, 18, 80, 143, 162; evolutionism and, 1, 10–12, 20, 27, 40, 41, 57, 69, 148, 161–172, 265; external influences and, 264; formulations of, 70; on freedom, 30–31; historical investigation and, 11; Hobhouse and, 80, 81; Law of Evolution and, 11, 41, 63, 64, 66, 278n5; political/moral views of, 30–31; on polytheism, 264–265; progress and, 30, 80, 247; reaction against, 74; social Darwinism and, 104n7, 161; social differentiation and, 148; social evolution and, 11, 26, 27, 162; social science and, 45; on warfare, 26 Spier, Fred: Big History and, 278n5 Stages: economic, 78–79; evolutionary, 4–5, 108, 159, 220; simple/complex, 85 Standard of living, 285, 310, 321, 322; agricultural intensification and, 308; decline in, 296, 297, 299–300, 302; in industrial countries, 311; Third World, 311 State-church, 119, 120, 130n1 State origin theories, 162, 170, 274, 287

States, 159; evolution of, 164, 169, 171; wealth and, 291 Status, desire for, 312 Stebbins, G. Ledyard, 236, 250 Steward, Julian, viii, 7, 108, 222n4; anthropological evolutionism of, 154; antievolutionism and, 328; Carneiro and, 122, 162; Childe and, 109, 123; criticism of, 128; cultural ecology and, 124–125, 172; developmentalism and, 123, 124; ecological multilinearism of, 182; evolutionary theory and, 120–125, 129, 155, 255; evolutionism and, 105, 122, 175; materialism of, 8, 124, 128, 154; multilinear evolution and, 121–122, 123, 125, 173, 176; political controls and, 124; progress and, 128, 255; social evolution and, 273; technology and, 125; unilinear evolution and, 120, 121, 122, 123; White and, 123, 155, 172 Stratification, 135, 138, 148, 156–157, 174, 243; class, 170, 293; development of, 299; evolutionary importance of, 219; productivity and, 157; rigidification of, 122; social, 38, 65, 79, 128, 134, 180, 193, 201, 242, 280 Structuralism, 162, 184, 260n3, 268; evolutionism and, 155 Structural Marxists, 184, 188 Structure, 188n3, 300–302; agency and, 271, 301; duality of, 268 Strydom, Piet, 214 Subordinate classes, 179; empowerment of, 151, 244; ruling class and, 119–120

Index Subsistence, 22, 302, 313, 314; intensification of, 181, 297; strategies, 174; technology, 198, 246, 285, 296 Sumner, William Graham, 44, 152, 171, 201, 265, 327; adaptation and, 229; antagonistic cooperation and, 83; Darwin and, 7, 84; evolutionary theory and, 10, 83–94, 103n5; evolutionism of, 83, 181; HRAF and, 83, 104n6; Law of Proportion and, 84; Malthus and, 84; population growth and, 85; progress and, 254; selectionism of, 268; social Darwinism and, 104n8; social evolution and, 74, 269 Superstructure, 188n3, 292 Survivals, concept of, 15 Syndyasmian family, 14 System of Modern Societies, The (SMS) (Parsons), 148, 151; developmentalism and, 140; social evolution and, 135 Tainter, Joseph, 245–246, 284 Technoenvironmentalism, 173–174, 189n8 Technological advance, 198, 229; economic productivity and, 197; population growth and, 195, 197; progress and, 196 Technological change, 53, 106, 126, 175–176, 179, 195, 196, 201, 240, 289, 299; benefits of, 199; social evolution and, 198, 199, 202, 255; social transformation and, 127; Socratic, 199; as subsistence intensification, 181 Technological evolutionism, 202, 230

Technological inertia, 233, 299 Technology, 116, 125, 126, 188n1, 195, 199, 205–206, 218, 245; agricultural, 205; culture and, 128; evolution of, 15–16, 288; human societies and, 198; industrial, 205, 302; military, 205; population growth and, 190n10, 203; productive, 182; rudimentary, 197; study of, 25; subsistence, 198, 246, 285, 296; urbanism and, 112 Teleology, 72–73n4, 81; criticism of, 56; developmentalism and, 33n3 Terray, Emmanuel, 21, 22 Theory of Communicative Action, The (Habermas), 219 Third World: birth rate in, 301; calorie consumption in, 308; infant mortality in, 309; life expectancy in, 309; standard of living in, 311 Tilly, Charles, 237; dedifferentiation and, 143–144, 236; on nation states/evolution, 289 Time-space compression, 329 Toulmin, Stephen, 6, 9n2, 34n8; on evolutionist/evolutionary formulations, 3, 16 Traits, 115, 227–228, 231; adaptation and, 225, 298; biopsychological utility of, 297; cultural, 235, 259, 261n4; organizational, 167 Transformation, 125, 128, 274, 292; economic, 107; evolutionary, 141, 160, 177, 233, 246, 275, 283, 287; explaining, 183; improvements and, 58;

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social, 50, 58–59, 72n3, 127, 189n5, 236, 275–276, 282, 291; social evolution and, 275–276, 286; technological, 107; world historical, 284 Transmission, 146, 258, 259 Trebly compound societies, 11, 12 Tribes, 77–78, 159 Trigger, Bruce, 112 Trotsky, Leon, 160, 161, 218 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 204 Turner, Jonathan, 8, 169, 222n4; adaptation and, 232; behavior and, 313; capitalism/industrialism and, 213, 214; curvilinear progressivism of, 255; evolution and, 192, 210; functionalism and, 206, 239, 241; institutional differentiation and, 209 (fig.), 210, 235; institutional selectionism of, 206–212; macrosocial forces of, 208 (fig.); normative evolutionism of, 212–214; progress and, 324; social evolution and, 211, 212, 307; Spencerian evolutionism and, 212 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 7, 18, 222n4, 264; anthropologists and, 2; Carneiro and, 15, 21, 25, 28–29; on classification, 38; comparative method and, 36–37; criticism of, 35, 74; Darwinism and, 28, 29; on developmentalism, 20; diffusion and, 42, 43; ethnocentrism and, 32; evolutionary theory and, 10, 14–16; evolutionism and, 1, 20, 24, 29, 57, 69, 113, 265; general laws and, 20–21; on historicism, 20; human mind and, 25; idealism and, 24, 25, 70; materialism and, 24;

372 ✻ Index Morgan and, 25; natural selection theory and, 29; Opler and, 24, 25, 28, 29; progress and, 31, 32; social science and, 45; unilinearism and, 41, 120; White and, 24 Umma, 135, 136 Unilinear evolution, 40, 112, 120, 142–143, 194; concept of, 162; universal evolution and, 121 Unilinearism, 44, 61, 62, 108, 115–116, 150, 163, 274; classical evolutionists and, 40–42; cultural evolutionism and, 164; problem of, 142–143; refuting, 46n3; strong, 41; weak, 41, 109, 162 Universal evolution, 120, 173; multilinear evolution and, 155; unilinear evolution and, 121 Universalism, 76, 151; particularism and, 133, 137 Urbanism, 109, 112, 201 Urbanization, 122, 283, 292 Urban Revolution, 107–108, 110, 112 Utilitarianism, 127, 230 Variation, 84, 258, 288 “Variation-and-selectiveretention” model, 258 Veblen, Thorstein, 160, 161, 218 Village societies, 146, 167–168 Voget, Fred, 22, 24–25 Wage Labour and Capital (Marx), 52 Wallace, Anthony, 210 Wallerstein, Immanuel: capitalism and, 215; challenge by, 205; directionality and, 277n4; evolutionism of, 214; hegemony cycles and,

328; on sixteenth century, 305; on social evolution/ intersocietal networks, 303; world-economy and, 240; world-system theory and, 161, 192, 204, 215 Warfare, 124, 126, 180, 188n4; chiefdoms and, 164; political conquest and, 165; political evolution and, 240; state evolution and, 171 Wealth, 291, 324; desire for, 312 Weber, Max, 329; bureaucracy and, 134, 214; Parsons and, 149; Protestant ethic/Western capitalism and, 206; rationalization and, 148 Welfare, 110, 130n1 Westermarck, Edward, 7, 265; diffusion/ independent evolution and, 266; Durkheim and, 104n7; evolutionary theory and, 10, 327; social evolution and, 74 What Happened in History (WHH) (Childe), 106, 108, 110; historical difference and, 122 Wheeler, G. C., 44, 82; Hobhouse and, 76; on justice/preliterate societies, 316; social evolution and, 80 WHH. See What Happened in History White, Leslie, viii, 7, 21, 105, 132, 157, 161; adaptation/ adaptedness and, 229, 230, 231; Agricultural Revolution and, 117, 128; anthropological evolutionism of, 154; antievolutionism and, 49n9; antireductionism and, 114; antiutilitarianism of, 127; on Boas/Boasians,

114, 172; criticism of, 172; cultural evolution and, 130n4, 166; culture and, 114, 115, 116, 117, 126; on Darwinism, 29; determinism and, 131n6, 188n1, 269; developmentalism and, 116; diffusion and, 46n7, 264; on ethical concerns, 118; evolutionary theory of, 120–121, 126, 129, 155; evolutionism and, 113–120, 125, 127–128, 160, 173, 175, 230, 269; external factors and, 266; on general laws, 128; influence of, 172, 193; Lenski and, 192; materialism of, 8, 117, 124, 127, 154, 157, 192; Morgan and, 22; multilinear evolution and, 121, 122; objectivism and, 269; primitive society and, 119; progress and, 118, 128, 156, 251, 255; relativism and, 118; social evolution and, 255, 273; on state-church, 120; Steward and, 123, 155, 172; technological change and, 127, 181, 230, 255; technology and, 125, 182; Tylor and, 24; universal evolutionism and, 120, 173 Wicken, Jeffrey, 236 Williams, George, 223, 224; evolution and, 237, 252; group selection and, 226; progress and, 252 Wilson, David Sloan, 226, 227 Wilson, Edward O., 261n7; biophilia and, 254; consilience and, 234; group selection and, 234; on social norms/sanctions, 235; traits/behaviors and, 235 Wittfogel, Karl, 124, 318 Wonderful Life (Gould), 252

Index Woodburn, James, 314 World-economy, 211, 240, 261n6, 274, 328 World history, 282–284; social transformation of, 218, 282; trends in, 292 World Societies: The Evolution of Human Social Life (Sanderson and Alderson), viii World-systems: commercializing state-

based, 216; evolution of, 281, 286, 303, 307; formation of, 216–217; kin-based, 215–216; modern capitalist, 215, 216; multicentered, 216; precapitalist, 186–187; primary state-based, 216; tributary, 215, 216 World-system theory, 158, 161, 183, 192, 204, 255, 274, 327; adaptation and,

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232; social evolution and, 8, 187, 214–218 Wright, Erik Olin, 5, 6, 9n1 Wynne-Edwards, V. C., 225, 226 Yakovlevich, Nicholai, 112 Yellen, John, 314 Zasulich, Vera, 62, 67 Zeitlin, Irving, 145, 148, 150–151, 228

About the Author

Stephen K. Sanderson, a specialist in comparative-historical sociology and sociological theory, is the author of numerous articles in academic journals and eight previous books, most recently Revolutions: A Worldwide Introduction to Political and Social Change (Paradigm 2005). Now retired from over three decades of university teaching, he is an independent scholar living in Boulder, Colorado, and pursuing several new book projects.

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