>More seriously - the only type of human society (not counting religious
>kooks who go to the woods to escape civilisation) that is relatively
>free of hierarchical institutions are pre-historic hunters and
>gatherers. I do not their living consitions were that great, as their
>life expectancy was less than half of what it is today.
Their life expectancy was not a direct result of their social organisation though. It resulted from the primitive means of production they had available.
>As soon as people started producing their own means of subsistence - the
>complexity of human societies started to grow exponentially, and that
>required some form of institutionalized order.
Yes, it requires more sophisticated organisation.
> The greater the number
>of people, and the greater their specialization, the more elaborate
>institutional order. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that
>out.
Yes, but it isn't specialisation or more complex organisation that necessitates coercive social structures. At least not directly. What really leads to coercive social organisation are a combination of the fact that, unlike in a hunter gatherer society it is *possible* to coerce people economically and that it is also socially-useful to do so.
Hunter gatherer societies are economically insecure, but producing a surplus would afford no economic power anyhow. It can only be given away. But in agricultural economies, control of surpluses affords economic power. Because shortages create the potential for some people to gain power over others.
So long as there is not enough to go around, a society has only two choices. Either everyone can suffer equally, as Jesus preached, or a few can live comfortably while the majority get slightly (or a lot) less than their fair share of what is socially produced. Because in a hunter gatherer society the latter option (class society) is not really possible, it just doesn't come up. But with more elaborate social organisation, class society becomes not only feasible, but objectively desirable. Desirable because it allows at least small number of people to more fully develop their intellectual capacity and have the time and security to work towards improving the productive capacity of society as a whole.
It is cruel to the majority, but the simple fact is that underfed and overworked people don't have much capacity to make the creative advancements in technology, which would be a loss to all.
The point is though, no matter how progressive it might seem in the long run, no matter how necessary, class society cannot operate without coercion. Human beings often will not give up their fair share of social produce willingly. Let alone willingly starve while others live lives of comfort and leisure.
Coercive social organisation is quite simply an artifact of a society which is unfair. Your assertion that it is a natural state of affairs is ignorant and stupid twaddle.
>Everyone who seriously thinks that a modern society can abolish
>institutions and live the same kind of life as we do, only better and
>free of coercion is hallucinating.
Abolishing institutions and living free of institutional coercion is not the same thing.
You seem to be assuming that there no is form of human institutional organisation possible, except that which is based on coercion. Yet you seem to accept that, except for the last few thousand years, humanity was organised without institutional coercion.
There is something odd about this. If human society has been organised without coercion for a million years, but it is impossible to do so anymore, then the only explanation is that a few thousand years ago a major evolutionary change in the structure of the human brain must have occurred. This mutation would need to have occurred virtually simultaneously, in populations that were widely scattered and had little contact.
I suppose it is possible that an alien race visited earth and genetically engineered this change, by dispersing a sophisticated gene-altering virus across the planet.
But the more simple explanation is that no such change in the innate structure of the human brain occurred at all. That we are still capable of organising our society in a non-coercive way, we just haven't figured out how to do it, given the material circumstances.
> Abolishing hierarchical institutions
>and coercion (or "power" as some would say) belongs to the same category
>as the dreams of immortality.
Obviously neither is possible for you personally. But that doesn't mean it is impossible for all time. You will die, we will all die, because we are mortal. New generations will approach the problem afresh. They may find a way to realise these objectives, history will not cease when we individually perish. In fact our passing (yours in particular I think) has the benefit of clearing away our fixed ideas (such as that coercive social structures are the only kind of social structures possible) and making room for new ideas.
> It is a daydreaming fantasy that often
>diverts attention from the more attainable goal of making those
>hierarchies and the use of corecion more accountable. But such
>"reformism" is beneath the dignity of a true idealist, I suppose.
Unworthy of those who still have full use of their brain anyhow. But you go on believing in alien gene modification theories if that is the only way you can rationalise your mindless theory of human nature.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas