Well, we're also the only fully linguistic primate society, and there is a lot more variation in our behavior than in (say) chimpanzees. Personally, I'd believe that we can live without hierarchy after about 10 million years of seriously trying variations on it, ratherthan jumping the gun on the question and foreclosing it by looking at a generation or two of ethological studies. Read Phil Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition. jks
Luke Weiger <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:Justin wrote: > Which tells you nothing much. All behavior is the outcome of the interplay of genetics and > environment. There's nothing else to explain it! Which means we ought to look at cross-cultural variation to assess our prospects for molding any given society in such and such a way. There has never been a non-hierarchical primate society, although there's plenty of variation in hierarchical forms. Read _A Darwinian Left_. -- Luke
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Getting rid of hierarchical poltical power is something conscious humans can do by sharing political power equally. Political power now is based on ownership of wealth. The classless society is non-hierarchical because socially produced wealth is socially owned.
Wealth is created through a division of labour within the producers--these days, the working class. Getting rid of the division of labour in society is not completely possible nor even desirable, IMO, as some of us are just better equipped intellectually and physically to do certain things than others are.
YFTSR, Mike B)
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