The Project
Historical and theoretical book under construction, as long as it takes.
I study 10 society ‘Types’ defined in the first instance by their mode of governance. I set the context in territories of the Near East and Europe whose Types 4-7 evolutions created the foundations for Type 8 globally transformative western societies with free system states. Types 1-3 (mine migrate near to Mesopotamia) are universal primordial precursors that remain causative in all later societies. Type 9 includes self-consciously non-western societies whose shared defining feature is domination by elites. Type 10 is an automatised sociational solution to stagnation and overload in modern society.
Type 1
Individualistic. Person over person. Differentiation by age, sex, cleverness, personality, physique. Neanderthal to late Prehistory. Mobile foraging.
Type 2
Communalistic. Group over person. Individualistic differentiation with greater division of labour and informal leadership influences more clearly distinguished by repeat performance of demonstrable individual biological and cognitive attributes. Assembly constraints on formal dominance. Prehistory to present. Mobile foraging.
Type 3
Coordinated. Person over group. More complex divisions of labour. Participatory leadership explicitly ranked or hereditary with individual titles at the settlement level. Traditional customs prevent extra-household rulership. Inter- and intra-group activity coordinated by assembly without administration. Prehistory to present. Stationary.
Type 4
Administered. Centre over society. Agricultural revolution. Compulsory cooperation. Settlement estates evolve to kingdoms. New societies of specialised organisations with numeracy, writing, transformative techniques, laws, rulership hierarchies.
Type 5
Participatory. Group over society. City-centred complex administration combined with a) communalistic or b) coordinative assembly participation. Differentiations of formal privilege and authority sustained informally. Palliative patron-client networks.
Type 6
Externalised. Centre over periphery. Extra-territorialisation. Hyper-administered elite-centred polities of Mesopotamia and Rome extend themselves imperially, spread modern knowledge, technology and techniques of governance, but become overloaded.
Type 7
Stratified. Rank over status. Europe 500-1600. Differentiation of ranked authorities. The administrative impersonal centralising impulses are usurped by religion. But the dynamic fragmentation and individualisation of power stimulates experiments with system-based governance and new philosophies for autonomous state formation.
Type 8
Functionalist. System over system. England first. Differentiation of functional powers inside states creates system societies with system states regulated by impersonal code.
Type 9
Elitist. State over society. Elite differentiation. Most of the non-western world. Facade democracies, one-party states, statism. The principal cause of underdevelopment.
Type 10
Mechanised. Society over individual. Type 8 governance on programable autopilot, smarter, smaller. Rule of law, robot judges. Non-discretionary welfare. Personalism tamed. AI solutions to overloading of politics in the separation of powers. It will be a logical enhancement of existing impersonal institutions, but could reset world order.
My theory and historical classification of societies breaks Durkheim’s rules:
There can be no question of undertaking a classification of societies. It is too complex a problem to be dealt with incidentally in that way … The objective every sociologist sets himself is the construction of a complete theory of society … all have a serious drawback: they depend too closely on the personality and temperament of the individual author to be easily detachable from him. Thus, each thinker is confined within his own dogma …
[Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method]