The Evolution of Prehistoric Social Systems
Written by Michael Heller
Overview (my theory)
Almost every branch of science boasts one or another insurgent systems theory. Social science is no different. However, a theory that aims to explain its entire subject matter only from the viewpoint of systems is not appropriate for the study of ‘society’. Society is too multidimensional to be encompassed within a single analytic perspective. One reason stands out. Conceptually organisations are the inverse of systems, and for the past 6000 years most societies have combined organisations with systems.
While it is true that systems often contain organisations—systems of interacting organisations—the reverse is not possible. No organisation is ever comprised of, or saturated by, interacting systems. An organisation is controlled by a centre, a core. A system can only ‘feel its way’ and ‘control itself’. A defining feature of the organisation is its capacity for personal discretion. The centre (director or committee of directors, individually or collegially) has powers to choose actions that benefit the organisation in competition with all other organisations. Without a centre, a system relies on participating individuals to make impersonal choices which enable the system to continue functioning for the benefit of all participants. The system of society relies on a kind of subliminal instinctual ‘code’ that favours the whole over the parts.
How governance systems emerge and survive alongside organisations therefore has to be a primary and complex concern of any complete theory of society. Systems lack ‘centre’ and ‘discretion’ to prioritise some of their individual components over others.
Over the course of recorded history the majority of major and minor societies have essentially been organisational rather than systemic. The only known full-scale ‘system society’ is the modern society with its unique separation of powers. Its central governing zone itself became a decentred system. This remains a rarity — very hard to achieve and even harder to sustain. The first indisputably organised society was the fourth human society—the ‘administered’ agricultural society—which reached its peak in the second millennium BCE. The three earliest societies predated recorded history and rulership. Because they lacked a central core of governance (rulership) the earliest ones relied on small and simple systems to coordinate decision making.
Larger scale, more advanced systemic decision making can be detected later in the communalistic and coordinated ‘participatory’ societies of the first millennium BCE, the vigorous city polities of Italy and Greece. In Rome ‘systems’ were manifested mostly through patron-client relationships. The prehistoric (individualistic, communalistic, coordinated) system dynamics reappear in substantially different forms throughout the stratified ‘ranking’ societies of medieval Europe, and in their parallel pan-territorial ‘system of organisations’. A special ‘system’ feature of medieval Europe is the growing sophistication and subtlety of personal-impersonal system coding, which paved the way for the first early modern transition to decentred states with separations of power. The intensity of medieval system coding was reflected in philosophical discussion occasioned by conflicts between ‘status’ and ranking.
It is only possible to infer or confirm the existence of systems by examining examples of decision making in the governance process of societies, beginning with the earliest group societies and tracing developments through to the most modern societies. We still have a long way to go with prehistoric societies, and a few considerations of a theoretical nature will help to pinpoint two or three probable lines of enquiry.
A general approach (my theory)
A society’s system needs to viewed firstly from the perspective of society’s structure and agency. Individuals with interests, ideas, and reason have always been front and centre of causation during changes within societies. This is people’s ‘agency’, their capacity to learn to adapt or shape their lives and change their worlds. Systems tend to be unintended consequences of action. Modern humans sometimes have an ‘ideal’ or ‘plan’ for system in mind when they pursue institutional or economic goals. Normally, however, they create organisations in order to achieve their objectives, and then hope for ‘good luck’ system dynamics to prevail in the interactions between organisations. Either way, I argue that some ‘organisational’ Type 4 administered societies and Type 6 peripheralised societies which thrived between 3000 BCE and 1000 CE also strove to establish systems. Whether they realised they were doing so is another matter.
There are, on the other hand, structural determinations — the constant choice constraints that are internal to all societies, such as the universal needs for shelter, safety, and subsistence, and external forces that are often entirely beyond society’s control, which fluctuate and are particular to each society’s immediate environment. Structures are like menu boards of opportunities and constraints that motivate or limit people’s ‘agency’ choices in society. Most great changes to societies throughout history can be traced to a mixture of structural determinants (both on the inside and outside of society), as well as pure (rational, deliberate, innovatory) human agency.
My emphasis on the governance and closure of society leads me to view systems as subservient to action and structure. I expect to find system-subverting organisational dynamics. Nevertheless, systems in their own right are real opportunities and also determinant factors. In neither case can they be ignored. I mean by this that system options have continually been available to societies regardless of existing structural constraints and the cognitive potentials of human agency, and regardless of whether they succeed or fail to generate and sustain systems. Once they are up and running systems in some degree exert the ‘structural force’ of an autonomous choice-menu onto human action. If people mistreat their systems, the systems will wither and expire. It is up to the agents of action to comprehend the exactions of systems, and make the sacrifices and compromises needed to keep systems in functioning order.
System codes and signals (my theory)
Systems are intuited through repeat experiences of exchanging things and concepts. The rules of system action are subliminal. They are continually tested by trial and error until the patterns of acceptable action and reaction are perceived and internalised as predictable regularities by participants. Humans who are intelligent and attentive to their social environments develop instincts for navigating the systems. “Instinct comes first, reasoning second” was one of Wittgenstein’s most useful dictums.
The social scientist (the observer) can label instinctually-perceived rules of system as universal subliminal ‘codes’, and then try to identify symbols or signs of code that fit the contexts of custom or belief. A society’s system code (system’s identifier) is always the most simple binary choice of preference between the whole object to which the system is oriented (society) and the multiple elemental parts constituting the whole (individuals within society). The code potentially guides all decision making within a system with its established routine practises of governance: consultation, judgement, adjudication, and group-based decisions relating to material subsistence. In every such system the code preference—expressed in binary form to be understood—is the priority of sustaining the whole as against sustaining particular individuals. Thus the preference expressed by society’s system code is the impersonal whole as against the person. If the system is to begin to function and then on persist in functioning, a dull compulsion motions all decisions to place society over the interest of the individual.
The conditions for the emergence of a system are complex, but I can sum them up as a need for interaction to optimise human talents and resources where a) it is impossible ever to ‘read’ the minds of others, b) it is impossible to ‘design’ legal codes that cover all dynamic eventualities, and c) organisations are too cumbersome or hierarchical to meet the free and fluid ‘needs’ for exchange. Contextually appropriate social systems have emerged historically among individuals, or groups, or organisations. In all cases the motives and the perceptions relevant to systems are individualistic in origin (as I previously explained). And the individual motives to stabilise society are paramount.
Returning to the earlier observation: although every system is subservient to agency and structure in the sense that a system cannot itself structure or perpetuate a society, ‘system’ properly belongs in the category of ‘structure’ rather than ‘agency’. Systems are naturally ‘there’ (organically) in the whole environment of society. System ‘comes to life’ within society when coded or symbolised ingredients for its existence combine. System meets a human need, much as shelter, safety, and subsistence do. Yet, systems are beyond society’s control. They are unlike ‘the organisation’, which is manually-generated as a visible and tactile ‘central control tool’ for coordinated human action.
Without ‘central regulation’ systems are therefore entirely dependent on the intelligent intuition of individuals who participate in system-based exchange and interaction, and who choose to be attentive to the balance of individual motivation and individual ability while perceiving regularities and standards of decision making which maintain the society that ‘hosts’ the system. In addition to the customary context-specific ‘rules’ of each society we find a standard code that prevails in all sustainable societies — the equilibrium of the personal motives with the general good of society.
Calculating this equilibrium is an everyday affair.
This can be stated in slightly different terms. Every system has an orbit of operation that is unique to itself. The orbit of the system of the society is the society itself. The system code identifies the components of the system and defines the inner logic of the system as a unity between component parts. A society is the sociation of individuals and groups of individuals who share a common border, who are bonded by language and beliefs, and who are bound to comply with common rules. Thus the individuals are the ‘parts’ of the ‘whole’. In the special variety of system that concerns formative ‘sociation’ there exists only the society and its individuals. The code is an intuitively utilitarian preference for the society over single individuals. The code has frequently been symbolised by a collective truth. A standard theory is that the gods of ancient societies represented society. The object of worship is society itself. This is perfectly although primitively consistent with the subliminal or explicit experience of sensing the existence of personal-impersonal code. It is also consistent with my definition of society as the ‘thing’ that is bordered, bonded and bound. And, it is consistent with my definition of the source of social order as a choice of impersonal over personal.
I have more to say on this topic, but the foregoing is a sufficient conceptual base with which to continue with descriptions of life in the first three societies, which share in common the distinctions of being ‘group’ and ‘pre-rulership’ societies, and whose distinguishing individual, communal, and coordinative features persist forever.
For this essay I have referenced the following authors:
Émile Durkheim, Gerd Gigerenzer*, Michael G. Heller*, Niklas Luhmann, Talcott Parsons, Max Weber, Ludwig Wittgenstein [*subscribers to Social Science Files]
The organic illustration is:
Zoological Garden I, by August Macke, 1912