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unpublished
Leonid GRININTHE EVOLUTION OF STATEHOOD AS THE PROBLEM OFPHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGYAbstract
Issues of the origin and evolution of statehood are among those most important problems not only in political anthropology but also in philosophy of history.Many aspects of these problems traditionally remain under vigorous debate. Wethink these difficulties are connected in many ways with the dominant view on the philosophical problems of social (cultural) evolution as much depends on scholar’sviews on the evolution process (
e.g.
its unilinear or multilinear nature; whether allnations must pass the same phases of development or not; the hierarchy of itsdriving forces; its directions and trends, etc.). One or another way of solving these problems forms his/her concepts about origin and evolution of the state. And viceversa opinions on the problems connected with statehood have a profound effecton the cultural evolution’s approaches.In the present paper there is made the analysis of the evolution of the stateorganization with account for the conception of the political anthropology and philosophy of history. In the paper there are suggested new models of the evolutionof the state. In particular instead of a two-stage model by Claessen and Skalník (early state–mature state) which does not take into account the principledifferences between the states of industrial and pre-industrial epochs there issuggested a three-stage model of the evolution of state:
early state – developed  state – mature state.
Early states – 
are insufficiently centralized states with underdeveloped bureaucracy, their flourishing falls on the period of Ancient World history and themost part of the Middle Ages.
The developed states
– the centralized estate-corporative and bureaucratic states of the Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and ModernAge.
The mature states
are the states of the industrial epoch with rational type of law and government where the classes of industrial society and modern type of nation have formed.
INTRODUCTION
Social (cultural) evolution is an endlessly debated category. The matter is that“evolution” (as well as “progress”, “development” etc.) is referred to those abstractterms which comprise a very wide content
1
. The notion of the state, on the contrary,seems to be quite concrete at first sight. However, in spite of that questionsconnected with the nature and definition of the state, reasons of its rise, stages of development, criteria of reference of a definite state to this or that stage – stillremain debatable. In the present paper we would like to show the complex
1
Although the contents of the notions of social and cultural evolution, as we see them, by nomeans agree completely, but taking into account that in anthropology they are often used just assynonyms, in the framework of the present paper we will also use them as synonyms. However,as it will be further shown in the case of separating the notions of evolution and macroevolution,it will be more exact to speak about
cultural 
evolution and
 social 
macroevolution.
1
 
unpublished
interrelations in the solution of particular problems of the social evolution theoryand the process of the rise and development of statehood because on the one hand,the approaches to the theory of cultural evolution on the whole are essentiallydependant on the position concerning the problems connected with the state. On theother hand, it is exactly the philosophic position concerning cultural evolution taken by a researcher of the problems of the state that determines to a great degree in whatway he/she will solve them.
EVOLUTIONISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF THE THEORY OF THESTATE
In spite of long and continuous critics (see e.g. Lowie 1961; Steward 1972[1955]; Popper 1964, 1969) there are still powerful the ideas of unilinear evolutionand evolutionary scheme according to which all nations pass the same stages of de-velopment and differ only in the time of passing them. Although this evolutionaryscheme appeared
 
already in the 18
th
century and does not evidently correspond tothe results of modern investigations it is eliminated with an extreme difficulty(Shieder 1977: 161).The consideration of the evolution as a unilinear (or more exactly notmultilinear) process greatly simplifies and eventually distorts fundamentally theevolutionary process. The result of competition, selection, search for moresuccessful evolutionary forms and patterns, i.e. the result of quite long andcomplex processes, is presented as if initially predetermined. It is explicitly or implicitly supposed that the old forms are always and everywhere substituted bystrictly determined forms. For instance, the chiefless primitive bands should besubstituted by chiefdoms, and chiefdoms, in their turn – by the states. In practice, itmight have quite often occurred otherwise. In particular the transition to complexsocieties by no means always followed the classic evolutionary scheme: pre-statesociety – primitive (early) state – because quite often there appeared societies of a particular type, non-state in their structure of administrative government and political organization but which were quite comparable in many aspects to the state(see e.g.
Kradin
 
et al.
2000; Grinin
et al.
2004).There are some approaches within whose framework there have been madeattempts to resolve the contradiction between the conceptions of unilinear andmultilinear evolutionism. Marshall Sahlins offered to distinguish “general”evolution that is the progress of the types of forms representing the movementthrough the stages of universal progress and “specific” one, i.e. the historicaldevelopment of particular cultural forms (Sahlins 1960: 43). Robert Carneiro notedthe importance of taking into account the parameters and aspects of the study. If one stresses the similarity of the institutions or structures that are developed,evolution is unilinear. If one stresses the various roads, social evolution can beconsidered as multilinear (Carneiro 1973; see also Carneiro 2003: 229–238). Of course, much depends on the research task. But still for the most scientific tasks totake into account the multilinearity and alternativity of evolution appears to beabsolutely obligatory. After all variability and alternativity are the most importantand fundamental features inherent of the social evolution all along, i.e.,figuratively speaking, evolution always has several responses to arising problems
2
 
unpublished
(see Bondarenko, Grinin and Korotayev 2002). Historical process is not arigorously predetermined development but a movement in the framework of constant selection of alternatives and models. Moreover, these models are by nomeans always in opposition but often integrate and actively borrow each others'achievements. That is why an
equal level of sociopolitical complexity can beachieved not only in various forms but on essentially different evolutionary pathways
(
Korotayev
 
et al 
. 2000; Bondarenko, Grinin, and Korotayev 2002: 54).It is false not to take this into account and that can be proved, in fact, by theexample of Carneiro himself whose views on the origin of the state can beconsidered unilinear 
2
.Also it is important to reject the idea that the transition to a qualitatively newlevel of organization (model, form) is a process similar to the transformation of anembryo into an adult individual by means of genetic code, i.e. the process of change programmed by the previous development. Any genetic code provides de-velopment only according to certain and thousand times approved patterns. Be-sides it prevents any, especially qualitatively new changes, after all its task is to prevent deviations from the programme.As the evolutionary development – 
i.e.
the advance of social organisms to acquir-ing new, earlier unknown quality which provides better adaptive opportunities – isalways connected with the emergence of the ever new, to a certain degree unfamiliar  problems (for the given society or World-System on the whole)
3
. Among such prob-lems there may be
e.g.
the explosive population growth, an acute shortage of land,an appearance of dangerous enemies or more cultural neighbors, a split and civil war in before peaceful societies, a rapid growth of wealth, sharp social stratification, de-terioration of the ecological situation etc. Moreover, it is worth paying attention tothe great role of the external factors among these problems or “challenges” accord-ing to A. J. Toynbee (1962−1963). Unfortunately, this aspect is often underestim-ated. For example, there is a common tendency to diminish the role of wars andconquests in the formation of state. Thus according to H. J. M. Claessen in this process they played a less important role in comparison with ideology or socialstratification (Claessen 1989; 2000; 2002)
4
.However, just new challenges are obviously not enough for serious changes.The matter is that most societies “respond” to new problems with the help of old,
2
For example, he writes that when dealing with political evolution we encounter an undeni-able
unilinearity.
If all human societies were once nomadic bands that later after the inventionof agriculture, evolved, for the most part, into autonomous villages. Then villages developed intomultivillage chiefdoms and a limited number of chiefdoms went on to become states.
Con-sequently, the common line in the evolution of all states has been one
of band – autonomousvillage–chiefdom–state (emphasis added – L. G.) (Carneiro 2003: 234)..
3
When interpreting the notion of World-System we base primarily of the conception of AndreGunder Frank (1990, 1993). On our approach to World-System and its evolution see: (Korotayev,Grinin 2006).
4
Of course not less false is to present conquests (of some nations or races by the others, of the sedentary peoples by the nomadic ones etc.) as a decisive reason for the ancient state forma-tion, as it was observed by some famous philosophers of the end 19
th
and beginning of the 20
th
century (see e.g. Gumplowicz 1983; Oppenhiemer 1926; see also Kautski 1931). The position of R. Carneiro (1970; 1978; 1981; 2000a; 2000b; 2003; 2004) is much more reasoned, of course, but still it does not take into account some basic variants of state formation process.
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