Groups under a certain size (Dunbar * ?) can be managed socially with personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that.
The state comes from living and working in larger groups than can bring managed socially.
The state comes from living and working in larger groups than can bring managed socially.
You're just trading one hierarchy for another; an official and overt hierarchy traded for an unspoken social popularity hierarchy. Like students in highschool, officially everybody is on the same footing with each other. But in reality the pecking order exists and is rigidly enforced through 'personal reputation and shame and shunning and all that.' Nasty and manipulative people often rise to the top in this sort of environment.
I'm fairly anarchist-leaning, but I definitely see the applications for authority and hierarchy, specifically in the contexts of justice and finite resource distribution.
The whole point about "unspoken social popularity" and tyranny of of structurelessness is based on a misunderstanding.
I think the point is that even in the absence of explicit hierarchy, you can still have coercion in the form of shaming/shunning/etc.
Dunbar times two (~250 as seen here https://darrinchatter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/blog-15...)
In the absence of a (strong) state, those sorts of groups will just become clans/tribes that act like a proto-state. Just look at the problems of governance in Afghanistan.
Right, this is the kind of thing that tends to emerge in the absence of a formal state. You get a proto-state supported by the local culture and traditions.
Also you originally referred to the "problems of governance in Afghanistan" which I took to mean the warlordism, violence, suppression of women and so on. I was pointing out that these problems are more tied to the specific cultural and religious history of that area. If by governance problems you were instead referring to the strictly administrative or bureaucratic challenges you might encounter trying to, for example, organize a collection of peaceful worker communes, then I misunderstood.
Might wanna reread what you wrote there.
If it's from a lack of a state, why would states being recent be an issue? Though I would phrase it as, "in the absence of a state."
All of my comments have been, I hope respectfully, pushing back on the implication that the modern nation-state is the natural form of government and that in its absence people will necessarily find themselves members of small, violently feuding patriarchal groups.