Who Are We? Part 4

The Evolution of Authoritarianism

Organic Versus Mechanical Solidarity

Scholars who follow Thomas Hobbes argue that authoritarian rule is essential for human social organization. They often point to the impressive technological achievements of elite-managed modern societies and the benefits these have brought to humankind. While acknowledging that hunter-forager bands may have interacted with their environments more sustainably than modern societies, these scholars tend to view such behavior as a temporary adaptation—one that arose due to small group size and limited complexity, and which elites will eventually outgrow or manage more effectively. They do not interpret it as a flaw in Hobbes’ theory.

However, a growing body of evidence challenges the assumption that authoritarian rule—or elitism—was either necessary, inevitable, or beneficial. The historical record of hundreds of thousands of years of hunter-gatherer life and thousands of years of early agricultural societies suggests that human nature does not inherently lead to authoritarianism (Chris Harman, A People’s History of the World, 2008, p. 24).

The Emergence of Elitism

In Consilience (1998), E.O. Wilson argued that natural selection in humans had shifted from being primarily biological to cultural. Research in epigenetics suggested that while humans may be genetically driven to form societies, our genes do not determine how those societies should be structured. Human culture, rather than biology, became the decisive factor in shaping governance—whether authoritarian or egalitarian.

Early humans who preferred egalitarian social arrangements generally outcompeted those who embraced elitism. But as civilization expanded and societies grew more complex, Wilson noted that cultural evolution had become global in scope. He warned that unless humans fundamentally restructured their relationship with nature, the planet could become uninhabitable within two centuries. Still, he remained optimistic that such a transformation was achievable—if those in power recognized the urgency of change. He feared, however, that elite policymakers were unlikely to accept this need voluntarily and would need to be replaced by more competent leaders (Wilson, Ch. 7; Hope Jahren, The Story of More, 2020).

Based on earlier evidence, it's reasonable to suppose that certain pressures led early urban societies to accept elitism as a temporary fix—especially if they had no history of monarchy. What if staple crops like grain had been healthier? What if the Iron Age and the domestication of horses and camels had occurred centuries later? The simultaneous rise in disease and warfare likely weakened tribal cohesion, pushing chiefs to enforce unpopular policies under duress. As tribal councils lost influence, citizens may have demanded faster results from their leaders: “Just get it done!” or “Find someone to stop the raiders!”

Archaeological evidence shows a rise in crime during early urbanization. Large and often violent gangs—known as guilds—became prominent, and responsibility for controlling them fell to chiefs and their police forces (Gideon Sjoberg, The Pre-Industrial City, 1960, Chs. VII–VIII).

Notably, for at least two thousand years, most urban chiefs showed no ambition to become monarchs. Why that changed remains an open question. The usual explanation—that power is seductive—falls short. Chiefs long possessed the capacity to assume monarchy but generally did not. Did they experience a Hobbesian realization that firm control was necessary? If so, why did so many early monarchs rule with cruelty, incompetence, and open contempt for their people?

Organic vs. Mechanical Solidarity

Ironically, the first modern thinker to argue that society should express the will of the people rather than a monarch was Hobbes himself. He believed that people best understood the need for social stability and would embrace strong authoritarian rule to achieve it. Hobbes' ideas, emerging in the mid-1600s during the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, earned him the label “father of democracy” for rejecting autocracy aimed solely at elite interests.

John Locke, writing shortly after Hobbes, agreed that governance was necessary to preserve democracy—but not that it required harsh rule. Leadership should come from those with vision, intelligence, and skill, not from a desire to dominate others.

During the Enlightenment, which followed the Renaissance in the mid-1700s, thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau further challenged Hobbesian authoritarianism. Rousseau characterized modern rulers as enslavers, not the wise managers Hobbes envisioned.

By the early 1800s, George Wilhelm Hegel proposed that democracy was ideal—even if perhaps unattainable. He urged people to strive for the most enlightened governance possible. His student, Karl Marx, disagreed. Marx insisted that people could and must achieve full democracy—by violent revolution if necessary.

In 1830, Auguste Comte founded sociology as a scientific discipline, positioning himself between Hobbes and Locke. He believed that democracy was desirable but only possible through elite management—ideally by scholars.

In 1893, Emile Durkheim, a founding figure in sociology, built upon Comte’s views. He acknowledged people's deep capacity for egalitarian cooperation and identified this as a powerful force in social thriving. He named this capacity organic solidarity—the ability of individuals to contribute to society freely, cooperatively, and without coercion (The Division of Labor in Society, 1948).

Durkheim contrasted this with mechanical solidarity, where people act not as free agents but as obedient servants. Organic solidarity enables people to follow capable leaders without subjugating themselves. Durkheim rejected Marx’s call for violent revolution but warned that any system suppressing collaboration and reciprocity threatened human progress.

Ironically, Durkheim assumed that ancient hunter-gatherers lacked organic solidarity, believing them bound by rigid rules like insects in a hive. He saw modern division of labor as the liberating force. He proposed that workers form “corporations” (in a very different sense than today’s term) to organize themselves around organic solidarity. He hoped elites would welcome this partnership—but died before completing his research, disappointed by findings that contradicted his theory.

Despite Durkheim’s errors, his concept of organic solidarity remains one of the most powerful contributions to social science.

Elites’ Response to Organic Solidarity: The Suppression of Women

Merlin Stone (When God Was a Woman, 1976) and Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade, 1988) provide evidence that post-agricultural elites systematically feared women’s role in fostering organic solidarity. They understood that egalitarian impulses had never been eradicated—only suppressed—and that women had long been central to maintaining them. Therefore, women had to be undermined.

Neolithic artifacts reveal that from 3000 to 1300 BCE, depictions of female deities in Egypt virtually disappeared, replaced by male gods associated with domination and authoritarian rule. Where goddesses symbolized harmony with nature and communal living, gods now represented control and subservience.

The doctrine of divine kingship and hereditary monarchy solidified elite power. According to Eisler, the Goddess religion emphasized communalism, while the emerging elite religions sanctified obedience (Eisler, p. 128).

Under elite control, male dominance and female submission became normalized. Altruism and care were reframed as feminine weaknesses. Women lost decision-making power, even within families. Religious ideology justified obedience to male gods and their earthly representatives. Women, once equal partners in society, became dependents.

“So universal did this become,” wrote Harman, “that even today it is usually treated as an invariant product of human nature” (Harman, 2008, p. 29).

In The Dawn of Everything (2021), David Graeber and David Wengrow concluded that the rise of autocracy and the denigration of women were so tightly correlated as to suggest a causal relationship (pp. 433–440, 493–524).

Elites’ Response to Organic Solidarity: Class Division

Another elite strategy was dividing lower classes into hierarchical subgroups. A master craftsman and an unskilled laborer might have equal standing in their tribe, but were stratified in urban life. Elites promised social mobility in exchange for loyalty and compliance (Sjoberg, 1960, pp. 138ff).

Niccolò Machiavelli, in The Prince (1513), advised rulers to keep commoners content but fearful, and divided to prevent solidarity. Though he regarded the masses as brutish, he also recognized their latent power to act collectively.

Elites’ Response to Organic Solidarity: Suppressing Self-Actualization

Hannah Arendt argued in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1973) that both Hitler and Stalin feared the grassroots movements that had brought them to power. They dismantled these organizations to prevent being overthrown by their own supporters.

In The Rise and Fall of Elites (1932), Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto argued that ruling classes inevitably decline because they suppress innovation—especially when it arises from below. Max Weber, another founding figure of modern sociology, echoed this view, noting that bureaucracy tends to stifle both initiative and individual autonomy.“Every bureaucracy tends to intervene in economic matters with the same result.”
(Stanislaw Andreski, Max Weber on Capitalism, Bureaucracy, and Religion, 1983, p. 365)

The Persistence of Organic Solidarity

Despite repression, organic solidarity has persisted. The Spartacus slave revolt of 72 BCE nearly overthrew Rome—not to conquer it, but to leave it in peace. Rome initially agreed to let the rebels go but later destroyed them through betrayal (Harman, 2008, p. 80).

In 1795, the Sans-Culottes—the working-class foot soldiers of the French Revolution—were vital to its success but were later betrayed and massacred by the bourgeoisie they had helped empower (Harman, 2008, pp. 290–302). Like the Spartacus movement, the Sans-Culottes mobilized enough force to overthrow their rulers but lacked the organization and strategy to consolidate their gains. A temporary compromise was reached: the bourgeoisie offered profuse apologies and promises of fair treatment. But once tensions subsided and order was restored, the ruling class retaliated—dispatching forces to crush the Sans-Culottes in a brutal massacre (Harman, 2008, pp. 290–302).

During the 1960s, Martin Luther King’s organization of heavily persecuted black citizens in pursuit of civil rights in the United States was modeled on Gandhi's movement. It required and possessed the same solidarity and strength, and had a substantial impact on social policy (Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States,1980, ch. 17).

From 1965 to the present, social activism in the United States has consciously embraced organic solidarity as a model for both social movements and society itself. Activists have become increasingly sophisticated in defining strategic goals, often in direct response to the failure of elites to address civil rights and environmental issues effectively (Stanley Aronowitz, The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism, 1996).

The Persistence of Mechanical Solidarity

If organic solidarity might one day become strong enough to shape society on a grand scale, mechanical solidarity has remained largely unchallenged since it rose to dominance roughly five thousand years ago. Some scholars—most notably social psychologist Steven Pinker—argue that this endurance supports Thomas Hobbes’s view: that most people have preferred hierarchical order, and that despite its flaws, the alternative might have been far worse.

Followers of Auguste Comte, especially English philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer—whose ideas influenced Émile Durkheim—have argued that the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism transformed the nature of society, and that elitism has been gradually improving as a result. In contrast, Karl Marx predicted that once people recognize mechanical solidarity’s failure to promote true human thriving, they will reject it in favor of communism—or some other form of socialism grounded in organic solidarity. From this view, elitism and organic solidarity are fundamentally incompatible; they cannot coexist in the same system.

Advocates of this perspective acknowledge that five thousand years may be a brief moment in historical terms, but they also note that it takes time to unlearn the deeply ingrained habits and customs of millennia. The inertia of mechanical solidarity is not easily overcome.

Others, such as social psychiatrist Erich Fromm, express a darker concern: that prolonged acceptance of authoritarian control may have fatally weakened the human drive for organic solidarity (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, 1970).

My next Substack will explore the rise of authoritarianism during the Age of Empires (2300 BCE–1453 CE).