1. SOCIAL CONTROL

Emotions, rather than rationality, primarily drive Homo sapiens and other higher-order neurologically complex animals.

Social control refers to the influence that regulates human behavior within a society. It is exerted through public opinion, coercion (by police and the army), propaganda, laws, public state cult with state myths controlled by a priestly class, appeals to reason, and other methods.

Political Anthropology

Political Anthropology is the science of politics, regarding homo sapiens. It observes the activities related to decision-making and conflict resolution in order to create and maintain social order, as well as to cope with social disorder.

The anthropologist Elman Service devised a model to classify human societies.

2. NEED FOR SOCIAL CONTROL

Social solidarity is essential for society’s existence. It works when people connect and identify with others.

No two people are alike in nature because of their unique DNA. Each individual is a separate personality. There are differences among individuals. Some worship an idol, while others do not. Some eat meat, while others are vegetarians. Some are orthodox, while others are more adaptive and modern. In fact, society is a heterogeneous organization. Therefore, there are variations and differences, but many people behave similarly, and people tend to imitate each other quickly.

The purpose of social control in a state is to preserve social order. As society expands, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the state and its order. Unity is essential for keeping the group together. It is often founded on a common language, shared state cult, and its mythology.

MAJOR MEANS OF CONTROL

a) Public state cults with state myth and priestly class.

This is a powerful tool used by all cult leaders who claim to be divine and act as mediators between the supernatural forces that rule the world and the people. To convince people of this, they create a mythology and brainwash them with it by constructing a make-believe world supported by all available media at that time, including amulets, books, statues, temples, speeches, processions, music, news outlets, large objects, movies, musicals, and more. We will demonstrate how this is done for Mesopotamia, Israel, and Rome.

b) Law and coercion (police, army)

Laws define rights, duties, as well as the punishments for their violation. Laws also define sin and taboo, often related to punishment, depicted by the public state cults’ mythology.

3. Legitimacy

Legitimacy is the perception that an individual has a valid right to leadership. Historically, the right to rule has been based on various principles. In agricultural states such as ancient Mesopotamia, the Aztec, and the Inca, justification for the rule of particular individuals was based on hereditary succession and typically granted to the eldest son of the ruler.¹

In most cases, supernatural cult beliefs were invoked to establish legitimacy and justify rule by an elite.

European monarchs invoked a divine right to rule that was reinforced by the Church of England in Britain, by the Roman Catholic Church, and other churches prior to the  French Revolution.

Louis XIV of France.
Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louvre collection via Wikimedia Commons.

The Bolshevik cult (organized worship) of Lenin promised a worker’s paradise on earth and claimed legitimacy by being the revolutionary vanguard of this new world order.

When the Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunacharsky, introduced Leninist propaganda to children, it had two long-range goals: to saturate children with Leninism, thereby growing up loyal to the party Lenin personified, and to find a role model more powerful than their parents. ²

Lenin proclaims power at the Second Congress of Soviets, October 25, 1917, Smolny Palace, Petrograd, by Vladimir Serov, 1955.

Adolf Hitler also claimed legitimacy by being the master of a new world order led by the myth of the racially pure Aryans in Nazi Germany.

Ehrentempel, November 9 1935 on Königsplatz. The annual funeral reenactment of the 16 fallen martyrs myth during the Munich putsch attempt of 1923.

© Bavarian State Library Image Archive

4. Classification of societies

Elman Service around 1937, during his time volunteering with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of the Republican faction to fight against the fascist General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Elman Service (Origins of the State and Civilization, 1975) ³ developed an influential scheme for categorizing the political character of societies: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state.

During most of the New-Stone Age (Neolithic) of Africa and Eurasia, people lived in small tribes composed of multiple bands. Most Neolithic societies were relatively simple and egalitarian. Generally, states evolved in Eurasia only with the rise of metallurgy.
We have extended his scheme below:

Band

Tribe

Chiefdom

State

State French revolution

Size

< 100

100 – 5,000

5,000–20,000

> 20,000+

Social Organization

• Egalitarian informal leadership

• Segmentary society
• slavery

• Kinship-based leaders
• slavery

• Class-based hierarchy under king, oligarchy or emperor.
• Slavery

• 3rd estate has taken over
• Debating clubs, revolutionary committees, parliaments,
• separation and balance of power
• Abolition of slavery

Economic Organization

• Nomadic hunter-gatherers

• farmers, herders

• Central accumulation and redistribution
• Some craft specialization

• Centralized bureaucracy
• Tribute based
• Taxation
• Laws
• Fulltime craft specializations

• Centralized bureaucracy
• Merit based
• Taxation reform
• Laws reform
• Fulltime craft specializations

Conflicts and War

Warfare is usually sporadic and short-lived

Raids by small groups

Mediation by chief, high-ranking warriors

Army led by divine king, oligarchy or emperor.

Army led by revolutionary generals. After his putsch, led by Napoleon

Housing example

Housing

Temporary shelters

Villages of mud huts

Fortified centres

Fortified cities, roads

Cities, roads

Cult shrines

Cults

Carved figurines (between
-50,000 and -10,000)

Altar, Small shrines of worship, female figurines

Altar, Shrines of worship, female figurines

Temples with altar and large object/statue of worship

Separation between cults and state. Cult of first and second estate classes dissolved.

Monuments / buildings

Objects like burial mounds and Stone monuments

Large monuments

Palaces,  public buildings

Revolutionary monuments, public buildings like hospitals

Historical age

Old stone age

New stone age / Neolithic

Bronze-, early iron-age

Iron-age

Modern age

5. Socio-political schemes

Anthropologist Elman Service established a four-tier evolutionary taxonomy to track the progression of human political organizations from small foraging bands to centralized bureaucratic states.

The Foraging Band

• Population Size: Typically under 100 nomadic individuals.
• Social Framework: Strictly egalitarian with zero institutionalized leadership offices.
• Conflict Resolution: Handled informally via interpersonal withdrawal, mockery, or ritualized public song contests.
• Economic Model: Production-for-use relies entirely on hunting wild game and gathering wild plants.

The Tribal Network

• Population Size: Ranging from 100 to roughly 5,000 members.
• Social Framework: Fluid, non-hereditary leadership based on charisma and situational expertise.
• Integration System: Uses sodalities, named age sets, and male bachelor associations to connect unrelated families.
• Economic Model: Small-scale horticulture or animal pastoralism without deep accumulation of personal property.

The Ranked Chiefdom

• Population Size: Ranging from 5,000 to approximately 20,000 individuals.
• Social Framework: Ranked lineages organized in a formal hierarchy beneath a permanent chief.
• Economic Model: Centralized economic collection and periodic redistribution of materials.
• Theocratic Focus: The chief commands compliance primarily through sacred authority rather than a legal standing military.

The Traditional Stratified State

• Population Size: Exceeds 20,000 people, often featuring multi-ethnic populations.
• Social Framework: Class-based stratification separating a tiny ruling elite from a peasant majority.
• Economic Model: Massive centralized bureaucracies enforce systematic taxation, extract tribute, and use draft labor.
• Housing and Infrastructure: Urban centers linked by permanent road networks, protected centers, and massive stone monuments.

The Post-Revolutionary Modern State

• Political Transition: Power shifts away from absolute monarchs toward elected citizen assemblies and parliaments.
• Structural Reforms: Explicit codification of fundamental human rights, constitutional separation of powers, and merit-based bureaucracy.
• Economic Shift: Systematic industrial manufacturing, formalized tax codes, and the statutory abolition of legal slavery.

6. Synthesis of Comparative Anthropological Schemes

To comprehend how human inequality evolved, anthropologists cross-reference the developmental schemes of Elman Service and Morton Fried. These frameworks generally realign across history’s major technological eras.

Most often, but not always, as we will see, these schemes align: band with egalitarian in the Old Stone Age, tribe with hierarchical in the New Stone Age, chiefdom with stratified in the Bronze Age, and state with statist in the Iron Age:

The sociopolitical scheme of social inequality formulated by Morton Fried:

1. The Egalitarian Foraging Band (Old Stone Age)

• Resource Access: Every adult member enjoys identical, uninhibited access to all survival resources.
• Zero Property Hoarding: Nomadic conditions render the long-term storage or hoarding of physical wealth impossible.

2. The Hierarchical Tribal Network (New Stone Age / Neolithic)

• Status Differentiation: Subtle social hierarchies emerge based on age, gender, and personal talents.
• Egalitarian Economics: Despite expanding populations, kinship systems guarantee that material resources remain shared.

3. The Stratified Chiefdom (Bronze / Early Iron Age)

• Restricted Status Positions: Valued roles of high societal prestige become strictly limited to specific elite bloodlines.
• Unequal Access: Core lineages closest to the ruler exert stronger claims over prime lands and storage wealth.

4. The Statist Legal State (Iron and Modern Age)

• Permanent Stratification: The legal system codifies permanent divisions between distinct socio-economic classes.
• Force-Backed Defense: Armed state institutions exist to protect resources from external threats and stabilize internal stratification.

Academic Source References

1. PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Chapt. 7 POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON Paul McDowell, Santa Barbara City College.
   https://perspectives.americananthro.org/ and https://pressbooks.pub/perspectives/ 
2. Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia by Nina Tumarkin,
   Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 1983.
3. Origins of the State and Civilization, The Process of Cultural Evolution,
   Elman R. Service, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA, 1975 W. W. Norton.
4. Service, Elman R, Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective , Chicago, IL, Random House,1976, (ISBN  0394316355 , SUDOC  014517388).
5. Morton H. Fried, The evolution of political society: an essay in political anthropology , Random House,1967( reprinted  1976: 71st edition (McGraw-Hill)), (ISBN  0075535793 , SUDOC  015156079).