Anarchism

So I read some of Marx's notes on the writings of social theorist Lewis Morgan. Obviously, a territory ruled over by a king is a hierarchical system. But the notes discuss how it may have become this way, that I found really interesting.

The works of Morgan was an analysis of the ancient Greek gens, gents, and gentiles. If you understand how Marx views history, I think he makes some interesting points, although these notes were not finished like Capital vol 1 (incidentally, when Marx died and Engels discovered he had been studying anthropology rather than writing subsequent volumes of Capital, he wanted to burn Marx's notes.)

So there are gens, which are like these egalitarian (non hebrew) religious groupings. And individual member of a gen, is a gentile. And the gens were like little religious communes, with egalitarian social sharing and authentic fraternity between members. But over time, despite the material egalitarianism, there develops differences in social standing, and accumulation of social capital. This informal hierarchy develops into formal castes. And the fraternity, while still present in an abstract way, gives way to individual interests, or caste interests.

Over time, these distance castes begin to compete with each other. Eventually, one caste becomes socially and materially dominant over the others, establishing a hierarchy. As this develops, the fraternal and egalitarian nature of the society becomes more abstract, like an ideal that everyone gives lip service to, but which a ruling caste has actual material and social control over. Eventually, this develops into an aristocracy that has a formal ruling class and formal domination, and all the fraternity, symbolic and concrete, has disappeared, and is replaced with divine right to rule.

Now this is a study of a society from around 500BC, and aristocracy precedes that by a thousands of years. Basically, we can date the rise of monarchial social relations by the rise of the major religions, since religion is a necessary component, and caste within, monarchial relations. But the study of how those societies may have gotten there is seething I think about a lot. Granted, I'm no expert, this is a single source, and even then its just notes.

But I thought it was still a better answer than all the people who are guessing based on preconceived notions of how hierarchy "has always existed".