The transition from quantity to quality: A neglected causal mechanism in accounting for social evolution

Abstract

Students of social evolution are concerned not only with the general course it has followed, but also with the mechanisms that have brought it about. One such mechanism comes into play when the quantitative increase in some entity, usually population, reaching a certain threshold, gives rise to a qualitative change in the structure of a society. This mechanism, first recognized by Hegel, was seized on by Marx and Engels. However, neither they nor their current followers among anthropologists have made much use of it in attempting to explain social evolution. But as this paper attempts to show, in those few instances when the mechanism has been invoked, it has heightened our understanding of the process of social evolution. And, it is argued, if the mechanism were more widely applied, further understanding of the course of evolution could be expected to result.

Men’s status and reproductive success in 33 nonindustrial societies: Effects of subsistence, marriage system, and reproductive strategy

“…Among the Tsimane' of Amazonian Bolivia, villages differ in political inequality (44) and whether political influence associates with RS (Dataset S1), in proportion to their distance from the market town. There may be more variation within than between subsistence categories in the socioecological factors that favor inequality, including constraints on migration (54), access to and inheritance of monopolizable material wealth (37)(38)(39)(40)55), and collective action problems that catalyze more centralized or coercive leadership (41)(42)(43)(44). Future studies of status and reproduction within and across societies should apply more direct metrics of these factors.…”

“…In aggregate, however, foragers from the ethnographic and archaeological record may lack the inequality in material resources that contributes to status hierarchy and reproductive inequality in pastoral or agricultural societies (38)(39)(40). Furthermore, foragers often lack the population density and associated collective action problems that can cause the rank and file to prefer more institutionalized, even coercive, political leadership (41)(42)(43)(44).…”

On reciprocal causation in the evolutionary process

“…For instance, the dialectical principle of the transformation of quantity in to quality can be understood as an early insight by Engels of phase transitions, non-linear changes, hysteresis, critical thresholds, tipping points and rapid (non-gradual) switches between alternative states in ecology and evolution. Such ideas have been successfully incorporated in models of human social evolution (Carneiro 2000;Gavrilets et al 2008), reproductive isolation and speciation (Gavrilets and Gravner 1997;Nosil et al 2017) and in ecosystem ecology (Scheffer et al 2001). Likewise, it is tempting to interpret Maynard Smith's interest later in life for major evolutionary transitions (Smith and Szathmary 1988) at least as partly influenced by his background in Marxist philosophy and appreciation of dialectics, as this is an excellent example of the transformation of quantity in to quality in evolutionary biology.…”

For a political economy of financialization: theory and evidence

“…This agreement contributed to the economic and social progress that characterized the (2) On this dialectical interpretative key, see Carneiro (2000). period known as the "Golden Age" of capitalism, with the geopolitical and economic leadership of the United States (Hobsbawm, 1995).…”