Page 181 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

158 Communication and Evolution of Society

The Modern Age: (a) postconventionally structured domains
of action—differentiation of a universalistically regulated domain
of strategic action (capitalist enterprise, bourgeois civil law),
approaches to a political will-formation grounded in principles
(formal democracy); (b) universalistically developed doctrines
of legitimation (rational natural law); (c) conflict regulation
from the point of view of a strict separation of legality and mor-
ality; general, formal, and rationalized law, private morality
guided by principles.

VI
I would like now to illustrate how this approach can be made
fruitful for the theory of social evolution. I shall choose the
example of the emergence of class societies, since I can rely here
on the aforementioned study by Klaus Eder.*#

1. Class societies develop within the framework of a political
order; social integration no longer needs to proceed through the
kinship system, it can be taken over by the state. There have been
a number of theories of the origin of the state, which I would
like briefly to mention and to criticize.®

a. The superimposition theory®® explains the emergence of a politi-
cal ruling class and the establishment of a political order by nomadic
tribes of herdsmen who subjugated sedentary farmers and set up a rule
of conquerors. Today this theory is regarded as empirically refuted
since nomadism appeared later than the first civilization.5* The emer-
gence of the state must have had endogenous causes.
b. The division of labor theory®® is usually advanced in a complex
version. Agricultural production achieved a surplus and led (in com-
bination with demographic growth) to the freeing of labor forces.
This made a social division of labor possible. The various social groups
which thereby emerged appropriated social wealth differently and
formed social classes, one (at least) of which assumed the functions of
rule. Despite its suggestive power, this theory is not coherent. Social
division of labor means functional specification within the vocational
system; but vocational groups differentiated by knowledge and skill
need not per se develop opposing interests that result in differential