Page 184 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

161 Historical Materialism

2. With these as my points of orientation, I would like now
to offer the following explanatory sketch of the origin of class
societies.
a. The phenomenon to be explained is the emergence of a political
order that organized a society so that its members could belong to dif-
ferent lineages. The function of social integration passed from kinship
relations to political relations. Collective identity was no longer repre-
sented in the figure of a common ancestor but in that of a common
ruler. ,
b. Theoretical explication of the phenomenon A ruling position
gave the right to exercise legitimate power. The legitimacy of power
could not be based solely on authorization through kinship status; for
claims based on family position, or on legitimate kinship relations in
general, were limited precisely by the political power of the ruler.
Legitimate power crystallized around the function of administering
justice and around the position of the judge after the law was recog-
nized in such a way that it possessed the characteristics of conventional
morality. This was the case when the judge, instead of being bound as
a mere referee to the contingent constellations of power of the in-
volved parties, could judge according to intersubjectively recognized
legal norms sanctified by tradition, when he took the intention of the
agent into account as well as the concrete consequences of action, and
when he was no longer guided by the ideas of reprisal for damages
caused and restoration of a status quo ante, but punished the guilty
party’s violation of a rule. Legitimate power had in the first instance
the form of a power to dispose of the means of sanction in a conven-
tional administration of justice. At the same time, mythological world
views also took on—in addition to their explantory function—justifica-
tory functions, in the sense of legitimating domination.
c. The goal of explanation follows from this The differentiation of
ruling positions presupposed that the presumptive ruler built legitimate
power by virtue of a conventional administration of justice. Thus the
emergence of the state should be explained through successful stabil-
ization of a judicial position that permitted consensual regulation of
action conflicts at the level of conventional morality.

The explanation sketch runs as follows:
d. The initial state 1 consider those neolithic societies in which the
complexity of the kinship system had already led to a more strongly
hierarchical organization to be the evolutionarily promising societies.