Page 205 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

182 Communication and Evolution of Society

cially produced wealth from the kinship system and reorganizing them
in accord with relations of domination. And this structural possibility
was also made use of in all civilizations. A class structure thereby
emerged, which of course did not yet appear as a socioeconomic divi-
sion of classes but rather as a structure of privilege of estates, castes,
ranks, and so cn. From all indications, stratification, exploitation, and
face-to-face social force had reached an advanced state in the old em-
pires. One has only to study the history of penal law to see that struc-
tural conflicts were built into these traditional societies, conflicts that
had to break out in crises again and again. In this connection one
might simply take a look at Rostovtzeff’s chapter on the Gracchi and
the beginnings of political and social upheavals in Rome.1°
In the European Middle Ages revolts by peasants, journeymen, and
urban communities were widespead; many of them did not go beyond
the thresholds critical for legitimation; but they often did when they
were connected with heretical movements. Examples would be the
Brothers and Sisters of the Holy Ghost, a pantheistic sect that de-
veloped around 1300 on both sides of the lower Rhine," or the radical
Franciscans in the northern Italian cities of the fourteenth century.”
The Peasants’ War was only the last important link in a long chain
of heretically founded and socially motivated movements.1% There is
no need to waste words on the class background of the bourgeois
revolutions.
It is not surprising that class confrontations lay behind the different
manifestations of delegitimation; for state organization of society is
the most important condition for a class structure in the Marxian
sense. Naturally legitimacy conflicts were not as a rule carried out in
terms of economic conflicts, but on the level of the legitimating doc-
trines. They had to relate to definitions of collective identity; and
these could in turn be based only on structures that established unity
and guaranteed consensus, like language, ethnic background, tradition,
or, indeed, reason. (The only exception I know of is the Communist
Party, which determined for a time the identity of the labor movement.
But even it is a structure that produces dissension only in the first
instance; the goal of the movement led by the Communist Party is
supposed to involve making itself superfluous as a party.)

Let me now briefly summarize the results of our conceptual
analysis. By legztimacy I understand the worthiness of a political
order to be recognized. The claim to legitimacy is related to the
social-integrative preservation of a normatively determined social