IV — Social Ecology & Libertarian Anthropology — Social Ecology and Communalism Workshop

Series: Social Ecology Today — Roots

Is Hierarchy Natural?

The Myth of Natural Domination Put to the Test

“Hierarchy and domination are not natural givens of social life; they are the product of a long historical development. ” — Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (1982)¹

Wherever societies have experienced the collapse of their institutions, a common belief has resurfaced: that power, hierarchy, and domination are inherent in the nature of things. That without a leader, without a state, without coercive law, humanity would revert to violence and chaos. This conviction is not merely a prejudice; it is a political argument—often invoked to justify the existing order and discourage any ambition for transformation.

The preceding texts have established a key point: domination is not an inevitability inscribed in human nature, but a historical construct.

One decisive question remains. Is this assertion merely a critique of modern societies, or can it be tested against the lens of human history itself?

This is where anthropology becomes decisive.

As soon as we broaden our perspective to the long term, one observation becomes clear. The social forms we now take for granted—the state, centralized hierarchy, accumulation—appear to be late developments. For millennia, human societies existed without lasting centralized power, without a state apparatus, and sometimes even by devising explicit mechanisms to prevent the emergence of domination.

This observation does not allow us to idealize these societies. Yet it is enough to crack a deeply rooted belief: that hierarchy constitutes the insurmountable horizon of all human organization.

Societies Against the State

One of the major contributions of political anthropology lies in a reversal of perspective. Certain societies are not “stateless” because they have not yet achieved it, but because they are organized in such a way as to prevent a state from forming.

This is what Pierre Clastres² demonstrated through his study of Amerindian societies. The chief’s power is strictly limited: he does not command, does not coerce, and his position depends on his ability to maintain the group’s equilibrium. If he attempts to impose his authority, he may be ignored, deposed, or sometimes ritually neutralized. Power is not concentrated there; it circulates and diffuses throughout the social body.

From a different yet complementary perspective, James C. Scott³ has highlighted societies that have developed strategies to evade state logic. Mobility, dispersion, limiting accumulation, or rejecting certain forms of administration do not stem from a lack of organization, but from a political choice: to preserve collective autonomy in the face of attempts at centralization.

These forms are not solely a thing of the past. Even today, communities live outside—or on the margins of—state structures, developing forms of organization rooted in their own territories, practices, and decision-making processes. The absence of the state does not constitute a void, but a political form in itself, constructed, defended, and always fraught with tensions.

Historical and Contemporary Diversity

Recent research has further expanded this understanding.

David Graeber⁽⁵⁾ and David Wengrow⁴ have shown that human societies do not follow a single trajectory leading inevitably toward the state form. On the contrary, history appears as a vast field of political experimentation: some societies have alternated between hierarchical and egalitarian forms, others have combined several types of organization within the same space, or transformed their institutions according to context. Far from being fixed, social life proves to be profoundly malleable.

This diversity is not confined to the past. It continues today in ways of life that escape, partially or temporarily, the dominant frameworks. Often discreet, sometimes deliberately ignored by official narratives, these experiences remind us of something essential: human societies have never ceased to invent other ways of living together.

Neither a golden age nor inevitability

It would, however, be misleading to turn these observations into idealization.

Anthropology does not reveal a lost paradise. Stateless societies, too, experience tensions, conflicts, and imbalances. As Marshall Sahlins⁶ has shown, the forms of equality observed often rest on precarious arrangements, always susceptible to being challenged.

This point is crucial. It is not a matter of replacing the myth of progress with that of an original golden age. Human history is neither a linear march toward domination nor the memory of a lost harmony. It is made up of forks in the road, experiments, inventions, and refusals.

In other words, domination is not inevitable, but its absence is never guaranteed. It is within this open, uncertain space that social ecology situates its reflection.

The Anthropological Contribution to Social Ecology

In dialogue with this body of work, social ecology finds decisive support. It no longer merely asserts that domination is historical; it can demonstrate that it has been contested, contained, and at times prevented.

This perspective reinforces a central insight: political forms are not merely inherited; they can be instituted differently.

Elinor Ostrom’s research⁷ sheds valuable light on this point. It shows that contemporary communities are capable of collectively organizing the management of common resources without resorting to either the market or a centralized state. Self-organization is not an abstract hypothesis; it is a real practice.

But these forms of organization cannot be reduced to institutional mechanisms. They are rooted in ways of inhabiting the world, of naming relationships, and of defining reciprocal obligations. As Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil⁸ points out, political forms are inseparable from the languages and cosmologies that make them possible: categories such as “individual” or “property” are not universal, and envisioning a stateless society also involves transforming the conceptual frameworks through which we understand the connections between individuals, collectives, and living environments.

Reinventing the Political Commons

“Freedom cannot exist without institutions that make it possible.” — Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society (1989)¹

The contribution of anthropology is not to propose a return to ancient forms. Rather, it opens up a new horizon.

If societies have been able to limit the concentration of power, if communities have managed to collectively organize their conditions of existence, and if these experiences continue today in various forms, then direct democracy ceases to appear as an abstract utopia. It becomes a concrete human possibility.

For social ecology, this means that political transformation does not start from scratch. It can draw on capacities already present in human history, while recognizing that contemporary conditions—marked by global interdependencies and complex technical systems—require novel forms.

It is therefore a matter neither of imitating nor of restoring, but of reinventing political commons. These are not reducible to formal institutions. They take shape in practices: ways of inhabiting a territory, organizing mutual aid, deciding together, welcoming and recognizing the other.

Through often fragile and inconspicuous experiences, the possibility of forms of life that escape, at least in part, state and market logics is already taking shape.

A Strengthened Hypothesis

At this stage of the series, a hypothesis is taking shape.

If domination is not natural, if societies have managed to avoid or contain it, if forms of self-organization still exist today, then direct democracy is not a fiction.

It appears as a historical possibility—demanding, uncertain, but very real.

Social ecology does not promise a world without conflict. It opens up a more demanding perspective: that of societies capable of consciously transforming themselves, by collectively taking responsibility for the conditions of their existence.

Transition — Toward an Ecology of Subjectivities and Care

But understanding that domination is not natural is not enough to overcome it.

For social structures are not imposed solely from the outside. They are also embedded in habits, desires, and fears—in what we have learned to regard as normal, inevitable, and natural. They shape the ways we experience authority, react to constraint, and anticipate what we can or cannot demand from communal life.

The question then becomes more personal: how do forms of domination reproduce themselves within us?

It is this shift that we will explore in the next text: V — Social Ecology and Psychotherapy — Roots

Notes

¹ Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, Cheshire Books, 1982; Remaking Society, Black Rose Books, 1989.

² Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State, Minuit, 1974.

³ James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, Yale University Press, 2009.

⁴ David Graeber & David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

⁵ David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004.

⁶ Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age, Age of Abundance: The Economy of Primitive Societies [1972], Gallimard, 1976.

⁷ Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

⁸ Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Us Without the State, Ici-bas, 2024.

Articles in the series: