Are there Ancient Roots to Socialism
Since Karl Marx and others began to advocate for societies to develop more equitable economic systems in the form of socialism and even communism, there have been those that advocated that capitalism and, by extension, economic and social inequality evident in societies reflect a deviation from natural or even original human societies. Evidence for more equal societies is often difficult to determine in the distant past, but there have been arguments that social and economic inequality we are witnessing is more recent.
Early Forms of Socialism?
Perhaps the most "equitable" forms of societies are often hunter-gatherer societies. Such societies, ostensibly, often do not display any major social hierarchy. Even if there is a "leader," of the group, often social power is limited and can be easily reversed. Wealth differences are also not usually very different between members of such societies. Based on this, and archaeological evidence, some archaeologists and historians have argued that a form of socialism or at least classless societies. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles advocated that hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian and represent a type of primitive communism.
Many archaeologists and anthropologists today, in one form or another, have indicated that early and even some modern band or hunger-gather societies are not only classless, but they even display no sexual inequality in that women and men wield comparable power. Such groups usually number between 20-50 individuals. Some have argued that the size of these groups make it easier to maintain relatively flat hierarchies, as individuals and families have almost comparable abilities to accrue food and resources.
While modern groups often do show limited differences in classes and even sexes in cases, it is not clear how prevalent this was in the past. Nevertheless, few hunter gatherer groups have been found to have direct evidence where a person would have greater authority or access to resources. One argument is that agriculture likely created the circumstances for inequality to emerge more easily. In this case, with agriculture, the ability to raise resources through the land is not equal. This could be because not all land is equal in productivity and some simply may be better. Once specific individuals were able to accrue more resources than this opened the possibility for socially unequal societies to emerge.
One possibility is that, although agricultural societies may have fostered greater inequality, a type of egalitarian and, even a form of socialist societies, did exist in a type of "vertical egalitarianism." In these cases, kinship and social networks were likely not equal for these communities, which were often larger as they utilized agriculture. However, on the surface, there may have been limited power or no real differences in power between family heads. Wealth may have been similar among families. In essence, such societies display hierarchy, in that not all members are the same and power is unequal; however, authority would be limited in that no central leader or wealthier individuals can easily emerge. What could have limited power for any central authority is that population was still relatively limited and larger groups may divide or fission.
