"No Kings!" Is the Waa-Bark of America's Chimpanzee Politics of Resistance to Trump

Last Saturday, we saw a massive display of chimpanzee political rhetoric.  Subordinate chimpanzees utter pant-grunts to signal their fear and submission before a dominant chimp.  But subordinates can also utter waa-barks to signal their defiance of a dominant chimp.  If enough subordinates scream their waa-barks, and if the dominant chimp does not have a sufficiently strong coalition of supporters, he can be overthrown.  The five million people in the "No Kings" protests against Trump were shouting their waa-barks.  The people at Trump's military parade celebrating his birthday were pant-grunting their submission to Trump.  But reporters noticed that the number of spectators at the parade was small, and many of them were looking at their phones to see images of the massive crowds at the "No Kings" protests.  The waa-barks were louder than the pant-grunts.

Although chimpanzees do not have language, they do communicate with one another through sounds, postures, and facial expressions that convey information.  Often that information is about social rank.  An alpha male might engage in a loud display of intimidation that asserts his dominance over the group.  Other chimps might respond to this by signaling their submission to him.  Or they might respond with signs of resistance and defiance.  And some might even signal that they want to overthrow him.  Thus chimps engage in political rhetoric, because they try to persuade one another as to how their social order should be organized.  

We could also identify this chimpanzee political rhetoric as Lockean insofar as subordinate chimpanzees can protest against despotic dominance by the alpha male and thus limit his power, which moves towards the egalitarian social arrangement seen in human hunter-gatherer bands with an egalitarian style of hierarchy in which the leader is only primus inter pares ("first among equals").  This is what Locke saw in the state of nature in which all men are by nature equally free.  Not that all are absolutely equal, because some will have higher status than others, and some will become leaders of their social groups.  But that all adults have the natural right to be free from being unduly subordinated to anyone else without their consent, and that they have the natural right to punish those who threaten their life, liberty, or property (Second Treatise, pars. 4-10, 54, 94, 105).  

To explain the Darwinian evolution of this human state of nature, we should expect to find precursors of this human egalitarianism in our pre-human primate ancestors.  And if we assume that the common ancestor of humans and the African great apes was similar to a chimpanzee, then we might expect to see evolutionary preadaptations for an egalitarian style of dominance in chimpanzee groups.  In fact, as Christopher Boehm has argued, we can see in chimpanzees similarities to the ambivalent political nature of human hunter-gatherers that shows a tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance (Boehm 1993, 1999).  

Dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to seek the power over others that comes from superior rank in a group.  The political life of primates is organized around dominance hierarchies in which the old tend to have dominance over the young and males tend to have dominance over females, although females can also have a dominance hierarchy, and sometimes coalitions of females can resist male dominance.  This is a political universal for chimpanzees, both in the wild and in captivity; and for human beings throughout history.  Winning or losing dominance is determined by patterns of coalition formation that depend on shifting circumstances and individual decisions.

Deference is the natural propensity of individuals to submit to those who are dominant.  As political universals, deference is the correlative of dominance.  Among the various species of political primates, there are distinctive behavioral cues, both verbal and nonverbal, by which subordinates defer to dominants.

Counter-dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to resist being dominated.  Among some primates, subordinate individuals can resist excessive dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

The variation in this behavior creates differences in dominance style across species.  As Frans de Waal has observed, rhesus monkeys show a "despotic dominance style" in which subordinates cannot challenge dominants; but chimpanzees show an "egalitarian dominance style" in which subordinates can restrain dominants (de Waal 1996).  Dominant chimpanzees are expected to mediate conflicts within the group and to lead the group in conflicts with other groups.  Dominant chimpanzees can be challenged or even deposed if they do not properly carry out their conflict-mediation role.

Like chimpanzee politics, human politics shows a dominance hierarchy that can be egalitarian in style, based on the principle that leaders are only first among equals.  This egalitarianism is most evident among human hunter-gatherers who use various kinds of sanctions (from ridicule and disobedience to ostracism and execution) to punish leaders who become too despotic in their dominance.  This resistance to dominance was probably a crucial part of human evolutionary history in the Paleolithic era (from about two million years ago to 10,000 years ago).  But with the establishment of large bureaucratic states based on agricultural production, which began more than 5,000 years ago, many states have been more despotic than egalitarian.  The emergence and spread of Lockean liberal democracies over the past three centuries is in some ways a return to the egalitarian dominance of the foraging way of life in which subordinates limit the power of dominants.

To the old question in political philosophy as to whether human beings are naturally hierarchical or naturally egalitarian, the answer from biopolitical science is that human beings are both.  Niccolo Machiavelli was right to see that human political nature is torn by the tension between the propensity of the few to dominance and the propensity of the many to submit to dominance while also resisting oppressive dominance.  The history of political practice and political thought turns on this natural ambivalence interacting over time with particular political circumstances and decisions.

As an illustration of this political ambivalence among chimpanzees, here is Jane Goodall's description of an incident she observed in July of 1964 in Gombe:

"Mike, the new alpha, rests in the shade of a tree.  A sudden crashing in the undergrowth heralds the arrival of Goliath, recently deposed from the top position.  Mike does not move as Goliath charges flat out toward him, dragging a huge branch.  At the last moment Goliath turns aside, swings into a nearby tree, and sits motionless.  Only now does Mike begin to display, swaying the vegetation, hurling a few rocks, then climbing into Goliath's tree and swaying branches there.  When he stops, Goliath displays again, leaping ever closer to his adversary until Mike responds.  For a few moments both are wildly swaying foliage within 2 meters of each other; but there is no fight.  They swing to the ground and charge off through the undergrowth, running parallel, then sit staring at each other.  Goliath stands upright and rocks a sapling; Mike hurtles past, throwing a large rock.  For the next twenty-three minutes the performance continues, and during the whole episode the only physical contact between them is when one is hit by the end of a bough swayed by the other.  Finally, after a three-minute pause, Goliath moves rapidly toward Mike, crouches beside him with loud, submissive pant-grunts, and begins to groom him vigorously.  For half a minute, Mike ignores him, then turns and grooms his vanquished rival with equal intensity.  For more than an hour, they groom until both are relaxed and peaceful" (Goodall 1986, 409).

Notice the ambivalent political rhetoric in this incident.  The male dominance hierarchy is determined by the directionality of displays and pant-grunting among the adult males.  Goodall has kept a quantitative record of this for many years so that she can track the ever-changing history of the dominance hierarchy. If an alpha male is secure in his dominance, he displays towards the others in the group, and he receives pant-grunts from the others; but he never pant-grunts toward any of them.  When Goliath displays towards Mike, Goliath is challenging him, attempting to take the alpha position.  Both are feeling aggressive and fearful at the same time.  Each is trying to bluff down the other.  But while Goliath wants dominance, his fear of Mike finally drives him to signal his submission through pant-grunting; and Mike accepts his submission by reconciling with him.

Displays are more common than physical attacks, because chimps would rather avoid the danger of serious physical injuries that come from attacks.  Charging displays are threats that serve to maintain or challenge the existing order of dominance.  But reversals in rank among the males are usually the result of physical fights.  And while size and strength are important for success in displays and fights, psychological traits--such as intelligence, ingenuity, boldness, persistence, and shrewdness in forming coalitions--are crucial for success.  Mike was actually one of the smaller adult males when he overthrew Goliath, but he figured out how to use empty kerosene cans in his noisy charging displays to shock the other males and throw them into confusion until they submitted to him.  As I indicated in a previous post, Boehm and Goodall have compared Donald Trump's bombastic rhetoric to Mike's displays.

The vocal rhetoric of chimpanzees is complex.  Goodall and other primatologists have identified at least 32 distinct calls that convey particular emotions or feelings (Goodall 1986, 127; Arcadi 2018, 116-23).  One of them is the pant-grunt that Goliath uttered to signal a feeling of social apprehension and submission.  Another is the waa-bark that signals anger and defiance.  Dominant individuals can use waas as a warning to subordinates.  But from his careful study of chimp videotaped vocalizations, Boehm has concluded that most waas are used by subordinates to express their defiance of dominants (Boehm 1999, 164-69).

Boehm has seen this illustrated by what de Waal reports in his studies of the chimps in the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Georgia.  When new adult males were introduced into the community, the Yerkes females acted as a power coalition that rejected males seeking the alpha male position.  Finally, they accepted Jimoh as the alpha male.  But when he acted as a bully, the females punished him.  

For example, one day Jimoh saw that Socko, an adolescent male, was mating with one of Jomoh's favorite females.  Jimoh chased Socko around the enclosure and refused to stop.  Socko was screaming and defecating in fear.

Several females nearby began to waa bark.  They looked around to see the reaction of others.  When others began to join in the waa barking, the intensity of their protests became deafening.  Finally, Jimoh got the message.  He broke off his attack to avoid any further attacks from the females.  It was as though the chimps were taking a vote, and Jimoh had lost the vote.  If Jimoh had not stopped his attack, he might have been overthrown and even killed.

Here are the evolved primate roots of Lockean political rhetoric, in which we see the political ambivalence in the tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.

Last Saturday, we saw a great debate between the deference to Trump at his military parade and the counter-dominance of resistance to Trump at the "No Kings" protests.

Steven Cheung, the communications director for Trump, has said: "The so-called No Kings protests have been a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance."  Of course, that is what he has to say--he has to tell those of us who attended one of the protests that we must not believe what we saw with our own eyes.

Like I say, that's chimpanzee politics.

(Some of the material in this post comes from a previous post.)

REFERENCES

Arcadi, Adam. 2018. Wild Chimpanzees: Social Behavior of an Endangered Species. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Boehm, Christopher. 1993. "Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy." Current Anthropology 34:227-254.

Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goodall, Jane. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

de Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The Lockean Political Rhetoric of Chimpanzees: Dominance, Deference, and Counterdominance

Although chimpanzees do not  have language, they do communicate with one another through sounds, postures, and facial expressions that convey information.  Often that information is about social rank.  An alpha male might engage in a loud display of intimidation that asserts his dominance over the group.  Other chimps might respond to this by signaling their submission to him.  Or they might respond with signs of resistance and defiance.  And some might even signal that they want to overthrow him.  Thus chimps engage in political rhetoric, because they try to persuade one another as to how their social order should be organized.  

We could also identify this chimpanzee political rhetoric as Lockean insofar as subordinate chimpanzees can protest against despotic dominance by the alpha male and thus limit his power, which moves towards the egalitarian social arrangement seen in human hunter-gatherer bands with an egalitarian style of hierarchy in which the leader is only primus inter pares ("first among equals").  This is what Locke saw in the state of nature in which all men are by nature equally free.  Not that all are absolutely equal, because some will have higher status than others, and some will become leaders of their social groups.  But that all adults have the natural right to be free from being unduly subordinated to anyone else without their consent, and that they have the natural right to punish those who threaten their life, liberty, or property (Second Treatise, pars. 4-10, 54, 94, 105).  

To explain the Darwinian evolution of this human state of nature, we should expect to find precursors of this human egalitarianism in our pre-human primate ancestors.  And if we assume that the common ancestor of humans and the African great apes was similar to a chimpanzee, then we might expect to see evolutionary preadaptations for an egalitarian style of dominance in chimpanzee groups.  In fact, as Christopher Boehm has argued, we can see in chimpanzees similarities to the ambivalent political nature of human hunter-gatherers that shows a tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance (Boehm 1993, 1999).  

Dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to seek the power over others that comes from superior rank in a group.  The political life of primates is organized around dominance hierarchies in which the old tend to have dominance over the young and males tend to have dominance over females, although females can also have a dominance hierarchy, and sometimes coalitions of females can resist male dominance.  This is a political universal for chimpanzees, both in the wild and in captivity; and for human beings throughout history.  Winning or losing dominance is determined by patterns of coalition formation that depend on shifting circumstances and individual decisions.

Deference is the natural propensity of individuals to submit to those who are dominant.  As political universals, deference is the correlative of dominance.  Among the various species of political primates, there are distinctive behavioral cues, both verbal and nonverbal, by which subordinates defer to dominants.

Counter-dominance is the natural propensity of individuals to resist being dominated.  Among some primates, subordinate individuals can resist excessive dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

The variation in this behavior creates differences in dominance style across species.  As Frans de Waal has observed, rhesus monkeys show a "despotic dominance style" in which subordinates cannot challenge dominants; but chimpanzees show an "egalitarian dominance style" in which subordinates can restrain dominants (de Waal 1996).  Dominant chimpanzees are expected to mediate conflicts within the group and to lead the group in conflicts with other groups.  Dominant chimpanzees can be challenged or even deposed if they do not properly carry out their conflict-mediation role.

Like chimpanzee politics, human politics shows a dominance hierarchy that can be egalitarian in style, based on the principle that leaders are only first among equals.  This egalitarianism is most evident among human hunter-gatherers who use various kinds of sanctions (from ridicule and disobedience to ostracism and execution) to punish leaders who become too despotic in their dominance.  This resistance to dominance was probably a crucial part of human evolutionary history in the Paleolithic era (from about two million years ago to 10,000 years ago).  But with the establishment of large bureaucratic states based on agricultural production, which began more than 5,000 years ago, many states have been more despotic than egalitarian.  The emergence and spread of Lockean liberal democracies over the past three centuries is in some ways a return to the egalitarian dominance of the foraging way of life in which subordinates limit the power of dominants.

To the old question in political philosophy as to whether human beings are naturally hierarchical or naturally egalitarian, the answer from biopolitical science is that human beings are both.  Niccolo Machiavelli was right to see that human political nature is torn by the tension between the propensity of the few to dominance and the propensity of the many to submit to dominance while also resisting oppressive dominance.  The history of political practice and political thought turns on this natural ambivalence interacting over time with particular political circumstances and decisions.

As an illustration of this political ambivalence among chimpanzees, here is Jane Goodall's description of an incident she observed in July of 1964 in Gombe:

"Mike, the new alpha, rests in the shade of a tree.  A sudden crashing in the undergrowth heralds the arrival of Goliath, recently deposed from the top position.  Mike does not move as Goliath charges flat out toward him, dragging a huge branch.  At the last moment Goliath turns aside, swings into a nearby tree, and sits motionless.  Only now does Mike begin to display, swaying the vegetation, hurling a few rocks, then climbing into Goliath's tree and swaying branches there.  When he stops, Goliath displays again, leaping ever closer to his adversary until Mike responds.  For a few moments both are wildly swaying foliage within 2 meters of each other; but there is no fight.  They swing to the ground and charge off through the undergrowth, running parallel, then sit staring at each other.  Goliath stands upright and rocks a sapling; Mike hurtles past, throwing a large rock.  For the next twenty-three minutes the performance continues, and during the whole episode the only physical contact between them is when one is hit by the end of a bough swayed by the other.  Finally, after a three-minute pause, Goliath moves rapidly toward Mike, crouches beside him with loud, submissive pant-grunts, and begins to groom him vigorously.  For half a minute, Mike ignores him, then turns and grooms his vanquished rival with equal intensity.  For more than an hour, they groom until both are relaxed and peaceful" (Goodall 1986, 409).

Notice the ambivalent political rhetoric in this incident.  The male dominance hierarchy is determined by the directionality of displays and pant-grunting among the adult males.  Goodall has kept a quantitative record of this for many years so that she can track the ever-changing history of the dominance hierarchy. If an alpha male is secure in his dominance, he displays towards the others in the group, and he receives pant-grunts from the others; but he never pant-grunts toward any of them.  When Goliath displays towards Mike, Goliath is challenging him, attempting to take the alpha position.  Both are feeling aggressive and fearful at the same time.  Each is trying to bluff down the other.  But while Goliath wants dominance, his fear of Mike finally drives him to signal his submission through pant-grunting; and Mike accepts his submission by reconciling with him.

Displays are more common than physical attacks, because chimps would rather avoid the danger of serious physical injuries that come from attacks.  Charging displays are threats that serve to maintain or challenge the existing order of dominance.  But reversals in rank among the males are usually the result of physical fights.  And while size and strength are important for success in displays and fights, psychological traits--such as intelligence, ingenuity, boldness, persistence, and shrewdness in forming coalitions--are crucial for success.  Mike was actually one of the smaller adult males when he overthrew Goliath, but he figured out how to use empty kerosene cans in his noisy charging displays to shock the other males and throw them into confusion until they submitted to him.  As I indicated in a previous post, Boehm and Goodall have compared Donald Trump's bombastic rhetoric to Mike's displays.

The vocal rhetoric of chimpanzees is complex.  Goodall and other primatologists have identified at least 32 distinct calls that convey particular emotions or feelings (Goodall 1986, 127; Arcadi 2018, 116-23).  One of them is the pant-grunt that Goliath uttered to signal a feeling of social apprehension and submission.  Another is the waa-bark that signals anger and defiance.  Dominant individuals can use waas as a warning to subordinates.  But from his careful study of chimp videotaped vocalizations, Boehm has concluded that most waas are used by subordinates to express their defiance of dominants (Boehm 1999, 164-69).

Boehm has seen this illustrated by what de Waal reports in his studies of the chimps in the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Georgia.  When new adult males were introduced into the community, the Yerkes females acted as a power coalition that rejected males seeking the alpha male position.  Finally, they accepted Jimoh as the alpha male.  But when he acted as a bully, the females punished him.  

For example, one day Jimoh saw that Socko, an adolescent male, was mating with one of Jomoh's favorite females.  Jimoh chased Socko around the enclosure and refused to stop.  Socko was screaming and defecating in fear.

Several females nearby began to waa bark.  They looked around to see the reaction of others.  When others began to join in the waa barking, the intensity of their protests became deafening.  Finally, Jimoh got the message.  He broke off his attack to avoid any further attacks from the females.  It was as though the chimps were taking a vote, and Jimoh had lost the vote.  If Jimoh had not stopped his attack, he might have been overthrown and even killed.

Here are the evolved primate roots of Lockean political rhetoric, in which we see the political ambivalence in the tense balance between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.

REFERENCES

Arcadi, Adam. 2018. Wild Chimpanzees: Social Behavior of an Endangered Species. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Boehm, Christopher. 1993. "Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy." Current Anthropology 34:227-254.

Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goodall, Jane. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

de Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lockean Meritocracy Satisfies the Evolutionary Natural Desire for Social Status and Egalitarian Hierarchy

There are at least twenty natural desires that are universal to all human societies because they are rooted in human biology as shaped by evolutionary history.  If the good is the desirable, then these twenty natural desires provide a universal basis for moral judgment.  A Lockean liberal social order can be judged to be the best regime in so far as it allows for the fullest satisfaction of those natural desires.

For example, there is a natural desire for social status that was formed in the Lockean evolutionary state of nature.  And we can see how the meritocracy in a Lockean liberal society satisfies that desire for social status.

Human beings generally desire social status through comparative social ranking.  This is a human universal found in all human societies (Brown 1991).  Human beings' esteem for themselves requires they be esteemed by others whose judgments they respect.  Human beings attain high social status through prestige, fame, or honor within the groups to which they belong.  And they can be ranked differently in different groups.  Although some societies are much less hierarchical than others, all societies rank individuals as higher or lower based on age, sex, kinship, physical formidability, physical attractiveness, social competence, and practical skills.

Individuals become socially dominant through any trait or activity that elicits deference in others.  A few charismatic individuals become heroic leaders because of their extraordinary power to win the respect of the people around them.  

And yet, subordinate individuals can resist excessive or exploitative dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

Men generally (on average) have a stronger desire for dominance in social hierarchies than do women.  Men compete for mating opportunities, and dominant men are generally more attractive to potential mates.

In a recent article published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Noah Smith and Reuven Dukas have surveyed the evidence and arguments for the evolutionary psychology of social ranking in humans and other animals.  They identify five major dimensions of social ranking in humans and two subcategories for each dimension:  physical formidability (height and muscularity), social conventions (age and nepotism), physical attractiveness (symmetry and health), social competence (empathy and extraversion), and practical competence in complex skills (intelligence and perseverance).  Although I agree with them about these five dimensions, they have overlooked a sixth major dimension of social ranking--the counter-dominance of subordinates that can establish what Christopher Boehm called a "reverse-dominance hierarchy" or "egalitarian dominance," which corresponds to what Locke identified as the natural equality of human beings in the state of nature.

Let's consider each of these six dimensions of social ranking.

(1)  Physical formidability.  Many animals live in social hierarchies in which higher ranking individuals can claim priority in access to scarce resources (such as food and shelter) and opportunities for sexual mating (Wilson 1975; Tibbets et al. 2022).  This ranking is mostly determined by physical formidability, which is the ability of an individual to win a fight.  Those who win a fight are more likely to win the next fight.  Those who lose a fight are more likely to lose the next fight.  Those with a reputation as winners can usually avoid costly fights by acting assertively and deterring challengers.  Those with a reputation as losers avoid costly fights with those who seem to be winners.  Consequently, actual fighting is usually rare, because conflicts are often settled through ritualistic displays of dominance and submission without the violence of real fighting.

Although physical formidability is not as important for human ranking as it is for nonhuman animals, it does have some influence in human social ranking.  For example, height is a cue for physical formidability, and height is correlated with high status and leadership positions (Cheng and Tracy 2014; Zeng et al. 2022).  One illustration of this is that the Presidents of the United States have been generally taller than the average for men.  But some of this correlation between height and high status could be explained by the correlation of height with intelligence and cognitive ability, because nutritional status during childhood affects both height and cognitive development in adults (Lindqvist 2012).

(2)  Social conventions.  Age and nepotism are two social conventions for determining social status that are important for both nonhuman animals and human beings.  Adults rank higher than children, and often older adults rank higher than younger adults (Redhead and Power 2022).  Nepotism (the tendency to favor one's kin) also shapes social hierarchies in which one's social ranking depends on the ranking of one's family (Bellow 2004).

(3)  Physical attractiveness.  Physically attractive people tend to have a high social status.  They have more friends, higher incomes, and better jobs.  This is true for both men and women (Frevert and Walker 2014).  Despite the variability in the perceptions of physical beauty, there are some general patterns that are universal, such as the judgment that the bodily signs of health and vigor, the youthful nubility of women, and facial and bodily symmetry are physically attractive (Jones et al. 2001).

(4)  Social competence.  In all human societies, people recognized for their social competence have high social status.  Social competence is the skill for performing social tasks and handling social interactions--such as leading a social group or mediating social disputes.  This requires a mixture of social intelligence, sociable personality traits, and social experience.  Socially competent people show cognitive sympathy (understanding other people's mental states) and affective sympathy (responding to people's mental states with appropriate emotion).  They also show sociable personality traits such as extraversion (Dukas and Bailey 2024; Smith and Dukas 2024).

(5)  Practical competence in complex skills.  In hunter-gatherer societies, people have high social status when they show competence in complex tasks such as hunting and toolmaking (Henrich 2016).  In modern societies, people gain high status when they show professional expertise in providing all kinds of goods and services (Anderson and Willer 2014).

(6)  Counter-dominance.  Smith and Dukas fail to recognize the importance of counter-dominance for subordinate individuals who need to resist exploitative dominance by socially superior individuals.  In their analysis of the traits necessary for social competence, Smith and Dukas (2024:164) include "the ability to control the impressions that other people have of an individual, and the ability to manipulate others for personal gain," and in support of this idea, they cite Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince and the writing of Richard Christie and Florence Geis (1970) on the "Machiavellian personality."

But they do not notice that the longest chapter in Machiavelli's The Prince--Chapter 19 on "Of Avoiding Contempt and Hatred"--is about how princes who become hated by the people they rule open themselves up to conspiracies leading to their assassination.  Although the people don't want to rule, they don't want to be exploited by those who rule them, and they will resist exploitative rule, sometimes violently.  Frans de Waal saw that political assassination was also part of the Machiavellian politics of chimpanzees, in which resistance to exploitative rule established an "egalitarian hierarchy" in chimpanzee communities as opposed to a "despotic hierarchy."  

Christopher Boehm saw this in both chimpanzees and in the foraging ancestors of human beings--a natural tendency to counter-dominance--the natural propensity of individuals to resist being dominated.  Among some primates, subordinate individuals can resist excessive dominance and thus limit the power of dominant individuals.  Subordinate individuals can form large coalitions to challenge those at the top of the hierarchy.

Locke saw this natural resistance to exploitative dominance in the evolutionary state of nature as the natural support for an egalitarian hierarchy, in which some have higher status and power than others, and yet all men are naturally equal in their liberty to live without being ruled by anyone without their consent.

REFERENCES

Anderson, C., and R. Willer.  2014. "Do Status Hierarchies Benefit Groups?  A Bounded Functionalist Account of Status."  In The Psychology of Social Status, eds. J. T. Cheng, J. L. Tracy, and C. Anderson, pp. 47-70.  New York: Springer.

Bellow, Adam.  2004.  In Praise of Nepotism: A History of Family Enterprise from King David to George W. Bush.  New York: Knopf Doubleday.

Brown, Donald.  1991.  Human Universals.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Cheng, J. T., and J. L. Tracy.  2014.  "Toward a Unified Science of Hierarchy: Dominance and Prestige Are Two Fundamental Pathways to Human Social Rank."  In The Psychology of Social Status, eds. J. T. Cheng, J. L. Tracy, and C. Anderson, pp. 3-27.  New York: Springer.

Christie, Richard, and Florence Geis.  1970.  Studies in Machiavellianism.  New York: Academic Press.

Dukas, R., and N. Bailey.  2024.  "Evolutionary Biology of Social Expertise." Biological Reviews https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.13115.

Frevert, T. K., and L. S. Walker. 2014. "Physical Attractiveness and Social Status."  Sociology Compass 8:313-323.

Henrich, Joseph.  2016.  The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jones, B. C., et al.  2001.  "Facial Symmetry and Judgments of Apparent Health: Support for a 'Good Genes' Explanation of the Attractiveness-Symmetry Relationship."  Evolution and Human Behavior 22 (November): 417-429.

Lindqvist, Erik.  2012.  "Height and Leadership."  Review of Economics and Statistics 94:1191-1196.

Redhead, D., and E. A. Power.  2022.  "Social Hierarchies and Social Networks in Humans."  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:20200440.

Smith, Noah M. T., and Reuven Dukas.  2024.  "Winner and Loser Effects and Social Rank in Humans."  The Quarterly Review of Biology 99:157-174.

Tibbets, E. A., et al.  2022.  "The Establishment and Maintenance of Dominance Hierarchies."  Philosophical Transactions for the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:20200450.

Wilson, Edward O.  1975.  Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Zeng, T. C., J. T. Cheng, and J. Henrich.  2022.  "Dominance in Humans."  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:20200451.

The Evolution of Equal Liberty Through Capital Punishment: Boehm's Egalitarian Hierarchy in Locke's State of Nature

This is a tracing of a rock drawing from a cave at the stone age site of Remigia, Castellon, Spain, dated to sometime before 6500 BCE.  Christopher Boehm used this rock drawing at Remigia in an essay arguing for the importance of capital punishment in the evolution of morality and egalitarian hierarchy (Boehm 2017).  He observed that on the right we see ten men jubilantly holding their bows over their heads.  On the left, we see a man lying on the ground with exactly ten arrows sticking in his body or on the ground.

It's hard to know for sure what has happened.  The victim could have been a prisoner of war who has been executed.  In fact, other drawings at Remigia show scenes of warfare.  But Boehm suggests that given what we know about hunter-gatherer foragers in the ethnographic record, it's more likely that the victim here was a deviant member of the band who had violated the moral rules of the band--perhaps by murdering someone--and he was becoming a bully who was trying to assert his dominance over the group.   

One study of the rock drawings in the inland regions of the Iberian Mediterranean basin identified 49 scenes of violent content (battles, ambushes, fights, and so on), which included 8 scenes of "execution squads" like the drawing above (Lopez-Montalvo 2015).

This also illustrated Boehm's "ambivalence model" of human nature in politics.  Human politics arises from the complex tension between three levels of our evolved political psychology: dominance, deference, and counter-dominance (Boehm 1999).  Some human beings want to have dominance over others.  Most human beings are inclined to defer to the rule of the dominant ones.  But when that dominance becomes despotic and exploitative, people will resist that dominance and punish the bullies by shunning them, ostracizing them, or--in the most dangerous cases--killing them.  (I have written a series of posts on the evolutionary theory of reverse dominance hierarchy.)

We can infer that this universal human nature was shaped in the environment of evolutionary adaptation of human foraging ancestors in the Late Pleistocene epoch.  We can make that inference through what Boehm calls the "ethnographic analogy".  Boehm has created a hunter-gatherer database of sixty-five foraging societies for which we have ethnographies, selected because they are most likely to resemble foragers in the Late Pleistocene.  If we find a practice like capital punishment for bullies in all six of the world regions where foragers have lived--North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Arctic--then we can infer that this has been widespread throughout hunter-gatherer history since the Late Pleistocene (Boehm 2012).

These ethnographies of foraging bands show that they form moral communities through agreement on moral rules and then enforce those rules through the forcible and reputational punishment of deviants.  Through gossip, ridicule, and shunning, those who violate the rules are punished with bad reputations, and people will refuse to cooperate with them.  Today, we might call this "nonviolent resistance"--people withdraw their consent to a bully's dominance.

If reputational punishment is not enough to enforce obedience to the rules, then the community can use coercive force, such as expelling deviants from the group, or, in the worst cases, killing them.  Nevertheless, foragers resort to capital punishment only rarely, and usually it's to punish a murderer.

Forcible punishment creates two possible problems.  The group can be torn apart by conflict.  Or an angry relative of a person killed can take vengeance on the executioner.  To avoid these problems, the group must reach a consensus on the punishment and even persuade the close relatives of the victim to cooperate.  In rare cases, the entire community might participate in the execution (as seems to have been the case in the Remigia drawing).  Or, more commonly, the group will delegate a close relative of the victim to do the killing.

Executing a bully is often dangerous for the executioner, however, because bullies are often formidable and aggressive enough to fight back and harm the executioner.  The solution to this problem, as I have indicated in previous posts, is killing at a distance.  There is plenty of evidence that human beings are evolved for throwing and shooting projectiles--rocks, spears, arrows, and bullets--that can kill even the strongest opponent from a safe distance.  In the Remigia drawing, we can see that it is easy for ten men armed with bow and arrow to bring down a bully without having to fight with him hand to hand. 

In this way, hunter-gatherers enforce the moral norm that Boehm calls "egalitarian hierarchy."  As that term suggests, they see that human beings are not naturally equal in all respects, because no two human beings are the same in all respects.  By virtue of being separate individuals, human beings are naturally different, naturally unequal, in any number of respects.  But they are naturally equal in their natural desire for equal liberty--their natural freedom from being ruled by others without one's consent.

The Bushmen (or San) people of Southern Africa are regarded by many evolutionary anthropologists as the descendants of the earliest human ancestors who lived as hunter-gatherers.  Polly Wiessner, an anthropologist who has studied them, reports that "all adult members of the society are autonomous equals who cannot command, bully, coerce, or indebt others.  There is a "strong egalitarian norm that no adult can tell another what to do."  "All people as autonomous individuals are expected to stand up for their rights," and so everyone has the right to enforce the social norms of the group by punishing those who violate them (Wiessner 2005).

John Locke recognized this natural desire for equal liberty as emerging in the ancient hunter-gatherer state of nature in which human nature was originally shaped.  He inferred this from his own "ethnographic analogy," because he studied hundreds of books by Europeans who had observed foraging and tribal societies around the world, particularly in the New World.  In particular, he looked to the indigenous people of America as providing "a pattern of the first ages in Asia and Europe" (Second Treatise, 108).  "In the beginning, all the world was America" (ST, 49).

Locke saw that in this state of nature, societies enforced moral norms through the "executive power of the law of nature"--the natural right of all human beings to use forcible and reputational punishment to punish those who violated the law of nature, which included capital punishment.  Even after they entered civil society and formed a government to rule over them by their consent, human beings retained the natural right of self-defense, including defense against a despotic government that would deprive them of their freedom from exploitative dominance.  The people can resist a despotic government through an "appeal to Heaven"--that is, an appeal to the God of battles to settle their dispute through war.

All of this manifested the principle that "all men by nature are equal in their liberty."  Locke explained:

"I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of Equality: Age or Virtue may give Men a just Precedency: Excellency of Parts and Merit may place others above the Common Level: Birth may subject some, and Alliance or Benefits others, to pay an Observance to those to whom Nature, Gratitude or other Respects may have made it due: and yet all this consists with the Equality, which all Men are in, respect of Jurisdiction or Dominion one over another, which was the Equality I there spoke of, as proper to the Business at hand, being that equal Right that every Man hath, to his Natural Freedom, without being subjected to the Will or Authority of any other Man" (ST, 54).

Thus, Locke saw in the state of nature the same egalitarian hierarchy that Boehm identified in the evolutionary state of nature that shaped the human nature of our foraging ancestors.  But Boehm does not recognize that his account of the evolved human nature of egalitarian hierarchy confirms Locke's view of the natural equality of liberty in the state of nature, because Boehm mistakenly identified Locke as a "blank slate" theorist who denied the reality of human nature (Boehm 1999, 128, 227).

Darrin McMahon makes the same mistake in his recent book Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea in seeing Locke as "famously conceiving of the mind as a tabula rasa at birth, shaped by education and experience, not hardwired by iniquity or innate ideas" (168).  McMahon also fails to see how Boehm's egalitarian hierarchy manifested in the execution scene at Remigia and in the ethnography of hunter-gatherers confirms Locke's conception of natural equal liberty in the state of nature (21-51).

McMahon does see that our foraging ancestors found a way to combine equality and liberty.  "The two went together.  Equality among members of the group prevented the domination of all save the would-be upstarts, forestalling severe constraints on the liberty of others.  Equality served as liberty's foundation and guarantee" (59).  

And yet McMahon does not see how Lockean liberalism achieves this by affirming the natural right to equal liberty.  McMahon passes over Locke's account of natural equality in a few pages without taking seriously Locke's concept of equality as equal liberty as the most intellectually defensible ground for justifying classical liberalism (163-166).

Nevertheless, since McMahon's book is the best history of the idea of equality, I will be writing a series of posts on the book, in which I will argue in defense of Lockean liberalism as showing the best understanding of human equality.

REFERENCES

Boehm, Christopher. 1999.  Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Boehm, Christopher.  2012.  Moral Origins: The Evolution of Altruism, Shame, and Virtue.  New York: Basic Books.

Boehm, Christopher.  2017.  "Prehistoric Capital Punishment and Parallel Evolutionary Effects."  Center for Humans and Nature, June 12.

Locke, John.  1988.  Two Treatises of Government.  Edited by Peter Laslett.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lopez-Montalvo, Esther.  2015.  "Violence in Neolithic Iberia: New Readings of Levantine Rock Art." Antiquity 89: 309-327.

McMahon, Darrin.  2023.  Equality: The History of An Elusive Idea.  New York: Basic Books.

Weissner, Polly.  2005.  "Norm Enforcement among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen: A Case of Strong Reciprocity?"  Human Nature 16: 117-135.

"Makers" and "Takers" in the Paleolithic

Libertarians and classical liberals have long argued for defending the makers who produce wealth from the takers who expropriate it (Contoski 1997; D'Amato 2018).  The makers need protection because for most of recorded human history over the past 5,000 years, most societies have been ruled by a few takers (kings, princes, nobles, and high priests) who coercively exploited the great multitude of people who were the makers of wealth that was stolen from them by the takers.  In these societies, there was little incentive for the makers to produce more than they could consume since most of what they produced would be taken from them, and consequently the general standard of living was low.  

But then, beginning about 300 years ago in northwestern Europe and North America, there was a shift in social conditions that made the life strategy of making--producing wealth for use and exchange--more successful than the life strategy of taking--extracting wealth from others.  That shift in favor of making over taking came with the establishment of modern liberal constitutionalism and free-market capitalism.  Over the past 100 years those institutions of liberal democratic capitalism have spread around the world.  As a consequence of that, most of the 8.3 billion people alive today live longer, healthier, safer, richer, and freer lives than human beings have ever lived previously.  Previously, I have written about this as the "evolution of human progress through the liberal enlightenment.

So how do we explain this pattern in human history--5,000 years of oppression by the ruling elites of takers and then the sudden emancipation of makers that has promoted unprecedented material and moral progress recently for most of humanity?  And if we can explain the causes of that modern progress, how might that help us to prevent any weakening or even reversal of that progress that would allow the takers to regain their dominance over the makers?  Does the recent rise of the "illiberal state"--like that of Viktor Orban in Hungary, for example--show the return of the illiberal "taker state"?

One of the best attempts to answer those questions is in the work of Stephen Balch (a scholar at Texas Tech University).  In an article (Balch 2014) and in a book that is soon to be published, he puts the history of the struggle between takers and makers within a Darwinian "big history" that integrates the history of life and the history of humanity into a universal evolutionary history of all life.  It is an exhilarating display of expansive multidisciplinary scholarship that weaves insights from the life sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities into a dazzling intellectual tapestry that will forever change the way you think about life.

I have not yet fully thought through everything he has written about what he calls his "naturalist interpretation of history."   But I understand enough of it to say that I find almost all of his arguments persuasive.  I do disagree with him, however, about four points. 

First, Balch fails to see that most of what he says about the universal history of politics--from Paleolithic stateless societies to Neolithic agrarian states to modern liberal constitutional states--confirms John Locke's account of the universal "history of mankind." 

Second, Balch also fails to see that the struggle between takers and makers arose first among Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, although he is certainly right in saying that that struggle was dramatically intensified by the invention of agriculture, which created an economic surplus that allowed takers to accumulate great wealth in the form of expropriated crops.  

Third, in his account of the first agrarian states, such as those in Mesopotamia, Balch tends to exaggerate the invincible dominance of the ruling takers, while minimizing the power of the makers to resist or evade exploitative dominance.

Fourth, I don't agree with Balch's claim that classical liberals like Locke have been mistaken in understanding property rights as an outgrowth of the personal rights of self-owning individuals.  Balch wants to separate economic freedom from personal freedom because he worries that personal freedom can include maladaptive behavior such as pursuing sexual pleasure in ways that do not lead to reproduction, which lowers reproductive fitness.  But here he fails to see that a low birth rate can be an adaptive reproductive strategy for people in wealthy societies who want to make a large parental investment in a few children, so that those children will be more likely to succeed in a modern bourgeois society.

Here I will elaborate my second point of disagreement.  In my next post, I will take up the fourth point.

PALEOLITHIC MAKERS AND TAKERS

Among hunter-gatherers, the takers are people who take without giving.  They take what they want from the social resources of their group without contributing anything to those resources: they are free riders or social parasites.  The takers are either cheaters who take what they want by deception, or bullies who take what they want by force.  

The makers respond to this by consenting to moral rules against taking and enforcing those rules with reputational and forcible punishments of those who violate the rules.  Reputational punishment includes ridicule, ostracism, and shunning.  Forcible punishment--including execution--is directed against the worst bullies, particularly murderers (Boehm 2012, 64-74).

Balch does not see this conflict between makers and takers among hunter-gatherers because he thinks that conflict arose only after the invention of agriculture.

"Taking" only came fully into its own when there was some real "take" to be had, when there was a redistributable surplus over and above what was required for individual survival.  The invention of agriculture set the stage.  Paleolithic hunter-gatherers lived egalitarian lives.  There was marginal advantage to be had through superior hunting/gathering/fighting/nurturing/negotiating and seduction skills, but--with only so much to go around--rarely big genetic jackpots.  Once, however, there was a possibility of massive wealth accumulations in the form of expropriated crops, all this changed (2014, 12).

"Genetic jackpots" are important for Balch because he believes that the evolution of human nature by kin selection favors what biological theorists call "inclusive fitness": we are naturally inclined to behaviors that advance the reproductive fitness of ourselves, our offspring, and our collateral relatives.  Although we experience some genetic conflicts of interest with our relatives because they are not genetically identical to us, our conflicts of interest with non-kin are much deeper.  We fight with non-kin over scarce resources as we try to take as much as we can for ourselves and our relatives.  But prior to the invention of agriculture, there wasn't much to fight over, and so it was impossible for the takers to accumulate great wealth that they had taken from the makers.  Consequently, Balch argues, Paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands were egalitarian in that there was no dominant elite of a few takers ruling over a multitude of exploited makers.

But this ignores the fact that while hunter-gatherers have always been egalitarian, their societies have achieved not an absolute equality but rather--to use Christopher Boehm's term--an "egalitarian hierarchy."  As that term suggests, hunter-gatherers see that human beings are not naturally equal in all respects, because no two human beings are the same in all respects.  By virtue of being separate individuals, human beings are naturally unequal, in any number of respects.  But they are naturally equal in their natural desire for equal liberty--their natural freedom from being ruled by others without their consent.  

A few human beings have a natural desire for dominance--to be the alpha male who rules over others--and these are those whom Balch identifies as the takers.  And while human beings in subordinate positions are naturally inclined to defer to the dominant few, the subordinates are also naturally inclined to resist being exploited by those dominant few.  Thus, Boehm observes, the political nature of human beings is ambivalent in showing the tension between dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.  The natural desire for dominance can be checked by the natural desire of subordinates not to be dominated.

In an egalitarian hierarchy, the subordinates use sanctions--such as ridicule, disobedience, ostracism, or even execution--to restrain politically ambitious individuals, those with special innate or learned propensities to dominate.  In every society, there will be leaders in some form.  But an egalitarian hierarchical society will allow only a moderate degree of leadership.  Here the power of the takers is checked by the resistance of the makers.

In a few passages of his book, Balch seems to recognize this.  In speaking about how Boehm and Richard Wrangham describe the hunter-gatherer "environment of evolutionary adaptation" (EEA), Balch sees “a strain of oligarchy” and “targeted conspiratorial killing," which points to egalitarian hierarchy and the conditions for some taker/maker conflict.  He suggests that when he says that the worst bullies had to be eliminated (59, 126-27), and “the tension between hierarchical power and leveling morality has been a constant of human history” (129).

Moreover, what Balch calls “primal morality” in the EEA corresponds to what Locke calls the “law of nature” in the hunter-gatherer state of nature (60, 126-29, 218-19).  Locke’s law of nature is enforced by the “executive power of the law of nature”—the right of everyone to punish transgressors through reputational and forcible punishment, which would be supported by Boehm and Wrangham.  What Boehm and Wrangham say about killing bullies in the EEA confirms Paul Bingham’s argument about the importance of “killing from a distance” in enforcing cooperation.

REFERENCES

Balch, Stephen H. 2014. "On the Fragility of the Western Achievement." Society 51:8-21.

Balch, Stephen H.  Naturalizing History: A Biocultural Theory of Progress.  Book manuscript.

Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Boehm, Christopher. 2012. Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. New York: Basic Books.

Contoski, Edmund. 1997. Makers and Takers: How Wealth and Progress Are Made and How They Are Taken or Prevented. Minneapolis, MN: American Liberty Publishers.

D'Amato, David. 2018. "'Makers' and 'Takers' in Libertarian Thought."  https://www.libertarianism.org.

The Primate Model of Chief Executive Rulers as Alpha Males

In most political communities around the world and throughout history, one person has held the highest political position--the office of the ruling chief executive.  There is always someone who is the big man, the chief, the monarch, the dictator, the emperor, the prime minister, or the president--the number one man (and it's usually a man).  Much of politics is all about the competition for that alpha male position.

Why is that?  Why do some people strive to be at the top, even when that striving exposes them to hardships and dangers, even death?  Why do many people defer to dominant rulers, while others resist being dominated?

The best way to answer these questions, I believe, is to say that human beings have biological drives to dominance, deference, and resistance to dominance that they share with other primates (monkeys and apes). One of the best theories supporting this view is Arnold Ludwig's primate model of political rule, which he set forth in his book King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership (University of Kentucky Press, 2002).  A slightly revised version of his model is a fundamental element of what I have called biopolitical science.  (Some years ago, I wrote "Why Males Rule," a review of Ludwig's book for the Fall 2003 issue of The Claremont Review of Books.)

Ludwig presented his theory as an empirical science based on the study of three kinds of data.  His first--and most rigorously collected and analyzed--database was the list of all the political leaders of all independent nations who held chief executive power for any length of time in the twentieth century (from January 1, 1900 to December 31, 2000), which was 1,941 individuals from 199 countries.  From this list, he then identified those who had separate encyclopedia entries in either the Encyclopedia Britannica or the Encyclopedia Americana.  He then did a bibliographic search to identify those on this shorter list for whom there was adequate data available about their personal lives and professional careers, who were selected as a sample for in-depth study and analysis.  This special sample contained 377 rulers.

He then prepared information forms to record all appropriate biographical data about all 377 rulers.  Based on these forms, he prepared data forms consisting of 182 items to be filled out for each individual, with definitions and criteria for recording all these variables.  With this, he could then do statistical comparisons among ruler types and other categorial variables to determine relative frequencies or percentages of certain characteristics or events for these rulers.

For example, Ludwig saw that 36 percent of the rulers in his sample had come to power with the help of mentors or colleagues.  He could then determine the likelihood of their betraying or remaining loyal to those who had helped them.  He found that 58 percent remained loyal, while 42 percent betrayed their friends.  He also saw that 100 percent of the tyrants and 86 percent of the monarchs were betrayers, while only 25 percent of the democratic rulers were betrayers.  It also seemed that betrayal was advantageous because while the loyalists spent an average of eight years in office, the betrayers spent an average of fourteen years in office.  He concluded that this confirmed Machiavelli's advice in The Prince that it is foolish for a new ruler to "keep faith" with those who helped him come to power: "because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them" (94-95).

Ludwig's second kind of data consisted of anecdotal biographical data to illustrate the generalizations from his statistical data.  So, for example, after giving the statistics for betrayal and loyalty, he gives six instances of betrayal by dictators and three instances by democratic rulers.  The first case comes from Pakistan:  "As prime minister of Pakistan, Bhutto appointed General Zia, a little-known military officer at the time, as chief of the army staff in 1976 because he felt he was completely trustworthy.  About one year later Zia overthrew his benefactor and hung him on the charge of murdering a political opponent" (95).  Ludwig relates these biographical anecdotes in vivid and often amusing ways that engage the reader.

This is similar to Machiavelli's writing in The Prince because he often states a general principle or maxim for prudent princes that is followed by dramatically colorful stories that illustrate the point.

Finally, Ludwig's third kind of data came from the reports of primatologists (like George Schaller, Jane Goodall, Frans de Waal, and Robert Sapolsky) that show how the striving for alpha male status among monkeys and apes resembles the political life of human beings.  For example, as evidence that political betrayal and shifting allegiances in the competition for political dominance is common in other primates, Ludwig quoted from Sapolsky's account (in A Primate's Memoir) of the political competition in the savanna baboon troop in Kenya that he had studied for over twenty years.

When Sapolsky was 21 years old, he first joined the troop of sixty baboons in 1978.  Solomon had been the alpha male for three years, but this became his last year because he was unseated by Uriah.  Then, in 1980, Saul deposed Uriah after one day of fighting.  

Saul proved to be an extraordinarily successful ruler.  Whenever he was challenged, even if it was a trivial provocation, he responded with a ferociously vicious attack.  Consequently, everyone learned to never challenge him about anything.  But he never started fights.  He never engaged in aggression pointlessly.  "Saul was what most males aspired to, if only they had a stitch of smarts or discipline or energy" (A Primate's Memoir, 103).  He was the model of a baboon Machiavellian prince.

There was a group of young males in their prime who were frustrated by their lacking the ability to individually challenge Saul.  Finally, they decided to form a cooperative coalition.  Joshua and Menasseh made coalitional appeasement gestures to each other that established their partnership.  They jointly challenged Saul, but he defeated them.  The next day, Joshua and Menasseh formed a coalition with Levi; but Saul forced them to run away after only a few seconds of fighting.  The day after that, four of them--Joshua, Menasseh, Levi, and Nebuchadnezzar--fought jointly with Saul, but they failed.

Then, the next day, these four had formed an even bigger coalition with two others--Daniel and Benjamin--so now it was six against one.  In their fight, Menasseh got in a lucky hit on Saul's haunches.  Saul fell, and all the others jumped on him.  His body was punctured with many canine bites.  He survived.  But he went to the bottom of the hierarchy.

What happened to the victorious coalition of six?  Sapolsky reports:

"The wonderfully cooperative junta that had overthrown Saul lasted all of a morning before it disintegrated into factionalism and both metaphorical and literal backbiting.  All hell broke loose for months afterward.  Joshua, Menasseh, Levi, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, and Benjamin were clearly the upper-ranking cohort now.  For example, in a social interaction, any one of them dominated a subadult like David, Daniel's old buddy.  But they didn't have a clue where they stood with respect to each other.  Ranks flip-flopped daily. . . . Chaos reigned.  Everyone was scheming, spending hours forming coalitional partnerships that would collapse within minutes of their first test.  Nearly 40 percent of the time, when it did collapse, the erstwhile partner would wind up on the other side.  The number of fights went through the roof, as did the rate of injuries" (Sapolsky, 169; Ludwig, 124).

Ludwig quotes this to show that political alliances are as easily broken up by betrayal among baboons as among human beings.

There is one weakness, however, in Ludwig's comparisons of human beings and other higher primates as showing the Machiavellian drive for alpha-male dominance:  this does not seem to be true for one ape species--the bonobos--who seem to show female dominance and a more peaceful life than is the case for the other great apes and monkeys.  Ludwig refers to this "apparent exception of the bonobos," but without explaining it (Ludwig, 8-9, 355, 376, 410).

THE PRIMATE MODEL

One way to summarize the primate model of politics is to list the similarities in the struggle for alpha-male dominance among human beings and other primates.  Here's Ludwig's list (355):

GAINING POWER

Males Dominant

No Special Experience or Skills Needed

Danger of Physical Harm

Vie with Competitors for Power

Form Alliances to Topple Leader

Repetitive Attempts to Depose Leader

Physical Prowess and Courage

Cunning and Deviousness Useful

EXERCISING POWER

Greater Access to Females

Breeding Advantage

Material Rewards

Deference by Subordinates

KEEPING POWER

Keeping Peace among Subjects

Risking Harm During Challenges

Repeat Mistakes of Past Leaders

Resist Giving Up Power

Posturings and Displays

Change in Demeanor and Manner

Fending Off Challengers

As I have indicated previously, I agree with Christopher Boehm in seeing a Lockean political rhetoric among chimpanzees that turns on three themes--dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.  Ludwig is not as clear as he should be about the theme of counter-dominance.  To make that clear, I would add a fourth part to his primate model:

LOSING POWER

The Alpha Male Is Overthrown by the Ambitious Few Who Want to Dominate

The Alpha Male Is Overthrown Because the Normally Deferential Many Resist His Oppressive Dominance

SIX KINDS OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE RULERS

Ludwig distinguishes six different ways of ruling as an alpha male--four kinds of dictators and two kinds of democrats (41):

DICTATORS

Supreme Monarchs

Consecrated by Church or Authority by Kinship to Esteemed Figure

Absolute Rule or Strong Constitutional Powers

Rule for Life

Endowed with Special Powers Such as Healing Touch, Infallibility

For Example: Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia (1932-1953)

Tyrants

Authority to Rule Based on Military Backing

Decrees and Edicts, Implemented by Force

Commonly Display Cruelty, Greed, Corruption

No Ideological Basis for Governing

For Example: Francois Duvalier ("Papa Doc"), President of Haiti (1957-1971)

Visionaries

Totalitarian Rule

Promotion of a Particular Political Ideology

Social Engineering

No Fixed Term in Office

For Example: Benito Mussolini, Prime Minister of Italy (1922-1943), Duce of the Italian Social Republic (1943-1945)

Authoritarians

Dictatorship Established to Preserve Social Stability

Emphasis on Law, Order, and Tradition

Bureaucratic Rule Common with Emphasis on Regulations

No Fixed Term in Office

For Example: Janos Kadar, First Secretary of Hungary's Communist Party (1956-1988)

DEMOCRATS

Transitional Democrats in Emerging Democracies

Rule Country After Liberation or Independence

Introduction of Constitutional Democracy with Fixed Terms in Office

Usually Show Autocratic Tendencies

Many Have Special Status as "Father of Nation"

For Example:  Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe (1987-2017)

Democratic Leaders of Established Democracies

Elected to a Limited Term in Office

Executive Powers Defined by Constitution

Balance of Power with Judicial and Legislative Bodies

Greater Emphasis on Negotiation and Compromise

For Example: Franklin Roosevelt, President of the United States (1933-1945)

We do not see these six kinds of alpha-male rulers among non-human primates.  Because many of the factors here--such as ideology and religion--arise from uniquely human traits such as language and hypersociality.  But we do see the dichotomy between dictators and democrats.  For example, Frans de Waal has observed that while rhesus monkeys show a "despotic dominance style" in which subordinates cannot challenge dominants, chimpanzees show an "egalitarian dominance style" in which subordinates can restrain dominants.  Dominant individuals are expected to mediate conflicts within the group and to lead the group in conflicts with other groups.  Among chimpanzees, dominant individuals can be challenged or even deposed if they do not properly carry out their conflict-mediation role.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PROFESSION

Holding high political office is a dangerous profession.  Being a chief executive ruler of a country is one of the most lethal activities known to human beings.  Ludwig's data shows that 12 percent of all twentieth-century rulers died a violent death--either by assassination (7 percent), execution (4 percent), or suicide (1 percent).  Within the sample of 377 rulers, the death rate was 18 percent.

Even if they are not actually killed, rulers have to worry about assassination attempts.  In the twentieth century, if the ruler was a tyrant, there was a 77 percent chance that someone would try to kill him.  For a monarch, it was a 61 percent chance.  For a visionary, a 56 percent chance.  For an authoritarian, a 46 percent chance.  Leaders in an emerging democracy had a 51 percent risk of being attacked.  Leaders in established democracies had a 19 percent chance of being exposed to attempted assassinations.

American presidents have faced many assassination attempts.  Four presidents have been killed in office--Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John Kennedy.  Others have been shot and came close to death--Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

Prior to the twentieth century, the danger of violent death for rulers was even greater.  In the first systematic and quantitative study of regicide in Europe, Manuel Eisner has collected data on the frequency of violent death and regicide among 1,513 monarchs in Europe between AD 600 and 1800 ("Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600-1800," British Journal of Criminology 51 [2011]: 556-577).  He has distinguished four categories of violent death: accident, battle death, murder, and legal execution.  He found that in the seventh century, the frequency of regicide was 2,500 murders per 100,000 years in office.  There was a long decline in regicide.  So that by the eighteenth century, the frequency of regicide was about 200 per 100,000 years in office.  By comparison, the homicide rate in Western Europe today is around 0.6-1.5 per 100,000 person-years.  Clearly, then, European kingship before the Industrial Revolution was one of the most dangerous occupations in the world, comparable to that of soldiers in combat.

Eisner found that for most of this history, regicide was carried out within the noble elite in the competition for political rule.  But, then, by the seventeenth century, regicide became increasingly a matter of legal execution--such as the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the execution of Louis XVI in 1793.  In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James II was deposed without being executed.

Even if they do not die a violent death, rulers face a high chance of bad outcomes.  In the twentieth century, tyrants faced the greatest risks: assassination (15 percent), thrown out of office by election (10 percent), deposed by coup (50 percent), or overthrown in a lost war (10 percent).  As Ludwig said, "that is a whopping 85 percent chance of leaving office in disgrace or in a casket" (120).

Simian alpha males face a similar likelihood of bad outcomes, including assassination.

In my next post, I will apply this primate model of political rule to the history of the Stuart monarchy in seventeenth century England.

The Chimpanzee Politics of Trump's "Unitary Executive Theory" of Demagogic Tyranny

                                                         "You're Fired!"  By Barry Blitt

"If the President does it, that makes it legal."

"I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."  

"He who saves his country violates no law."

That first sentence is a remark by Richard Nixon in an interview with David Frost in 1977.  This was three years after Nixon had been forced to resign to avoid impeachment for crimes associated with the Watergate break-in.  Nixon went on to explain to Frost that "in war time, a President does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution." I have written about this as an example of a president claiming the executive prerogative powers of a dictator (Arnhart 2016: 254-262).

The next two sentences are from Donald Trump.  That's what Trump says when he is accused of illegal actions in exercising presidential power.  

The third sentence has been attributed to the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and it suggests the idea that in a time of national emergency or war, the national leader must have absolute power to do whatever he thinks is necessary to save the country.  

In the second sentence, Trump is referring to the "unitary executive theory," which says that Article II of the Constitution gives the President complete power over the Executive Branch, and therefore any congressional legislation regulating or limiting that executive power of the President is unconstitutional.  So, for example, the President may rightly disregard any congressional laws that set up independent agencies outside of presidential authority or laws restricting the president's power to remove employees within the executive branch.  This theory is what justifies everything that Trump and Elon Musk have been doing to take control of the federal government, even though much of this violates federal law.

The unitary executive theory is based largely on an interpretation of the first sentence of Article II: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."  The claim is that this sentence vests all of the executive power solely and exclusively in the President.  And, therefore, the Congress cannot deny or restrict the President's absolute power over the entire Executive Branch--all of the Federal administrative agencies and departments and all of the three million civilian employees (including the USPS employees) and 1.3 million active-duty military employees.

Moreover, it is argued that this follows necessarily from the principle of the separation of powers.  To prevent the tyranny that would come from one or a few people having too much concentrated power, the executive, legislative, and judicial powers must be strictly and completely separated.  And that means that in the government of the United States, the Congress and the courts must never exercise any executive powers, which belong only to the President.  Consequently, President Trump in the exercise of his executive powers can do whatever he wants.

It is also argued that the President has the authority to act as the one supreme leader of the government because he is the only person who has been elected by the American people in a national election to fill the Office of the President at the head of the government.  This allows a popular demagogue like Trump to say he must be free to do whatever he wants to fulfill his mandate from the people.

It is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon have to decide whether this unitary executive theory as expansively interpreted by Trump is correct.

There are at least three reasons for thinking that the Supreme Court should rule that the proponents of this theory are mistaken.  First, their interpretation of Article II--and particularly, the vesting clause--violates the original meaning of the constitutional text.  This is remarkable since the advocates of this theory claim to be constitutional originalists who look for the clear meaning of the text as it was written by the constitutional framers in 1787 and ratified in 1789.

Second, the proponents of this theory fail to see that the principle of separation of powers with checks and balances does not dictate a complete separation of powers because securing a balanced government requires some partial mixing of those powers, and this was understood by the constitutional framers.

Third, the proponents of this theory do not grasp how the balancing of powers through a partial mixing of those powers is the only way to prevent a demagogic president like Trump from becoming a tyrant.  The Founders saw this threat to liberty from a Caesaristic demagogue like Trump when they warned "that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants" (The Federalist, number 1).

In explaining these three points, I will show how the need for the balancing of powers in government to check the tyrannical propensities of ambitious demagogues is rooted in the evolutionary history of the human beings.  I will move through three levels of biopolitical history: the natural history of the "chimpanzee politics" of dominance hierarchies, the cultural history of using a constitutional balance of powers to steer the ambitious striving for dominance away from tyranny, and the biographical history of ambitious individuals looking for ways to satisfy their desire for dominance (Arnhart 2009; 2012).  (I will link to previous posts that elaborate some of these ideas.)

We should see that there is a complex co-evolutionary interaction between these three levels of evolutionary history.  Natural history enables and constrains, but does not determine, cultural history.  Natural history and cultural history jointly enable and constrain, but do not determine, biographical history.  Shaped by their social and personal history, individual political actors must decide how best to satisfy their peculiar ambition for political power within the contingent circumstances that they face.

NATURAL HISTORY

Human politics is rooted in an evolutionary history of power-seeking and rivalry for dominance shared with other primates--monkeys and apes.  Frans de Waal found that Niccolo Machiavelli's Prince was the one book that most helped him understand the complex political life of chimpanzees.  Machiavelli analyzed politics as competition for power and glory organized around three orders of human beings--the "prince," who is number one, the "great ones," who are high-ranking individuals with ambition to rule; and the "people," who are the majority of individuals in a society with no ambition to rule, but who do not want to be oppressed by the "prince" or the "great ones."

Just as Machiavelli saw a balance of power as the fundamental mechanism for maintaining a stable political order that would not be despotic, de Waal saw a similar mechanism at work among chimpanzees.  Noticing how the alpha male often had to rely on the support of an ally to keep challengers down, de Waal explained this as a "balance of power: the superiority of one party over another depends on the support of a third, so that each party affects the position of the others."

Although every human society shows an order of dominance, a well-balanced society can achieve egalitarian dominance rather than despotic dominance.  De Waal observed that rhesus monkeys manifest despotic dominance, because a dominant rhesus monkey instills unremitting fear in subordinates.  But among chimpanzees, the dominant chimp often acts to protect subordinates, and if he becomes a bully, he can provoke an alliance of subordinates to throw him out of power.  Something similar seems to happen in egalitarian human communities.

Among human hunter-gatherers, the few people who are ambitious to rule can become leaders; but leaders who become too proud are attacked with social ridicule, and in extreme cases, leaders can be deposed or even executed by their followers.  Christopher Boehm argued that this supported an evolutionary political psychology of dominance, deference, and counter-dominance.  A few human beings who are ambitious for dominance will fight with one another for the highest social ranking.  Most human beings will defer to these dominant few.  But if the few dominant ones become too oppressive in exploiting the multitude, the people will resist and perhaps even overthrow the dominant ones.

CULTURAL HISTORY

Beginning with the emergence of the first archaic states about 5,000 years ago, power became ever more centralized and concentrated in a bureaucratic state under a ruling class of priests and kings that was inclined to autocratic tyranny.  When that despotic dominance became oppressive, it could provoke popular resistance and rebellion.

In this autocratic form of government, all power is concentrated in a few people or even one person with supreme sovereignty.  By contrast, some societies have had a balanced form of government, in which power is divided between independent entities that check and counterbalance one another in a system of countervailance with no supreme sovereignty.

The predominance of these two principles of government--sovereignty versus countervailance--in the cultural history of governments over the past 5,000 years suggests that despite the great diversity in the forms of government, these two principles identify the two basic models of social organization.  According to the model of sovereignty, the authority to command is hierarchically structured with the supreme power at the top.  According to the model of countervailance, the authority to command is distributed across a network of independent powers--so that power controls power--and there is no supreme power.

Scott Gordon--in Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today--has sketched the cultural history of these two models from Athenian Democracy and the Roman Republic to American constitutionalism and modern Britain.  He coined the word "countervailance" to denote the counterbalancing of powers in a social system.  Although the Oxford English Dictionary does not recognize the word "countervailance," it does recognize "countervailing" as a noun, a verb, and an adjective.

Gordon's two models correspond roughly to what David Stasavage calls "autocracy" and "democracy."

The Balanced Republic of the Founders

The American Founders clearly chose the model of countervailance, although they identified this not as a pure "democracy," but as a "republic" with a balance of powers.  As early as 1775, when the revolutionaries were first discussing what the new American constitutionalism should look like, John Adams proposed:

The Course of Events, naturally turns the Thoughts of Gentlemen to the Subjects of Legislation and Jurisprudence, and it is a curious Problem what Form of Government, is most readily and easily adopted by a Colony, upon a Sudden Emergency.  Nature and Experience have already pointed out the Solution of this Problem, in the Choice of Conventions and Committees of safety.  Nothing is wanting in Addition to these to make a compleat Government, but the Appointment of Magistrates for the due Administration of Justice.

Taking Nature and Experience for my Guide I have made the following Sketch, which may be varied in any one particular an infinite Number of Ways, So as to accommodate it to the different, Genius, Temper, Principles and even Prejudices of different People.

A Legislative, an Executive and a judicial Power, comprehend the whole of what is meant and understood by Government.  It is by balancing each of these Powers against the other two, that the Effort in human Nature towards Tyranny, can alone be checked and restrained and any degree of Freedom preserved in the Constitution (Letter to Richard Henry Lee, November 15, 1775).

What Adams calls "Nature and Experience" is what I call natural history and cultural history.  The natural evolutionary history of the human species explains "the Effort in human Nature towards Tyranny," and the cultural history of balancing the three powers of government shows us how to check and restrain that natural tendency to tyranny and preserve freedom from tyranny.  But then at the individual level of history, Adams recognizes that his sketch for a constitution, which he elaborated in his Thoughts on Government in 1776, will have to be accommodated "to the different, Genius, Temper, Principles and even Prejudices of different People" in constitutional and ratifying conventions.

Adams and the other Founders generally agreed on a form of government that would balance the three powers--legislative, executive, and judicial--so that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition," and none of the three powers could become tyrannical (Federalist, number 51).  But they were unsure of how the presidency should be designed to fit into this scheme of balanced government.  At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Alexander Hamilton proposed a presidency that looked like an elective monarchy.  But others wanted the president to be constrained by an executive council of people because they feared giving all the presidential powers to one person.

Once they agreed to give the presidential powers to one person, they worried about how he would be selected.  They did not want a national popular election of the president because they feared that the people would choose a popular demagogue who would lead a party faction contrary to the public good.

They devised a complicated indirect system of selection through the Electoral College.  They were confident that "the process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications," that the "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" would not elevate a man to the presidency, and that "there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue" (Federalist, number 68).  

This was a mistake, perhaps the single biggest mistake in the Constitution.  Within the first ten years of the government, the selection of the president came under the control of two intensely partisan political parties.  And within fifty years, most of the state legislatures had handed over the selection of presidential electors to popular vote.

Republican Remedies for Presidential Democracy

From the beginning, presidents persistently claimed presidential control of the executive branch, which would support the idea of a unitary executive at the head of a presidential government (Calabresi and Yoo 2008).  But beginning in the 19th century, the cultural history of the American state shows the emergence of various extraconstitutional contrivances for constraining presidentialism in favor of republican balancing, which Skowronek, Dearborn, and King (2021) have called "republican remedies" for presidential democracy.

For example, early in the 19th century, Congress controlled presidential nominations: the congressional party selected the national candidates and then coordinated the local electors in supporting the candidates.  By the middle of the 19th century, local party bosses controlled the nomination of candidates.  And presidents were expected to hand out jobs in the executive branch to all the factions of their party.

By the turn of the 20th century, Progressive reformers attacked this control of the executive branch by the spoils system.  They set out to render executive administration nonpartisan by providing civil service protections for the government workforce and by establishing various independent regulatory commissions that were largely insulated from presidential control.

To be continued . . .