The evolution of political society: an essay in political anthropology

The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology 71st ed. Edition by Morton Herbert Fried Fried outlines perhaps what seems to be a standard model regarding political development: We have moved from primitive egalitarian bands to rank and stratified societies, and then the state, where there’s “hierarchy, differential degrees of access to basic resources, obedience to officials, and defense of the area.” This is “the Evolution of Political Society.” Fried offers this development schema without explicit evaluation, though the book cover does exactly that (apes at the bottom, wise/strong man sitting alone, at the top of historical humanity). He describes what he sees as the truth about the way humans have organized themselves for the purposes of controlling access to resources (“power,” per Laswell’s definition) and the maintenance of internal order and external defense.