No society with economic surplus has ever abolished arbitrary-set hierarchy

Evidence

Furthermore, every attempt to abolish arbitrary-set, group-based hierarchy within societies of economic surplus have, without exception, failed. These failures have ranged from attempts at massive, revolutionary transformation (e.g., the French, Russian, Mexican, Chinese, and American civil rights revolutions) to transformatory experiments within small and isolated utopian communities (e.g., New Harmony, Indiana; New Lanark, Scotland; the Oneida Community, New York). This apparently perfect correlation between the production of sustainable economic surplus and the emergence of arbitrary-set social hierarchy appears to imply that systems of arbitrary-set hierarchy will emerge whenever the proper economic conditions allow. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3171

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s work on institutions emerging under economic conditions, and to theories that material surplus drives stratification. — connects to: No permanent human social group has ever been fully egalitarian — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 56
• SEED: The claim that every egalitarian revolution has failed could anchor an essay on why material abundance seems to produce rather than dissolve hierarchy.