The descriptive-explanatory dimension of my theory of social change wrought by the perpetual struggle between hierarchs and resisters is an account of how change occurs. It makes no judgments as to whether changes are progressive or otherwise. The normative dimension evaluates the changes produced by the struggle, identifying some of them as morally progressive. This chapter has two goals: to clarify the nature of the descriptive-explanatory dimension of the theory and to defend its normative dimension against two assaults on the very idea of moral progress.

Before proceeding, I want to make it clear why understanding social change is of exceptional importance. The first reason is that humans are historical beings: To understand who and what we are now, it is necessary to know where we came from; that requires understanding the changes that have shaped the social environment that shapes us. The second reason is forward-looking: If we understand the processes and patterns of past social changes, we may be able to exert more control on future changes and perhaps even increase the probability that they will be progressive. Or at least we may be able to avoid the most regressive changes.

Some social changes are more important than others. Those I examine in this book are among the most important. They are changes in the concepts and norms we use to evaluate the unequal power relations that hierarchies include and changes in the institutions that constitute and regulate hierarchies. I will explain how major changes in moral concepts, norms, and institutions are produced by the struggle between hierarchs and those who resist hierarchical power. That struggle is a contest for extremely high stakes. It is, among other things, a battle for freedom. So, there are two ways to look at this book, more generally, as a study of social change; and more specifically, as an examination of the nature of the struggle for liberation.

Resistance – by which I mean deliberate efforts to control, lessen, or depose hierarchical power – is not the only cause of the destruction of hierarchies or reductions in their ability to dominate. In his outstanding book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality, Walter Scheidel documents how violence, not only in revolutions, but also in interstate wars and in the anarchic conditions of state collapse, often reduces material inequalities and with them inequalities in power.Footnote ¹ Similarly, in another exceptionally valuable book, Indigenous Continent, Pekka Hämäläinen hypothesizes that several hierarchical indigenous polities in Meso-America and the Southwest of what is now the United States collapsed from a combination of two causes, both resulting from unfavorable climate changes: a dramatic loss in agricultural productivity and the hierarchs’ loss of legitimacy due to their failure to avert that loss.Footnote ² In the cases discussed by Scheidel and Hämäläinen, the processes that led to the destruction of hierarchies were not initiated by resistance, that is, by deliberate opposition to them. In the present work, I will focus only on cases of deliberate efforts to curb or destroy hierarchical power.

Theorizing Social Change

This book offers a theory of social change. But it does not offer a theory that purports to encompass all of the sources and processes of social change. Nor does it claim to identify one cause of social change that is more powerful or basic than any other. The social world is more complicated than that. In fact, the predominant view now is that the physical world is too complicated to be captured by a unified theory. Reducing all of the factors influencing social change to one is if anything less plausible than reducing all of the natural sciences, including biology, to physics. My project is more modest and saner: to advance the thesis that there is one important source of social change that has been neglected by theorists of social change, the ongoing struggle between hierarchs and those who resist hierarchy.

I am convinced that we can only hope for a comprehensive pluralistic, not a unified, theory of social change. By a comprehensive pluralistic theory, I mean a theory that includes all the major causes of all the most important types of social changes, but which, unlike a unified theory, does not purport to reduce them all to one basic causal mechanism or one basic concept. The most reasonable research strategy, at least for the foreseeable future and I suspect indefinitely, is to identify various causes of social change in particular domains and to develop mutually consistent theories of how these causes operate, without pretending that any one of them explains all types of social changes or even all types of major social changes.

My proximate goal in this book is to construct the main features of a descriptive-explanatory theory that picks out one important cause of social change and explains how it causes change. My ulterior goal is to make reasoned, fact-responsive moral assessments of the effects of this cause and in particular to try to ascertain when it produces morally progressive changes and when it does not. Having that knowledge would be invaluable. It would help us to achieve social change that is progressive or at least to avoid destructive or regressive social changes or being mired in a deficient stable equilibrium. I will argue that the perpetual struggle has been one important source of moral progress and may produce progress in the future, not that it is the only source of progress.

If we abandon the project of developing a comprehensive, unified theory of social change, it becomes clear that the existing theories of social change are often not fundamentally incompatible but rather at least, in part, complimentary. So long as they do not pretend to identify a cause that is responsible for all forms and types of social change, there is the possibility that they are simply focusing on causes of different phenomena of social change or on different levels of explanation of the same phenomena.

Theoretical competition occurs only if two or more theories hypothesize not just different causes for the same phenomena but different causes operating at the same level of explanation. There is no inconsistency between identifying C as the proximate cause of a social change SC and C1 as a cause anterior to C, that is, further back in the causal chain that resulted in SC. For that reason, there is often less disagreement among theories than at first meets the eye. In many cases, there is no disagreement at all, except perhaps with regard to which level of causal explanation is most illuminating.

What is sometimes overlooked is that there is no general answer to the question of which level of causal explanation is preferable. It all depends upon what one is interested in. In some cases, we are especially interested in a causal explanation at a certain level because we can intervene at that level to produce outcomes more to our liking. For some purposes, a closely proximate cause will do; for others, we need to go further back. Too often theorists want to privilege their own view as the best or as the only valid theory because they think it identifies a link in the causal chain that they assume, without good reason, is the appropriate stopping point.

I will focus on how the dynamic, co-evolutionary interaction between opposing coalitions in a contest over unequal power causes changes in moral concepts, justifications, norms, and institutions. I will say something about the causal antecedents of this causal factor, in particular, by speculating on the evolutionary origins of the human psychological traits that fuel the contest. But I will make no attempt to go further back than that. Nor need I do so. My main message will be that the struggle between hierarchs and those who resist their power produces changes in that part of morality that speaks to the proper ways of some people coming to have and exercising institutionalized power over others and that this struggle also produces corresponding institutional changes that serve to manage the inequalities in power that define hierarchies.

I do not assume that the causal relationships I explore stand alone, that they can operate autonomously, or in all situations. There is no doubt a complex set of enabling conditions, circumstances that are necessary for the perpetual struggle in its various aspects to produce the changes I identify. But in most cases, I think what I say will be interesting even in the absence of a thorough specification of those enabling conditions.

The following outline will clarify my theoretical ambitions in this book, by locating my theoretical project in the larger domain of a theory of social change.

1. I. A comprehensive, pluralistic descriptive-explanatory theory of large-scale social change, a theory that encompasses all of the most important causes of all the most important types of social change (presently unavailable and not what I will attempt to supply)

   1. A. A descriptive-explanatory theory of the ongoing struggle between hierarchs and resisters as one driver of major changes in political-moral concepts, justifications, norms, and institutions (what I will supply).

      1. 1. A descriptive-explanatory theory of revolution as one form the perpetual struggle takes and one cause of major changes in political-moral concepts, justifications, norms, institutions. (what I will also supply).

This book concerns items A and 1. It therefore offers only two parts of I, a descriptive-explanatory theory of major social change that encompasses all the most important causes of important social changes. My claim is not that the morally weaponized struggle between hierarchs and resisters is the only driver of social change, but rather that it is one significant driver. Nor am I claiming that morality originated in that struggle. My claims are about changes in morality, not about its origins. And, of course, I acknowledge that major social changes may occur independently of the struggle between hierarchs and resisters. For example, the development of technologies could be another major driver of change, as could certain demographic processes, and wars between societies.Footnote ³

My thesis is that the struggle between hierarchs and those who challenge hierarchical power produces important political-moral concepts, norms, and justifications regarding the proper possession and exercise of unequal power. But I do not claim that the struggle as I conceive it produces all important political-moral concepts.

Economic Hierarchies

I draw a distinction between efforts to reduce or eliminate what are perceived to be abuses of hierarchical power, the subject of this book, and efforts to compel hierarchs to address problems that are not of their making, not primarily due to their actions or omissions. The latter efforts do not assume abuses of hierarchical power; yet they have nonetheless sometimes also contributed to the emergence of new moral-political concepts. For example, in late eighteenth-century France, on the eve of the Revolution, there were protests demanding a lower price for bread, a very limited and specific demand regarding the conditions for the distribution of one very important resource. These protests were not the expression of a principled understanding of the role of the state regarding material resources generally. Nor were they animated by a conception of distributive justice. In fact, it is not clear that the concept of distributive justice was even available at that time. It most likely only emerged later in the history of the perpetual struggle.

If the state was fixing the price of bread and people knew this, those participating in bread riots may have conceived of their actions as protests against the abuse of state power, on the assumption that if the state was to fix the price of bread, it should fix a price that made it affordable to the common people. In that case, their protests would count as “resistance to hierarchy” as I employ that phrase in this book. If, in contrast, the state was not regulating the cost of bread, and protests were first directed against bakers or grain farmers, and only subsequently against the state for not curbing the supposed greed of bakers and grain farmers, then the protests would not fall within my analytic framework: They would not be engaged in resistance to the state, the most comprehensive and powerful hierarchy, grounded in the assumption that the state was abusing its power. Yet such behavior has sometimes been the predecessor of transformative challenges to political hierarchies.

Growing concerns about material inequalities that were not initially framed as complaints about the abuse of state power eventually produced profound changes in how the state, the most powerful and comprehensive hierarchy, was conceived. At least by the late nineteenth century and more clearly in the twentieth, conceptions of distributive justice had developed, along with the idea that the state was the primary agent of distributive justice. Matters that previously had not been thought of as requiring action by the state, including lessening the human damage of economic downturns, were now understood to be within its domain of duties. This new conception of the role of the state included the idea that states should provide a set of “positive” or welfare rights for their citizens, ranging from unemployment subsidies to a guaranteed minimum income and, in the case of contemporary Sweden, a commitment to keeping inequalities of wealth and income within certain limits. This was a transformative expansion of the understanding of the duties of the state and a corresponding enlargement of the grounds for challenging that most comprehensive hierarchy.

More specifically, it came to be widely thought that the state has a duty to address problems that arise from the workings of markets and that its legitimacy is called into question if it did not act accordingly. These new demands on the highest-order political hierarchy were not grounded in an assumption that the state was abusing its power; rather, the premise was that it was culpable for not using its power to address problems created by the growing prevalence and power of markets, in particular, great inequalities of wealth and economic cycles that brought large-scale unemployment and reduced wages. People came to expect and demand that the highest-order political hierarchy should constrain economic inequality and they challenged it when it failed to do so.

To the extent that economic inequalities are a function of persisting, institutionalized unequal economic relationships, one must acknowledge that there are not just political hierarchies, but also economic hierarchies. And one may rightly attribute unjust material inequalities and domination to the workings of economic hierarchies. The idea would be that an economic hierarchy exists when some subset of the population that does not occupy official political roles exercises significant powers over the economy and hence over the distribution of wealth that the economy produces, that this economic elite possesses powers that others do not have; and that such unequal power is often exercised in ways that produce domination, not just in the political sphere, but also in the workplace, as well as distributive injustices.

One can also acknowledge that there are complex interactions between political and economic hierarchies and that causal influences between them go in both directions. More specifically, one can observe that where there are persisting relations of economic inequality, the state, in response to pressure from economic hierarchs, has typically supported such relations, using its powers in effect to institutionalize and strengthen economic hierarchies. One could then provide an explanation of the emergence of the belief that instead of supporting economic hierarchies that involve domination or exploitation or other types of distributive injustice, the state should restrain or even abolish them. And one could then proceed to provide an analysis of how resistance to specifically economic hierarchies produces moral and institutional change. I will not go down that path in this book, chiefly because doing so would require doubling its length and constructing a much more complicated descriptive-explanatory theory. Instead, I will focus primarily on resistance to perceived abuses of broadly political hierarchical power – especially the power of the modern state – while acknowledging that the distinction between political and economic hierarchies is an idealization and a rather misleading one at that.

Marx on Social Change

Any theory of social change, including mine, must come to grips with Marx’s theory, for two reasons: It is the most intellectually influential theory of social change, and it has had the greatest effect in the world. I will have more to say about Marx’s theory in Chapter 2, but for now, I will note four similarities with my theory and four differences. The similarities are first, that both Marx’s theory and mine hold that conflict is a driver of social change; second, that ideology figures heavily in both theories; third, that social change, in many cases, is not the result of anyone’s deliberate intention to bring it about; and fourth, that an especially prominent cause of social change is the contest to determine who shall control the social surplus, the fruits of human productivity that exceed the requirements of subsistence.

The main differences are these. First, unlike Marx, at least on one plausible interpretation of his view, I do not claim that there are patterns in the struggle that conform to laws of social change that make specified outcomes predictable if not certain. My descriptive-explanatory theory is not a deterministic theory of history. More specifically, although I show that the perpetual struggle between hierarchs and resisters sometimes produces morally progressive results, I conclude that there is no good reason to believe that improvement is inevitable, no guarantee that domination, oppression, exploitation, and injustice will be overcome. In contrast, Marx appears to think not only that a communist revolution is inevitable because of the internal “contradictions” of capitalism, but also that we can be confident that it will usher in a new kind of society that will be a remarkable improvement compared to all that has gone before. Second, I do not assume that the opposing parties to the conflict over hierarchy are always two classes in Marx’s sense, the group that has control over the means of production and the one that lacks it. Instead, I hold that each party to the struggle will sometimes find it advantageous to build a more effective coalition by extending membership to previously excluded or ignored groups, and these groups need not be classes in Marx’s sense. Third, I do not claim that all significant social changes stem ultimately from changes in a society’s dominant mode of production. That is one manifestation of my skepticism about unified theories of social change. Fourth, in my view, both status quo-supporting ideologies and resister ideologies (including revolutionary ideologies) play a significant role in social change. In contrast, Marx only recognizes ideologies that support the oppressive existing social order.

I will argue that Marx’s failure to appreciate the motivational power of ideologies that challenge, rather than support, oppressive social orders prevents him from developing a satisfactory account of anti-capitalist, revolutionary motivation and hence of successful revolutionary action. There is a curious asymmetry in Marx’s theory of how the revolution that will topple capitalism will occur. On the one hand, he attributes an insoluble, fatal collective action problem to the capitalist class. He thinks that even if every capitalist understands that continuing to wring surplus value from the proletariat will result in the latter’s “immiseration” and the disintegration of the capitalist system, structural forces in that system compel each capitalist to persist in this self-destructive behavior. On the other hand, Marx believes that purely self-interested motivation will overcome or avoid any collective action problems the proletariat faces. Or rather, he apparently does not even consider the possibility that purely self-interested behavior on the part of the proletariat cannot overcome obstacles to successful revolutionary collective action. Consequently, he does not see that a revolutionary ideology may be needed if the proletariat is to engage in concerted action to end capitalism and create the new order. Such an ideology, as I will explain in Chapter 2, would include moral commitments that either lead the proletariat to avoid the cost–benefit calculations that can thwart collective action or to give greater weight to those commitments if they do engage in such calculations.

His prediction that capitalist exploitation will drive the proletariat to the point where revolution is the only alternative has, of course, turned out to be false in the more developed capitalist systems. The best explanation of why it has turned out to be false is that the capitalists possessed and effectively utilized a resource for solving their collective action problem that the proletariat lacked, namely, decisive influence on the behavior of the state. Beginning chiefly with Bismarck’s Germany, the major capitalist countries developed social welfare programs and labor regulations that avoided the immiseration of the proletariat but were compatible with the continued dominance of the capitalist class. In effect, by exerting their influence on the state, the capitalists created a self-binding mechanism in the form of compulsory taxation to finance the welfare state and a system of enforced labor regulations. They thereby undercut the revolutionary motivation fueled by the desperation that Marx counted on.

Why Understanding the Perpetual Struggle is Important

It is very likely that hierarchy is unavoidable in well-functioning complex, large-scale, diverse societies. For in such societies there is a need, not just for a division of labor but also for hierarchy, for a structure of authority, a persisting pattern of institutionalized relationships in which some have decision-making authority and the power to see that their decisions are implemented that others lack, because this is required to achieve and sustain the incredibly complex coordination such societies require.

There is a substantial literature in organization theory that supports this hypothesis. It makes the case that hierarchy is needed to execute the complex tasks that such societies must undertake, because it reduces transaction costs, enables more rapid decisions, makes an organization more resilient in response to setbacks and better able to adapt to new challenges.Footnote ⁴

If the kind of society we live in and want to continue to live in requires hierarchy, then understanding the evolution of strategies for managing hierarchy is not just a matter of historical interest. It is of vital practical importance. The hope is that we can discern important patterns in the struggle and determine which techniques for managing hierarchy prevent domination or exploitation or other injustices – or at least reduce them – while preserving the vital benefits of hierarchy. In calling the struggle perpetual, I am indicating that the task of managing hierarchy is never-ending, because, at least so long as large-scale, complex societies exist, there will always be a need for some form of hierarchy and hierarchs will always exhibit a tendency toward domination. In short, there can be no final solution to the problem of hierarchical domination – short of abolishing hierarchies – because hierarchs adapt to efforts to control them.

Accordingly, we need an empirically supported account of the consequences of various types of efforts to constrain or replace hierarchies in order to determine what we ought to do when faced with the inevitability of reliance on them. We need to know which forms of resistance to hierarchy, under which conditions, are likely to succeed, and at what costs. And to know what counts as success and how the costs and benefits of regulating or deposing hierarchies are to be weighed, we need to engage in systematic moral thinking. We need a theory that includes both a descriptive-explanatory element and a normative element, with the latter being informed by the former.

A Naturalistic Approach to the Normative Issues

As far as the normative dimension of my theory of social change goes, my methodology is an example of the “naturalistic turn” that has occurred in some domains of contemporary philosophy. The term “naturalistic” is ambiguous, however. On one interpretation, it denotes an attempt to reduce normative matters to factual matters. That is not my intention for two reasons. First, I doubt that it can be done. That is because, in my judgment, all attempts to reduce the normativity of moral judgments and concepts to facts have failed, and I am unable to envision a change of argumentative strategy that would bring success. Second, if a reduction of the normative to the factual could be achieved in the case of morality, it is not obvious how illuminating it would be, at least from the standpoint of determining what we ought to do. Suppose, for example, that we come to know that moral judgments are nothing more than brain states.Footnote ⁵ That information provides no guidance whatsoever as to whether one should do this or that in any given situation. Similarly, knowing that a table is nothing more than a collection of molecules with considerable space between them does not help one know how to build, repair, or use a table.

My non-reductionist naturalism has two components. The first is a commitment to grounding normative reasoning about a particular phenomenon in the best available empirically informed descriptive-explanatory theory that applies to that phenomenon. “Grounding” here does not mean deriving. Rather, it means that the factual premises on which normative judgments and reasoning rely must be consistent with if not supported by the best available descriptive-explanatory theory of the phenomena referenced in those premises.

For example, a theory of the ethics of revolution should be informed by the best available, empirically supported account of what revolutions are actually like. If, as I shall argue later, attention to how revolutions actually unfold reveals that the most daunting and distinctive ethical problems of revolution occur before revolutionaries are capable of making war, then it becomes clear that a theory of the ethics of revolutionary violence that is restricted to the ethics of revolutionary war-making will be seriously deficient. It will start too far down the road, unwittingly leap-frogging over two of the most difficult and distinctive problems revolutionaries face: how to get enough people to join in the revolutionary effort (the participation problem) and how to ensure that participation is effectively organized (the coordination problem). In their attempts to solve both problems, revolutionaries often resort to violence, including violence prohibited by basic, widely accepted moral norms and that is directed not just against the regime, but against those they seek to liberate. Violence against those they seek to liberate may be necessary for ensuring sufficient participation; that is, it may be necessary to use it to raise the costs of nonparticipation to the point where participation is the prudent option. Violence to eliminate rivals for the leadership role may be necessary if adequate coordination of participation is to be achieved. It is understandable that revolutionaries often resort to violence in both of these ways, given that in the cases where a revolution is most needed, they lack access to institutional resources for solving these two problems in a relatively consensual, peaceful, morally permissible manner.

Yet, so far, normative theories of revolution have not clearly distinguished between revolutionary war-making and the revolutionary violence that precedes and enables it. Nor have they appreciated the moral implications of the fact that revolutionaries must solve the participation and coordination problems before they are in a position to wage a war. The best explanation of this mistaken framing is that theorists have simply transplanted just war theory, which deals with the ethics of war-making by states against one another, to the domain of revolutionary violence, without noticing how different revolution is from interstate wars. Normative work has not been grounded in a sound descriptive-explanatory account.

The second element of my naturalistic approach is a commitment to investigating normative issues in the light of what we know, through the natural and social sciences, about human psychological capacities and in particular their capacities to understand and conform to moral norms. In other words, we should keep in mind that our concern is with ethics for humans, not for ideal agents. In the main, this will be a matter of recognizing that in the actions that contribute to large-scale social change both self-interest and moral motivation play a role. More specifically, I will show how self-interest is often best served by the strategic deployment of moral norms and concepts.

A conclusion often drawn from the second naturalistic methodological commitment is that judgments about what we ought to do should take into account what is feasible due to the limitations of our evolved psychology.Footnote ⁶ This is good advice and I have tried to follow it in this and other works. But I have to say that its implications in particular cases can be quite unclear for the simple reason that we do not know the limits of our capabilities. That is because what we are capable of is not just a matter of our psychology, but of how our psychology operates in different environments. What we are incapable of in one environment we may be capable of in another. And we may not yet have constructed an environment that would stretch our moral capacities to the maximum. If we could do so, then presumably we ought to. In other words, if what we can now do does not measure up to our moral principles, the proper response may not be to trim back the principles, but to increase our capacities, if we are able to do so. Creating environments in which we can get the most out of our capacities is one way to reduce the gap between what we believe we ought to do and what we are presently capable of doing. Using biomedical interventions to change the capacities is another, at least in principle.Footnote ⁷

The danger is that our assessment of what is psychologically feasible will be parochial, that it will be based on an unrepresentative sample of historical experience grounded in environments that prevent the full expression of our powers. And that will make us unduly conservative. At any rate, I think it will become evident as my argument unfolds that nothing I say in the normative domain is inconsistent with acknowledging the cognitive and motivational limitations of human beings. More specifically, my account of the perpetual struggle will not be “idealistic” in the pejorative sense of that term (i.e., unrealistic) for two reasons: It will explain how moral appeals supplement and, in fact, enable the use of force rather than substitute for it; and it will provide an evolutionary explanation of the motivational roots of the struggle that does not invoke moral motivation. Further, as I have already indicated, my theory is not idealistic in the sense of neglecting the importance of interests in explaining social change. It emphasizes that moral commitments, embedded in ideologies, can contribute to the advancement of interests in two ways: by providing justifications for self-interested behavior that otherwise would be prohibited by moral principles and by overcoming or avoiding collective action problems that would otherwise thwart interests in overthrowing dominating hierarchies.

A Non-Evaluative Conception of Hierarchy

Given the nature of my project in this book, it is important to operate with a conception of hierarchy that is morally neutral, purely descriptive, and not normative, conveying only the idea of a structure of relations characterized by inequality of power. We must do that if we are to allow for the possibility that there can be hierarchies that are not dominating, exploitive, oppressive, unjust, or otherwise seriously morally deficient. We also need an evaluatively neutral conception of hierarchy in order to observe the distinction between the descriptive-explanatory and normative aspects of my project.

I will use the term “hierarchy” in a very general sense: A hierarchy is a structure of unequal power, consisting of relations in which some exercise control over others that others do not exercise over them. A comprehensive hierarchy, as I noted earlier, is one in which those at the top of the structure exert power over virtually everyone else in a given society. The modern state is the paradigm of a comprehensive hierarchy in this general sense of the term.

In this understanding of hierarchy, a regime in which a single leader exercised control over everyone else without the aid of subordinate administrators would count as a hierarchy. But that is not the usual case if it has ever existed. Instead, hierarchies typically exhibit a layered structure: Those in the lower levels of the structure take orders from those above them and must seek approval from them, while those at the highest level exercise power over all those below them and need not seek their approval for decisions.Footnote ⁸ In the case of comprehensive hierarchies, the layered system as a whole would exert control over the general population and individuals higher in the layered system would exercise control over those below them.

Before I proceed further, a word of caution is in order. My descriptive-explanatory account of the perpetual struggle does not assume that there is a clear or fixed boundary between hierarchs and resisters. The same people can cooperate with a hierarchy in some respects and resist it in others; and some members of a hierarchy may challenge some of the exercises of power the hierarchy includes while endorsing others. More importantly, my emphasis on the need to form and sustain coalitions includes the idea that those who support an existing hierarchy and those who challenge it will try to recruit people from the opposing coalition to strengthen their own. To the extent that they succeed, opposing coalitions will be fluid regarding memberships.

It is true that when the struggle produces democratization broadly understood – that is, when the population at large has secure opportunities for meaningful participation in political institutions – the distinction between hierarchs and subordinates is to that extent blurred. Yet even in robustly democratized political orders, hierarchy remains: Government officials have powers that ordinary citizens lack. And that disparity creates opportunities for domination.

One more clarification is needed. In most cases, those who resist hierarchy are the victims of the abuses of hierarchical power, the individuals and groups who are subject to domination by hierarchs. Yet this is not always the case. Sometimes a group will resist a hierarchy – will attempt to constrain its exercise of power or overthrow it entirely – on behalf of others who are the victims of its domination. This is the case with movements to abolish slavery and, more recently, efforts to improve the treatment of nonhuman animals.

Alternative Conceptions of Domination

I have characterized this book as an inquiry into the struggle against the domination that is facilitated by hierarchy. Here it will be helpful to distinguish three distinct philosophical understandings of what domination is. All three start with the idea that one is dominated when one’s choices, plans, or well-being are vulnerable to unwanted, arbitrary interference.

These philosophical conceptions of domination differ as to their views on what does the interfering. Classical republican theory holds that the unwanted, arbitrary interference is the result of the actions or omissions of some particular persons or groups of persons. A second, more expansive account adds that interference also may be the effect of structural features of the social-political environment, including hierarchies. A third and still more expansive view adds to the first two sources of interference the idea that one’s own beliefs can also arbitrarily interfere with one’s choices, plans, and well-being.

In my judgment, the third, most expansive account of the sources of unwanted, arbitrary interference provides the best philosophical understanding of domination. In an article titled “Prisoners of Misbelief,” I argued that we can be rendered unfree by our own beliefs,Footnote ⁹ and I examined the various ways in which our beliefs can interfere in arbitrary, unwanted ways with achieving what is in our interest or our commitment to following the moral norms we have internalized and can also prevent us from acting autonomously. In other words, I argued that one can be dominated by one’s own beliefs. Such domination occurs, for example, when one’s ideological beliefs systematically thwart one’s pursuit of one’s own good by mischaracterizing what is in one’s interest. One’s being dominated by false ideological beliefs can result in accepting a social order that dominates one. This understanding of domination is compatible with workers also being dominated by certain individuals or groups. It allows one to say, for example, that capitalists are able to dominate workers in part because the latter are dominated by false ideological beliefs.

If we stick with the first, least expansive conception of domination, the Classical Republican characterization, then when we say that a hierarchy is an instance of domination, we will mean that those who occupy the positions of greater power that constitute hierarchy act in ways that count as unwanted, arbitrary interference with the choices, life-plans, well-being, or autonomy of those who are subordinate to them. This widely accepted conception of domination allows me to say much of what I want to say about the perpetual struggle, without having to defend the somewhat more controversial understanding of domination captured by the second and third conceptions. And one can employ it fruitfully without denying that social structures or a person’s own belief can dominate them.

I will emphasize, however, that one of the ways that hierarchs dominate is by using their superior power to inculcate ideological beliefs that interfere with individuals’ pursuit of their own good by disguising the fact that the social order systematically disadvantages them. The larger point here is that hierarchical domination, if it is durable, rarely relies exclusively on force; beliefs also matter. I will elaborate this point when I discuss the role of ideologies in the perpetual struggle.

Domination understood according to any of the three philosophical conceptions is not the only concept for criticizing hierarchies. Hierarchies can also be described as unjust, oppressive, or exploitive. I will generally use “domination” as shorthand for a set of negative characterizations of hierarchies, including exploitation, oppression, and injustice, all of which can be thought of as abuses of power or wrongful exercises of power.

I think that “domination” is an apt general term for abuses or wrongful exercises of hierarchical power because it conveys the idea that those who possess power over others act in ways that convey a sense of their superiority and a corresponding lack of equality and reciprocity in their relationship to those over whom they exercise power. This very general understanding of domination encompasses the three philosophical conceptions but is also broad enough to cover conceptions of exploitation, oppression, and injustice that may not be reducible to any of the three philosophical conceptions.

As will become clear as my investigation proceeds, the struggle against hierarchy produces new concepts for criticizing hierarchical power. For example, broad terms like “tyranny” are supplemented by more fine-grained terms, including those, like “exploitation,” which focus on what we now call distributive injustice.

Morality as the Product of Conflict

The idea that human moralities emerged in response to conflict is not new. Evolutionary thinkers hypothesize that humans developed moralities because early human groups who possessed these moralities had a competitive advantage, in terms of reproductive fitness, over groups that did not, driving the latter to extinction.Footnote ¹⁰ That explains why all human groups of which we have knowledge have had moralities.

The view presented in this volume is strikingly different. It identifies conflicts within society as an important driver of the evolution of some of the most important elements of human morality, more specifically morality in the political domain: morality so far as it speaks to the proper allocation of and uses of unequal power. According to this view, then, morality, in substantial part, is the child of conflict over unequal power, the perpetual struggle between those who seek to dominate others and those who resist domination – or seek to become the new dominators.

A Focus on Revolution

In Chapter 2, I descend from Chapter 1’s analysis of the general structure and patterns of the perpetual struggle to focus on the most dramatic form resistance to hierarchy can take, when those who find an existing hierarchy unacceptable dispense with the idea of restraining or reforming it and instead become revolutionaries, seeking to destroy it and institute a new order. I do so for three reasons. First, in the case of revolution, the moral stakes of the struggle between hierarchs and resisters are highest and the ethical problems most difficult, as I will make clear in subsequent chapters. As such, revolution provides a demanding test for my normative inquiry. In contrast, the moral stakes are often lower when reform is the issue; and some cases they may be so low that one may be more prone in that context to doubt that there is only one valid moral position to take. Consequently, judgments as to whether this or more reform would best promote moral progress will be less certain.

Second, as I have already noted in the Preface, the normative dimension of a theory of social change should shed light on the perennial question “Which is the best path toward moral progress, reform or revolution?” and to answer that question we must understand what revolutions are like and what their prospects for achieving improvement are under various conditions. Third, when we envision cases where there is the strongest justification for revolution, we think of a political order that is both horrible and impervious to efforts to reform it, what I shall call a “resolute severe tyranny.” In that kind of case, talk of normative ethical relativism – the view that statements about right and wrong must always be indexed to particular moralities – rings hollow; and talk of moral progress seems entirely warranted.Footnote ¹¹ Any regime that approached the depravity of the Third Reich, which exterminated millions and sought to exterminate millions more and enslave many more still, would not just be wrong only from the standpoint of some particular moralities; it would be wrong simpliciter. And if such a regime could be replaced by even a minimally decent one, surely that would count as moral progress, not just progress if a certain moral standpoint is assumed but not from the standpoint of other valid or reasonable moralities. In brief, the judgments we make about the nature of regimes against which revolution would be most clearly justified are moral judgments we reasonably consider to be objective or at least intersubjectively valid. A focus on revolution makes it clear, then, that the discourse of moral progress is coherent and can be substantive.

It is important to emphasize, however, that the descriptive-explanatory theory I advance applies not just to revolutions but also to less violent and more temporally extended processes of large-scale social change.Footnote ¹² The plausibility of that claim is established by Chapter 1, which discusses a number of changes in moral concepts, norms, and institutions produced by interactions of hierarchs and resisters that did not involve revolution.

Applying the Naturalistic Approach to Revolution

My approach to the normative issues of revolution is atypical of philosophical work on this topic in three respects. First, as I have already indicated, it is naturalistic: My working assumption is that to illuminate the ethics of revolutions and of interventions in revolutions, it is necessary to understand how revolutions actually happen. More specifically, I will argue that revolutions occur in quite different contexts and that the character of the context makes a difference as to the probable outcomes of a revolution and to the ethical problems revolutionaries and potential interveners face. Second, I will show that ideologies can and often do play an important role in revolutions and I will explain in detail just how they do so. Finally, I will argue that different revolutionary contexts favor the predominance of different revolutionary ideologies and that some revolutionary ideologies help solve the practical, morally fraught problems revolutionaries face – but in a way that makes it extremely likely that the revolution will not be genuinely liberating but instead will replace one oppressive regime with another. My analysis will therefore supply vital information as to the circumstances in which revolution is likely to be an ethically sound strategy for improvement and when it is not. Answering that question is critical both for the ethics of revolution and the ethics of intervention in revolution – as well as for the ethics of the pursuit of moral progress.

Challenges to the Normative Project: Skepticism about the Idea of Moral Progress

As I noted in the Preface, an important part of the normative project of this book is to try to ascertain when, if ever, the perpetual struggle yields morally progressive change. Doing this involves, inter alia, making judgments about whether and if so under what circumstances pursuing revolution, rather than reform, is the best strategy for achieving moral progress. All of this assumes that the concept of moral progress makes sense and that moral progress is at least possible. And when I claim that the perpetual struggle sometimes has, in fact, produced morally progressive changes, I am asserting that moral progress is not just possible but has actually occurred.

For some contemporary philosophers, including the influential postcolonial theorist Ashis Nandy, I have crossed into forbidden territory. Talk about moral progress is to be scrupulously avoided, they think, because the concept of moral progress is incurably tainted by its misuses in justifications of colonialism, White supremacy, imperialism, and oppressive communist regimes.Footnote ¹³ Critical theorist Amy Allen takes a more nuanced view. For her, talk of progress to be sought is permissible, but statements about progress that has been achieved in the past are to be avoided.Footnote ¹⁴

The second reason for skepticism about moral progress is that talk of moral progress is thought to be inconsistent with a proper acknowledgment of the truth of normative ethical relativism, the view that there is a plurality of moralities, that there is no rational way of ascertaining that one is superior to another when they conflict, and that judgments about right and wrong must therefore be indexed to particular moralities. According to normative ethical relativism, one cannot say, for example, that slavery is wrong, period. One can only say that it is wrong from the standpoint of some particular morality or moralities. If one morality condemns slavery and another commends it, there may be no rational, principled way of resolving the dispute. Accordingly, we cannot speak of moral progress for humanity but only of moral progress relative to the values and principles of some particular, specified morality. Let us consider each of these reasons for abstaining from making judgments about moral progress. If they are cogent, then my normative project is ill-conceived, indeed doomed to failure.

My first response to the claim that the concept of progress is irredeemably tainted is that it is possible to formulate a concept of moral progress that contains no hint of racism, and no endorsement of colonialism or imperialism, or support for the brutalities of communist regimes, either explicitly or by implication. In fact, it is not just possible, it has been done.

In The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory, Rachell Powell and I offer such an understanding of what moral progress is. Instead of giving a definition of moral progress in terms of abstract necessary and sufficient conditions, we list several types of changes that are reasonably viewed as cases of moral progress: (1) there is better compliance with valid moral norms, including compliance facilitated by institutions, (2) better moral concepts, norms, and institutions are developed, (3) there are improvements in understandings of the virtues, (4) there are improvements in moral motivations and sentiments, and (5) there are improvements in moral reasoning; and all of these improvements come about through processes that involve the exercise of moral capacities, rather than as a result of causes unconnected to human agency.Footnote ¹⁵

This understanding of moral progress is certainly open to dispute; but it is not vulnerable to the charge that it gives cover to colonialism, White supremacy, imperialism, or communist oppression. To make a connection between it and any of those pernicious items requires a large number of highly imaginative if not to say bizarre premises, none of which is even alluded to in anything Powell and I say about moral progress.

My second response to the claim that the concept of moral progress is too tainted by its historical uses is to point out that many moral concepts have been put to immoral purposes and yet they are valuable enough to retain. For example, consider the fact that the concept of virtue, when applied to women, has been understood in such a way as to support patriarchal prejudices and to serve as a means of controlling women to further the interests of men. It does not follow that we should jettison the term “virtue.” Instead, we should use it to refer to admirable dispositions to act, to judge, and to decide, and to express moral sentiments that are so stable as to qualify as character traits – and be very careful as to the basis for our judgments about what really is admirable. Moral discourse without the concept of virtue would be sorely impoverished.

So, the fact that a concept has been employed to further immoral ends in the past is not a sufficient reason to abandon it. But it is a reason for anyone who wants to employ it to be especially careful to craft their remarks so as to reduce the risk of misinterpretations that would encourage immoral views or behavior. Nevertheless, there are limits to one’s obligations in this regard. I say “reduce” rather than “prevent” harmful misinterpretations because it is too much to expect one to refrain from using a concept because some stupid, uninformed, or malicious person may misuse it.

There may be some concepts that are so tainted and so superfluous, given other options, that it is better to retire them. At times, I think this may be the case with the concept of race, but there may be more compelling examples. One might be the concept of “fallen women.” I recently came across that term when rereading William Lecky’s history of European morals.Footnote ¹⁶ In a discussion of progress, Lecky notes that the invention of railways was in many respects beneficial, but that it has resulted in an increase in the number of fallen women.

The term “fallen women” is so enmeshed in pernicious patriarchal ideological assumptions that rehabilitating it would require too much work, given the negligible gain of doing so (if it could be done at all). It seems to be irretrievably tainted, essentially tainted, as it were. The same cannot be said of the concept of moral progress. We can purge that concept of its dangerous defects and still capture a substantive and valuable notion of moral improvement. Further, we need the concept of moral progress, because we need to deliberate about whether particular changes are to welcomed or condemned, attempted or resisted. And, when we find ourselves depressed or even embittered by our assessment of the current state of our society or the world, it is not only consoling, but also motivating, to think that moral progress has occurred in the past and may occur in the future.

In The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory, Powell and I go out of our way to distinguish our view from earlier theories of moral progress, which indeed did provide ready rationales for immoral behavior. More specifically, we reject the idea that there are stages of civilization, with higher stages exhibiting greater moral progress; and we avoid the assumption that there is a particular culture or tradition or ethnicity that enjoys a privileged position as the standard-bearer of moral progress. We also express skepticism about the ability to make cogent global or sweeping, all-things-considered moral progress assessments – judgments to the effect that some society is more morally progressive than others or that the world today is more morally better than in previous periods. The problem with such judgments is that they ignore the plurality of dimensions of moral progress and overlook the possibility that some may be incommensurable with others. Powell and I restrict what we say to “local” moral progress assessments. For example, we say that the abolition of Atlantic chattel slavery was an instance of moral progress, as was the repeal of laws and the extinguishing of practices that prohibited African Americans from voting.

Recall that Amy Allen thinks that while references to past instances of progress is to be avoided, talk about progress to be achieved is permissible, indeed of great importance, so far as it is a matter of progress toward emancipation, the goal of critical theorists like herself. Unfortunately, that view has a serious liability. Understanding the conditions and factors that resulted in progress in the past is almost certainly necessary for ascertaining how to bring about new improvements. If we are barred from discussing morally progressive changes that occurred in the past, we will be unable to develop accounts of how they came about. And without an understanding of how progress came about in the past, how are we to know how to foster it in the future? If we follow Amy Allen’s prescription, we will deprive ourselves of what is perhaps our most valuable resource for the pursuit of progress, namely, an understanding of how progress was achieved in the past.

I would also like to point out that the most vociferous critics of talk of moral progress are tacitly assuming that there is such a thing as moral progress. Those like Nandy, who advocate not using the term, presumably think that if their advice were followed that would be in improvement, from a moral point of view. In other words, they are advocating a change in discourse, not just for the sake of change, but because they think the change would be morally progressive. More specifically, they think that a world in which there was no talk of moral progress would be a world in which it would be harder to justify colonialism, White Supremacy, imperialism, and oppressive communist regimes. Surely, they must think that would be a better world, from a moral point of view, other things being equal. But if so, then they believe in the possibility of moral progress and are implicitly invoking the concept, in the very act of advocating dispensing with it. Ironically, in urging us to jettison the concept of moral progress they are assuming not only that there is such a thing as moral progress but also that moral progress will occur if their advice is followed.

Justifying Judgments about Moral Progress

Finally, in reply to those who are skeptical about a project that purports to identify instances of moral progress, I want to emphasize how uncontroversial and widely accepted the claims about moral progress I make in this book actually are. My focus is on changes that constrain the ability of hierarchs to perpetrate clear injustices or other wrongfully harmful, arbitrary uses of power. One does not need a bullet-proof, comprehensive theory of moral progress to assert that the abolition of Atlantic chattel slavery or the extension of basic civil and political rights to women or the adoption of constitutional devices that increase the accountability of government officials are morally progressive changes.

I would add that the widely-shared moral and factual beliefs on which my judgments about morally progressive change are based withstand scrutiny under conditions conducive to accurate factual premises, critical thinking, and consistency in reasoning, namely, freedom of expression and association, along with low-cost access to relevant factual information and the widespread expectation that when one’s moral beliefs are questioned, one is to offer reasons in support of them. In other words, the moral beliefs on which my judgments about moral progress are based are situated in a social-epistemic environment that is conducive to forming justified beliefs generally, including moral beliefs. So, much more can be said in favor of these judgments than that they are based on moral beliefs that happen to be widespread.

The primary basis of my judgments that certain changes wrought by the interaction of hierarchs and resisters are instances of moral progress is instrumental: These changes were progressive in the sense that they reduced domination in the broad sense noted earlier, where this encompasses the three philosophical conceptions and also conceptions of injustice, exploitation, and oppression that are not reducible to the latter. For example, there is now impressive evidence that governments that are democratic in the sense of having periodic fair elections of major officials conducted under conditions of party competition and freedom of expression and association perform better when it comes to basic human rights to physical security, including security against coercive domination by private agents and by the government itself.Footnote ¹⁷ It also appears that this gain against domination has in most cases been achieved without excessive human costs (assuming that the costs of democratization to tyrants who violently resisted it do not count or do not count for much, morally speaking). If that is so, then the judgment that the change from government by unaccountable elites to democracy is progressive appears to be well-founded. In making such judgments, one is not just appealing to facts, of course; one is also assuming that domination (or exploitation, or some other kind of injustice) is bad; and that assumption in turn is based ultimately on beliefs about how persons should and should not be treated, more specifically, that they should not be subjected to arbitrary interference with their choices and plans nor have their interests arbitrarily thwarted. These beliefs are relatively uncontroversial.

It is also worth emphasizing, as I have already noted, that my judgments about moral progress do not assume that hierarchy as such is morally bad and that any reduction in hierarchical power is in itself progressive. In other words, I do not assume that unequal power relations are wrong per se. If, as I and most organization theorists believe to be the case, some type of hierarchy is necessary for the functioning of large-scale, complex, diverse societies, then some reductions in hierarchical power may not be instances of moral progress, but rather of regression.

In our world, the modern state is the most comprehensive, powerful hierarchical institution. Its potential for domination is enormous; and there is no escaping control by one state or another. Because the state is ubiquitous and dangerous, there is nothing parochial or Eurocentric or peculiarly Western, either about proposals to control state power in order to reduce the risk of domination, or about statements that when this is achieved without unacceptable costs, that is moral progress. In brief, unconstrained power is dangerous and changes that reduce that danger are, other things being equal, morally progressive. And they are morally progressive from the standpoint of a wide range of moralities and cultural values.

It is true that a few of my assertions or assumptions regarding morally progressive changes, such as the claim that government should be subject to institutional provisions for accountability and that ordinary citizens should participate in some way in governance, do not command universal assent. As far as I can ascertain, however, the only dissenters are autocratic government officials, such as the current leaders of China, their lackeys, and people who have ingested the authoritarian political ideology these dictators peddle. It would be too much to expect them to accept what the rest of us quite reasonably take to be instances of moral progress regarding constraints on hierarchy.

For the most part, the changes I identify as morally progressive are so because of the ability of hierarchs to inflict wrongful harms, to exploit those over whom they exercise control, to deprive them of what is rightfully theirs, or to limit their freedom in unjustifiable ways. In addition, I will show that in some cases the struggle produces changes that are progressive insofar as they enable better moral reasoning, the fuller development of people’s moral capacities, and the more apt expression of moral sentiments. In fact, as my characterization of the struggle proceeds, it will become clear that it has produced each of the five types of moral progress that Powell and I identified and that I listed above: (1) better compliance with valid moral norms, (2) better moral concepts, justifications, norms, and institutions regarding the distribution and uses of power, (3) improvements in understandings of the virtues, (4) improvements in moral sentiments and motivations, and (5) improvements in moral reasoning. I do not characterize morally progressive changes in terms of contribution to some ideal state of affairs the nature of which we can now know but rather as improvements from where we are now.

The understandings of harm and exploitation I will employ are relatively uncontroversial: By a harm, I mean a setback to an interest and by an interest I mean and ingredient of or contributor to someone’s well-being broadly understood. When I include exploitation among the wrongs committed by hierarchs, I mean treating another merely as a means to one’s own benefit in ways that result in harms to that individual to which he or she did not consent. I also sometimes use “exploitation” in a different, non-pejorative way, as when I say that in certain revolutionary contexts, aspiring leaders exploit a particular kind of ideology. I think it will be sufficiently clear when I am using the pejorative notion of exploitation and when I am not.

I wish also to emphasize that I will not attempt to determine who is to be praised for making the morally progressive changes I describe; nor will I assign blame to individuals for the wrongs inflicted through the workings of hierarchies. Judgments of praise and blame can be especially problematic in the case of actors operating under quite different conditions from ours, especially conditions in which they lack morally relevant knowledge or did not possess moral concepts that would have helped them to ascertain what they ought or ought not to do. My concern is with evaluating changes that have occurred in the course of the struggle between hierarchs and resisters, not with judging those who participated in the struggle. Thus, for example, I am prepared to say without reservation that spousal rape has always been wrong and that recent changes in legal and social norms that characterize it as wrong are morally progressive, but hesitant to say that all human beings throughout history, including those who lived in thoroughly patriarchal societies knew or should have known that it was wrong and that anyone in such societies who had nonconsensual sex with his wife was culpable for doing so. The main point, however, is that to do what I want to do in this book, I need not take a stand on such issues.

Moral Progress That Brings Epistemic Progress That Brings More Moral Progress

The fact that the social-epistemic environment in which judgments about moral progress are made matters bears emphasis. In Chapter 1, I will argue that in some locales the struggle between hierarchs and resisters has produced improvements in the social-epistemic environment to such an extent that there is reason to believe that the judgments about moral progress made in environments that incorporate these improvements are reliable.

I will make the case that if the social-epistemic environment in which you and I operate is conducive to justified moral judgments, including judgments about moral progress, it is due in large part to past successes on the part of resisters in their struggle against hierarchs. The key point is that dominating hierarchs tend to pursue policies that produce defective social-epistemic environments. They do this chiefly by arbitrarily restricting information that they believe might be used to construct challenges to their domination, by promulgating false ideological beliefs that support their domination, and by denying the masses or particular groups the opportunity to contribute the processes by which shared beliefs are formed.

Successful resistance to dominating hierarchies often results in social changes that eliminate or ameliorate these defects in the social-epistemic environment. One obvious example is the positive social-epistemic environmental effect of victory in the struggle to establish rights to freedom of expression and association. These rights, under the right conditions, can facilitate exposure of the false ideological beliefs promulgated by dominating hierarchs and allow the input of previously excluded representations of diverse interests and perspectives in the processes by which beliefs are formed. Beliefs about what is just, for example, are more credible, other things being equal, if they take into account the full range of legitimate interests relevant to matters of justice and reflect a recognition that there is a diversity of beliefs about what justice requires. Generally speaking, that can only occur under conditions in which significant progress in curbing hierarchical domination has already occurred.

What I am describing is a continuous positive feedback loop: Political gains against dominating hierarchies result in improvements in the social-epistemic environment in which the struggle continues and that in turn facilitates additional political gains that produce further improvements in the social-epistemic environment, and so on. In this way, if we are fortunate enough to occupy social-epistemic environments that incorporate improvements brought about by the perpetual struggle, we have reason to regard our judgments about moral progress as being credible. In other words, the struggle itself has contributed to the feasibility of well-founded claims about moral progress wrought by the struggle. In Chapter 1, I will develop in much greater detail the epistemic dimension of the struggle against domination.

The Specter of Ethical Relativism

There is another source of unease regarding moral progress, namely, the metaethical view called normative ethical relativism. To address this worry, some distinctions are needed. First, it is important to distinguish descriptive ethical relativism from normative ethical relativism. The former is the true but mundane thesis that there is a plurality of moralities in our world.

From a normative standpoint, nothing of interest follows from the truth of descriptive ethical relativism, though some people have mistakenly thought that it implies that we should be tolerant and respectful of moralities other than our own. Here is why that inference is mistaken: If your morality happens to claim universal validity and prescribes that everyone be required to comply with its norms, then why you should tolerate other moralities? Toleration is not required, if your morality happens to demand that you try to convert those who subscribe to them to the one true morality or force them to comply with its demands.

So, whether tolerance is prescribed or recommended is a matter of the particular content of a morality, not the fact that there is more than one morality. This point is nicely conveyed in a reputed conversation between the British ruler of India and some Hindu religious leaders. The British had recently outlawed Sati, the practice of widow-burning. The religious leaders protested “But this is our tradition.” The British official replied: “It is our tradition to hang people who burn other people. If you follow your tradition, we will follow ours.” His point was that recognizing there are moralities other than one’s own does not imply that one should be tolerant toward them.

In its most plausible formulation, normative ethical relativism is the thesis not just that there is a plurality of moralities, but that there is a plurality of valid moralities, that they are in disagreement with one another, that there is no prospect of establishing that any one of them is superior to the others all things considered, and that consequently one cannot speak of what is moral or immoral simpliciter, but only in reference to some morality or other. The qualifier “valid” is important, because it would be implausible to hold that a morality that is clearly self-contradictory or grossly dysfunctional could not be shown to be inferior to others that do not have these defects. If there is a plurality of valid moralities, how can we talk of moral progress, rather than moral progress relative to this or that valid morality? Can we only say, for example, that the extension of the franchise was moral progress but only for valid moralities that happen to condemn elite rule that excludes the public from participation in governance, not for all valid moralities?

When I apply the term “valid” to moralities, I mean first and foremost moralities that are plausible and defensible in the sense that their most important norms can withstand competent and sincere scrutiny under social-epistemic conditions that are reliably conducive to forming true beliefs and, perhaps more importantly, detecting and correcting false ones, and which promote good inferential reasoning. In addition, I would say that to qualify as valid in this sense, a morality must not be self-defeating and should be conducive to human flourishing or at least not detrimental to it, at least in fairly favorable conditions. I want to suggest that the perpetual struggle, especially in its epistemic dimension, has contributed to the development of better, more demanding criteria for what counts as a plausible, defensible morality.

The Evolutionary Adaptationist Argument for Normative Ethical Pluralism

What reason is there to think that there is a plurality of moralities that are valid in the sense characterized above? The fact that there is a plurality of moralities is not sufficient to establish that thesis. To think it does is to confuse descriptive ethical relativism with normative ethical relativism.

One answer is provided by what Powell and I call the adaptationist evolutionary argument.Footnote ¹⁸ This argument does not confuse descriptive ethical relativism with normative ethical relativism; nor is it committed to the implausible view that all moralities, including grossly dysfunctional or patently contradictory ones, are valid.Footnote ¹⁹ In addition, this argument is in the spirit of my naturalistic approach, because it grounds the case for normative ethical pluralism in science, more specifically, in evolutionary anthropology.

The adaptationist argument begins with the plausible assumption that human morality originated as an adaptation for solving problems of cooperation or more generally, problems of social living, in the harsh environment of the Middle-to-Late Pleistocene, somewhere between 400,000 and 150,000 years ago (and with the assumption that cooperation is fitness-enhancing). Those problems include free-riding on cooperation by others, attempts to appropriate more than one’s fair share of the fruits of cooperation, and other kinds of self-interested behavior that can thwart cooperation or cause destructive conflicts within the group. In brief, the claim is that human moralities came to exist because they helped early human groups overcome these obstacles to cooperation and to living together in a relatively harmonious, peaceful way.

According to the standard evolutionary view, a central feature of the harsh, unstable Middle-to-Late Pleistocene environment was competition among groups for resources for survival. Groups that developed moralities were able to cooperate better in their efforts to prevail over other groups. This supposed fact about the selective pressures for the development of moralities has a disturbing implication. The moralities that emerged in this environment would be “tribalistic” or “exclusionary” in this sense: They would feature robust moral obligations toward members of one’s own group but would either fail to recognize the moral status of members of other groups or relegate them to a markedly inferior status. In brief, according to this evolutionary narrative, morality came to be chiefly because it facilitated cooperation against other groups and the fact that it did shape its content. More broadly, we may say that the original function of morality was to solve problems of social living, where this includes not only facilitating cooperation but also reducing destructive intra-group conflicts that reduce the fitness of individuals or groups, in part by making them less effective in competition with other groups.

The next premise of the adaptationist argument is that the validity of a morality amounts to how well it performs the function of solving problems of social living thus understood. Then comes the claim that we should expect that more than one morality will perform this function equally well, because there is more than one way in which the function can be successfully achieved. Further, if how well the function is performed is a matter of degree, there is no reason to think that any one morality performs the function better than all the others. If a society has persisted over time and does a reasonably good job of solving problems of social living, then that is a good indication that its morality is valid. And there is more than one society that fits this description. The conclusion of the adaptationist argument is that it is likely that if there is at least one valid morality it is likely that there is more than one, and that if validity is a matter of degree (that is, of how well the function of morality is performed), it is likely that there is no one morality that is more significantly “more valid” than all the others. That is normative ethical pluralism.

The adaptationist argument has a fatal flaw, namely, the assumption that the validity of a morality is simply a matter of its success in solving problems of social living, where this means facilitating cooperation and reducing destructive intra-group conflicts. It is true that morality is essential for the powerful and flexible cooperation that distinguishes our species, and it is also most likely true that moralities came to be because they facilitated cooperation while also reducing destructive conflicts within the group. But none of this implies that moralities as they exist today only serve to facilitate cooperation and to reduce destructive conflicts or that their validity reduces to how well they perform that function.

Here an analogy may be helpful. It is likely that the human shoulder joint, with its extraordinary rotational flexibility, came to be as it is because it facilitated the throwing of projectiles, which gave humans a significant advantage in terms of reproductive fitness. But it would be a mistake to say that the human shoulder joint is nothing more than a projectile thrower. It can do many other things. Similarly, even if moralities came to be chiefly because they facilitated cooperation (more precisely, cooperation against other groups) and reduced conflicts within the group that reduced fitness, it doesn’t follow that they only serve to do that now. And if that is so, then the validity of a morality may depend upon factors other than how well it solves the problems of social living. At that in turn means that even if it is true that there is plurality of moralities that perform the function of solving the problems of social living equally well, it does not follow that there is more than one valid morality, if there is at least one.

What reason is there to believe that some moralities nowadays have features that cannot be explained in terms of their facilitating cooperation or reducing destructive conflicts within a cooperating group? It is important to remember that according to the evolutionary story, moralities originated in large part because they facilitated cooperation against other groups. If one focuses only on that function, it is hard to account for the fact that some human moralities have become very inclusive, according equal basic moral status to all human beings, not just members of one’s group and recognizing that some nonhuman animals have moral standing. This one indication that the answer to the question “Is morality M valid?” cannot be reduced to the question of whether M is fulfilling the function that supposedly explains the emergence of moralities.

The more basic point is that there are many ways of achieving cooperation or avoiding destructive conflicts and that some are morally better than others. Some forms of cooperation are morally superior, for example, because they treat people more fairly, both in what they are expected to do in participating in a cooperative endeavor and in the distribution of the benefits of cooperation. A morality that facilitated a cooperative scheme that allowed more members of society to be effective participants in cooperation, rather than passive recipients of benefits produced through cooperation by others would also be better, other things being equal, than one that supported a cooperative scheme whose demands excluded many people from participation.Footnote ²⁰ Similarly, some ways of reducing destructive conflicts are superior to others, because some ways distribute the costs of conflict-avoidance more fairly or achieve a reduction in conflicts in a less costly way, in particular, by requiring less coercion or violence. Further, some ways of reducing conflicts within a group may require treating other groups badly, for example, by expropriating their resources and thereby reducing scarcity within the exploiting group. That a morality facilitates cooperation and reduces destructive conflicts within a group may be a first step toward showing that it is valid, but it is not the only consideration.

The upshot of my critique of the adaptationist argument for normative ethical relativism, understood as the thesis that if there is at least one valid morality it is likely that there is more than one, is this: At most, that argument shows that there is more than one morality that satisfies one necessary (but not sufficient) criterion of validity, namely, the ability to facilitate cooperation and reduce destructive conflicts. That argument does not show that there is more than one valid morality. For it might turn out that although there is more than one morality that satisfies one necessary condition for validity, namely, the ability to facilitate cooperation and to avoid destructive conflicts, there is only one morality that satisfies all the criteria for validity or one that satisfies more of them more fully than any other morality.

Constrained Normative Ethical Relativism

At this point, it is worth stepping back and reminding ourselves why we are trying to evaluate the adaptationist argument for normative ethical relativism – why it matters whether there is more than one valid morality. The reason is this: If there is more than one valid morality, then there is a potential problem to talk about moral progress. It may only be possible to say that there is moral progress relative to this or that particular valid morality.

That result would follow, however, only if valid moralities share no (plausible, defensible) basic norms. If they do share some such norms, then we can speak of progress if there is better compliance with them. In fact, we can refer to those shared norms as “universally valid” and then gauge progress in terms of better compliance with them.

Are there any moral norms that any valid morality includes, any “universally valid norms”? Likely candidates include the norms that promises are to be kept, that only the guilty ought to be punished, and that lying is wrong. These norms are so intuitively plausible that we would be likely to regard a morality as invalid if it failed to include them or at least if it included norms that contradicted them. More to the point, compliance with these norms does much to facilitate cooperation and avoid destructive conflicts among humans who interact with each other. And if a morality is to perform those functions, surely it must include those norms.

In what follows, I do not pretend to make a conclusive case for the thesis that all valid moralities share some basic norms. I only want to do enough to indicate its plausibility to counter the assumption that because there is a plurality of valid moralities, we cannot speak of moral progress, but only of moral progress relative to this or that valid morality. I believe I have accomplished that, so I feel that I am permitted to pursue an important part of the normative element of my project in this book: trying to determine when the perpetual struggle between hierarchs and resisters is likely to produce morally progressive change.

Rachell Powell and I have recently offered a superior evolutionary argument for normative ethical relativism (or as we label the view there, normative ethical pluralism).Footnote ²¹ That argument does a better job than the adaptationist argument in supporting the thesis that if there is at least one valid morality, it is likely that there is more than one. More importantly for my purposes in this book, it also can be easily extended to give us reason to think that all valid moralities share some basic norms and that therefore we can speak of moral progress as occurring when there is better compliance with those norms, so far as those norms are plausible and defensible – that is, can withstand scrutiny in favorable social-epistemic environments, provide practical guidance, contribute to human flourishing, etc. Here I will only outline the argument, which is presented in more detail in the chapter referenced in footnote 21, and then note its extension.

1. 1. One of the most important determinants of the validity of a morality, if not the most important one, is its contribution to individual flourishing. Moralities that systematically thwart flourishing are at least prima facie invalid. (“Flourishing” here is an intentionally vague placeholder for your favorite conception of well-being.)

2. 2. Humans are characterized by path-dependent moral psychological malleability: Generally speaking, their traits, including behaviors, are more plastic or sensitive to environmental inputs in earlier phases of their development, and changes that occur early on tend to have large impacts on which changes can occur later.

3. 3. Individuals’ capacities for flourishing are significantly shaped by their social environments. Whether an individual flourishes by living a particular kind of life generally depends upon whether their social environment makes feasible privileges and rewards that type of life, especially during the period when the individual is developing the capacity for flourishing. For example, if an individual’s moral capacities develop in an environment that provides rich opportunities for engagement in family life and features moral norms and practices that reward such engagement, as well as esteemed role models who exhibit it, then that individual is likely to develop a capacity for finding fulfillment in family life, and her environment will make it easier for her to pursue this kind of life without serious psychological conflicts or frustrations. If the social environment makes the rewards of family life high and the costs low, the capacity for flourishing as an individual for family life is central, will develop accordingly and the individual will tend to flourish by engaging in family relationships and activities. In essence, the individual will become psychologically attuned to flourish in that mode of life.

4. 4. Different social environments, though featuring different moralities may contribute equally well to the flourishing of their members, so long as those moralities are part of an environment that enables individuals to become psychologically attuned to flourish in the way that their society rewards and nurtures.

5. 5. So, to the extent that the validity of a morality is determined by its success in promoting flourishing in the particular social environment in which it exists, it is likely that there is more than one valid morality, if there is at least one.

6. 6. So far as there are some conditions necessary for flourishing that are present across all human societies that promote flourishing and so far as morality plays a role in creating and sustaining those conditions, it is likely that all valid moralities share some norms. For example, since flourishing generally requires cooperation, and norms such as those requiring truth-telling and promise-keeping are generally necessary for cooperation, one would expect that all valid moralities, so far as they contribute to flourishing, will include those norms.

   6. the extension of the argument from the claim that if there is at least one valid morality then it is likely that there is more than one, to the claim that valid moralities are likely to share some norms? The idea is that some moral norms are essential for the kind of distinctively human cooperation that is necessary for humans to flourish as human beings, regardless of the fact that there are different ways for them to flourish as human beings.

I have taken the trouble to lay out this argument because I believe it lends support to what I take to be the most plausible position on ethical disagreement and convergence, namely, constrained normative ethical relativism. This is the view that there is a plurality of valid moralities and that while there is a disagreement among them so far as other norms are concerned, they all share some basic norms. Further, at least some of those norms themselves are defensible or reasonable, compliance with them is beneficial for everyone in most circumstances, and they withstand critical scrutiny in social-epistemic environments that are conducive to sound judgments and reasoning.

The existence of shared basic norms constrains relativism, placing a limit on how much valid moralities can differ from one another. It also grounds talk about moral progress in a nonrelativistic way: Better compliance with the plausible and defensible norms that all valid moralities share is moral progress. An attractive feature of constrained ethical pluralism is that it allows one to talk about moral progress period, that is moral progress for humanity, not just relative to this or that morality or tradition, while acknowledging that one’s morality is not the only valid one.

I do not pretend to have established the truth of constrained normative ethical relativism. For one thing, I have at most only shown that if there is at least one valid morality, there is likely more than one and that all valid moralities (if there are any) share some basic norms and that at least of these shared norms are themselves valid in the sense of being plausible and defensible. I have not refuted moral skeptics or nihilists, those who doubt or deny that there are any valid moralities. I am assuming that most of my readers do not fit that description – if they did, they would be unlikely to read a book that explains how the perpetual struggle sometimes produces moral progress. Regarding those of you who are not moral skeptics or nihilists, I only hope to have made constrained normative ethical relativism plausible enough to be able to pursue my normative agenda, so far as it includes making judgments about whether social changes brought about by the dynamics of the perpetual struggle are morally progressive.

A Plea for Interdisciplinary Cooperation

There are few if any models for my approach of grounding normative assessments in a descriptive-explanatory theory. That is due to a pervasive failure to even try to integrate descriptive-explanatory and normative thinking, which in turn is chiefly due to the lack of interdisciplinary cooperation. Descriptive-explanatory theories are developed by social scientists, who traditionally have been taught to avoid normative issues for the sake of being truly scientific. Normative theories most often have been pursued by philosophers who have been taught to engage only in conceptual analysis or the construction of “ideal” prescriptive theories that are not grounded in descriptive-explanatory accounts of the phenomena that were thought to raise ethical issues in the first place. In my opinion, constructing ideal, fact-free prescriptive theories is a bit like playing tennis without a net or boundary lines.

My hope is that this book will encourage collaboration among psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, and historians trying to develop empirically grounded accounts of large-scale social change, including revolutions, and philosophers working on the ethics of revolution and, more generally, the ethics of large-scale social change. I say “hope” rather than “expect,” because, although naturalistic approaches in other areas of philosophy have in recent years burgeoned, political philosophy, for the most part, has remained disturbingly disengaged from the facts. Given the nature of the problems that political philosophy addresses, I find it troubling that the majority of articles and books in that discipline show little or no evidence of taking into account work from the social sciences.

If they proceed without engagement with social scientific work, philosophical theories of large-scale social change generally or of revolution in particular face a dilemma: Either they avoid the need for empirical grounding but at the price of becoming unduly abstract, “ideal” theories that supply little or no guidance for how to proceed in the real world; or they are nonideal theories – theories that purport to provide practical guidance for our real-world situation -- that do not take into account how variations in the context in which revolutions and other large-scale social changes occur shape the nature and salience of the ethical issues.

Social science inquiries regarding revolution or other instances of large-scale social change are valuable in their own right, but they become even more valuable if their research agendas include empirical work that is relevant to philosophical theories that address normative issues. I will regard the present volume as a success if it stimulates philosophers to benefit from the work of social scientists and social scientists to address empirical issues whose importance they might have otherwise underestimated, but which must be addressed by a sound normative theory of large-scale social change.

Separating the Descriptive-Explanatory and Normative Projects

I am aware that some social scientists – especially some economists – are skeptical about normative inquiries generally. I would like to point out to them that there is an asymmetry in the relationship between the descriptive-explanatory and normative dimensions of my project. Although the normative thinking depends on the descriptive-explanatory account, the reverse is not true. If you are a skeptical of normative inquiries (or just not interested in normative matters), you can focus only on my descriptive-explanatory theory. I think it is interesting in its own right and makes a significant contribution toward the development of a comprehensive pluralistic theory of social change, quite apart from serving as the empirical basis of my normative project.

Methodology

I will support my descriptive-explanatory claims about the perpetual struggle by recourse to many historical examples and by reference to well-regarded work in the social sciences. Nonetheless, a good deal of what I say will be speculative; and my causal hypotheses will not be supported by hard quantitative data. In defense of this way of proceeding, I wish to emphasize two points. First, with regard to its speculative character and lack of hard data, this book is no different from the most influential books on large-scale social change to date, including works such as The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Acemoglu and Robinson; Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History by North, Wallis, and Weingast; and States and Social Revolutions by Skocpol. Second, in new areas of research, speculation is unavoidable if progress is to be made; and it is acceptable if it is compatible with relevant empirically well-supported theories and also points the way toward empirical work that can either confirm or disconfirm it. I believe my speculations in this book satisfy those requirements.

The Route Ahead

Chapter 1 lays out the basic contours of my descriptive-explanatory theory of the social changes that result from the perpetual struggle between hierarchs and resisters. Chapter 2 narrows the focus to the most dramatic form the perpetual struggle can take, revolution, and explores the explanatory reach of the concept of political ideology, where this includes explanations of how political ideologies can either facilitate or thwart revolutionary collective action. Chapter 3 deepens the analysis of the role of ideologies in large-scale social change by showing how a particular kind of political ideology can help aspiring revolutionary leaders solve two problems they must solve to succeed in their revolutionary efforts: the participation problem (mobilizing enough people) and the coordination problem (organizing participation effectively). Chapter 4 explores the ethics of revolution and intervention in revolution by attending to the special moral dilemmas that revolutionaries face and the paucity of institutional resources for solving them. Chapter 5 summarizes the main findings of the book, acknowledges its limitations, and sets an agenda for further research.