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Title: Social Evolution
Author: Huang Lingshuang
Date: 1929
Language: en
Topics: evolution, social ecology, Chinese Anarchism, China
Source: From Robert Graham (Ed.), Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas; Volume One: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939). https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-documentary-history-libertarian-ideas-volume-1-2

Huang Lingshuang

Social Evolution

The degree of human social life is evaluated by the degree of cultural

development. Culture is a unique characteristic of human society, and

coexists with human life ... Social evolution started before the

appearance of humankind, and cultural evolution started at the very

beginning of human life. The development of culture and human life

started simultaneously. Social evolution originated from organic

evolution, and cultural evolution originated from social evolution.

What is the place of social evolution and cultural evolution in the

progress of world evolution? We know that world evolution is a natural

sequence. At the very beginning there were merely physical and chemical

phenomena in the world; after a long period of development life and

society came into being. The final and the highest product of

progressive evolution is culture...

If we want to understand the fact of social evolution, we must realize

that the methods and concepts used to study organic evolution are unable

to provide sufficient assistance in our study of social evolution.

First, the subject of organic science (plants or animals) is relevant to

inheritance, but culture is not inherited ... and has no relevance to

race. Culture is superorganic and beyond the sphere of biology;

secondly, human physiology has not changed much since the end of the

glacial epoch. The Neanderthal, who has been considered to be the

earliest ancestor of human beings, had a very large skull; the

Cro-Magnon, who was more advanced and similar to the modern man, had

obviously large brain capacity. According to anthropology, their

physical strength and brain capacity were little different from those of

modern man, but there is an enormous difference between their stone-age

culture and modern culture.

In sum it is safe to say that social evolution depends on the

development of culture, and cultural evolution determines the direction

of social evolution ...

In the nineteenth century geologists, paleontologists, and biologists

proposed many theories of developmental stages. They held that without

exception all organic life went through these stages from the earliest

geological epoch to the modern epoch. This led to the idea of the

developmental stages of society. Herbert Spencer held that the political

and social systems of society experienced many changes, which proceeded

in a certain sequence, from simple systems to complex systems. Lewis

Morgan’s Ancient Society can be seen as the “comprehensive” model of

this kind of conception of evolution ...

The anthropologists of our time do not accept such an argument. Instead

of making a sweeping generalization, they have paid much attention to

the study of the cultural traits of particular groups, which has led

them to reject the proposition that without exception all nations have

to go though the same social or Cultural stages...

We also reject the proposition that there are necessary stages of

economic progress. First, there is hardly any standard way to measure

the unit of, for example, technology or economy, organization or type of

commerce, or means of exchange, none of which can be seen as the basis

for the economic stage of a nation. The stage of economic life includes

a great number of interrelated factors. Among them we cannot find a

single factor that bears particular importance. The economy is very

intricate, and a cultural complex includes not only economic but also

psychological and social factors. More often than not these factors can

change the nature and function of economic factors in society. The same

economic and technological conditions do not necessarily result in the

same culture. It is true that economic life exercises its influence on

culture, but economic life is not the factor that can change all social

factors; secondly, economic change, like historical change, has a strong

system of continuity, it is not so easy to create a division, and the

change in different aspects of the economy does not occur at the same

rate. Very few groups in the world have gone through all the assigned

stages without transcendence. The theory of economic stages, therefore,

is as implausible as Morgan’s theory of cultural stages.