The post deals with some of the themes in Daron Acemoglu’s and James Robinson’s Why Nations Fail. There is a contradiction between the benefits of inclusive political institutions, where power is diffused amongst the many, and the alleged benefits of greater centralization (which the authors themselves agree that these more often than not lead to absolutism and extractive institutions). They claim that without bureaucratic centralization there can be no meaningful economic growth; it seems to me that the relationship is the opposite (even given the data they present). Economic growth makes bureaucratization possible, since all bureaucracies are extractive by nature.
This seems to go along with what I wrote earlier: “Anyway, the state could be (and was) seen as simply the administrative organization of the polis. IIRC, Plato thought that the ideal task of this administrative organization was to ensure ‘virtue’ to the fullest extent possible.”
Ensuring “virtue” to the fullest extent possible doesn’t mean making as many people as possible be “virtuous” in their hearts and souls, but rather that they simply act “virtuously” as much as possible. In other words, whether they act “virtuously” of their own free will or are constrained so that they become motivated (or have no choice but) to act “virtuously” makes no difference.
Additionally insightful may be Caspar Bluntschli - Theory of the state: http://archive.org/details/theorystate01lodggoog
But this is more an overview of the origins.
According to the authors there were always some kinds of human organisation of authority and submission. They did however differ drastically from ethnicity and age.
What I would be interested in would be more literature on stateless societies and if there ever was a group of more then 1000 people that would qualify as being a stateless society. Perhaps what would come close to that would be the Bushmen, who were basically hunter gatherers. But still there have been authority figures and rules amongst them. They also got quite quickly absorbed into the (modern) South Africa state and even into the army as spoorsnyers.
At the moment it seems the general subjective value preference of people prefers state over non-state, despite lot’s of quibbling by right-wingers and anarchists.
i believe that the earliest states were outgrowths of the church. the reason is because you need to have an ideology in place before you can have violence. it cant work the other way around because even the most despotic states require a majorities consent
there was a book mentioned in a jeffrety tucker intervew called law and revolution which the interviewee said deals with the issue, i havent read it myself
the essay “society are people” in frank chodorov’s the rise and fall of society could be of interest. also in that book, “a state is born” is a biblical view of a state emerging. it’s one of my favorite books. i highly recommend reading it in its entirety if you haven’t yet done so.
i agree with your hypothesis, too. specialization didn’t exclude things such as policing. now, i can’t recall if i’m getting the following from my reading of the rise and fall of society; but it seems to me tribes used to rape and pillage other tribes for their belongings. then they decided the tribesmen from whom they stole could be exploited for further gain if they kept them alive (slavery). eventually humanity figured out paying people to do work will get it done more efficiently (capitalism). i think the state probably emerged during phase two, when civilizations started settling, due to the advent of agriculture and use of slavery. of course, i’m in the same boat as you, with nothing to back up my assumptions, so any serious history would be something i’d love to look into. it’s too bad rothbard didn’t stray far from american history.
But it sounds fargoingly plausible. The Henry Morgan book Ancient Society has also a list of historical steps in it. Of that has historical record, while some are only assumptions, but still make sense. I think one could also look at the division of labor emerging from an initially extended family. Of the elders then would have functions like judge, priest, military leader etc. While the rest would farm, craft or provide some services.