Power and privileges in political history (XXX century BC – XXI century AD). Volume Two. Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modernity

Abstract

It is a prehistoric truth that antiquity is the origin of human civilization. This truth is often forgotten and ignored today because in many cases the back is turned to the distant past. This past, however, continues to provide us with an enormous amount of knowledge, both in terms of facts, phenomena and processes, and as new grounds for building hypotheses, concepts and theories. In this sense, authentic historical sources (and references) and the dozens of monographs devoted to this era can help us make sense of what is happening in the contemporary world and its social development. Such is also the problem of political privilege, which is almost impossible to study and explain analytically without tracing its genesis, conceived in the bosom of antiquity. For the problem dates back to the earliest „infancy“ of human history, when there were no state entities, institutions and organs of power. But there is something else: a thorough study of privilege from the dawn of its primary germination gives us rich opportunities to trace its evolution as a social phenomenon more comprehensively, to „unravel“ its real manifestations in different types of societies, and to make comparative characterizations (in quantitative and qualitative terms) according to one or another historical epoch, political system, and party leaders. This is what makes it necessary to consider privilege in a deep historical context whose roots are to be sought in the Old World, in the functioning of tribal societies several thousand years back.