Now it’s hard for a person to imagine that once the life of society was organized without a state and its various political institutions. After all, it is in them that all the power of power is concentrated. However, history shows that at the beginning of civilization, the state was preceded by society as a community of people. So, the problems of a primitive horde of hunters were solved by a single leader, that is, a leader. Along with the advent of the tribes, a council of elders arose, at which various disputes were resolved, the main affairs were discussed. Existing customs, traditions and norms were enough to regulate human relations during this period.
That is, the state did not appear instantly. It was the result of a gradual historical development. Ancient philosophers saw the reasons for the emergence of the state in the complication of forms of human society. They considered this process quite natural. Aristotle, for example, proposed the following hypothesis explaining the causes of the state. At first, people united in families. When there were several of them, the village turned out. And only at the last stage of this process does the state emerge as a form of human community, in which citizens are already subject to the force of law. At the same time, a political system appears.
In the Middle Ages, the origin and essence of the state began to be considered from a religious point of view. It was suggested to the population that this is an institution of power on earth, established by God himself. Even modern Catholicism agrees with the views of Thomas Aquinas on the causes of the state. He reminded people that power is connected with divine laws and encouraged her to obey.
Ethical theories are closely connected with theocratic theories. They consider the state as the embodiment of a law common to all, a moral idea. Hegel believed that it represents the highest level at which the unity is restored, previously destroyed by the struggle between the individual and groups.
In modern times T. Hobbes, J.-J. Rousseau put forward a contractual theory according to which people who lived without a state decided to create it consciously (concluded a contract) so that everyone had the same rights and freedoms.
Proponents of the theory of conquest (F. Oppenheimer, L. Gumplovich) believe that they very realistically explain this phenomenon. In their opinion, states and classes arise as a result of the conquest of tribes by each other.
Marxist theory considers this process differently . Its representatives see the reasons for the emergence of the state in the need of an economically strong class to have its own political organization in order to suppress class opponents. That is, it appeared at that level of development of the production forces, when the division of labor occurred, private property arose , and consequently, property inequality and the split of society into opposing groups.
There are also attempts to explain the causes of the state by a psychological factor. Supporters of this theory are J. Byrdot, M. Kovalevsky. According to her, leaders influenced the crowd in need of leadership, hypnosis, charisma and thus created the state.
In modern political science, a synthetic point of view reigns on the causes and forms of the state. It takes into account several factors that influence this process in a complex. These are religious, and socio-economic, and moral, and psychological, and military. However, the main reason is still seen in the evolution of the economic activities of people. After labor productivity increased, an excess product appeared, society began to stratify, depending on the amount of property. To consolidate their position and protect material values, people needed special rules, norms, structures. So in politics the first management institutes appeared, which at that stage still relied not only and not so much on the law as on the strength of weapons.