The idiots, usually socialists or communists, who think living in a primitive hunter-gathering tribe was paradise, don't know what they are talking about. Those ancient people barely survived and I doubt they had much leisure time.
I have read an interesting theory that collectivists adore primitive tribalism because their minds are not developed enough to appreciate any form of human society beside a primitive tribe run by a strongman or an oligarchy. For millions of years all people knew was primitive tribalism, so people are still hard-wired to like that sort of arrangement.
Collectivists feel that even agriculture is vaguely "unnatural" and a threatening innovation. And they have even stronger misgivings about the Industrial Revolution and representative democracy. They cannot understand the sophisticated concepts in the Magna Carta or the U.S. Constitution. But collectivists instinctively understand a Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini who rules the "tribe" by commands, and most leftists long to be a "priest" in a one-party state, lording it over people. They think that because, theoretically, the best hunter could run a tribe of a few hundred hunters, that somehow this model can be expanded and a dictator can effectively rule a modern society by decree. So really the "progressives" want to take us back many thousands of years.
Very interesting argument
There is another reason why liberals are innately authoritarian. Free people will not willingly succumb to socialism. Simply stated, most will not "get with the program".
Consequently, to achieve their dreamed-for utopian society, massive coercion is required. This necessarily requires true believers to be in charge and to exert their authority over the non-compliant masses.
You can't run the socialist state without a strong man...and a supporting group of elite apparatchniks.