Social theory

Contents

CHAPTER PAOB

I. The Forms of Social Theory ... i

II. Some Names and Their Meaning . . 25

Chapter I

MEN do not make communities — ^they are born and bred into them. Every individual at his birth is flung into a social environment, and his life's work from infancy is to make the best of that environment for himself and for his fellows. As he grows to fuller consciousness, his environment gradually expands. He becomes aware of the family, contact with which furnishes his first social experience. At the same time, he becomes aware also of a larger world outside the family, a world of wisdom, of things seen from windows and on journeys from home, a world which slowly assumes definite shapes and takes on human characteristics of neighborhood and similarity. As he grows older, the fact of organization irt this world becomes apparent, and school, church, club and other social institutions claim him, and assume a part in his life. By the time he reaches manhood, he has drunk in and accepted the fact of the world, his environment, as a complex of individuals and associations, of customs and institutions, of rights and duties, of pleasures, pains, desires, hopes and fears, strivings and attempts to understand all centering round this complex and all raising the more or less insistent question of his place in it, and his relation to it.

Of course, this process is widely different in the case of different individuals, types and classes. Hitherto, men have usually been brought far sooner and more completely into contact with an organized social environment than women, whose experience has not been allowed to expand with the same freedom. Again, the opportunities of the rich and of the educated classes for contact with the world without have been far fuller than those of the workers or of the lower middle class. The workers, however, through their Trade Unions, clubs and other societies have shared with the upper classes what is largely denied to the lower middle class — ^the opportunity for free association with a communal object, and the consequent appreciation of the social structure of the world around them. The Trade Union is the working-class equivalent for the upperclass public school and university, which are the scenes not so much of education, as of the social training of a ruling caste.

The generality of men and women take their experience of the social scene around them unphilosophically. They do not reflect upon it; they merely accept it. But that does not make it any the less a real experience, or any the less a part of their mental equipment. They are born into a complex society, and by a natural process that complex society becomes a part of their lives — as real a Weltanschauung as any Teutonic philosopher ever imagined.

The task which I propose to attempt in this book is that of setting down, as clearly as I can, the social content of this Weltanschauung of the ordinary man, not of course limiting myself to what he sees, but endeavoring to put together the social contents of various experiences, and to make of them, as far as they form one, a coherent and consistent whole. What is the content of our social experience — ^what is the relation between the various fragmentary experiences and contacts of and with individuals, associations and institutions which we come upon in our day-to-day life in Society? What, in short, is the structure of the half-organized and half-conscious community of which we form a part ?

Perhaps that last question gives rather too large and inclusive an idea of the purpose which I have in mind. It is not all experience that I mean to deal with, but only social experience. Social Theory is not concerned directly with all the actions of individual men, but mainly with their actions taken in concert through some temporary or permanent organized group, and with the actions of such groups as they affect and react upon the individual. The unorganized, personal conduct of individual men will be always present as the background of our study, though it will only be treated incidentally in relation to its social content.

Even with this limitation, the scope which I have taken for this book will seem to many people far too wide. Social Theory, especially under its name of "Political Theory," has often been regarded as having to do mainly with one particular association, the State, and with its relation to the individual. Recent theory, however, has been moving more and more to the conclusion that this definition of the scope of the subject is wrong, because it is fundamentally untrue to the facts of social experience.

I do not mean, of course, to deny that it is possible to write books about, and even to make a distinct and separate study of, the nature of the association called "The State," and its relation to the individual. That is, of course, a perfectly legitimate and necessary inquiry. But I do absolutely deny that any study of the relations of State and individual can furnish even, the groundwork for a general survey of social experience, and that it, taken by itself, can penetrate to the heart of the question of man's place in Society. It is simply not true that the social relations of which a man is most directly and constantly aware are, under normal conditions, his relations with the State ; and it is still less true that these relations furnish the whole, or even the greater part, of his social experience.

Society is a very complex thing. Apart from personal and family relations, almost every individual in it has, from childhood onwards, close contacts with many diverse forms of social institution and association. Not only is he a citizen or subject of his State, and of various local governing authorities within it : he is also related to the social order through many other voluntary or involuntary associations and institutions. He is, maybe, a worker in a factory, mine or office, a member of a church or other religious or irreligious body, a Trade Unionist or member of a professional or trading association, a Cooperator or Allotment Holder or Building or Friendly Society member, he has his club of the Pall Mall, politician or workman's variety, he is a sportsman associated with the fellow-sportsman, a Socialist or a Primrose Leaguer, he has hobbies which cause him to join an association of persons with the same tastes, or views which cause him to link up with others of the same opinion. Moreover, as a husband and a house or share owner, he is directly in contact with the social institutions of marriage and property, while his whole life is a complex in which social customs and traditions play an immense part. None can escape from constant contact with some of these various social relations, and almost every one is conscious of a widely diversified and ceaselessly varying social environment of which he forms, for his fellows, a part. Custom is perhaps strongest among women, and association is certainly strongest among men ; but among women also the growth of association is following hard upon the awakening of a wider social consciousness. This being the character of the social complex, the question at once arises of the right way of surveying it from the theoretic standpoint. The tendency of political theorists has been to survey it under the guidance of the principle of Power or Force, which is also the principle of the Austinian theory of law. Of all the forms of association and institution which I have mentioned, only the State, and, under the State, in a small degree the local authority, obviously possesses in our day coercive power. The State, therefore, as the "determinate superior," having in its hands not only the majesty of law, but the ultimate weapon of physical compulsion, has been singled out and set on a pedestal apart from all other forms of association, and treated as the social institution par excellence, beside which all other associations are merely corporate or quasi-corporate individuals, which the State and the law can only recognize at all by pretending that they are individuals, although it is perfectly plain that they are not.

Following out this line of thought to its logical conclusion, classical Political Theory has treated the State as the embodiment and representative of the social consciousness, the State's actions as the actions of men in Society, the relations of the State and the individual as the chief, and almost the only, subject-matter of Social Theory. Over against the State and its actions and activities this form of theory has set indiscriminately the whole complex of individuals and other associations and institutions, and has treated all their manifestations as individual actions without vital distinction or difference.

I believe that this false conception of the subject arises mainly from the conception of human society in terms of Force and Law. It begins at the wrong end, with the coercion which is applied to men in Society, and not with the motives which hold men together in association. The other way of conceiving (human Society, first fully developed in Rousseau's Social Contract, is in terms not of Force or Law, but of Will.

As soon as we view the social scene in this light, the whole outlook is at once different. Not only the State, but all the other forms of association in which men join or are joined together for the execution of any social purpose, are seen as expressing and embodying in various manners and degrees the wills of the individuals who compose them. The distinction between Social Theory — the theory of social conduct — and Ethics — the theory of individual conduct — is at once seen to be the distinction between simple individual action and associative action, between the direct individual action of a human being by the simple translation of his will into deed, and the associative action of a number of human beings, or of an individual acting on behalf of a number as agent or representative, throug'h a society or association. Of course, the act of an individual may be just as "social" in its content and purpose as the act of a society or group. But that is not the point: the vital point is that, viewed in terms of will, the actions of the State appear as of the same nature with the actions of any other association in which men are joined together for a common purpose. The respfective spheres of ethical and social theory are thus marked out with sufficient clearness for practical purposes, though a doubtful borderland remains of types of action which x:an be regarded as either personal or associative, because the element of association, though present in them, is present in so rudimentary a form as not to override the purely individual element. This point, however, does not concern us here ; for it is enough for the present to have made it clear that Social Theory is concerned primarily, not with the State, but with the whole problem of human association — ^that is, of associative will and action, i/

It is, of course, possible to reject will as the basis of human inptitutions ; but the consequences of such a rejection are so extraordinary that nearly all political theorists have recoiled from their direct acceptance. Even those who, like Hobbes, have been most assiduous in founding their conception of actual societies on the basis of Force and Law, have sought to reinforce their position by finding an original Hasis for social association in will. Hence Hobbes' imaginary original social contract in which men bound themselves together by Will into a society, only to alienate forever for themselves and their posterity the will which alone could make their society legitimate. As soon as a basis of right, and not of mere fact, is sought for human association, there is no escape from invoking the principle of human will, except for those who maintain that Kings are Kings forever by Divine Right and Appointment. And even this is only to appeal from the Will of man to an omnipresent and omnipotent Will of God.

Every approach to democracy makes the actual and legitimate foundation of Society on the will of its members more manifest. A theory based on Force and Law may pass for long undetected in an authoritarian Society; but it cannot survive the emergence of democratic or even of aristocratic consciousness. This is true, not only or mainly because the will of the people or of a class begins to exert its influence upon affairs of State; but, still more, because, without the sanction of law, other forms of democratic or oligarchal association begin to exercise a power which, within their sphere of operation, threatens to challenge or control the State and to usurp the functions which it has arrogated to itself. Law in the strict sense, law , enforceable by courts and police, may remain in the hands of the State; but other bodies, such as a baronial assembly, a Church or a Trade Union, frame regulations and secure their observance, even without the aid of the black cap and the policeman. To the great scandal of authority in our own day, even the policemen form a Trade Union of their own, and aim at becoming, within a narrow sphere, their own legislature, executive, and judiciary.

Such a social situation is fatal to Political Theory of the old type. While the political philosophers are holding high argument about the philosophical theory of the State, and the relation to it of the individual, the world around them has become interested in a new set of problems, in the position of voluntary and functional associations in Society, in their relation to national States, and their position as being often international associations, in the multiplicity and possible conflict of loyalties and obligations involved for the indi\idual in simultaneous membership of several such associations. In short, while the philosophers are still arguing about the State and the individual, the world of creative thought has moved on to the discussion of the functional organization of Society, and the new problems for the individual to which it gives rise.

It is not in the least surprising that, under these conditions, the political theory of the schools has become sterile, and that the new developments have arisen among those whose vital interest has lain neither in philosophy nor in the State, but in the sphere of functional association. Apart from purely psychological developments, there are at present only three live sources of social theory — the Church, industry and history. Socially inarticulate in this country since the enfeebling conflicts of the seventeenth century, the Churches are to-day regaining their voice, if not their hold, upon the people. They are beginning to realize that they, too, are social institutions, and to reclaim their right to spiritual self-government and spiritual freedom from the State. Dr. J. N. Figgis' book. Churches in the Modern State, has proved itself one of the live forces in present-day social theory.

A force far more generally diffused, and far more potent in its influence, is that which springs from industrial sources. Bolsheviks, Syndicalists, Marxian Industrialists and Communists not merely claim for proletarian organizations independence of the State; they threaten to destroy it altogether. Right or wrong, they are a force, and their doctrines are a living international influence. At the same time Guild Socialists, inspired also by industrial and economic conditions, preach the doctrine of democratic self-government in industry and the transformation of the State by the influence of the functional principle. Their doctrine is far wider than industry, although it springs out of industrial ' conditions. It amounts in the last analysis to a complete Social Theory— to the Social Theory which I am putting forward in this book.

Thirdly, there is the source of history, which, as our knowledge of the past grows, reminds us more and more that the factotum State — the omnicompetent, omnivorous, omniscient, omnipresent Sovereign State — in so far as it exists at all outside the brain of megalomaniacs, is a thing of yesterday, and that functional association, which is now growing painfully to a fuller stature, is not a young upstart of our days, but has a pedigree to the full as long and as honorable as that of the State itself — and indeed longer and more honorable. Not only the study of medieval history, but still more the growing knowledge of early hurnan institutions, serves to emphasize the common character of the various forms of human association, the essential reality, based on the common will of .men,, of associationsto which Roman law was prepared to concede only the derivative character of personce fictce. We owe much to Gierke and Maitland in the study of law; for they have enabled us to view it, not as the handmaid of the Sovereign State, but in its relation to human association as a whole.

Our study of Social Theory will begin, then, not with the State, or with any other particular form of association, but with association as a whole, and the way in which men act through associations in supplement and complement to their actions as isolated or private individuals.

Here, however, we are confronted with an immediate difficulty. Is the family to be treated as , an association, and therefore as part of the social fabric of Society as distinguished from the individuals composing it ? Does the study of th^ family form a part of the study of individual cohduct or of social conduct? These are not easy questions to answer.

I do not propose to go deeply into the historical character of the family, or to touch at all upon the relations, actual or supposed, between the family and the tribe. I am treating my subject, not historically, but purely in relation to the present and the future. I shall therefore say only that, in modem times, the family has changed not only its nature and function, but also its composition, and that in doing so it has become far less a social and far more a purely personal unit. The family to-day only functions as a unit in relation to the personal concerns of a relatively very small group, usually those who are included in a single household or brick-box. The family, in the sense of the clan, including a large group of blood kindred, no longer survives in Western Countries as a social unit. It was, in primitive civilization, distinctly and markedly a social rather than a personal unit; but to-day the social functions of the clan have passed into other hands, and the family remsuns as a private group largely bereft of social functions except in the getting and upbringing of children. No small exception, truly! But it is an exception largely irrelevant to our present purposes. For, although in a sense the family is the necessary basis of Society, it remains itself, under modem condi- -tions, largely external to the social fabric, the scene of purely personal contacts, and least capable of

ITHE FORMS OP SOCIAL THEORY 13

I organization where it is most performing a social function. Its very character is to be unorganizable, incapable of organized coordination with the world of associations which surrounds it; in short, personal rather than collective, individual rather than associative in its operation. It is itself perhaps the strongest of all human groups, as it is certainly the most permanent ; but, as a human group, it is essen- ^ tially individual, and not the least of its strength lies in the fact that it holds aloof from other groups and remains, to a great extent, isolated in a world of developing interrelation. Its members exercise their civic, industrial and pohtical functions more and more, not through it, but as individuals, and, by the removal of other past functions, the disappearance of domestic industry for instance, it is more and more set free to become the sphere of purely personal affections and contacts.

In the past, some social theorists have based their whole theory upon the analogy of the family, and have striven to explain all wider phenomena of association and community in its light.^ Any such explanation seems to-day so obviously misleading that it need not detain us at all. It is, however, important to point out that this is by no means the only cure in which the use of a false analogy has caused social theories to suffer shipwreck. Again and again, social theorists, instead of finding and steadily employing a method and a terminology proper to their subject, have attempted to express the facts and values of Society in terms of some other theory or science. On the analogy of the ' e.g. Filmer's Patriarcha.

physical sciences they have striven to analyze and explain Society as mechanism, on the analogy of biology they have insisted on regarding it as an organism, on the analogy of mental science or philosophy they have persisted in treating it as a person, sometimes on the religious analogy they have come near to confusing it with a God.

These various analogies have very different degrees of value and disvalue. The mechanical analogy and the organic analogy have been alike definitely harmful, and have led theory seriously astray; for they both invoke a material analogy in what is essentially a mental or spiritual study. The analogies drawn from psychology and mental philosophy are far less harmful, and may be even extremely suggestive, if they are not pushed too far; for though neither Society nor the various associations which it includes are "persons," they approach far more nearly to being persons than to being either mechanical or organic.

There are, however, obvious and sufficient reasons why no analogy can carry the study of hiunan Society very far forward. To every distinct human study corresponds its own method and its own terminology, and analogy pushed beyond very restricted limits necessarily engenders confusion. Our object is not to know what Society is like, but to know what and how it is ; and any reference of it to some other body of knowledge defeats the object in view.

It is true that the method of social theory bears a close resemblance to the method of ethics and psychology. The two are, indeed, in a very real sense, complementary, and only in both groups of knowledge together can we find a full knowledge of community. They must pursue to a great extent the same method, in order to arrive at conclusions which are capable of being collated and correlated. Thus social theory has its social psychology, its descriptive study of the action of men in association, and this is related to social philosophy to some extent, though not wholly in the same way as individual psychology is related to moral philosophy.^ How far the parallel holds depends largely upon the sphere assigned to social psychology, which is a young science not yet at all sure of its scope or method.

The fact, however, that social and moral theory are complementary, and that, as the final object of both is the human mind in action, they must pursue largely and essentially the same method, is only one reason the more for keeping their terminologies as clearly distinct as possible. For their spheres of operation are distinct, though closely related, and the closeness of their relationship only makes any confusion of terminology the more likely to result in confusion of thought. Thus, if we say that an association is a "person," we are merely obscuring a difference — ^between persons and associations, or rather between personal and associative action, upon which the separate existence of moral and social theory essentially depends. Such a conception may be useful to lawyers whose object is to be able to group persons and associations together for like treatment civilly under the law; but it is clearly inadmissible in social theory.

*To this point I must return later. See p. i8.

We must, then, avoid analogies, or at the least avoid allowing our terminology to be influenced at all by analogies, however valuable. We must adopt our own terminology, and make it, as far as possible, clearly distinct from the terminology of any other study.

So far, I am fully aware, the ground has not been cleared for the adoption of an easily inteUigible and consistent terminology for social theory. This is in part, but only in part, the fault of social theorists, who have not succeeded in defining with sufficient exactitude the scope and the boundaries of their inquiry. It must, however, be recognized that the task is one of peculiar difficulty, both because the words of social theory are words of common use and wont, and therefore peculiarly liable to shift their meaning as conditions change, and still more because conditions do change, and the associations and institutions with which social theory hajs to deal change with them, develop new functions, and discard old ones, and even alter their fundamental character and internal structure. The "States" of to-day differ widely among themselves, and we should be hard put to it to find a definition which would embrace them all. But the "States" of different ages differ far more widely, until such common nature as exists among them is almost undiscernible m the mass of transient characteristics which encompass them at every time.

If, then, this book seems to be concerned largely with questions of terminology, that is not my fault. It is hardly possible to fall into any discussion upon an important point of social theory without finding sooner or later the discussion tending to resolve itself into a question of words — not because only words are at issue, but because it is impossible to get down to the real issues until verbal ambiguities have been removed. We shall be unable to proceed with any analysis and social phenomena, and still more with any explanation of them, until we have determined, as far as possible, to use each important name only in a single and definite sense, and until we have agreed what that definite sense is to be. That is why my second chapter deals entirely with questions of terminology.

Before, however, we begin the discussion of these vexed questions, it will be well to make as plain as possible the object which this book has in view. The subject-matter of social theory is the action of r^ men in association. That is clear enough. But manifestly this subject-matter can be studied from several different points of view. Apart from purely historical studies, there are at least three main ways — ^besides many subsidiary ways — of approaching it, and, while each of the resulting bodies of knowledge is useful to each of the others, and each throws a necessary light upon each, their respective interests are clearly distinct and the generalizations or results with which they are concerned are essentially different. We must see clearly what is the content of these various studies, if we are to recognize and appreciate the scope and the limitations of that study with which alone we are here directly concerned.

The first way of approach to social theory lies through the study and comparison of actual social institutions. Here it often approaches nearly to history; for the direct material with which it works is to be found in history. The anthropologist or sociologist, studying the institutions of primitive mankind, the constitutional historian, studying the evolution of the State and of the political structure of Society, the jurist, studying the development of law, the ecclesiastical historian, studying the growth and organization of churches — all these amass materials from which generalizations can be drawn, and on which more or less scientific principles of human organization can be based. The student of representative institutions — a Montesquieu or an Ostrogorski — works upon these materials and arrives at results which possess an objective value. A "positive science" of institutions is the object' of such forms of inquiry.

The second way of approach lies through the study, not of institutions in themselves, but of the 1 motives and impulses by which men are moved in their social actions through institutions and associations. At one extreme, this type of theory finds its place in the study of "mob" or "crowd" psychology, the impulses and ways of action of a barely organized human group. At the other extreme, it studies, from the same standpoint, the psychological aspects of the most complicated and highly developed form of social association, and endeavors, like the psychology of individual conduct, to formulate the general rules which guide the actions of men in association, studying also the diseases of association as individual psychology studies the diseases of personality. Mr. Robert Michels' book on Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties is perhaps the best modem example of this form of study in its developed form; but the nucleus of it is to be found in that part of Rousseau's Social Contract which deals with the actions of "government," and the tendency of all governments to degenerate.^

There is, of course, much "Social Psychology" which takes for itself a far more roving commission than this. Like psychology as a whole. Social Psychology has often tended, in the hands of its professors, to rely too much on data afforded by the primitive types, and to resolve itself largely into an analysis of instincts. Mr. Graham Wallas' Human Nature in Politics furnished a sort of preface to a more developed sort of Social Psychology, which its author proceeded to follow up, somewhat disappointingly, in The Great Society. In America, however, the method of Mr. Wallas is finding followers in plenty, and big developments of this form of social study may be expected from these sources.