Afterword

5. Property and Avidity

Tarde's system, then, poses as powerful a challenge to reductionism as to holism. Indeed, it enables us to see the two as mutually reinforcing, in that they rely on the same dynamic of unveiling, the discernment of substance beneath phenomenon or cause behind effect, only pursued in opposite directions. Tarde's theory steps outside of their apparent opposition, enabling us to see both as forms of substantialism, that is, as demands to choose a certain subset of entities as principles of all the rest.²⁴ I have argued that this challenge is premised on the priority of relation with respect to entity. Nonetheless, if it is the dynamic of unveiling itself, rather than any specific set of ontological commitments, which is the core of substantialist metaphysics, then effectively countering the latter will require more than simply asserting the priority of relation, since otherwise there is a risk of reproducing the substantialist narrative while simply replacing entity with relation (or force or process or whatever) at its final resolution, and claiming to overcome substantialism by means of a 'dynamism' which, Tarde suggests (p. 20), is rarely satisfying even on its own terms. What is required is a positive account of relation which is sufficiently constructive to provide a coherent alternative metaphysics, while resisting the recuperation of relation into a special kind of substance. Tarde's theory of properties provides such an account.

Three stages can be distinguished in Tarde's argument. First, he observes that social relations in the general sense of the term can be thought of in terms of 'possession' or 'having', of the relationship of proprietor to property. Such relations can be either unilateral, such as that of master to slave, or reciprocal, such as that between the parties in a commercial transaction. Second, this notion of possession can be generalized to non-human societies, such that, for example, a material particle can be said to 'possess' all the other particles on which it exerts a force. The theory of possession thus generalizes the theory of belief and desire as psychological quantities; it can be seen as giving ontological content to the logical idea of relation, while retaining the generality of the latter. The other forms of relation required for scientific or metaphysical explanation can then be reconstructed on this basis: agency or causality, for example, are merely forms of possession, and are less suited to form ultimate principles because their scope is narrower.

Finally, the relation of substance to attribute (or 'property' in the philosophical sense) can also be reconstructed as a form of possession. The idea here would seem to be that attributes are always more or less disguised modes of relation between elements. However, these relations are themselves simply ways of describing or identifying other elements. A primary quality such as the mass of a body can be seen in terms of the gravitational force it exerts, which is really a way of describing the other bodies within its sphere of influence. A secondary quality such as a body's colour will be seen in terms of a relation to human or animal visual systems, which is the possession of the body by the latter rather than vice versa, and hence reduces to the operation of such visual systems. That is, as Tarde clearly says, the properties of an element are other elements, not relations with other elements.

Thus, the central image which expresses proprietorship is that of centre and sphere, not of node and link, and the overarching vision is not of an interconnected network but of a dense froth of interpenetrating spheres, in which both the circumference and the centre are everywhere. To return to the point with which I began this section, the displacement of entities by relations as the basis of reality, if it is not to slip into the reification of relations into a special kind of entity, must be doubled by a further shift from the relation to the field on which it acts. That is, while the priority of having over being certainly entails the priority of the relation of having over the entities which possess and are possessed, the still more fundamental reality is that of what Tarde calls 'avidity', or the abstract urge to possess. From the point of view of the element, it itself is the centre which emanates the sphere by projecting radii, but ontologically it is the sphere which is given, and both the centre and the radii constructed from it.

This avidity is manifest in the elements' desire to enter into relation with their peers, to gain hegemony and influence over them and to expand their spheres of action, a desire which can never be satiated, but always strives to transcend any given situation or structure. By the same token this desire is never fulfilled or completely expressed; sooner or later it will always be met by other monads' competing desires. Indeed, Tarde argues, attempts to predominate by brute force are unlikely to succeed; rather, any element can only attain even the most limited success by tactically co-opting others' drive to hegemony. Reality as we perceive it is built up out of these transactions and conflicts between avidities.

This is reflected the omnipresence of conflict, competition and exchange;²⁵ nonetheless, the macroscopic world in which we usually live consists largely of stable and enduring entities in reasonably co-operative relationships, which reflect the success of certain elements in gaining control over others or inspiring their emulation, and stamping their impressions on the resulting aggregates.

This is reflected the omnipresence of conflict, competition and exchange;25 nonetheless, the macroscopic world in which we usually live consists largely of stable and enduring entities in reasonably co-operative relationships, which reflect the success of certain elements in gaining control over others or inspiring their emulation, and stamping their impressions on the resulting aggregates.

This avidity, however, is not a blind drive to gain power, or to reproduce, although the sexual instinct is surely one of the clearest examples of it, but contains in miniature a plan for the reorganization of the cosmos as a whole. Against the Darwinian account of evolution—which might otherwise appear rather congruent with the picture of reality sketched in the preceding paragraph—Tarde holds that every minor change, even the most fleeting and least successful mutation, has implicit within it a complete vision of the cosmos; the tiniest motion can only be understood by extending it to infinity, and the narrowest idea by drawing its most far-reaching conclusions. The drive of each monad to extend its sphere of influence is the drive to actualization of a virtual idea of the universe. '[T]he speciality of each element, a true universal medium, is to be not only a totality, but a certain kind of virtuality, and to incarnate within itself a cosmic idea which is always called, but rarely destined, to realize itself effectively. This would be, as it were, to house Plato's ideas in Epicurus' atoms, or rather Empedocles' (p. 58). Perhaps the most striking aspect of this idea is the priority it grants to the virtual over the actual. However, it is important also to note what underwrites this priority, namely each monad's having an image of the universe and a plan for its transformation, in view of which it continually acts. Thus, Tarde refuses to abandon the idea of universal explanatory principles along the lines of the Platonic Forms, but seeks to rejuvenate them by scattering throughout the universe an infinite number of copies,²⁶ writing in the heart of each atom an alternative virtual history of the whole, all of which are more coherent than the history which actually transpires.

By the standards of the philosophical tradition, the theory which results is curiously hybrid. On the one hand, it can be seen as a hypertrophied rationalism, where the most contingent motions can only be explained on the basis of the complete vision of reality which each monad possesses, and which it strives to actualize.²⁷ On the other hand, it implies that reality as a whole is very far from being rationally ordered, since it is formed in a chaotic and unpredictable fashion by the competition, and even more by the simple collision, of the trajectories of the elements. Tarde retains teleological or final causes at the level of the element even while sharply rejecting them as explanations of the history of the universe as a whole.²⁸

Thus, the order which we see taking shape at macroscopic scales as a result of the temporary dominance of leading elements is both a reflection and a betrayal of the order which pertains at the level of the element. Since, Tarde argues, this order reflects the success of a leading monad in gaining predominance within a given aggregate, it represents a reinscription or projection of that monad's state on a macroscopic scale. By the same token, however, it occludes the much greater number of subordinate monads (or, more precisely, those aspects of them which are not exhausted by their participation in the aggregate), and hence by far the greatest part of the aggregate's reality. In particular, since no social order is permanent, the longer-term evolution of the aggregate will largely be determined by these subordinates, and not by the leading element. A society presents a unified face to the outside world only to the extent to which it suppresses, or at least conceals, dissent between its members.

The process which culminates in the formation of a coherent aggregate, then, does not respond to some higher or prior principles, but to the contingency of struggle; but, again, this struggle is not between two atoms of sheer will but between competing principles, or overarching visions of the universe. One implication of this is that the structural forces at work in complex aggregates tend to reflect, if imperfectly, the universal vision of the leading (and other) elements, not just the fact of dominance. Social movements without a clear programme, Tarde observes, are doomed to failure from the beginning. More than this, movements whose programme is in any way limited or particularistic are much less likely to be successful in the long term than those committed to a universal vision. Because the monads' desires and beliefs are universal in their scope, the furthest-reaching of aggregative social forces are those which have the greatest capacity to harness this universality rather than suppressing it. Whether it be the bureaucratic forms of politics which were destined to overcome charismatic monarchy, the universalism of the great missionary religions, or (to add a further example to Tarde's) the various political myths which have taken the latter's place in the 20th and 21st centuries, the most lasting and productive modes of social aggregation are those which appeal explicitly to universal visions of one form or another. Nonetheless, these visions are always severely compromised and diluted in their application; even the most harmonious is only a pale reflection of the intense drive of the individual element towards totality.

Thus the metaphysics of possession rejoins that other central tenet of monadology, that the part reflects the whole: for Tarde, it does so in the form of an urge to remake the whole in its own image by gaining hegemony over it. The reality of the particular lies in the drive towards universality, and the heterogeneity of the elements in the clash of their universalisms. The light scattered by the pulverized dust of reality resolves into an image of totality. 'What do we place within the ultimate discontinuity if not continuity? We place therein ... the totality of other beings. At the basis of each thing are all real or possible things' (p. 27).

Notes

24. This critique is what enables us to see Tarde’s theory as an ontology of ‘univocity’, in Deleuze’s terms (Difference and Repetition, cited above; for this connection see Debaise, ‘Une métaphysique des possessions’, cited above), or as a ‘flat ontology’ in DeLanda’s (M. DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London, Continuum, 2002). On my reading, however, there are considerable differences between these thinkers’ development of this idea and Tarde’s; space precludes a detailed engagement with this point.↩
25. The emphasis on competition is unusual in MS compared to Tarde’s other works, where co-operative relationships are more prominent. Indeed, even MS (p. 140). emphasises that relations of reciprocal possession are more productive than those of unilateral possession.↩
26. One might think here of the Stoic ‘seminal reasons’ (logoi spermatikoi). Cf. Lazzarato, ‘Gabriel Tarde’, cited above, p. 107.↩
27. Lazzarato here talks of ‘the priority of the logical or intellectual element over the element of will’ (Lazzarato, ‘Gabriel Tarde’, cited above, p. 140).↩
28. See also Social Laws, ch. III.↩