Chapter XV

The Nature of the Social Process

We have spoken of "interests" as " elements of the social process." In order to see haw they take on that character, it is necessary to analyze interests a little more carefully from another point of view.

What we have to say now applies to interests, whether we use the term in the most general sense, as when we said that interests may be reduced to six; or in the most particular sense, as when we speak of an interest in buying at the lowest price, or in getting an invitation to a social function,.or in catching the train, or in occupying a good seat at the theater.

An interest is a plain demand for something, regardless of everything else. An interest is unequivocal, intolerant, exclusive. We may see this in the case of different interests in. the same individual. Everybody, for instance, is interested both in eating and in resting. One of the marks of a high state of civilization, as contrasted with a lower state, is persistence in carrying on the work needed to assure the food supply, even when starvation is not an immediate danger. The interest of the savage in rest often leaves him at the verge of missing his last chance for food. Men of low grade will let their rest-interest have its way till hunger asserts itself; then the food-interest in turn banishes rest till hunger is appeased. I may be interested in talking with my family, or in music, or in games, or in celebrating the Fourth of July. If, however, at a given moment my main interest is in going to sleep, I have patience neither with talk, nor music, nor games, nor celebrations. Every interest tends to be absolute. If we were concerned now with individuals, as such, we should have to dwell upon the psychology of interest. It is enough for our present purposes to observe that each individual is a resultant of many interests, which have been reduced to a certain working basis of mutual concession.

When we consider individuals in their relations with each other, we find that their reactions are produced by the interests that they severally represent. Each individual is a simple or a compound interest-factor. For instance, a newly arrived Slovak sees in a boss builder simply and solely the source of a wage. The builder sees in the immigrant simply and solely a power to work. The one wants the wage, the other wants the work; and beyond that the two neither expect nor desire more of each other. But presently the immigrant becomes a voter, and the builder becomes a candidate. Now the voter wants an easier wage, and the candidate wants other services besides work. The two nay be at heart quite as self-centered as before. To each the other is merely a means, while self is for each'the end. Yet the interests of the two have a different content, and as a result their reaction upon each other is somewhat changed, both in form and in method. Each is still bent on making the other tributary to his own interests, and on avoiding payment of more tribute than necessary to the interest of the other.

Stages in the social process differ according to the degree in which the interests of individuals are independent or interwoven. At one extreme is the condition in which either A's interest and B's interest in food may be satisfied without reference to the other, and as they have no effective interests Of any other sort, they live without attention to each other; Or, A's interest in food cannot be satisfied if B's interest in food is satisfed. Their interests in this case demand either the same food or control of the same source of supply. Under the latter circumstances, fierce hostility, war of extermination, is the phase of the social process inevitable between the individuals, or between the tribes whose situation they typify. At the other extreme is the condition in which neither major nor minor interests of one person are satisfied in any considerable degree except at the price of contributing to satisfaction of the interests of others. From one extreme to the other, the social process is a reaction between persons each attempting to satisfy his own interests.'

If we look into the different modes of this reaction, we find that they reduce to two; viz., conjunction of interests and conflict of interests. The former type occurs when it is necessary for the persons in question in some way to further each other's interests in order to promote their own interests. The latter type occurs when it is necessary for the persons in question to oppose each other's interests in order to promote their own. The members of a patriarchal family, of a tribe, of a band of outlaws, or of an army are illustrations of the first type. Two tribes fighting for possession of the same hunting grounds, the criminal element and the law-abiding element in a community, competing schemes for monopoly of an economic opportunity, or two intolerant religions, are illustrations of the second.

The social process could not occur at all if a certain measure of the conjunction of interests did not exist among the earliest specimens of the human species. Such community of interests as that between parent and offspring, children of the same family, members of the same clan or tribe, may contain little that is clearly different from the community of interest in a pack of wolves. If the latent community of interests among primitive men had been no greater than that among other animals, their descendants would not have developed the contrasts that now exist between human individuals and their societies, on the one hand, and brute individuals and their societies, on the other.

At the same time, the conspicuous element in the history of the race, so far as it has been recorded, is universal conflict of interests. It may be that philosophers will some day be able to reconstruct views of the social process, throughout historic time, in terms which will present implicit consensus of interests as the ultimate motor of the process; while they will construe the obvious conflict of interests as merely secondary incidents in the development of the process. It would be mere dogmatism to pretend that the facts in sight at present justify such a rendering. Conflict between men interested in the same thing, which could not be controlled by both contestants; or between men interested in different and incompatible things, has always been the prominent social situation; while conciliation and agreement have been rather resultants of social forces than prime factors in movement. We shall see later that the last proposition has to be modified when we observe the most advanced stages of the social process. It is approximately correct of the earlier stages. At first, conflict is the active factor, while consensus is the passive factor. The former of these factors is so constant and, at the beginning of the social process on a large scale, so predominant, that the initial forms of the process have been subsumed under the so-called "law of absolute hostility."¹

Yet we must not even provisionally assume that "absolute hostility" is literally absolute, as a general relation between men. There is absolute hostility between interests, considered as pure abstractions. There is limited hostility between actual interests, either in the same person or in different persons. In cases of blood-feud, or wars of extermination, the notion "absolute hostility" has its evident application. For practical purposes the formula means that human relations range upward from a state in which men will fight each other to the death. The very men who are destroying each other in the latter case may be prompted to that violence by desire to protect other persons from similar violence. Their "absolute hostility" is not universal, therefore, but particular. It is not an essential human principle, but merely a mode of social relationship under peculiar circumstances.

"Absolute hostility" reduces to something like this: So long and so far as the struggle for existence develops merely material wants, the persons or groups feeling those wants are implacably hostile to all persons or groups whose existence threatens the satisfaction of those wants. As other wants develop, and as means for securing the essential wants increase, the terms on which persons are willing to pursue satisfaction of their wants become less absolute. The social process continues to be largely in the form of struggle, but it is less and Iess inexorable struggle.

Without affirming that either conflict or conjunction of interests is the essence of the social process, we may say that, in form, the social process is incessant reaction of persons prompted by interests that in part conflict with the interests of their fellows, and in part comport with the interests of others. The ratio of the conflict and of the harmony is almost infinitely variable. The kinds of conflict and harmony are likewise variable. In general, conflict is the obvious phase of association in earlier stages of the social process, while conjunction of interests grows more evident in later stages. Our analysis of the social process will, accordingly, take the corresponding order; viz., first the conflict phase of the process, second the co-operative phase.

In thus speaking of opposition and conjunction in the social process, as though they were earlier and later in order of time, we are doing a certain necessary violence to reality, as has been indicated above. The two aspects of the process are not consecutive, but simultaneous. Yet it is doubtful if they are ever equal either in quantity or in importance. One is always the main tendency, while the other is secondary. Certain interests in given persons are always engaged in social struggle, while certain other interests in the same persons are in co-operation with other, or possibly the same, persons. An obvious illustration is the conflict between England and the United States as producers of steel rails, for instance, and the harmony of the two nations as consumers and producers of cotton. Without forgetting the interplay' of these two principal aspects of the process, we shall first observe the phenomena of conflict, and later those of co-operation. Sociological analysis, guided by the process-conception of life, must have gone far beyond its present results, before it can be pertinent to venture generalizations about the relative importance of these factors as dynamic forces.

It is not superfluous to repeat that we do not reach the deep meaning of any social situation, past or present, until we have found final answers to the questions: What are the effective interests in the activities observed, and what is the law of their operation? In practice we shall hardly be able to hold these questions entirely separate from the questions which are logically subordinate: How do these factors operate, by collision or by conjunction; and by what form and proportion Of compounding the two modes?

Notes