Social Value
Chapter 9: The Sociological Presuppositions
Benjamin McAlester Anderson Jr.
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CONCEPTIONS of the social unity fall, in the main, into three classes: the mechanical, the biological, and the psychological. Each of these conceptions recognizes, of course, that the individual has a mind, but the first thinks of that mind as so shut in that the only connections between men must be of an external sort; the second sees modes of collective action analogous to the modes of individual action, and reaches the conception of a social mind by analogy; while the third treats the social mind as an empirical fact, the phenomena of which can be studied as concrete things in detail. And there are gradations here, and combinations.
The following extract, freely translated and substantially abridged, is taken from chapter I of DeGreef's Introduction a la Sociologie:
It is in vain that Spencer protests against the accusation that he has assimilated the laws of biology with those of sociology. The confusion is everywhere complete. He has not indicated a single law, nor a single phenomenon, which has not its correspondent, if not its equivalent, in the antecedent sciences. Draper, in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, adopts precisely the doctrine that the laws of biology apply equally to sociology. Man is the archetype of society. Nations pass through their periods of infancy, adolescence, maturity, age, death. This
(73) sort of thing makes sociology wholly unnecessary. The attempt of Stanley Jevons to explain economic crises by sun-spots, so far from being an effort of genius, is simply a jeu d'esprit. It is simply a recognition of the common fact that climate is one of the factors that influence man in society. According to Hesiod, physical forces first engender each other, then in turn the gods and man. Since then, social science has in turn been founded on the laws of astronomy, chemistry and biology. To-day it is the last, vitiated, further, by false psychological notions about the power and unlimited liberty of the reason, and the consciousness of human individuals, and applied by analogy to the collective reason.
The error consists in looking for the explanation of social phenomena in the most general laws. This is natural within certain limits, but has been pushed to extreme, but logical consequences, by the American, Carey (Social Science). He looks, in effect, to one of the oldest sciences, and one, consequently, relating to the most highly general phenomena, those of astronomy, for the universal laws of society. Geometry, he holds, gives us principles equally valid for the chemist, the sociologist, and for him who measures the earth. A system assuming to explain complex phenomena solely by the laws of phenomena more simple, may be compared to the effort to give an account of a book, not by reading it line by line, but by examining the cover and the title-page.
As DeGreef elsewhere puts it, there is a hierarchy in science, proceeding from the more general to the less general, depending on the nature of the phenomena studied. This hierarchy has been variously stated. Comte puts it thus: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, social physics (sociology). Baldwin,[1] writing much later, of course, puts it thus:
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So here, as elsewhere, there is a gradation, a hierarchy, in science: chemistry necessary to life, but not itself of life; forces in the environment necessary to evolution, but not themselves vital; life-processes necessary to consciousness, but not themselves mental; consciousness necessary to society, but not all consciousness social; social consciousness necessary to social organization, but not all social consciousness actually in a social organization.
Now the point with DeGreef is that the special laws of each successively narrower group of phenomena are to be explained only by concrete study, and that it is wholly vain to think that the application of principles drawn from other, more general groups of phenomena give us these laws. Thus the economists talk of "equilibria" between various economic forces, just as if they were physical forces;[2] and a whole school of mathematical economists has arisen, who find economic life a thing that will fit into equations. This work is valuable, but it is not final. Analogies are helpful, but are not ultimate. Similarly, the biological conception, which likens society to a man, has its contributions. The biological analogy has been pushed very far: thus Novikow calls the social intellectual Rite the social sensorium; Lilienfeld likens the action of a mob to female hysterics; Simiand calls the idle rich the adipose tissue of society, the priests also represent fat, while the police are the social phagocytes which eat up wandering criminal cells.[3] But this, though suggestive, is not an ultimate social philosophy or even an approach
(75) to it. Even DeGreef, as I shall indicate a little later, errs by trying to trace a too rigid parallel between individual structure and social structure. We must introduce a careful study of the peculiarly social phenomena, those phenomena which are to be found only in society, before we are privileged to talk of a social organism or a social mind.[4]
On the other hand, it seems to me that Baldwin has erred in the opposite direction. The laws of chemistry do not cease to be operative in the human body, even though more complex biological laws operate there. And the laws of biology are not suspended just because an animal organism develops a mind. The greatest defect of the older psychology, against which the experimental psychology is a reaction, was its failure to take proper account of physical processes connected with consciousness. Now society, according to Baldwin, is best described as analogous to a psychological organization, and such an organization as is found in the individual in ideal thinking.[5] But surely this is an abstraction, and not a fact. Society does not cease to be physical, chemical, biological, subconscious, merely because it has also attained in part a higher form of psychical activity (to which Professor Baldwin would object on the basis of his distinction between the "social" and the " socionomic
DeGreef's conception seems to me better, on this logical point, -- though of course Baldwin's
(76) analysis of facts represents a great advance but it is not satisfactory: [6]
Since unconsciousness, instinct, and reflex action characterize the psychic life of inferior beings, and even the greater part of the intellectual activity of those most highly developed, man included, we ought not to be astonished, a priori, that the collective force which constitutes the social superorganism presents the same characteristics.
Consciousness is aroused in the individual, and new activities result, which soon, however, lose their conscious character, and become reflex and automatic. So with society.
Then follows an elaborate analogy between the individual brain and nervous system and their functions, and the social structure and its functions, which we need not reproduce here. This analogy seems forced to me. There is little point to trying to find such exact correspondences. It is enough if we have our general organic principle as a method of study, and then proceed to the study of social facts. I shall myself, however, make use of some analogies in what follows, but shall not insist too strongly upon them. I may here express the opinion that society is an organism less highly developed than a man's body or a man's mind, and that its unity is primarily a unity of function rather than of structure,[7] though there is some structural unity.
The conception of the social unity which seems most useful for the purpose of our study - and the. writer would insist that no social theory is
(77) valid for all purposes, and that many social theories have value for some particular purposes - is that of Professor C. H. Cooley, as set forth, particularly, in the opening chapters of his Social Organization. As this book, however, presupposes certain doctrines set forth in Professor Cooley's earlier book, Human Nature and the Social Order, a brief account of certain points in that study must also be given. It may be noted, at the outset, that Professor Cooley neglects the study of the material aspects of society, and centres his attention upon the mental side. His purpose in this is not to deny the significance of the material factors, as he explains in the preface to Social Organization, but simply to narrow the scope of his labors. The writer wishes here to make a similar statement regarding his own viewpoint. In the following pages, attention will be centred almost exclusively upon the psychical forces involved, upon what we shall call the " social mind." In this, however, it is explicitly recognized that the physical environment and the biological individuals are essential factors, and that the forces which are manifested in them must be recognized as coefficients with the psychical forces which we shall study, in the determination of any concrete social situation. I have no intention whatever of giving an independent, ontological character to this psychical abstraction. For the purposes of this study we shall regard the physical factors as constant, - an assumption justified for purposes of study, provided we subsequently, in handling concrete
(78) problems, make allowance for the extent to which it is untrue.
In his earlier book,[8] Professor Cooley objects to the customary antithesis between " individual" and "social." They are simply two aspects of the same thing. He discriminates three meanings of the word, social, none of which, he says, is properly to be contrasted with "individual": (1) that pertaining to the collective aspect of humanity, in its widest and vaguest meaning; (2) that pertaining to immediate intercourse; (3) conducive to collective welfare, and so nearly equivalent to moral. But none of these meanings has individual " as its natural or logical antithesis.
There are several forms of individualistic views: (1) Mere Individualism. The distributive phase of human life is almost exclusively regarded. Each person is thought of as a separate agent; all social phenomena originate in the action of such agents. This view is much discredited by evolutionary science and philosophy, but is by no means abandoned even in theory, and practically it enters as a premise into most common thought of the day. (2) Double Causation, -a partition of power between society and the individual, both thought of as separate causes. This is ordinarily the view met with in social and ethical discussions. There is here the same premise of the individual as a separate, unrelated agent; but over against him is set a vaguely conceived collective interest or force. People are so accustomed to think of themselves as uncaused causes, special
(79) creators on a small scale, that when general phenomena are forced on their notice, they think of them as something additional, and more or less antithetical. The correction of this error will leave the contest between individualism and socialism, considered as philosophical notions, rather than as names for social programs, among the forgotten debris of speculation. (3) The third view he calls Primitive Individualism. The individual is prior in time to society. This view is a variety of the preceding, perhaps formed by mingling individualistic preconceptions with a rather crude evolutionary philosophy. Individuality is lower in rank as well as prior in time. The social is the good, moral, and the individual is the anti-social and bad. Professor Cooley's view is that individuality is neither prior in time, nor inferior in rank, to sociality. If social be applied only to the higher forms of mental life, it should be opposed, not to individual, but to animal or sensual, or the like. Our remote ancestors were just as inferior when viewed separately as when viewed collectively. (4) The fourth form of individualism he calls the Social Faculty view. The social includes only a part, and often a rather definite part, of the individual. Individual and social are two different parts of human nature. Love is social; fear and anger are unsocial and individualistic. Some writers have treated intelligence as an individualistic faculty, and have founded sociality on some form of sentiment. This is well enough if we use social in the second sense of pertaining to immediate conversation,
(80) or fellow feeling. But that these sociable emotions are essentially higher, or pertain peculiarly to collective life, is very doubtful. Cooley holds that no such division of human nature is possible. Social or moral progress consists less in the aggrandizement of certain faculties and suppression of others, than in the discipline of all with reference to a progressive organization of life.
The rest of the book is devoted to a study of society in its distributive aspect, or as we should say ordinarily, using the terms which Professor Cooley objects to, the study of the social nature of individuals. It is based in large measure upon a study of the development of children. Personality is an essentially social thing. The "I" feeling is a thing which only social influences can develop.[9] The thought process within the " individual mind" is a social process, - we think in words, and, indeed, in conversations.[10] I shall not develop these notions at length. They are of similar nature to those in Professor Baldwin's Social and Ethical Interpretations, when he discusses the "dialectic of personal growth." They are interesting and pertinent as showing in a concrete way the tremendous and comprehensive sweep of social factors in the creation of the individual mind.
Social Organization, which appeared in 1909, takes up the collective aspect of human-mental life.
Mind is an organic whole, made up of cooperating individualities, in somewhat the same way that the music of an
(81) orchestra is made up of divergent but related sounds.[11] No one would think it necessary or reasonable to divide the music into two kinds, that made by the whole, and that of the particular instruments, and no more are there two kinds of mind, the social mind and the individual mind. The view that all mind acts together in a vital whole from which that of the individual is never really separate, flows naturally from our growing knowledge of heredity and suggestion, which makes it increasingly clear that every thought we have is linked with the thought of our ancestors and associates, and through them with that of society at large. It is also the only view consistent with the general standpoint of modern science, which admits nothing isolate in nature.
The unity of the social mind consists not in agreement but in organization, in the fact of reciprocal influence or causation among its parts, by virtue of which everything that takes place in it is connected with everything else, and so is an outcome of the whole. Whether, like the orchestra, it gives forth harmony may be a matter of dispute, but that its sound, pleasing or otherwise, is the expression of a vital cooperation, cannot well be denied. [12]
Professor Cooley stresses the unconscious character of many of these social relations. "Although the growth of social consciousness is perhaps the greatest fact of history, it has still but a narrow and fallible grasp of human life." Cooley objects to the Cartesian postulate, which makes " cogito," "I think," the fundamental and most absolutely certain fact in the world. He holds that it grows out of the idiosyncrasy of a highly specialized, introspective philosopher's mind, and that, for the normal mind, " cogitamus," "we
(81) think," is just as obvious.[13] The "I" feeling, and the "we" feeling are differentiated together out of the inchoate experience of the child. And "I" and " we" are alike social in their nature. The self, for-Professor Cooley, is not a scholastic "soul-substance" or transcendental ego, but simply a relatively differentiated portion of the social mind. "'Social organism' using the term in no abstruse sense, but merely to mean a vital unity in human life, is a fact as obvious to enlightened common sense as individuality. "[14]
I pause here to contrast this view of the "social mind" with that of some other writers, of whom I may take Professor Giddings as representative. I quote from page 134 of the 1905 edition of Professor Giddings' Principles of Sociology:
The social mind is the phenomenon of many individual minds in interaction, so playing upon one another that they simultaneously feel the same sensation or emotion, arrive at, one judgment and perhaps act in concert. It is, in short, the mental unity of many individuals, or of a crowd.
The social mind for Professor Giddings is thus made to depend upon an identity of content in many individual minds. For Professor Cooley, it is an organization and integration of many differentiated and divergent minds, in a complementary activity. Professor Cooley's conception, thus, takes in all minds, while that of Professor Giddings would exclude the dissenters. Further, Professor Giddings emphasizes the ele-
(83) -ment of consciousness; unconscious processes are included by Professor Cooley, whose conception really finds a place for the total psychosis of every individual in society. It may be noted , however, that Professor Giddings, in the more detailed exposition of the classroom, does not stress either the agreement or the consciousness in the absolute fashion that the brief passage quoted would indicate, and readily concedes that for theoretical purposes the more inclusive conception of Professor Cooley's is a very useful one. The difference between his viewpoint, as set forth in the classroom, and that of Professor Cooley, is primarily a matter of emphasis.[15]
The following propositions are submitted, partly by way of summary, and partly by way of addition, as embodying the points essential for present purposes as to the nature of society:
(1) Society is an organism. Organism as here used is a generic term, with the following connotation: (a) an organism has different parts, with different functions; (b) these parts are interdependent; (c) an organism is alive, in the sense in which Spencer defined life, that is, an organism has the power of making appropriate inner adjustments to the external environment; (d) an organism has a central theme, not externally imposed, to the working-out of which the different parts contribute; but the organism -- or the
(84) parts - is not necessarily conscious of this central theme; (e) an organism is constantly changing its "matter" without essential change in "form." (In a biological organism the process of metabolism goes on constantly. In a society, men are constantly passing out of society through death, or through lapsing into idiocy, etc., and new elements are constantly entering, not through the biological process of birth, but through the process of becoming "socialized," in the manner described by Baldwin as the " dialectic of personal growth," or by Cooley, in his Human Nature and the Social Order.) (f) An organism grows, by progressive differentiations and integrations.
(2) There is a mind of society, a psychical organism. The minds of different individuals themselves differentiated into systems of thoughts and feelings that are often lacking in harmonious adjustment to each other - are in such intimate interrelation that they may be said to constitute one greater mind. The physiological basis of this greater mind - if it be thought necessary to locate it -is the brains and nervous systems of individual men, plus that set of physical symbols (e.g., language, literature, gestures, art, music, etc.) which are set in motion by the nerve activity of one man, and then stimulate nerve activity on the part of another. This unity is primarily a unity of function, however. [16]
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(3) The fact of individual differences among the minds of men, does not vitiate the conception of a mind of society. It rather proves the organic character of the social mind, by introducing the fact of differentiation. The integrating element is found in the points which individual minds have in common.
(4) The mind of society, like the mind of a man, is primarily volitional, and not intellectual. (Volition is here used in the wider sense, as including all motor and affective activities in mind.) Like the individual mind, the greater part of it is vaguely conscious or subconscious.
(5) Less highly organized than the individual mind, the mind of society is less rational, and less highly conscious, than most, if not all, individual
(86) minds. "Social self-consciousness" is a rare, if not non-existent phenomenon.
(6) The mind of society, in its entirety, is -of necessity not a matter of perception for any individual. Each individual sees only that part which is in his own mind - not all of that! and in the minds of other individuals with whom he is in communication.
(7) But the minds of other men may be, and normally are, in part objects of perception for any social individual. There may be an "inferential " element in our perception of mental processes in the minds of other men, but it is not inference.
(8) The individual monad is a myth. His machinery of thought- language and logicis socially given him, his ideals and interests, his tastes even in matters of food and drink, are socially given, - apart from social intercourse his human-mental life would be mere potentiality.
(9) The worth of this conception of social reality, like the worth of other scientific hypotheses, is to be determined by a pragmatic test: does it relate phenomena the connection between which was previously obscure, without introducing greater difficulties of its own? I believe that, for the problem of value theory at least, it will find such a pragmatic justification.
This lengthy excursion into a field not commonly counted as part of the economist's territory is to be justified on the ground that the economist has not only failed to take account
(87) of the conclusions reached there, but has also, too often, been making and using assumptions which contradict them. It is further necessary, because the conception of "social value," which forms the subject of this book, assumes a " social organism " which can give value to goods, without making it clear what sort of an organism society is conceived to be. The excursion has at least revealed some of the many meanings that lie behind that term. And it is especially necessary in view of the fact that the conception of " social value has been attacked on the ground that the organic conception has been abandoned by the sociologists themselves.[17] That this is true of the biological analogy, which made society an animal, and drew social laws from biological laws, rather than from the study of social phenomena, is readily granted. But that sociologists have abandoned the generalized conception which gives us primarily a highly convenient schematism on which to group the social facts that we actually find, is by no means conceded. And the question is really one as to those facts themselves rather than as to the mode of grouping and conceiving them, If social activity be nothing more than a sum of similar individual activities, as Professor Davenport seems to think in the article criticizing Professor Seligman,[18] and if the individ-
(88) -ual be an isolated monad, then Professor Davenport's criticisms will hold. But if the individual
(89) is in vital psychic relation with other individuals, so much so that he is impossible apart from those relations, and if social activity is, not a sum of similar individual activities, but an integration and organization of differentiated and complementary individual activities, spiritual as well as physical, then Professor Davenport's criticisms are not valid. And it is on this point that I would strongly insist. The argument of the following chapters may be put -though not so conveniently - in terms of the mechanical analogy, and the psychical processes treated, not as the action of a unitary, though differentiated, mind, but as a balancing and transformation of forces, and practically the same results for value theory will follow.
