i. Problems of Social Philosophy
WE have seen that personality is an expression not only of innate structure but also of environment. In the case of human personality the environment is very largely social. In some sense human personality is through and through an expression of present and past social environments. But precisely in what sense? We must now face this problem, which is one of the two main problems of social philosophy. On the one hand lie theories according to which individuals alone are "real," and society is merely the system of related individuals. On the other hand lie theories according to which society alone is "real," or "fully real," and individuals are mere abstractions from the concrete social whole. Between lie theories which compromise by suggesting that both society and individuals are abstractions, and that neither should be hypostatised, or regarded as an independent self-complete entity; but that, taken in their actual relation, both may be called "real."
From these various types of social theory emerge various types of social ideal, ranging from extreme individualism to the apotheosis of the State.
When we have discussed these traditional problems, we shall examine in more detail the nature of community, and its pre-requisites. We shall consider also its prospects in the world to-day.
In the next chapter we shall turn to the other great problem of. social philosophy, namely the search for the underlying principles which determine social change and social evolution. This will involve us in a discussion of the Marxian theory of economic determinism.
ii. Two Theories of the Nature of Society
(a) Individualism — The philosophical individualism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a system of ideas appropriate to a commercial class that was rising into dominance through individual enterprise in industry and commerce. The triumph of the doctrine is a good example of the determination of thought by economic influences.
According to the theory, individual men and women are self-complete realities or substances, and "society" is the mass of them in relation to one another; or (in another sense of the word "society") the abstract system of relations which holds between them. In this sense, "society" as a whole, including every one of its multifarious institutions from fashion to marriage, from the club to the State, is simply a very complex system of manners in which individuals behave toward one another. According to the individualistic theory, individuals are to be thought of as "atoms," entering into, but not constituted by, their relations with one another.
Each individual, according to the theory, is regarded as a centre of experience and rational behaviour. Apart from aberrations due to ignorance, stupidity, or distorting passion, each seeks to preserve and advance his own person. When he behaves altruistically he does so because, through one cause or another, and indeed most mysteriously, his self-interest has been extended to include the self-interest of others.
The theory is associated with the doctrine of Utilitarianism, according to which, as we have seen, pleasure is the sole good, and the ideal is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This ideal sets the true direction of all social activity. Nothing is to be sought but the pleasure of individuals, and one individual is as good as another, save that some may be capable of more pleasure than others, and some may be more useful to their fellows. The function of the State is to interfere with the free behaviour of individuals only so far as this is necessary in order to prevent them from hurting one another.
Hence the doctrine of Laissez Faire. It was confidently believed that, the uncontrolled economic activity of individuals seeking private gain by competing to satisfy the demand for goods would ensure the greatest possible production, and also the just distribution of goods, and therefore the greatest possible happiness of the greatest number of individuals. It was assumed that on the whole people would demand the kind of goods which would most benefit themselves, and therefore society, and that production would be guided solely by the spontaneous demand of the masses of freely demanding individuals.
As we know, events did not justify the theory. Our concern is philosophy, not history; but it is impossible to see Individualism in its true light without noting how it worked out in practice. Those who had economic advantages were soon able to dominate society. Those who lacked advantages sank to the status of wage-slaves, to drag out their lives often in incredible misery and brutishness. Their distress was generally regarded as a necessary though regrettable consequence of the triumph of the system. Combination of the workers to wrest better conditions from the masters was condemned as a wicked interference with sacred economic laws. Little by little, however, the workers themselves, aided by a few generous individuals in the employing class, did compel the State to interfere more and more (by means of Factory Acts, etc.) to protect wage-slaves against wage-masters. Always such interference was regarded by individualists as a very dangerous practice, to be adopted only in urgent cases.
The faith that people would demand the kinds, of goods which would most benefit them was falsified by three facts that the advocates of Laissez Faire overlooked. First, people did not really know what was good for them in the long run. Second, even when they did know, they were led astray by primitive cravings which were exaggerated to the pitch of obsession by the nerve-strain caused by unfavourable conditions. Third, capitalist propaganda and advertisement tended to stimulate these cravings rather than the desire for "the good life." The result was the tragic futility and vulgarity of our civilisation.
Along with economic individualism there grew up a morality which was individualistic not merely in the sense of being convenient to selfish individuals, but also in the sense that it was a social doctrine based on the importance of individual rights, individual responsibility, and individual intelligence and conscience. Individual rights were, of course, the only rights, and they were to be curtailed only to safeguard the rights of the majority of individuals. Freedom of action and of speech became basic political values to be safeguarded and increased. This was admirable, but it was overlooked that to the wage-slaves political freedom was useless without economic freedom. Complementary to individual right was individual responsibility. Since the individual was real, and society an abstraction, the individual must think for himself, and must will according to his own lights, never surrendering his intelligence or his conscience to the care of other individuals. In the sphere of religion the rise of the "Nonconformist Conscience" was an expression of the general reeling for individualism. In our day, when individualism has become an unfashionable doctrine, we tend to forget that it was not merely the glorification of selfishness, and that it contained much of permanent value.
Unfortunately the worse elements of the theory tended to be put in practice more than the better. Selfishness ran riot; individual responsibility was too often evaded; liberty was not preserved. Freedom of action and of speech did not include freedom on the part of the wage-slaves to act and speak against their oppressors.
The fact that Individualism as a practical political and social policy has had regrettable results constitutes in itself no condemnation of Individualism as a theory of the nature of society. But it not unreasonably arouses suspicion and an inclination to seek some theory in which society appears as more real than its individuals and as imposing a special obligation upon them. Of course the advocate of Individualism may reasonably argue that, if effective provision were made to ensure that all individuals should have an equal chance, the policy would. work. To this it may be replied that even if a society of individualists were to be put in this state of very unstable equilibrium it would very soon generate a dominant class which would use its advantage to fortify its own position.
(b) The Apotheosis of Society — At the other extreme from Philosophical Individualism lies the political theory associated with Philosophical Idealism. For Kant and his followers, particularly Hegel, the whole was necessarily more real than the parts. This theory, as we have seen, is derived from the theory that all finite things, including finite minds, are constituted by their relations with other things. So far as human knowledge is concerned each thing simply is the system of its relations with the rest of the universe. Of the things in themselves which have those relations nothing can be known. It is merely postulated as the one, universal, Absolute Reality. Of finite things (we are told) it may with human and partial truth be said that the more comprehensive a thing, the more real it is, since it approximates more to the Whole which alone is fully real.
The application of this theory to the nature of society was very striking. In a very important sense an individual is an expression of the society in which he occurs. His every act is determined by his biological inheritance, his own past experience, and his present environment. There is nothing whatever in him (according to the theory) that is not social or racial through and through. The form of his whole life and every moment in it is, so to speak, an expression of society's willing and thinking in and through him. The only thing about him which is not determined from without is the abstract and completely featureless capacity for experiencing in some manner and acting in some manner. What manner depends wholly on his social, historical, and biological "location" so to speak.
The Idealist philosophers were not greatly concerned with biology, but we may significantly give their theory a biological interpretation to bring it in line with contemporary thought. Biologically the individual inherits the dispositions for the special modes of behaviour characteristic of his species and his unique individuality. These dispositions are themselves determined by the pressure of past environments working on the indeterminate potentiality of his ancestors, selecting some biological strains rather than others. Even if, as we are told, natural selection cannot account for the occurrence of the variations themselves, nevertheless, whatever their source, it must be a source beyond the finite individual that manifests the variation. It is a social and a racial source. In fact, according to the theory, it is the Absolute Reality, of which all particular things are merely particular aspects.
Apart from biological inheritance, the individual mind is determined by the social tradition in which it is nurtured. As we have seen, all a man's experience is limited by the categories which traditional culture imposes on him. Or rather, he can only transcend his traditional culture in so far as contemporary social circumstances or the special conditions of his life compel him to do so. The creative originality of the individual need not be denied, but it may be thought of as the "spirit of the whole" possessing him and acting through him. His originality consists in some special sensitivity or insight into the nature of his experienced world, and a consequent imaginative leap to new modes of behaviour more appropriate than the old modes. But this special sensitivity itself is the product of past social and racial factors.
Some philosophers, bearing in mind all these considerations, have been led to a sort of deification of society or the race. An extreme case is the theory of the "group mind." It is well known that in a crowd or mob individuals may behave quite otherwise than they would in isolation. Seemingly the "spirit of the crowd" possesses them and imposes on them its own forms of feeling and of thought. Each individual is carried away by the enthusiasm or passion of the crowd, so that he willingly participates in acts that may be either more brutal or more generous than he or any average individual in the crowd could have performed without the support of the crowd. Lynching mobs, patriotic assemblies, revivalistic religious congregations, afford evidence of these statements. Less dramatic, but to some minds equally impressive, is the spread of fashionable ideas in a national community. Like the wind on a cornfield, some mysterious force seems to sway all minds together in unison, with spreading waves of thought and feeling. Should we not, then, say the advocates of the "group mind" theory, think of society as a great brain made up of individual cells? Must we not believe 'that all individuals, though they seem to themselves to be living their own mental life in isolation from one another, are in fact possessed by a common, unitary social consciousness?
Many Idealist philosophers who did not accept the theory of the "group mind" in this extreme form adopted a theory very much like it in effect. In their view a mind was essentially a system of ideas and valuations, a system of "mental content." The whole of the individual's "mental content" was merely a minute excerpt from the total system of ideas which constituted the whole cultural life of society. This mental content of society as a whole they regarded as real independently of the individual minds that participate in it; and indeed as more real than the individual minds, since it was vastly more comprehensive.
Just as Individualism triumphed because it was congenial to a rising commercial class, so theories which hypostatised the State or the race flourished because they were congenial to a class that had secured power and regarded its political and social institutions as essential to the life of the community. Just as Individualism produced its characteristic morality, so did the theory that we are now discussing. We have already seen that in Idealist ethics the moral claim is the logical claim of the individual's "real" will over his actual and merely partial will, and that his "real" will is the completely rational and good will, which is said to be identical in all individuals, and is the will for the greatest possible fulfilment of society as a whole. In this theory, what is really best for the individual himself is that he, with his particular capacities, should be used to the best advantage by society for the social good. It followed that the right course for the individual was not, as the individualists declared, to seek his own interest, in the faith that in this manner he would best serve society; on the contrary he must serve society, in the faith that in this manner he would fulfil his better, his "real" self.
Further, since he as an isolated individual had no reality, since he was a mere abstraction from the concrete whole of society, he must not presume to set himself up as a judge of society's morals. Since his thought was but a fragmentary abstraction from the whole culture of society it would be folly for him to judge that culture in the light of his private intelligence. Since his conscience was but an imperfect mode of the public conscience, it would be wicked for him to judge the accepted morality in the light of his own moral intuitions. For him the sum of righteousness must be to conform to the precept, "My station and its duties."
On the other hand, though for the average individual the right course was simply to fulfil his social function in the office to which fate had assigned him, some individuals there must be who were gifted with special powers of insight into the needs of society and the potentialities of cultural growth. These were the natural interpreters of the General Will, the true brain of the social organism. Without their mediation and guidance the masses would blunder into all kinds of folly and conflict. Obviously this doctrine was well suited to an established oligarchy which regarded itself as the rightful rulers of society.
Oddly enough the same kind of doctrine is also suited to a revolutionary party that claims to have a mission to remake society, and needs for its heroic task strict intellectual and moral discipline, and conformity to the dictates of the party. Marx turned Hegel back to front not only, as we shall later observe, in converting his form of idealism into a corresponding form of materialism, but also in restating for the purpose of revolution a moral doctrine that was originally well adapted to an established oligarchy.
Doctrines which hypostatise society have a special advantage which individualism has not. They can give a quasi-religious satisfaction, a sense of participation in and service of a supernatural being whose purposes are of a higher order than the purposes of individuals. This is their strength and their danger. For dangerous they are. They breed a fatal tendency toward a vague mysticism of State or race. They tempt self-assertive individuals to regard themselves as semi-divine leaders of society, and to mistake their own private advancement, and their own private prejudices, for the sacred will of society. They also afford to these self-styled interpreters of the general will an excuse for every kind of tyranny and ruthlessness. On the other hand, they encourage the average mentally lazy individual to shirk his intellectual and moral responsibility, to accept ideas and values uncritically, either from popular "leaders of thought," or from a vague and illusive public opinion, or from the official propaganda of the class that controls the great modern organs of propaganda. The ordinary citizen thankfully surrenders his intelligence and his conscience into the hands of others, and becomes a blind instrument.
But the fact that these doctrines are dangerous does not necessarily mean that they are false. Let us now try to judge both the social theories that I have been describing, both Individualism and the Idealist political philosophy, in order to discover, if possible, what is good in each.
(c) Synthesis — The Idealists' criticism of Individualism is in the main true, but their positive assertions go much too far. There is indeed good reason to hold that the individual's will is an expression of his biological inheritance and his social environment. Biologically the only qualification is that at every stage of his ancestry, no matter how remote, there must always have been something internal, something upon which the environment worked. Without that initial something, even though it was probably from the physical point of view just a very complex and unstable molecule, there could have been no biological evolution. And the offspring of that initial something, made more and more complex by generations of evolution and of intercourse with the environment, is man, with his highly-developed subjectivity.
Socially also a qualification must be made. Though the individual is through and through an expression of past and present society, yet, whatever his causes, he actually now is what he is, namely a particular and determinate individual, a centre of experience and action. To call him a mere abstraction would be false, if by "abstraction" is meant something non-existent. To "abstract" is to attend to a particular character while ignoring others. Though the character attended to is an "attraction," it is not less objective than the whole of which it is a member. Of course, the human individual without a social environment would be a very different creature; but though the social environment profoundly influences his mind it is not essential to his mind's existence as a mind. Moreover, however he was made, there he is, a real centre of mental and physical activity.
Society itself is simply the individuals that compose it. The individuals, of course, are organised in complex social relations, and are infused by their society's tradition and culture; but there is nothing that is society or the State over and above the individuals, with their present relations, and their traditions. Their relations are ordinary physical and mental relations between individuals. Their tradition is embodied in a huge mass of verbal and other symbolism, created by past generations of individuals, and interpreted by the present generation. Nowhere is there any evidence for a supra-individual self. Even the striking facts of crowd-behaviour can be fully explained without any such hypostatisation of the group. The individual in the crowd may be regarded as indulging in a particular sort of instinctive response to the special stimulus of the presence of his fellows. His reaction is what the psychologists call "primitive passive sympathy." He tends to manifest emotions and actions similar to those manifested by his fellows.
We must reject also the less extreme view which, though it does not postulate a group mind as an actual conscious process embracing all individual minds, yet regards the individual as a mere excerpt from the objective tissue of ideas which is the life of society. This view depends on the theory that a mind is simply a system of mental "content," of thoughts and values which can be identical in different minds. It ignores the individual mental activity which has this content, which thinks and feels it. If a mind is simply a system of "content," and a minute excerpt from the whole mental "content" of society, it follows that society is actually a mind of the same order as the individual's mind, though far greater. Against this view we must insist that the individual mind is of a different order from the tissue of ideas which constitutes culture, just as a tree is of a different order from a forest. From the Idealists' theory it follows that, since the whole is more real than the part, the social mind is more real than the individuals that compose it. But this view we have rejected. The parts even of an organic whole are not less real than the whole. A hand is not less real than the man, though it is less complete, and cannot exist in isolation, and is instrumental to the whole man.
Society, of course, the whole system of individuals, is more important than any individual or group of individuals, simply because it is all the individuals. It is always possible, no doubt, that, from the point of view of the welfare of the whole, a particular individual or group of individuals may be supremely important, or at any rate more important than others. But their enhanced value is instrumental to the whole.
We must admit that in a society composed of individuals of very different mental rank, say men and animals, or supermen and submen, the welfare of the men (or supermen) should count for more than the welfare of the animals (or submen), simply because they would be capable of activities and fulfilments of higher order. But actually the individuals of human societies do not differ in rank in this extreme manner. It is quite impossible to grade them in a mental hierarchy which will be demonstrably and objectively correct. Consequently, for political and social purposes, however much they may vary in social usefulness, they should be treated as though all were equally capable of mental fulfilment, as having equal claims to the consideration of society, and equal rights to express their will about the conduct of society, and, in the last resort, to determine its policy.
On the other hand, we must not fall into the errors of individualism and the cruder sort of democracy. We must recognise that the mass of individuals in a society, nurtured in unfavourable conditions, doomed to crippling activities, and educated not for responsibility and integrity, but for mechanical efficiency and docility, may be quite unable to recognise what is really best for them as individuals capable of mental development, and quite incapable of judging public policy. We must recognise, in fact, that a policy based on the expressed demands of the majority of individuals may lamentably fail to satisfy the deeper needs of those individuals themselves.
This fact must not be made an excuse for authoritarianism on the part of an enlightened minority. We have to-day plenty of evidence of the tyranny to which this inevitably leads. Instead, the enlightened minority must work by reasonable persuasion and the example of its own personal integrity and responsibility, till the masses recognise them as appropriate leaders. Unfortunately it is always easier to gain recognition and power by deceitful and emotional propaganda, and to secure it by coercion.
iii. How Men Behave in Groups
(a) Degrees of Social Awareness
(c) The Individualistic Mentality
(d) Genuine Community: Personal Intercourse
(e) Genuine Community: Social Will
(a) Degrees of Social Awareness — Having considered the problem of the status of the individual and of society, we will discuss the different manners in which individuals are aware of society. The reader must be warned, however, that in this section I shall not be summarising well-established philosophical theories, but tentatively putting forward ideas which academic philosophers might regard as outside the province of philosophy. It will be obvious that in formulating these ideas I have been influenced by the writings of Mr. Gerald Heard, but I have also, for my own purposes, modified his theories in some very important respects. Mr. Heard speaks of the "evolution of consciousness" from the pre-individual type, through the individual type, to the fully social type; but I cannot determine whether he is describing different kinds of attitudes taken up by the individual toward society or different forms of a communal consciousness or group mind. In what follows I shall discuss merely the attitudes taken up by the individual to his social environment.
There seem to be three different kinds of mental attitude or three kinds of mentality which the individual may manifest toward the group of which he is a member. For brevity I shall call them the herd-mentality, the individualistic mentality, and the mentality of genuine community. All three attitudes are actually manifested by all extant human beings, at one time or another, or all together; but since some individuals are on the whole more prone to one attitude than the others, we may perhaps very roughly classify individuals according to their habitual attitude to society. And since we may with some confidence arrange the attitudes in order of mental development, we may similarly grade the individuals in respect of development of social consciousness.
I cannot believe, as Mr. Heard does, that it is possible to trace in history a gradual evolution from a condition when the herd mentality, the most primitive social attitude, was overwhelmingly dominant to a condition in which the most developed will for true community is intermittently occurring. Instead I incline to believe that the three attitudes have been common ever since our species emerged from the sub-human, and that throughout the historical period the individualistic attitude has been commonest. On the other hand, it may well be that in the highest sub-human mammals, and even in the earliest, most primitive human races, the herd-mentality dominates. It may be that in a biological type higher than our own the dominant mentality would be that of genuine community. But again it is not inconceivable that even in the case of Homo Sapiens more favourable social and economic conditions and better education may in the long run immensely strengthen the rudimentary community-will in each generation, and that in time even the imperfect nature of our species may be conditioned to genuine community.
However this may be, there are to-day three distinct ways of feeling about social groups; and if we wish to understand the nature and potentialities of human society we must form clear ideas on this subject. I shall now try to describe these social attitudes and I shall argue that the more developed cannot be described simply in terms of the less. Individualism contains a factor not reducible to herd-mindedness; and genuine community-will contains something not reducible to individualism.
(b) Herd-mindedness — The most primitive social mentality is illustrated most strikingly in typical mob-behaviour. The individual is intensely conscious of the presence of the crowd as a vague surrounding mass, but much less aware of distinct individuals, save as focal points in the crowd. His attention is directed to individuals only when they become in any way significant of the mental life of the crowd, for instance by assuming leadership over him, or by being singled out as aliens, recalcitrant to the common mood. Even leaders and aliens fail to impinge on the mind of the crowd-member as real individuals. They are merely stimuli evoking in him a stereotyped response. He tends to be oblivious also of his own individuality. So far as he is self-conscious at all, his desire is to conform to the behaviour of the crowd. He is almost literally hypnotised by the crowd's presence.
Not every member is reduced to this state. On the contrary a few may react with heightened self-consciousness and self-assertion. But all tend toward herd-mindedness, even if some resist the tendency, and react in a contrary manner. Under the influence of a crowd-leader who senses the disposition of the crowd, and can express it, and within limits control it, the members eagerly conform to the prevailing temper. They allow their individual intelligence and moral sensibility to fall into abeyance. They accept uncritically such simple thoughts and feelings as can be communicated in the atmosphere of the crowd. Relatively simple, primitive, and emotional ideas can be communicated much more easily than ideas that are more subtle and less emotional. It follows that under the influence of the crowd each individual tends to be reduced to a mental level lower than his normal level, and is capable of actions which in the normal state he would dismiss as foolish or barbarous or base.
It would be unjust to say that in c............
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