Chapter
9
Total
Environment
and Man
Panta
Rhei. (Everything flows.)
Heraclitus
of Ephesus
In the past chapters
we have
looked at man as the component; the society or the group as the
context;
values, norms, symbols and their social patterns and dimensions as the
content;
and the whole as a dynamic and fermenting socio-political flux. Within
this
flux an individual's entire life experience and social impact may be
but an
incident, a component of the current that carries it. The impetus of
innovators
who brave the prevailing norms may be felt only if and when, more or
less
belatedly, their impact gains momentum and magnitude. More generally
speaking,
it is the whole composite of each now generation, itself ever-changing,
which,
while submitting to the social flux that has gone before it and will
continue
after it, constitutes the texture of that flux and shapes its course.
For
example, within a continuum of fermentations and dynamics, John Locke's
philosophy of natural rights, long after it had been developed in
England,
found favorable ground in America, influencing people like Jefferson,
Adams,
Hamilton and Madison; and, combined with the aftermath of the
Franco-British
Seven Years War and other parameters, helped bring about the American
Revolution. As Scott points out:
The
reasons for Locke's great vogue in the New World are not hard to find.
His
analysis began with the state of nature, and although Locke sometimes
treated
this simply as a convenient way of explaining the basis for political
obligation rather than as a historical fact, in America it looked
remarkably
like a description of reality. Did not a kind of natural law prevail in
the
wilderness and on the frontier before the formal institutions of
government
could be set up? And if Americans were dissatisfied, could they not go
elsewhere as Locke had said? Locke spoke in terms of the social
contract by
which men assembled and created a government, and had not the idea of
compact
played an important part in the colonies from the beginning?[1]
The example poses the
problem
of the confines and definition of the sociopolitical flux. In our
illustration
we can detect distant dimensions which seem to have affected the social
currents and conditions prevailing at the time of the American
revolution. That
Locke's natural rights philosophy, influenced by European realities
rather
remotely connected with the American colonies, could inspire the
revolutionaries a century later (partly because of their territorial
and
geographic outlooks) leads us to the evident conclusion that the social
flux
does not flow in a vacuum. It is not "a river without bottom and
without
banks and flowing without assignable forces in a direction one cannot
define."[2]
It flows
within an environment. This environment, as our example implies, is
shaped not
only by interpenetrations, intertwinings, shadings and fadings of
different
social currents into one another, but also by other environmental
factors
giving different social currents their particular characteristics. In
other
words, the environment we are talking about is that totality within
which the
social flux flows and from which it draws its substance.
Indeed, man has
forever looked
into this total environment (of which he himself is a part) to find
clues to
explain himself and his society and to seek inspiration for his social,
economic and political organization. Before considering the "social
flux" proper, then, we will need to take a look at the other phenomena
the
total environment engenders--that is, those which man, within the
limits of his
perceptions and conceptions, has distinguished. In that total
environment man
has established that trees and animals grow--therefore it is organic; that crystals form and
planetary systems revolve--thus it is systematic;
and that as the organic grows and the systematic evolves and revolves,
time
passes--thus it is temporal. As man
circumscribes phenomena to perceive an environment, he consequently
assumes a
"beyond environment" embracing the circumscribed. If we want our
total environment to be total, we must consider it as well. Thus, the
total
environment, in temporal and spatial sense (beyond life and stars),
extends to
eternity and infinity and endows man's conception with metaphysical,
spiritual
and supernatural dimensions.
Man has used these
various
conceptions of the total environment to find his place within it. By
analogizing or incorporating himself into certain aspects of his total
environment, or by analyzing and manipulating them, man has elaborated
organic,
systematic, historical or spiritual rationales for economic, social and
political action and organization. While we present the picture as a
whole,
different schools of thought, depending on their times, places and
social
conditions, have emphasized parts of this totality as decisive in
shaping man
and his society. By looking at the social flux from various points of
view, we
may be able to identify better the various parameters of the total
environment.
In some cases we will not go into detail, as we can draw on what we
have already
covered. We will distinguish between those approaches which have used
the
phenomena of the total environment mainly to explain man and society,
and those
which have used them as blueprints for social organization. Of course,
it
should be borne in mind that the two aspects of explaining and
advancing
theories for the organization of man and society are intertwined, and
our
compartmentation exists only for the sake of clarity.
I. Man
Explained
Man the
Organic Product
Some thinkers, from
Aristotle
through Montesquieu and up to contemporary social scientists such as
Toynbee,
have attributed a considerable role to the natural environment in
shaping human
character and society. While human character and social structures
eventually
reflect one another, among the theories advanced we can discern, at one
level,
those focusing on the biological impact of nature on human
characteristics and,
at another level, those emphasizing the influence of climate and
geography on
social structures.
For Aristotle, the
people of
the cold climate (those of the north) were courageous but had little
intelligence and talent; therefore they could maintain their freedom
but could
not govern their neighbors. Those of the south were more intelligent
and
artistic but not courageous; therefore they were subject to domination
by a few
masters.[3] Climate, he contended, thus influences human
characteristics, which in turn lend themselves to particular forms of
government. Twenty centuries later Montesquieu advanced a similar
theory, devoting
most of the third part of his L'Esprit
des Lois to analyzing the effects of climate on the political
cultures of
different nations. Observing that temperature influenced the human
organism, he
found that the cold climate invigorated men but reduced their passions,
while
the hot climate rendered them lazy and fainthearted but passionate and
temperamental. Montesquieu then
concluded that the political consequences of climate would be that the
Northerners, who had more courage and perseverance, would tend towards
greater
liberty and consensual forms of government, while the Southerners,
because of
their laziness, inconsistencies, cowardice and temperamentality, would
be more
prone to tyranny and eventual subordination and slavery.[4]
More recently, similar
theories
with different degrees of determinism have been developed. By the end
of the
nineteenth century, the organic relationship between man and nature had
been
more "scientifically" distinguished into two components: racial
characteristics, and what can be labeled "geo-social" and
"geo-political" determinism, i.e., the effects of the natural
environment on social and political institutions. Of course, the racial
and
geo-socio-political aspects intertwine, but different emphases can be
discerned. We have already referred to some of the racial theories,
notably in
our discussions of National Socialism in Chapter Five and of reference
groups
in Chapter Eight.- Here we will consider some of the more singular
geopolitical
theories.
In 1897, Friedrich
Ratzel, professor
at the University of Munich, attributed to man a "sense of space," an
organic potential which some people possessed more than others and
which,
combined with their geographical situation and the space they occupied,
determined their political supremacy.[5] His
was one of the theories which flourished
in the Western world at the turn of the century under the impetus of
economic
and political expansions and imperial rivalries.[6] In the United States, Huntington theorized
that the great empires in the Middle East had declined because their
natural
environment gradually died out. He used his theory for general
historical
analysis and explained the rise and fall of great empires on the basis
of
climatic fluctuations.[7] He also placed all the highly developed
countries within the latitudes at 350 N. and 700 N., which he
identified as the
"very high energy" region.[8]
In a lecture entitled
"The
Geographical Pivot of History," delivered in 1904, the British
geographer
Mackinder emphasized Eurasia as a center and generator of power.[9] He elaborated a theory on the relationship
between geography and politics. Distinguishing between sea- and
land-based
powers, he envisioned a "world island" comprising the land mass of
Africa, Asia and Europe with a "heartland" located in the Russian
part of Eastern Europe and Northwestern Asia. This heartland, because
of its
population and raw material and its inaccessibility to sea
powers--located in
what he identified as "rimlands"-had such potential for growth that
whoever
controlled it could control the "world island" and hence the destiny
of the world.[10]
The concepts
formulated by
Ratzel, Mackinder and other political geographers have had considerable
impact
on political thinking and policy-making in the twentieth century. In
Germany,
Major General Karl Haushofer, well versed in the theories of Ratzel and
Mackinder and borrowing the term "geopolitics" from the Swedish
scholar Rudolf Kjellen, founded the Institute for Geopolitics in Munich
in
1922. He came in contact with Hitler in 1924 through Rudolf Hess--who
had been
Haushofer's aide-de-camp in World War I--and, despite his Jewish wife,
was
highly esteemed by Hitler, who after accession to power gave Haushofer
facilities to expand his Institute and substantiate the Third Reich's
claims to
Lebensraum.[11]
Traces of Ratzel's Raumsinn (sense of space) theory are
found in the French geographer Jean Brunhes' theory on the
confrontation
between the nomadic and sedentary people, where the former, of
necessity and
because of their mobility, developed a sense of strategy permitting
them to
dominate their fellow men.[12] Wittfogel explains the despotic forms of
government in Asia on the basis of the water supply in what he calls
the
hydraulic societies. According to this theory,
Above
the level of an extractive subsistence economy, beyond the influence of
strong
centers of rainfall agriculture, and below the level of a
property-based
industrial civilization ...man, reacting specifically to the
water-deficient
landscape, moves toward a specific hydraulic order of life.[13]
Here, the opportunity
for
despotism arises, and those who control the water supply control the
political
complex.
Beyond the
deterministic
concepts establishing strict and direct organic relationship between
man and
his environment, other approaches (at times labeled "possibilism," in
contradistinction to "determinism") have suggested interaction
between man and the natural environment within a range of possibilities
offered
by the geographical setting, among which and within those limits man
can
choose. Further along the line human geography took a broader approach
to the
impact of the natural environment and geography on man, considering
them only
as integral dimensions of the social sciences and taking into account
social evolutions
and cross-cultural interpenetrations.[14] Thus,
the theories on the effect of the
natural environment, climate and geography have evolved from the
extremes of
geopolitics and environmental determinism to possibilism, and the more
moderate
approaches of human geography.
Man the
System
At the systematic end
of the
spectrum man, having perceived how nature puts things together, and
having
himself put things together in the systematic and mechanical sense, has
tried
to understand himself and his relationship to his environment on
similar
terms. Already in ancient Greece, the
"physicist" philosophers, such as Democritus, had tried to give a
mechanical explanation of natural phenomena. In the seventeenth
century,
Descartes and Hobbes used scientific methods to understand and explain
human
behavior and society. Hobbes opens his Leviathan
with the following words:
Nature
(the Art whereby God hath made and governes the World) is by the Art of
man, as in many other things, so in this
also imitated, that it can make an Artificiall Animal. For seeing life
is but a
motion of Limbs, the begining whereof is in some principall part
within; why
may we not say, that all Automata
(Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch)
have an
artificiall life? For what is the Heart,
but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so
many Strings; and the Joynts, but so
many Wheeles, giving
motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that Rationall
and most excellent Worke of Nature, Man.
For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a C0MM0N-WEALTH or
STATE, (in Latine CIVITAS) which is but an Artificiall Man; though of
greater stature and
strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was
intended;
and in which, the Soveraignty is an
Artificiall Soul, as giving life and
motion to the whole body; The Magistrates, and other Officers of
Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment (by which fastned to the
seate of the
Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty) are
the Nerves, that do the same in the Body Naturall.[15]
In the efforts to
apply science
to society as a system, we may recognize three dimensions. First is the
driving
inspiration to assimilate man and his society to a system which, like
other
structures--organic, mechanic or inorganic--may be analyzed. Second, if
this
process did work, it would imply that man and his society are systems
whose
mechanisms can be analyzed empirically. Third, if man and his society
were
systems, then, like other systems, they could have potentials for
rearrangement
and further system-building (which we shall discuss in the next
section). In
our age of science and technology, this systematic approach has been in
great vogue.
Analogies to mechanical processes have permitted the development of
methods for
analyzing social structures.[16] Explaining his cybernetics system of
analysis, Norbert Wiener wrote:
The
existence of Social Science is based on the ability to treat a social
group as
an organization and not as an agglomeration. Communication is
the-cement that
makes organisations.
Communication alone enables a group to think together, to see together,
and to
act together. All sociology requires the understanding of communication.
What is
true for the unity of a group of people, is equally true for the
individual
integrity of each person. The various elements which make up each
personality
are in continual communication with each other and affect each other
through
control mechanisms which themselves have the nature of communication.
Certain
aspects of the theory of communication have been considered by the
engineer.
While human and social communication are extremely complicated in
comparison to
the existing patterns of machine communication, they are subject to the
same
grammar; and this grammar has received its highest technical
development when
applied to the simpler content of the machine.[17]
The analogy between
men and
machines implied empirical analyses, experimentation and quantification
of
human behavior and social structures, opening new methodological
avenues. If
man were a system, then if properly measured he could be understood and
acted
upon.[18] Thus, mathematics is applied to the analysis
of human behavior, as in game theories and simulations. Furthermore,
general
theories with structural-functional approaches, such as those of
Talcott
Parsons, have been advanced regarding the social system. The new
approaches
have had significant impact on the course of the social sciences.
Parsons, for
example, defining his social system, points out that:
...a
social system is only one of three aspects of the structuring of a
completely
concrete system of social action. The other two are the personality
systems of
the individual actors and the cultural system which is built into their
action.
Each of the three must be considered to be an independent focus of the
organization of the elements of the action system in the sense that no
one of
them is theoretically reducible to terms of one or a combination of the
other
two. Each is indispensable to the other two in the sense that without
personalities and culture there would be no social system and so on
around the
roster of logical possibilities. But this interdependence and
interpenetration
is a very different matter from reducibility, which would mean that the
important properties and processes of one class of system could be
theoretically derived from our theoretical knowledge of one or both of
the
other two. The action frame of reference is common to all three and
this fact
makes certain "transformations" between them possible. But on the
level of theory here attempted they do not constitute a single system,
however
this might turn out to be on some other theoretical level.
Almost
another
way of making this point is to say that on the present level of
theoretical
systematization our dynamic knowledge of action-processes is
fragmentary.
Because of this we are forced to use these types of empirical system,
descriptively presented in terms of a frame of reference, as an
indispensable
point of reference. In relation to this point of reference we conceive
dynamic
processes as "mechanisms" which influence the "functioning"
of the system. The descriptive presentation of the empirical system
must be
made in terms of a set of "structural" categories, into which the
appropriate "motivational" constructs necessary to constitute a
usable knowledge of mechanisms are fitted.[19]
We have quoted this
long
excerpt in order not to betray Parsons' thoughts. His Social System
should be
understood in the light of his structural functional approach, with all
the
qualifications he attaches to it. However, the view he depicts can, if
fragmented, lead to misconceptions and faulty conclusions--that is, if
the approach,
without consideration of its underlying limitations, were applied to
the
sub-systems of the social system. Indeed, this has been done in some of
the
systematic approaches to politics. It is a little like applying the
metaphor of
a car to the human body, analogizing the fuel tank as the stomach, the
engine
as the heart and the wheels as the feet, then losing sight of the
general sense
of the analogy and looking for one particular instrument in the stomach
identifiable as a fuel gauge. More pertinent to our subject here, it is
like
trying to explain the government in a country without knowing its
economic
philosophy or traditional values. Methods of research may also become a
handicap. Simulation, for example, is useful for getting an idea about
the actual
situation, but it is not the real situation. A maneuver is not a war.[20] The Game Theory, while it surely helps the
understanding of possible outcomes of conflicts, competitions and
bargains,
indicates only possible outcomes, and
only part of them at that, mostly in static frameworks, because to be
mathematically plausible, it conceives of players as rational
systems--rational
according to the rationale of the game-builder.[21]
Man the
Historical Product
The temporal or
historical
dimension is ever present even where immutable natural laws or
systematic
processes are emphasized. As we pointed out, the organic grows and the
systematic evolves. We are considering here, then, only the tendencies
of some
schools of thought to emphasize man's temporal environment to degrees
which may
blur the other dimensions of the social flux. Many thinkers have tried
to read
into the history of mankind a pattern explaining man's evolution and
destiny.
Although the term "historical determinism" evokes the Hegelian/Marxian
schools of thought, the idea to conceive of man and his society as
bound to the
temporal continuum has been with man ever since recorded
history--often, of
course, intermingled with the spiritual dimension. Some political
cultures,
such as the Chinese, have been structured for millennia on historical
terms.[22] In the West, already in the second century
B. C., the Roman, historian Polybius depicted in his Universal
History the rise and fall of systems of government as a
cyclical recurrence. Nineteen centuries later his countryman
Giambattista Vico
(1668-1744) in his The New Science
(1725 and 1744) saw in the historical process the law of ebb and flow
which
moves man and his society through progress and regression. This theory
inspired
the Enlightenment philosophers like Condorcet to develop their ideas of
progress. Thinkers like Condorcet or Auguste Comte fitted their systems
within
the mold of a temporal background and recognized stages in the
development of
mankind.
The role of the
temporal
environment as the decisive factor in the human social evolution is the
essential trait of the Hegelian philosophy. For Hegel (1770-1831) there
existed
a rationale in the historical development of society, where, through
successive
dialectical processes, man, as a component of the state, moved towards
realizing the absolute Idea and Spirit. History contained the pattern;
indeed,
it was the pattern, the understanding of which could lead to objective
standards of value. Marx adopted this theory of historical determinism
but substituted
matter for the Hegelian ideal and spiritual ultimate. Thus, Marxian
historical
determinism was materialistic. The materialistic conception of history
unfolded
for Marx five epochs: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism,
capitalism and
communism. While Marx's method was essentially empirical and
systematic, and
while the bulk of his research was oriented towards analyzing the
social
phenomena of his time, the historical method made it possible for him
to
conceive of the inevitability of the proletarian revolution. Towards
the end of
their lives, Marx and Engels, particularly the latter, did recognize
that the
historical processes were not as rigidly determined as they had assumed.[23]
Man the
Spiritual Being
By the spiritual
dimension, we
mean those approaches which, in trying to identify man in relation to
the total
environment, have looked to that part lying beyond man's perception and
extending to infinity--the cosmos. We saw earlier that man tends to
resort to
that layer of the environment when he finds himself helpless or
uncomfortable
in understanding his immediate environment. In the centuries when his
main
source of inspiration and speculation about the origin of his
environment and
himself was the supernatural, man conceived of himself as an image and
an
extension of that supernatural, and of his social environment as an
arrangement
by divine providence. The concept should not, however, be understood
restrictively in terms of religion. The spiritual can also be moral
without
religious overtones, or metaphysical and supernatural without
necessarily being
moral. Thus, while spiritual approaches by St. Augustine (350-430) in
his City of God (413-427) or St. Thomas
Aquinas (1224-1274) in the Summa
Theologica were religious and supernatural, we also find spiritual
dimensions in the theories of those who have leaned on the organic,
systematic
or temporal characteristics of the environment, such as Montesquieu,
Descartes
and Hegel. In fact, nearly all the applications of the beyond in the
West since
the Age of Enlightenment to explain man and his society have had some
organic,
systematic or historical (temporal) mold.[24]
Maybe one of the
purest modern
spiritual approaches (free from other dimensions) which can best
illustrate our
point is Friedrich Nietzsche's (18441900). His transvaluational
philosophy
takes man beyond the organic, systematic or historical, to the "will to
power." In stating, that Nietzsche's philosophy illustrates our point,
we
are making it clear that we do not necessarily equate a spiritual
approach with
a religious or even a moral goal, as indeed the Nietzschean will
transcends the
organic-naturalistic, systematic-mechanistic, historical-temporal, and
even
moral premises. Posing the problem, Nietzsche writes:
Suppose
nothing else were "given" as real except our world of desires and
passions ....is it not permitted to make the experiment and to ask the
question
whether this "given" would not be sufficient
for also understanding... the so-called
mechanistic (or "material") world? I mean ...as holding the same rank
of reality as our affect--as a more primitive form of the world of
affects in
which everything still lies contained in a powerful unity before it
undergoes
ramifications and developments in the organic process (and, as is only
fair,
also becomes tenderer and weaker)-as a kind of instinctive life in
which all
organic functions are still synthetically intertwined along with
self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, and
metabolism--as a pre-form of life .
...The
question is in the end whether we really recognize the will as efficient,
whether we believe in the causality of the
will ....one has to risk the hypothesis whether will does not affect
will
wherever "effects" are recognized--and whether all mechanical
occurrences are not, insofar as a force is active in them, will force,
effects
of will.
Suppose,
finally, we succeeded in explaining our instinctive life as the
development and
ramification of one basic
form of the will--namely, of the will to power, as my
proposition has it; suppose all organic functions could be traced back
to this will to power .... then one would have gained the right to
determine all efficient force unequivocally as--will
to power. The world viewed from inside,
the world defined and determined according to its "intelligible
character"--it would be "will to power" and nothing else.[25]
This will to power is
the prime
attribute of the superman whose consciousness of existence--his own
above
all--is the optimum condition for his highest and boldest spirituality.
He is
the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit, the
artist,
the creator of values and hence their destroyer, because whoever of
necessity
creates, of necessity destroys.[26]
The world of Nietzsche is the world of spirit, sublime: the will to
power in
which man and his total environment are one.
II. Man
Organized
The organic,
systematic,
temporal and spiritual parameters of the total environment have
different
potentials as blueprints for social organization. Their potentials also
depend
on how they are envisioned by different schools of thought. Some of the
approaches so far discussed, such as the geopolitical and the temporal
(historical), tend to see the environment as actively influencing man
and
society, while the systematic approach perceives it as more passive,
subject to
analysis and manipulation. Where a parameter is considered actively
influential
and deterministic in shaping man's destiny, the approach to social
organization
may become fatalistic and/or dogmatic. For example, religions have
preached
spiritual determinism; political myths such as Nazism have used
geopolitical
determinism; and dogmatic communism has claimed historical determinism.
Such
approaches use their valuational premises as blueprints for their
social
organization. Of course, beyond their valuational fatalism and/or
dogmatism,
they also have, in different degrees, organic and systematic outlooks
for
explaining and organizing man and society. And those approaches
capitalizing on
organic and systematic parameters are not without valuational
dimensions. But
organic and systematic approaches, tending to consider man as having
decisive
impact on the environment, become less fatalistic and more pragmatic or
rationalistic (although in their rationalism they may also tend towards
dogmatism). The organic and the systematic approaches, drawing
inspiration from
modern sciences such as biology and physics to discover laws for human
organization, have been the main thrust of social theories ever since
the Age
of Enlightenment.
Economic
and Social "Natural Laws" and Survival of the Fittest
In France, François
Quesnay
(1694-1774), a medical doctor, physician to Madame de Pompadour, and
agriculturalist, searched for eternal and natural laws of wealth
similar to
those of physics, independent of time, space and historical evolution.
Finding
agriculture the only productive source of wealth, while considering
industry
was sterile, he postulated an economy based on the free expansion of
agriculture and criticized governmental policies that neglected it in
favor of
mercantilism and industrialization. His physiocratic school advocated
that
society should be left to its "natural" law, where not only would
free economics take care of the production and distribution of wealth,
but the
rule of laissez-faire, laissez passer
would adjust the course
of society with the least governmental intervention. The society could
take
care of itself like an organism. Dupont de Nemours, another member of
this
school, addressed the sovereigns: "You will see how simple and easy the
exercise of your sacred functions is, which consists principally in not
hindering the good that is being done by itself and punishing, by the
ministry
and the magistrates, the small number of those who attempt at the
property of
others."[27]
These economic and
social
natural laws were further developed in England by Adam Smith
(1723-1790).
Exposed to the burgeoning industrial revolution in England, Smith was
influenced not only by the physiocrats, but also by early Humean
utilitarianism
and Locke's concept of natural rights, the labor theory of value and
the right
to property. Smith revealed the basic principles of the division of
labor and
specialization and the essential role of capital in the development of
a society.
Although he recognized that the produce of labor rightly belonged to
the
laborer, he believed that if part of the worker's earnings were not
held as
rent, interest, profit, and savings, there would be no accumulation of
capital
for further economic development. Accumulation could best take place in
a
liberal economy where the capitalist, looking after his own interests,
would
invest and exploit his capital and the workers toward the growth of the
nation's wealth. Although he conceded that division of labor and
capitalism
engendered certain premises incompatible with moral justice, he
considered them
part of the providential scheme and natural order which should not be
tampered
with-notably by the intervention of government.[28]
Smith's successors, in
a more
aggressive industrial environment rife with the inequities he had
deplored,
built those inequities into the capitalist formula and justified its
natural
development. Thomas Robert Malthus (17661836) stressed that with every
increase
in industrial production there would be a disproportionate geometric
increase
in population, while the means of subsistence could increase only
arithmetically. He concluded that in an egalitarian system the end
result would
be general misery, but that if the social flux was left to its natural
process,
unimpeded by laws intended to maintain some financial equity (such as
the
English "poor laws" of 1562 assisting the dispossessed), then society
would regulate itself. The regulatory process would come about because
of the
inequality of wealth: The liberal economy, by making life too difficult
for the
miserable masses whose wages maintained them at only a subsistence
level, would
discourage them from procreating. He argued that this was a natural
process of
social growth and decay similar to other organic processes in nature.[29]
David Ricardo
(1772-1823)
further developed the idea of a self-regulating liberal economy by
emphasizing
industrial capitalism and a market economy,
where:
Labour,
like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be
increased
or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The
natural
price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the
labourers, one
with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either
increase or
diminution.[30]
He noted, however,
that while
profit was the incentive for the accumulation and investment of
capital, since
the development of industrial production would result in an increase in
population and hence an increase in the demands on naturally limited
resources,
the ultimate beneficiaries of industrial development would probably be
the
landlords. Ricardo did not advise measures to stop this trend, which he
believed to inhere in the nature of things. He nevertheless deplored
that it would
sooner or later slow down the economy, although the leveling off could
be
postponed by further mechanization of industry and new methods of land
exploitation.
These concepts of
liberal
economy advanced by the French physiocrats and British economists were
based on
the assumption that society, if left free from man-made regulatory
processes
disrupting its natural course, would, like other natural phenomena,
best
preserve its own well-being. As this natural process unfolded, it
revealed
inequality, struggle, challenge and competition among the members of
the
society, the rich and the poor, with the latter condemned to mere
subsistence
and the danger of perishing in unemployment, misery, famine and poor
health. In
the nineteenth century, with the advance of biology, further
conclusions were
drawn from these premises. Conceptualizing liberal economy in terms of
biological evolution, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) argued that as
society
evolved towards civilization, the process of competition should be free
from
interference, including public education, public sanitation or help to
the
poor, which postponed progress by permitting the unfit and vulnerable
to
survive. Thus, he justified a social order based on the survival of the
fittest, similar to the organic process.[31] "That
there is a real analogy between
an individual organism and a social organism," he argued, "becomes
undeniable when certain necessities determining structure are seen to
govern
them in common."[32] The concepts of struggle for survival and
survival of the fittest have had far-reaching impacts on Western
thought and
social structure, notably in the United States where, as William Graham
Sumner
(1840-1910) put it, "The growth of a large business is merely the
survival
of the fittest."[33] The combination of theories of capitalism
and survival of the fittest is the moving force of American competitive
free
enterprise, still justifying great discrepancies in wealth and
reluctantly
accepting governmental regulation for social justice or economic
planning.
Socio-Psychologically
Arranged Contentment and Material Affluence
Concern for the
scientific
understanding of man and his society branched out in different
directions.
Already in the seventeenth century, ideas were developing about
structuring man
and his society as a system. Plato had long ago advocated that men be
structured and conditioned to enjoy their appropriate stations. Modern
advances
in physics and other exact sciences made such processes seem plausible.
These
approaches centered mainly around three intertwined aspects of man's
interaction with phenomena, namely, the
socio-psychological conditioning of men, the systematic organization of
society,
and the materialistic exploitation of
nature.
Claude Adrien
Helvétius
(1715-1771), one of the French philosophes,
whose book De l'esprit (1758) was
published at the same time as Quesnay's Tableau
Economique, tried to make ethics a science similar to physics by
postulating that man's only natural impulses are the physical
sensations of
pleasure and pain, which develop his self-love and are the source of
all his
virtues and vices. Unlike the physiocrats, he did not think that
society should
be left to the free play of mans self-interests. He observed that moral
and
behavioral patterns were inculcated through associations and learning.
Asserting the equal intellectual potentials of men at birth, he
concluded that
social harmony required wise legislators to institute laws and
structures which
would reward with pleasure those acts in the public interest and punish
with
pain deviations from the social norms. Basically, Helvétius was
advancing,
without its laboratory accompaniments, psychological conditioning and
reinforcement as advocated by modern psychologists such as B. F.
Skinner. For
Helvétius, as for Skinner, the issue of individual freedom did not
arise, for
properly conditioned members of society would not feel a need for
freedom.[34]
In his Voyage
to Icaria (1840), Etienne Cabet (1788-1856) depicted a
country organized on the basis of the decimal system, its one hundred
provinces
each composed of ten communes with the capital cities in the middle of
the
provinces and the cities laid out symmetrically, where education,
production
and social life were scientifically organized under the direction of
elected
technocrats. Education began at the age of five and continued till
seventeen
for girls and eighteen for boys, after which boys and girls were
assigned
social tasks on the basis of aptitude. Cabet, who believed his system
would
soon become a reality, tried to organize a prototype for it in the
United
States, but his Icarian experiment in Nauvoo, Illinois, where he had
gathered
some 1,500 followers, failed, mainly because of bad management.
Other thinkers in the
first
half of the nineteenth century, such as Claude Henri de Saint-Simon
(1760-1825)
and Charles Fourier (1772-1837) in France, and Robert Owen (1771-1858)
in England,
also advocated systems--albeit less strictly structured ones.
Saint-Simon's
advocacy of a "positive" examination of man and control of social
behavior inspired his one-time secretary, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), to
develop
the science of society: sociology. Analyzing social structures, Comte
discovered three stages in human development: first, the theological
stage with
the belief in the supernatural; second, the metaphysical, dominated by
the
power of abstraction, intellectual anarchy and a variety of doctrines;
and
third, positivism based on science, during which the society would be
totally
organized and dictatorially structured by the power-holders, mainly the
intellectuals at the spiritual level and bankers and industrialists at
the
functional level. The main ingredients of Comte's positivism were order and progress. He wrote:
In
Sociology, the correlation assumes this form: Order is the condition of
all
Progress; Progress is always the object of Order. Or, to penetrate the
question
still more deeply, Progress may be regarded simply as the development
of Order;
for the order of nature necessarily contains within itself the germ of
all
possible progress.[35]
Contemporary to these
thinkers
were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They too looked at man and society
scientifically to discover not only what the social system should
be, but, they believed, what it will be. Before the
final stage of communism, the members of the
society had to be processed and conditioned by a dictatorship of the
proletariat.
The idea of progress
has, of
course, been central to modern models for social organization. While
the idea
of progress after the Renaissance and the Reformation connoted both
spiritual
and material betterment of man, in the impressive strides of the
industrial
revolution material improvement came to overshadow spiritual
dimensions.
Already in the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon envisioned man as
capable of
controlling his environment. At the close of the eighteenth century,
Condorcet
forsaw, through the use of science, endless human progress, wherein
disease,
ignorance and inequalities could be vanquished.[36] In the nineteenth century the idea that man
could master and harness nature, i.e., condition nature rather than be
conditioned by it, was firmly established in the materialist schools of
thought
and has since been the motivating philosophy of modern societies,
whether of
free enterprise or socialist conviction. Such ideas, in contrast to
those which
considered man organically dependent on his environment, postulate a
systematic
relationship between man and nature, in which man, by the proper and
rational
use of science and technology, can employ nature to overcome nature's
handicaps. This approach has been particularly pronounced in Marxian
materialism and Western theories of affluence and development after
World War
II.[37] Recent awareness about the ecological
backlash from excessive technological encroachments on nature, however,
have
revealed that man cannot systematically exploit Mother Earth on purely
mechanical and technological bases.[38] Thus,
neither is the relationship of man to
his natural environment totally organic, nor technologically and
mechanically
systematic. It seems, then, to be human. But what is human? Is the
human not
organic and systematic? To answer this question, we have to ponder
further how
man's perception and conception of the phenomena of the total
environment have
been used to understand human behavior and society.
III.
Man the Central Science
While man tries to
explain and
organize himself and society organically, systematically, temporally or
spiritually, we have seen that the study of man and society cannot be
reduced
to any single parameter. Even the schools of thought we have briefly
reviewed,
although emphasizing one or another aspect of man's relationship to his
environment, have rarely confined themselves to their own main focus.
While man
may at times defy certain characterizations and encourage others, it is
only by
having a multiple yet balanced perspective that we can make sense of
the
complexity of the human phenomenon. Man is at once organic, systematic,
temporal and spiritual.
Yet even by keeping
all these
dimensions in mind, we may distort the human phenomenon if we study him
from
all these angles subjectively. Man is all of these, yet he is none.
Take the
organic and the systematic. Man is organic, yet his metabolism does not
function by simple organic processes. He does not always eat when he is
hungry,
sleep when he is sleepy, copulate when he is sexually aroused, or
excrete when
he needs to. He is conditioned --and he conditions himself--to attend
to these
organic needs and pleasures according to certain patterns of behavior
in
particular times and places. He even conditions other organisms--animal
and
vegetable--which come into contact with him (he "domesticates" and
"cultivates" them). However, this does not mean that he is systematic
in satisfying his needs. He is not always hungry when he sits at the
table, he
does not always go to sleep when he goes to bed, he is not always
aroused when
he lies beside his mate, and he does not necessarily feel like
evacuating when
he goes to the lavatory (otherwise he wouldn't need laxatives). He
takes pills
to force himself--or regulate himself--to do the things his organism
does not
want to or cannot do.
It is not, then, by
applying
"organisms" and "systems" in any strict sense to man that
we will finally make sense of him. It is rather by understanding man
and his
place within his total environment, as he perceives and conceives it,
that the
organic, systematic, temporal and spiritual dimensions can be
understood. For
they are, in so far as man perceives and conceives them as he does,
human
inventions. Man makes not only God according to his own image, but also
plants,
machines and history. That plants are organic and stones are inorganic
is a
categorization within the limitations of human understanding; they may
have
common characteristics beyond human perception. To understand man and
his
relationship to his total environment, then, we should branch out from
the
"science of man" into the sciences that he has elaborated to
understand his environment: from anthropology,[39]
ethnology, archeology and history, to psychology, sociology, political
science,
human geography, branching into ethology, zoology, ecology, biology and
botany,
theology and thence astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, physics and so
on. Let
us take a quick glimpse, using this approach, to see whether we can
single out
any characteristics in the relationship of man with his total
environment which
could be useful for further analysis.
Primeval men often
took
themselves to be organic, to the point of attributing,
anthropomorphically,
their own characteristics to other organisms and objects, going so far
as to
believe in human-like souls for trees, animals, water, earth and
sky--and then
dealing with them on that basis by appropriate symbolism and rituals.
By so
doing, however, men distinguished themselves from other organisms by
their
potentials for thought and symbolism. Already in his gathering and
hunting
stages man ceased to behave by simple, natural, organic patterns. By
manipulating nature (stone and wood), he invented tools for hunting.
But above
all, he soon exploited the natural sources of energy to supplement his
own
physiological potentials: he discovered
fire. No other organic being, as far as man knows, makes energy
beyond its
own physiological potentials. By cooking his food he reduced his
metabolic
effort for digestion. He used fire to compensate for body temperature
and thus
made it possible to survive where he could not have lived otherwise. In
the
process, he became dependent and claimant on nature beyond the
ecological
balance. As he evolved he further manipulated nature. Bread replaced
grass and
leaves for the early socialized man, but it was still made of
first-hand,
natural components. The bread of modern man is made not only of flour,
water,
yeast and salt, but also of iron, rubber and oil (of the tractor) and,
of
course, insecticides, preservatives, artificial flavoring and coloring.
The human
characteristics
distinguishing man beyond the organic processes are, then, his
potentials for manipulation of tools, production and
exploitation of energy, and elaboration
and transmission of symbols, not only among the contemporary
conspecies but
from generation to generation, resulting in storage
and accumulation of knowledge. The interactions and evolutions of
these
capacities have brought about, in different stages, the complexities of
human
society--from stone scrapers to tractors, from wood fire to fossil fuel
and
atomic energy, and, as for symbols, from gestures and sounds to the
whole array
of languages, literature, music and social institutions.
Thus, from his organic
relationships and potentials man has evolved towards systematization. A
tractor
is a mechanical system; so is the extraction of fossil fuel or nuclear
energy
and its consumption. Governments, banks, schools and theaters are also
"systems." The latter, however, because composed of men, should be
distinguished from the type of systems represented by tractors and
nuclear
accelerators. To operate his society and his mechanical systems, man
has
created human "systems." We may examine a machine as a system, but if
we limit our examination of man's behavior and his social institutions
to a
systems analysis, we may not be asking all the questions and
consequently not
getting all the answers.[40] So far, man has not been able to devise a
foolproof process by which to make machines out of men, or to plant or
grow men
the way he plants trees and raises cows. The day he succeeds in doing
so, men
will be machines, vegetables and animals. In socio-political terms, he
may want
to build his institutions on the pattern of crystal-formations in
nature. But he
cannot do so, because his systematic thought and orderly action is
conditioned
by other more organic drives. If he is driven towards order and
justice, he is
also driven towards domination and challenge, comfort and fear, sex and
food.
And he satisfies these needs within his radius of understanding and
identification, his affectional-functional dimensions, his values and
other
ponderables we have discussed.
Temporally, man and
his society
are part of a continuum. We emphasized earlier the importance of the sequence of events. There are certain
events whose causal relationships are more probable. There is the
likelihood,
for example, of a baby boom after a war. But this is not a formula of
historical determinism; many other conditions must be met before it can
be
validated. While many principles of Marxian social analyses were proven
right,
their predictions on the basis of historical determinism did not all
materialize. The concept of sequence of events is more than a temporal
and
historical tandem. It does not refute the likelihood of certain causal
relationships, but puts them in the context of other components of the
social
flux within the total environment. The inhabitants of Azerbaijan around
the
Caspian Sea knew about petroleum even before the time of Zoroaster, but
they
did not invent the combustion engine. The Chinese invented gunpowder,
but not
the shotgun. One is not predetermined to follow the other. Yet the
sequence of
events is valid in that the Western man had to know about powder before
inventing
a shotgun. And many other factors--scientific, technical and, indeed,
social,
economic, political, educational and religious--had to fill the gap
between the
knowledge of petroleum and its use in a combustion engine.
Spiritually, man has
at times
developed strong value systems based on his interaction with the beyond
environment. And he has reaped their fruits, submitted to their
influence for
conditioning himself and organizing his society. Yet his godly
pretentions have
soon been worn down in combination with his organic, systematic
(tendency to
build systems like religious institutions, which eventually swell to
turgescence--see The Epilogue) and temporal realities.
Man's being, within
his social
flux, within his total environment, is not then solely an organic
growth, nor a
systematic mechanism, nor a historically determined inevitability, nor
a
spiritual ordainment, but, to put it positively, a complex of causes
and
effects of all these dimensions. None of these factors is to be denied,
and
indeed we will make ample use of them in our analysis. But we have to
be
conscious that these parameters are "human realities," in that their
perception and conception emanate from within man in the context of the
total
environment within which the social flux flows, of which it is a part
and from
which it receives its stuff. That stuff, by which human groups and
societies
are identified, and which gives their sociopolitical institutions their
particular characteristics, we call culture.
We need to look into it first before delving into the political
phenomena it
shapes and molds. We hope that our brief examination of culture in the
following pages will lead us to identify its potential energy which
serves as
the raw material for socio-political behaviors, processes and
structures.
IV.
Culture
Culture implies caring
for,
nurturing, fostering. Agri-culture, for example, connotes not that we
simply
pick the fruits that grow wild but that we sow, raise and care for
plants in
order to reap their fruits. On the large scale, "culture" refers to
the process through which man takes care of his environment. And man
cares for
his environment through his culture in order to take care of himself.
In
culture the man of drives; of social, affectional and functional
behaviors; of
interests and values; of beliefs, myths and ideologies; of choices and
temperaments, shapes--and submits to--much of his environment. He does
so by
elaborating and transmitting symbols, storing and accumulating
knowledge,
developing and manipulating tools, and producing and exploiting energy.
As
Herskovits puts it, "Culture is the man-made part of the
environment."[41] Very few animals (we know only of ants and
termites) consciously replant what they eat or grow herds of their
prey. Above
all, animals do not exploit nature's combustible energy. Man does all
of these.
Whereas an animal perishes if it outgrows its natural sources of
livelihood,
man can manipulate nature and not only delay his expiration, but (at
least so
he has often believed) actually improve his situation. Other organisms
survive
in different climatic conditions only by organic adaptation (true,
sometimes
with great versatility), but man manages to live where he could not
otherwise
have survived by exploiting nature's energy: from the skins of his prey
to
central heating and air conditioning.[42]
The possibility of
extracting
energy from nature beyond man's physiological potentials permits and
induces
men to stretch their wants beyond their needs (to eat more food than
the body
requires or to burn more fuel than is needed to survive the cold) and
to expand
their appetites and tastes for further cultivation, seeking, beyond
bare
survival, ever greater comfort. The degree to which they can do so
depends on
the extent to which they succeed in manipulating and exploiting energy,
which
obviously depends on the availability and accessibility of resources,
the
sequence of events, including, at certain crucial moments, the element
of
chance, as well as the appropriate social factors.
Human
Energy and its Exploitation
Not the individual
efforts of
isolated men, but their social potentials to tap nature's energy
resources,
will develop a culture. While this statement implies a distinction
between the
aggregate of individual potentials and their integral social
potentials, it
also indicates another source of energy at man's disposal, namely, his
interaction with his social context. This dimension relates directly to
man's
capacity for symbolic communication and accumulation of knowledge.
Discovering
how to increase the velocity of an arrow with a bow may result from one
man's
reflections, but he does not remain the only hunter in his group. He
shows the
others how to do it and they see how he does it, thus multiplying the
group's
potentials to exploit natural energy--provided, of course, that the
others have
both the capacity to learn and the strength to stretch a bow. In more
sophisticated terms, the population of a given society is itself a
source of
energy; and its composition, size, and level of communicative and
educational
development are crucial to cultural evolution.
To identify population
as an
energy source reveals yet another crucial variable of cultural
evolution: the
ways human energy can be exploited and manipulated. We have discussed
at length
the relative variety of human characteristics, notably the different
degrees of
needs and wants and the intensity of various drives (particularly the
domination drive) among the members of society. If men have potentials
to
locate and exploit energy, they will soon realize that one
of the major sources of energy to exploit is human energy within
the social context, which they can profitably combine with natural
resources. Under different conditions, the combination of natural and
human
resources produces different cultural patterns. We noticed in Chapter
Three,
for example, that in a subsistence economy, not only was the
possibility to
exploit natural energy limited, but so was the exploitation of man by
man,
because of a lack of access to raw material and the impossibility of
accumulating capital. On the other hand, in the early cumulative
economies
where wealth and certain raw materials were becoming available, man's
access to
mechanically generative sources of energy remained elementary. When
circumstances enhanced the drives of some men for greater appetite,
more
comfort and power, they turned mainly to exploiting human energy.[43] This evolution should be complemented by the
ensuing functional differentiations and social hierarchies which shift
and
disrupt affectional relationships, making men use men for functional
purposes
without affectional considerations--see Chapter Three. Drawn to
extremes, such
exploitive developments led to slavery. Some have argued that class
stratifications resulting in extremes of exploitation are possible
within an
integral social setting.[44]
Others have advanced that extreme class stratifications have developed
as a
result of conquest. In the words of Oppenheimer: "The moment when first
the conqueror spared his victim in order to exploit him in productive
work was
of incomparable historical importance. It gave birth to nation and
state, to
right and the higher economics."[45] In
either case, the social reality is the
exploitation of man by man.
Cross-Cultural
Fertilization
The argument that
class
stratification and human exploitation results from conquest implies
conflict
among alienated groups and suggests yet another crucial dimension of
the total
environment, namely, the intercourse among different cultural entities
in the
broad sense (and-not only in the situation of open conflict). Indeed,
by adding
the dimension of intercultural influences, clashes, penetrations and
exchanges,
we complete the picture of the spatial and temporal total environment
within
which a social flux is embedded, evolves and revolves.
Anthropologists have
suggested
traits of cultural interpenetrations based on archeological discoveries
stretching from the upper paleolithic to early recorded history.[46] In speaking of cultures, then, we should
keep interpenetration in mind as a possible shaping factor. Although
particular
societies, interacting with their climatic and geographical
environments, may
have developed unique cultural patterns, it was not necessarily in
total and
perpetual isolation.[47] On the other hand, similarities of certain-
traits in different cultures do not always imply cultural
interpenetration
because, in the final analysis, man as a species has certain
characteristics
common to all men, and he copes with his environment within the range
of his
potentials to satisfy his drives. Thus, while each culture is unique
(the
degree of uniqueness distinguishing each from the others), cultures are
alike
in covering the range of human species-specifics.[48] Their emphasis on particular aspects of life
and the phenomena they cultivate make cultures unique and provide
potentials
for intercultural pollination.
However, while the
diversity of
cultures has been a main source of human enrichment, the very
uniqueness of a
culture, because it emphasizes particular
aspects of life, handicaps its members from fully appreciating other
cultures.
Basically, man understands cultures in terms of his own--a fact
corresponding
broadly to the range of group identity discussed in Chapter Three. The
two
factors, cultural uniqueness and man's limited range of cultural
identity, can
lead, beyond free-flowing intercultural influences, to cultural
interpenetrations caused by the compelling vigor of some cultures in
particular
times and places over others. This relates to group dynamics and
interactions
already covered, such as clashes and interpenetrations of adventurers
and
conservers. A culture may find attractive what another culture has
and/or may
consider itself superior, and consequently overpower the other culture.
By doing
so, it may create energy through intercultural potential differentials.
Examples of this are the exploitation of India's manpower and natural
resources
by the British, or those of Venezuela (petroleum industry) and Central
American
countries (fruit industry) by the United States.
These, however, are
material
examples. When we talk about intragroup and intercultural exploitation
and
interaction of human energy, we imply all the parameters of the total
environment:. organic, systematic, temporal and spiritual. From an
evaluative
point of view, in the long run, cultural vigor is more complex than
material
force. Christians did not take over Rome by the edge of the sword, and
Gandhi's
nonviolence was a powerful "weapon" in weakening the British hold
over India. Vietnamese determination was decisive in the face of
American
might. Culture reflects the Bergsonian concept of duration--the
continuous
progression of the past gnawing into the future and swelling as it
advances,
the past in its entirety prolonged into the present and abiding there
actual
and acting.[49] How a culture looks depends on how fast
different currents within it move, and as they do what kind of energy
they
generate, how they generate it and exploit it. The examination of this
process
and its energy will lead us to power--the ingredient we are seeking in
our
quest to understand the socio-political complex.
Tradition,
Transition and Modernity
The fact that cultures
may be
distinguished from one another by their emphases on different aspects
of human
existence, experience and interaction with the environment should, of
course,
be understood in its dynamic and fermenting sense. A culture is not
static but
ever evolving and becoming. No matter how conservatively maintained,
because of
its temporal dimension it remains a changing continuity. The prevailing
tendency has been to identify cultures according to their disposition
toward
change and to classify them as traditional, modern or transitional
(i.e., in
the process of passing from one pattern to the other). The
classification
hinges not only on the amount and speed of change that occurs or is
likely to
occur within a culture or some of its aspects, but also on the
approaches and
attitudes within that culture towards change, i.e., to what extent
innovations
distinct and deviating from or modifying the set patterns are tolerated
and
admitted, and if they are allowed, whether they are deliberately sought.[50]
*
* *
The process by which a
culture
maintains the ways of the past is its tradition (derived from the Latin
verb tradere, which implies handing over -- in
this context, from one generation to another). Tradition is
ever-present in
every culture, and, whether a man is conscious of it or not, it is a
main
ingredient of his identity. We do not always do things by conscious
rationalization but often because others do them that way or because we
are
told to do so, and those who do so and tell us so are themselves doing
and
saying because others before them did. The degree to which customs,
mores and
habits handed down through the generations are followed distinguishes
the
traditional from the modern dimensions of cultures.
A culture or certain
aspects of
it may be considered traditional when it projects its continuation into
the
future along the lines of the past. The traditional attitude implies
conservatism and the belief that what has stood the test of time should
be
maintained. Innovations that drastically depart from established
patterns will
not easily find their way into the cultural mainstream. Where they
occur, they
should be moderate--mostly modifications of existing patterns--and
generally
integrated without disruption. Maintenance of the prevailing norms and
slowness
of change favor the perpetuation and effectiveness of value systems.
Normative
continuity will also be conducive to deeper elaboration of symbols and
rituals,
at times beyond their functional premises. Values and symbolic systems
are thus
likely to become preponderant organizational fabrics for a traditional
culture.
The emphasis on continuity enhances the tendencies of value systems to
stretch
themselves to the spiritual beyond. Material existence, notably that of
the
members of the society, will be recognized and justified not so much at
the
individual level but as part of a traditionally and spiritually
established
continuum, usually complemented by a sphere beyond life where man's
goals for
betterment ,reside. This general pattern has, of course, varied. The
Judeo-Christo-Islamic culture looked beyond life to heaven, the Hindu
to
reincarnation, the Chinese to the spirit of the ancestors to be joined
after
death. All imply strong normative patterns closely knit within the
affectional
and valuational which, you may recall, are deep-rooted in man's
nonrational
dimensions.
*
*
*
A modern culture, or
the modern
phase of a culture, as distinct from the slow-paced traditional
culture,
fluctuates and is subject and/or open to change. Modern, as distinct
from
traditional, is the contemporaneity of a culture. ("Modern" is derived
from-the Latin word modo, which means
"just now.") It is that which not only integrates innovation and
change, but in many respects is oriented by them.
The men who, some ten
thousand
years ago, left their hunting and gathering habits and settled down to
agriculture and animal husbandry were imbued with a modern approach, as
were
those who initiated urban civilization and organized cities, dug canals
and
built dams and dikes. However, such "modernizing" periods leveled off
into long periods of tradition. In earlier times, change usually
resulted from
an accidental discovery or a deliberate search to solve a problem.
Things
changed when the prevailing patterns could not resist the impact of
some
innovation, whether in the modes of production and exploitation of
energy, the
spiritual premises or other environmental factors. Such change was more
a
consequence than an end in itself. Once it had taken place, the
tendency was
towards stabilization, bringing about a new traditional period to
maintain the
new social order.
To this tendency, the
modern
adds a recognition of change as desirable in itself--the acceptance of
change
as a social reality necessary for progress and cultural vitality. The
idea of
progress was a well-established Western social philosophy by the
beginning of
the nineteenth century. Its basic premise was to better man's lot
through his
interaction with his environment and to organize his economic, social
and
political activities for this purpose. In order to progress, one must
accept
the modification of the present into something different (and, one
hopes
better). Progress thus carries a valuational connotation and the
potential to
inspire value systems: it is the moving spirit of modernity.
The modern approach
takes an
empirical tack, wanting to know why things are done as they are and
whether a
method can be improved. Yet modernity, beyond rationales for change,
which in
social subjective terms should be change for the better, may become a
pattern
of behavior for satisfying man's drives for excitement, challenge and
the
search for the unknown, and may tend toward change for the sake of
change.
Modernity implies adventurer dispositions. While it presents the
excitement and
challenge of change, it does not, in all instances, provide the
security
present in the traditional continuity of the known. Thus, even if a
culture is
conscious of the change factor as essential for progress, it still
tends to
retain dimensions providing for the perpetuation of its social and
political
structures. For in its pure abstraction, modernity may defy continuity,
some
degree of which is essential to maintain a polity.
While versatility and
openness
to innovation are not necessarily the pattern of behavior of all who
live in
the modern Western world, they have been general enough since the
Enlightenment
to produce the characteristics usually associated with modernity,
namely,
advanced technology and industrialization, expansion of communications
and
mobility, development of education and hygiene, mass culture on the one
hand
and individualism on the other, private or state capitalistic or
socialistic
economies, and secular participatory or totalitarian social and
political
structures. None of these, however, are inclusive or exclusive
characteristics
of modernity. A pure model of modernity is an unrealistic abstraction.
As some
of the above qualifications reflect, modernity can at times present
contradictory alternatives. Not all drives for modernity have
automatically
developed educational and medical systems, as the history of
industrialization
in nineteenth-century England attests. on the other hand, in some
traditional
cultures, such as that of pre-restoration Japan, education was highly
popularized and developed.[51] Development of education and hygiene should,
however, characterize a modernizing pattern in the long run because,
rationally
speaking, by better education and better hygiene more skilled manpower
can be
made available for a developing industry and hence material progress.
As
technology develops, it produces means of communication--both for
physical
transportation and for information-and brings about movements of people
and
their concentration in industrial centers. This movement and
propagation of
information will make mass culture more likely, although its intensity
will
depend on the traditional components preceding modernization.[52] At the same time, however, to the extent
that the individual is made mobile and independent of tradition, given
public
education, and involved in impersonalized economic activities, he will
tend
toward individualism and may develop a taste for participatory and
secular
politics aid social institutions. Nevertheless, a different dosage of
the same
factors may result in a mass culture which, with the help of mass
media, propaganda,
control and regimentation, can bring about totalitarian social and
political
structures.[53]
*
* *
The combination of
traditional
and modern characteristics within a culture may grow dissonant,
depending on
the level at which the technological and scientific changes, in
relation to
socio-political changes, are taking place. Such was the case of
European
cultures during the Renaissance and the Reformation, as we shall see in
more
detail in Chapter Eleven. More contemporary, however, are the Asian and
African
cultures. Because the European experience transformed European
traditional
patterns into the present modern social structures, it is generally
believed
that the non-Western countries currently undergoing social and cultural
changes
are passing through a transition which, as in Europe, will transform
their
traditional cultures into modern societies similar to those of Europe.
Such an
assumption, of course, needs qualification. Cultures have unique
characteristics, and lump-summing them into categories--traditional,
transitional and modern, implying a hierarchy from the former up to the
latter--could be misleading.[54] Some African and Asian countries whose
cultural patterns (traditional until recently) have been disrupted
under the
impact of Western contacts and penetrations, and show symptoms which
could be
interpreted as transitional crises, are not necessarily moving towards
"modernization." In some cases the per capita growth of the country
does not keep up with its population growth, nor does its educational
system
grow fast enough to cope with its illiteracy problems or even to
provide
schooling for the growing school-age population. With their traditional
socio-political patterns disrupted, these countries are given modern
structures
only in name and are run in reality by authoritarian and military rules
which
often mismanage their economy, causing balance of payment deficits and
overextended international loans. Where such patterns persist, it will
be
difficult to project the country's future in terms of the modern
evolution of
the Western world.
Rather .than confining
ourselves to the strict hierarchical categorization of cultures, we may
better
understand their nature and evolution if we bear in mind the total
environmental concepts we have elaborated. As we noted, change may come
about
from within, a particular sector or subculture of a culture, or as a
borrowing
from the outside. The change caused through adaptation and borrowing
will not
necessarily involve the same development and consequences that the
transplanted
factors may have had in their original setting. That will depend on the
similarity of the cultures involved, their stages of development and
the nature
of the transmitted factors. Even within similar cultures, similar
innovative
factors submit to each culture's uniqueness. Dissimilar cultures may
absorb and
mold certain borrowed factors beyond recognition. For example, the
Christian
rites, evocations and sublimations of some converted African tribes
have very
little in common with the Lutheran churches of Norway.
While some borrowed
patterns
serve more as frames or forms whose contents can be greatly changed
when
transplanted from one culture to another, there are other patterns
whose forms
and contents cannot easily be dissociated, and when implanted in a
different
culture they may change and revolutionize some of the culture's basic
characteristics. The statement is, of course, relative, as every change
in one
aspect of a culture has repercussions in the other aspects. But
relatively
speaking, certain food habits or art forms from another culture may be
less
disruptive than new modes of production, exploitation of energy and
economic
distribution which, as pointed out earlier, are essential in shaping
the social
flux and concern those who control and organize the social, economic
and
political structures. By borrowing new methods in these areas, a
culture may
prepare for disruption of its prevailing social system and its
cherished
values, resulting in a cultural crisis which may even lead to
revolution and
the demise of its established socio-political controls and structures.
The
nineteenth-century Chinese believed that the technical know.-how of the
West
could be grafted onto their otherwise superior culture. But the
Confucian "substance"
the T'ung-chih restoration wanted to retain did not marry well wish the
Western
technological "functions" it wanted to adopt, and eventually the
mismatch ended in the downfall of the traditional Chinese Empire.[55] The Japanese, as of the start of the Meiji
revolution in the nineteenth century, made greater concessions than the
Chinese
to the technological system which they found could not flourish in a
culture
run by feudal lords.[56]
In our examination of
transition we have to envision cultures with their particular social,
economic
and political structures reflecting and reflected in their symbols,
values,
customs and habits, in given historical conjunctures and
human-geographic
positions. As they evolve, they submit to the influence of the cultures
with
which they come in contact; thus, their course depends not only on
their own
fermentations and dynamics but also on what happens to others and what
others
do. Traditional cultures which came under the aggressive impact of
Western.
cultures were not left alone to choose, assuming they desired it, their
own
mode of transition. Some traditional societies, impressed by Western
technology, mistook it for Western culture.[57] Where
Western administrations were in
control, particularly in the colonial and neocolonial contexts,
exposure to
Western culture was selective, involving largely the bureaucratic,
commercial
and military frameworks. Although in many cases those from the
traditional
society who were exposed were relatively few, because of the position
and
experience they gained under the Western impact, as either
administrators,
businessmen and military men or modern intelligentsia, they came to
play
substantial roles in the transition of their countries. The different
combinations of these nuances of exposure, whether bureaucratic,
commercial,
military or intellectual (and in some cases religious, as a consequence
of
Western missionary efforts), have strongly influenced the way
non-Western
peoples have shaped their societies in the past few decades.[58] The Indian, the Chinese, the Ugandan or the
Saudi Arabian experiences of transition are each unique.
The transitional
patterns
reveal more dramatically the concepts of continuity and change as
applied to
traditional and modern cultures, and the pivotal role of power and
politics in
the evolution of cultures. At points of transition the crises may more
brutally
reveal the energy potentials within a culture providing the raw
material for
social and political organization. In the slow pace and established
mores and
institutions of traditional cultures or the functionally organized
dynamics of
modern patterns, many aspects of power may be taken for granted and may
go
unnoticed. When the socio-political flux passes through crises of
transition,
power sectors become more apparent and power positions sharpen. In this
sense,
the term "transition" has a broader connotation covering not a
compartmented kind of culture, but the point at which the phenomenon of
change
intervenes in a given sector or sectors of a culture, whether its
overall
pattern is qualified as traditional, transitional or modern. In that
perspective, we are in fact adding a dimension to our concept of
change, namely
that causing a culture to pass from one pattern to another. As distinct
from
the specific attitude towards change that was the criterion for
distinguishing
between traditional and modern cultures, transition from one to another
implies
a change of attitude towards change.
In its attitude toward change, a modern culture has a continuity--a
tradition,
so to speak--to accept phenomena on empirical and rational bases and to
organize itself "systematically." When a basically traditional
culture moves towards modernity (or, for that matter, when a modern
culture
immerses itself in a traditional pattern) it changes its attitude
towards
change and thus disrupts its continuity.
The qualification of
the even
pace of tradition, the organized dynamics of modernity and the crises
of
transition may also provide perspective as to how power potentials are
consumed
in different cultural contexts. As long as the peasant tills the
landlord's
farm and the slave serves his master, believing in fate or divine
providence,
and as long as the worker on the assembly line punches the clock
punctually and
attends to his chores diligently, believing in progress and the virtues
of
competitive free enterprise or building communism, the power potentials
of the
culture carry the course of the sociopolitical flux. They may be
"slower" or "faster" by certain criteria, but they are not
disruptive. In transitional situations, whether dynastic conflicts or
religious reformation in a traditional pattern, or a social revolution
in a
modern pattern, power sectors may mobilize against each other and cause
the
destruction, disturbance and disruption of some of the culture's power
potentials. When the farmers revolt or the workers take to the streets
to
picket or strike, farms and factories remain empty. That is why those
in
control usually favor law and order. The disruption caused by
transition may,
however, in the long run, liberate and reveal new power potentials
setting a
culture on a new course and tempo.
*
* *
As this chapter has
unfolded,
we have looked at man's total environment from within man rather than
the other
way around, recognizing his potentials for manipulation of tools,
production
and exploitation of energy, elaboration and transmission of symbols,
and
storage and accumulation of knowledge. Different combinations and
developments
of these potentials and their interaction with the organic,
systematic,
temporal and spiritual dimensions of the total environment brought
forth what
we identified as culture, which provides the stuff of the
socio-political
complex. Our examination of culture revealed, above all, the importance
of the
energy-generating process combining the exploitation of man by man--and
by
society--with that of the resources of the environment, and the
tendencies
towards different degrees of continuity and change in different
cultures. These
factors claim and complement each other, and understanding their
complementarity can lead us to perceive the energy touched off within a
culture
as power: the raw material of the socio-political complex. For, as we
have
suggested, the whole process of maintaining continuity or bringing
about
change affects and holds on to the energy-generating processes. It is
by
molding the energy within a culture into socio-political power that
both that
power and the energy-producing processes that support it can be
perpetuated.
No doubt all aspects of cultural endeavors, whether they involve
turning sounds
into music, iron ore into cars, stones into monuments, vegetables into
soups,
corporals into dictators or common citizens into presidents, are
interrelated
parts of a total energizing whole. But it is by recognizing and
realizing how
the energy with which the culture is pregnant emerges as power that we
can best
conceive of the fermentations and dynamics of the socio-political
complex.
[1] Andrew M. Scott, Political Thought in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959), p. 46. See also Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955), pp. 60-61.
[2] Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics; The Creative Mind (Totowa, N. J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1965), p. 186.
[3] Aristotle, Politics, Bk. VII, Ch. vii.
[4] Montesquieu, L'Esprit des Lois (1748), Bks. XIV and XIX. For a critical discussion of these theories see, for example, Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939, Ch. I; published in Italian in 1896 and 1923 as Elementa di Scienza Politica).
[5] Friedrich Ratzel, Politische Geographie (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1897, 2nd ed. 1903).
[6] Ratzel's theories can be traced back to earlier thoughts on the role of geographical factors in political power advanced by Americans such as Alfred T. Mahan, whose The Influence of Seapower Upon History (1897) had an impact on Ratzel's thoughts, notably on his conception of the relationship between sea power and power politics, which he expounded in The Sea as a Source of National Greatness (1900). Ratzel had received training in the United States, and his theory on space is not without resemblance to the American nineteenth-century creed of Manifest Destiny. See Hans W. Weigert et al., Principles of Political Geography (New York: Appleton-Century, 1957), pp. 10-11; and Robert Strausz-Hupe, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York: Putnam, 1942), p. 245.
[7] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia (Boston: Houghton, 1907); and his Palestine and Its Transformation (Boston: Houghton, 1911).
[8] Ellsworth Huntington, Civilization and Climate, 3rd ed., (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1924).
[9] Sir Halford J. Mackinder, "The Geographical Pivot of History," Geographical Journal, 23:421-444 (1904).
[10] Sir Halberd J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: Norton, 1962; first published in 1919). See the modified version of his theory in his article, "The Round World and the Winning of the Peace," Foreign Affairs, 21:595-605 (1943). For a critical discussion of Mackinder's theories, see N. J. Spykman, The Geography of Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944).
[11] Lebensraum literally means "room to live in," a claim advanced by Hitler for territorial expansion and control of raw material resources to make Germany self-sufficient. Haushofer's association with Hitler came to an end when Germany, against his advice, got involved in a war with the Soviet Union--with disastrous consequences.
[12] Jean Brunhes, Géographie Humaine, 4th ed., 3 vols. (Paris: Alcan, 1934).
[13] Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 12.
[14]
See, for example,
P. Vidal
de la Blache, Principles of Human
Geography (London: Constable, 1926; originally published in French
in
1922); and C. L. White and G. T. Renner, Human
Geography: An Ecological Study of Society (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948).
[15] Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction
[16] For different treatments of the mechanical systematic approach, see Pareto, The Mind and Society; Parsons, The Social System; Pitrim A. Sorokin, Contemporary Sociological Theories (New York: Harper, 1928); and George C. Romans, The Human Group (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950).
[17] Norbert Wiener, Communication (MIT Press, 1955), quoted in Kark W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press, 1963), p. 77.
[18] See, for example, Abraham Kaplan, "Sociology Learns the Language of Mathematics," Commentary, 14:274-284 (1952).
[19] Parsons, The Social System, p. 6.
[20] On simulation see, for example, H. Goldhamer and H. Speier, "Some Observations on Political Gaming," World Politics, 12:71-83 (1959); H. Guetzkow, "A Use of Simulation in the Study of Inter-Nation Relations," Behavioral Science, July 1959, pp. 183-191; and John R. Raser, Simulation and Society: An Exploration of Scientific Gaming (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969).
[21] On Game Theory see, for example, Anatol Rapoport and Carol Orwant, "Experimental Games: A Review," Behavioral Science, January 1962, pp, 1-37; and M. Shubik, ed., Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1964).
[22]
See, for example,
Werner
Eichhorn, Chinese Civilization (New
York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 156-163.
[23]
Philosophies
emphasizing,
to greater or lesser degrees, the temporal phenomena have been treated
by some
as "process philosophy."
See, for example, Douglas Browning, ed., Philosophers of Process (New York: Random House, 1965); and Walter Buckley, Sociology and Modern Systems Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), notably pp. 17-23.
[24]
See Raymond B.
Cattell, A New Morality From Science: Beyondism
(New York: Pergamon, 1972).
[25] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Vintage, 1966; originally published in 1886), pp. 47-48.
[26] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885), notably Part I, Sec. 15; and his Toward a Genealogy of Morals (1887).
[27] Quoted in Georges Weulersee, Le Mouvement Physiocratique en France de 1756-1770 (Paris: Alcan, 1910), II, 41. On the physiocratic school, see also Hector Denis, Histoire des Systèmes Economiques et Socialistes (Paris: Giard & Briere, 1904); Henry Higgs, The Physiocrats (New York: Macmillan, 1897); and Max Beer, An Inquiry into Physiocracy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1939).
[28] Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), notably the chapter, "Wages"; see also his The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), particularly Sec. III.
[29] Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).
[30] David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ch. V., Vol. I of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, ed. Piero Sraffa (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1951), p. 93.
[31] Although the school of thought which developed along these lines came to be known as Social Darwinism, its main exponent, Herbert Spencer, had published his Social Statics, in which he developed his views on the evolutionary process of the human society, in 1850--nine years before Darwin's Origin of the Species.
[32] Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology (1873), Ch. 14.
[33] William Graham Sumner, Essays in Political and Social Science (New York: Holt, 1885), p. 85, See also Galbraith, The Affluent Society, Ch. V., Sec. iv.
[34] Claude Adrien Helvétius, De l'esprit (Essays on the Mind, 1758); and his De l'homme (A Treatise on Man); and B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Knopf, 1971).
[35] Auguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive (Course on Positive Philosophy, 1830-1842); A General View of Positivism, Ch. 2; also his Système de Politique Positive (System of Positive Polity, 1851-1854).
[36] Francis Bacon (1561-1626), notably his Novum Organum and The New Atlantis; and Marquis Antoine Nicholas de Condorcet (1743-1794), Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, notably the Tenth Stage of progress.
[37] See notably W. W. Rostow, The Process of Economic Growth, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960); W. W. Rostow, "The Stages of Economic Growth," in Economic History Review, 12:1-16 (1959); John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969); Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000 (New York: Macmillan, 1967); and Olaf Helmer, "Prospects of Technological Progress," in Alvin Toffler, ed., The Futurists (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 151-159. For a recent Marxist exposition, see I. Bestuzhev-Lada, "Bourgeois 'Futurology' and the Future of Mankind," Reprints from the Soviet Press, 3 April 1970, reprinted in Toffler, The Futurists, pp. 194-210.
[38]
See, for example,
Jacques
Ellul, The Technological Society (New
York: Knopf, 1964; first published in French in 1954 as La Technique);
Walt
Anderson, ed., Politics and Environment
(Pacific Palisades, Cal.: Goodyear, 1970); Kenneth Boulding, "The
Economics of the Coming Spaceship," in Henry Jarrell ed., Environmental
Quality in a Growing Economy
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1966); Paul Ehrlich, "The
Eco-Catastrophe!"
Ramparts, September 1969, pp.
24-28; Howard T. Odum, Environment,
Power and Society (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1971);
and Nathan Keyfitz, "World Resources and the World Middle Class," Scientific American, July 1976, pp.
28-35.
[39] In Greek "anthropology" means the science of man, but it has been reduced to designate rather broadly the study of cultures, and more restrictively the science of the exotic and the dead man. Had the term not been adulterated, it could easily have been used to cover the whole spectrum of social sciences. See, for example, Alfred I. Kroeber, Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953), notably the Introduction, pp. xiii-xiv.
[40] For an interesting essay on the subject, see José Ortega y Gasset, "Man the Technician," in History as a System and Other Essays: Toward a Philosophy of History (New York: Norton, 1941, 1961), pp. 87-161.
[41] Melville J. Herskovits, Cultural Dynamics (New York: Knopf, 1964), p. 3. See also A. L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhorn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Cambridge, Mass: The Museum, 1952); and for a concept of culture in itself see Leslie A. White, The Concept of Cultural Systems, pp. 8 ff.
[42] The latter two, incidentally, help reduce man's susceptibility to climate, making the assertion that climate influences human characteristics less valid now than in the times of Aristotle and Montesquieu. With today's indoor climate-control devices, men in Colombo and Winnipeg can function in similar regulated environments.
[43]
In fact, where
cheap labor
was available, it discouraged development of mechanical devices. As V.
Gordon
Childe points out, despite inventions which could be put at the service
of
agriculture and industry in ancient Greece, "landlords and capitalists
preferred to invest their profits in living instruments rather than
costly
machines of wood: slaves were cheap."
What Happened in
History,
rev.
ed. (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1954), p. 253.
[44] See William C. MacLeod, The Origin of the State Reconsidered in the Light of the Data of Aboriginal North America (Philadelphia, 1924); and Robert H. Lowie, The Origin of the State (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962; first published in 1927), pp. 33 ff.
[45] Franz Oppenheimer, The State (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1914; first published in German in 1907), pp. 33 ff., notably p. 68; also Ludwig Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology (New York: Paine-Whitman, 1963; published in German, 2nd ed., 1905), pp. 192 ff.
[46]
Reviewing the
paleolithic
tools and their improvements, Childe noted that in vast areas, from the
Cape of
Good Hope to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to India, the
variations
succeeded one another in the same order, and he pondered: "It looks as
if
some sort of intercourse were being maintained among the
widely-scattered
groups so that ideas were interchanged and technical experience was
pooled."
Childe, What
Happened in History, p. 32; see also p. 39.
[47] Recent archeological discoveries have revealed possibilities of contact between sedentary cultures of the Nile, Mesopotamia and Indus valleys. Experiments to retrace early sailings--such as Kon-Tiki in the Pacific and Ra in the Atlantic--have even tried to suggest possibilities of intercontinental cultural links.
[48]
Wissler, in
attempting to
enumerate the different components of a culture, while not following
quite the
same pattern as we have developed in our past chapters, suggests more
or less
the same phenomena, ranging from speech, material traits, art,
mythology,
religion, family, social systems and property to government and war.
Clark Wissler, Man and Culture (New York: Crowell, 1923).
[49] Henry Bergson, Duration and Simultaneity (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965; first published in French in 1922); see also his Introduction to Metaphysics (Totowa, N. J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1965).
[50] For a discussion of the process of cultural change, see Gordon P. Murdock, "How Culture Changes," in Harry L. Shapiro, ed., Man, Culture and Society (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 247-260; and Alex Inkeles and David H. Smith Becoming Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974).
[51] See Ronald P. Dore, "The Legacy of Tokugawa Education," quoted in Robert E. Ward, "Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan," World Politics, 15:575-576 (1963).
[52] See, for example, Marion J. Levy, Jr., Modernization and the Structure of Societies (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966).
[53] For further readings on the issue see David E. Apter, ed., Political Change (London: Frank Cass, 1973).
[54] For a discussion of different political patterns on the road to modernization, see David E. Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1965); also his "Political Systems of Developmental Change," in Some Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Modernization (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968). See also Leonard Binder et al., eds., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), therein notably James S. Coleman's "The Development Syndrome: Differentiation-Equality-Capacity," pp. 73-100.
[55] On the T'ung-chih Restoration, see Mary C. Wright, The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1957).
[56] See, for example, Shibusawa Keizo, ed., Japanese Society in the Meiji Era (therein notably Ch. II by Okubo Toshiaki, "Change of Social Conditions"); Fujii Jintaro, ed., Outline of Japanese History in the Meiji Era, Centenary Council Series (Tokyo: Obunsha, 1958); and Masaaki Kosaka, "The Rebirth of Japan and the Impact of the West," in Guy S. Métraux and François Crouzet, eds., The New Asia: Readings in the History of Mankind (New York: Mentor, 1965), pp. 378-408.
[57] For examples of the Western culture and traditional background hinted at here, see Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner's, 1930; first published in 1904-1905); and Jan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London: Arnold, 1924).
[58]
See Jmaes S.
Coleman, ed., Education and Political Development
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965); and Harry J. Benda,
"Non-Western
Intelligentsia as Political Elites," Australian
Journal of Politics and History, 6:205-218 (1960).