Seldom has there been in history a period presenting so many evidences of social disorganization as does the world of today. The contemporary social order is beset by disintegrating forces from within and by hostile intrusions from without. In large areas of Europe and Asia the recently existing social orders have been destroyed. The remaining areas of peaceful order have contracted to the western hemisphere.
The need is therefore imperative that all who value a democratic way of life become aware of the forces within a peaceful society that make for its disorganization. To identify and to control these forces are tasks essential to the defense and preservation of that democratic way of life. All who agree to this statement will find the new edition of Elliott and Merrill's Social Disorganization a valuable source of information and a dependable statement of principle.
This issue of a well-known book is no mere reprinting of material. It is a thoroughly revised treatment of the subject that brings the entire volume up to date by the addition of recent knowledge. Throughout the new work the authors have systematically used son nd sociological concepts to clarify and interpret a vast mass of factual material.
Finally, and by no means of least importance, the authors have added a critical and informative analysis of present world disorganization, as this greatest of all forms of disorganization expresses itself in revolution, fascism, and war.
The Editor is gratified that this important book is now added to the list of works in Harper's Social Science Series.
F. STUART CHAPIN
ix
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
American sociologists have traditionally presumed an interest in the practical considerations of social welfare. Courses in "Social Problems or "Social Pathology have been among the most popuLu offerings of academic sociology, yet there has seldom been any attempt to integrate the subject matter within a scheme of systematic sociology. For the most part, the approach to the conglomerate topics listed under these Leadings has becn on a strictly common-sense level. Little or no consideration Las been given to the social processcs involved in these objective manifestations of disordered social relationships.
Social Disorganization, as the name implies, is an attempt to study these problems from the standpoint of thc social processes which bring them about. It is in a sense a study of the genesis of anti-social attitudes in the individual, the family, and the community, and of the conflict between these attitudes and those held by the larger defining group. The specific manifestations of disorganization, whether they take the form of individual sex behavior, tensions between husband and wife, or the failure to obey the laws of a given community, are incidental to an underlying conflict of attitudes.
The wide variety of problems of individual, family, and community disorganization considered below are related, as far as possible, to the sociological concepts which they exemplify. The authors have attempted to integrate the most significant conclusions of contemporary sociology on these subjects. The disorganization of the homeless man, for instance, is not treated as an isolated phenomenon; rather, he is discussed as an unfortunate victim of the larger process of human mobility. Divorce is not considered simply as an alarming symptom of the decay of marriage; rather is it treated as a significant index of a number of converging social movements which have resulted in drastic changes in the structure and function of the family. Political corruption is not held to be the result of the sinister machinations of a group of vicious and unprincipled politicians; rather is it viewed as a phase of disorganization that is the natural result of certain social forces operating in the community.
The authors have consciously avoided the use of the tenn, "social pathology, and the biological implications of the organic nature of society that such a concept embodies. We have spoken of a disorganized, rather than a pathological, individual, family, or cornmunity. We realize that this may seem merely to be substituting one norm for another, a standard of social organization for that of social health. But the implications of this distinction go farther than this. In recent years, students of the nature of society have gradually abandoned the quasi-biological organic concepts that were so popular at the turn of the century. Society has been conceived in terms peculiar to itself, rather than in terms of a hypothetical super- organism. As must be apparent from any perusal of our book, we believe that any fruitful study of time nature of social disorganization must be based npon an analysis of social organization and social processes.
In our exposition of the specific manifestations of social disorganization we hope to make some claim to logical arrangement. The division of the subject matter into individual (or personal), family, and community disorganization is the first step in this direction. This order might, of course, be reversed with equal logic, inasmuch as the disorganization of the individual and that of the community are essentially but two aspects of the same whole. Each of the major divisions is prefaced by a discussion of the conceptual nature of the social processes involved in the particular type of disorganization under consideration. Similarly, this arrangement has been applied to the individual chapters wherever feasible. Each division is concluded by a discussion of those types of acute disorganization which represent the tragic dénouememmt of the particular crisis that is under investigation. Thus suicide is presented as the final outcome of the process of individual disorganization, the last and irrevocable step in a series of minor crises. Desertion and divorce are the twin issues of family disorganization; personal demoralization following divorce is a possible aftermath. Revolution is eoiismdered as the violent breakdown of a traditional organization of both the local and the national community. Thus we have attempted to develop a certain conceptual unity to problems that have heretofore been considered in a somewhat random fashion.
While our book represents a conscious effort to reorganize the approach to the academic study of social problems, we recognize our wide debt to all previous contributions in the field from which we have drawn so liberally for illustrative material. A survey of European literature in the field indicates that the French have made the most notable contribution. Since so little of the French sociological theory is available in contemporary American publications, we are including a summary statement, "Social Disorganization in Contemporary French Thought, in the Appendix.
In the preparation of the manuscript we wish particularly to acknowledge our indebtedness to Professor Winnifred D. Lowranec of the University of Kansas who read the proof, and to Mrs. Dorothy Grauerholz Wright who gave so much time and care to the preparation of the index.
December, 1933 |
MABEL A. ELLIOTT FRANCIS E. MERRILL |
xiii
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
The world has changed since the first edition of Social Disor- ganization was published in 1934. Economic problems then over- shadowed all other types of human maladjustments. Today the breakdown in the economic structure pales into comparative in- significance as we witness the vast upheaval of modern war raging in the Old World. Yet any penetrating analysis of the social scene must convince us that the major problems of economics, politics, and war are all fundamentally interrelated. These social disruptions confound and confuse men and we can expect neither the new watchwords of the Fascists nor the old lip service to democracy to save us from further devastation and disorganization. Only through some scientific understanding of the processes underlying these maladjustments can there be any hope for satisfactory readjustment. Naturally, we make no pretense to complete understanding, but times like these make patent the imperative need for sociological study and research in the various aspects of social problems.
Our point of view in this volume is essentially a ramification and an augmentation of our earlier book. In presenting this edition we hope to have improved, clarified, and brought up to date our anal- ysis of the nature of social disorganization. Retaining essentially the same sociological framework, we have sought to incorporate the most recent research and statistics available for the various topics covered. The book has been almost completely rewritten, but naturally some parts have been revised more than others, because of the differences in the nature of the material. The theoretical conceptual chapters have been rethought and, we hope, improved. A large body of recent research data has been incorporated in the chapters on "The Juvenile Delinquent" and "The Adult Offender." The treatment of illegitimacy under "Sex Offenders" has been greatly expanded and new material on venereal disease has been in- cluded. The repeal of the Prohibition Amendment has altered the analysis of "Drink." The trek of the dust-bowl "Okies" to California and the increase of transiency because of unemployment called for a detailed revision of "Mobility." The refugee problem has altered our conception of "Migration." State and federal legis- lation has mitigated some, but not all, of the more serious problems of industry. The Social Security Act has removed some of the haz- ards of unemployment. Advances in medical science have affected our understanding of mental derangement. Social research has made clear the importance of social as well as biological factors in mental disease and suicide. Social conditions and social legislation have had their impact upon family disorganization and the divorce rate. We have employed case studies throughout for illustrative purposes but have drawn our conclusions from statistical data.
In our revision of the section on "Community Disorganization,~~ we have placed greater stress on institutional disorganization and lack of community consensus. Case studies amplify our treatment of both urban and small-town disorganization. Housing is pre- sented in relation to ecological factors in community disorgani- zation. The monumental contribution made by Professor Arthur J. Todd and his co-workers in the Chicago Recreational Survey and other important research in leisure-time activities have been in- corporated in our chapter on "Leisure." The close interrelation between "Political Corruption" and "Crime and the Community" has been emphasized and illustrated with pertinent factual situa- tions.
Part V presents a new section, "World Disorganization," for no text dealing with social disorganization today can ignore the inti- mate relationship between the individual and the international situation. Revolution, Fascism, and War are treated as objective indexes to social disorganization on the one hand, and with special reference to their impact upon individuals, families, institutions, and communities on the other. The chapter, "Social Disorgani- zation in Contemporary French Thought," has been omitted.
In every sense of the word, these chapters represont the joint thinking of the authors who have both contributed to the best of their ability in integrating the material for the whole book. Mr. Merrill is, however, responsible for the chapter, "The Romantic Fallacy."
This book is possible only because of the wide field of research and scholarship from which we have drawn. In addition to our in- clusive debt to scholars in the field, we are personally indebted to the assistance given us by a number of research specialists. Leon E. Truesdell, Chief Statistician, and Philip M. Hauser, Assistant Chief Statistician of the United States Bureau of the Census, have suppbed us with important statistics relating to illegitimacy and divorce rates, and have drawn up special tables according to our instructions. We are deeply grateful to the Honorable Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, to Miss Katherine Lenroot, Chief of the Children's Bureau, to Miss Mary Anderson, Chief of the Women's Bureau, and io Isador Lubin, Chief of the Division of Labor Statistics, all of the United States Department of Labor, and to their assistants for their invaluable aid in checking the material presented in the chapters on "Man in Industry," "Women and Children in Industry," and "Unemployment." We are also grate- ful for the important material which they supplied and loaned us. We also wish to thank Max Stern, of the Bureau of Information of the Social Security Board, for data with reference to the federal social security legislation, and Robert Thomas, of the Vocational Education Office, for data on vocational rehabilitation. The Rus- sian, Italian, and German Embassies in Washington supplied us with official statistics pertaining to marriage and divorce in their countries, and the research service of the Encyclopaedia Britannica compiled statistics for us on illegitimacy rates for other countries. The United States Public Health Service furnished us with data on venereal disease and with research on brucellosis, often mistaken for neurosis. The Federal Bureau of Investigation supplied special material with reference to crimes committed. Throughout we have endeavored to use primary source material wherever possible, and have found governmental documents to be by far the most valuable of such material. The document librarian of the University of Colorado, Mr. Reynard Swank, and his assistants were of immense help in locating such materials. We are also grateful to Louisa Cooke Don-Carlos, Margaret Speelman, Ruby Marks, and Harvey E. Steiger for reading the proof, and to Jessie Hukill for assistance in making the index.January 5, 1941 |
MABEL A. ELLIOTT FRANCIS F. MERRILL |
3
PART I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
A Dynamic Society.— Life is dynamic. Life is ceaseless, bewildering change and man, armed though he is with the experience of the past, can never be certain of the future. Even the immediate present is set in a constantly changing frame of reference which renders contemporary problems difficult to understand and even more difficult to solve. The individual, the family, the local community, the nation, and the world of nations are all involved in varying degrees in the process of social change which renders the old truths uncertain and the new truths transitory.
Social life often exhibits a paradoxical and confusing dualism of change and resistance to change. On the one hand, social change is a restless and dynamic process, but on the other hand, social controls tend to become fixed and formalized. In the daily process of living, men and women are obliged to face a continuous series of individual crises which necessitate new forms of response, new patterns of behavior, and new ways of thought. Sometimes they can meet and overcome these crises with the experiences and techniques handed down from the past. Often, however, problems arise for which previous experience offers no acceptable definition or solution. In a dynamic society governed by comparatively static social norms, a certain degree of maladjustment is inevitable. This maladjustment leads to social disorganization. Social stability is at best a relative matter.
The element of change in our society is by no means unique. Social change has taken place, first slowly, later rapidly, since the dawn of history. For centuries before the industrial revolution men were forced to adjust themselves to new situations in one way or another. The western world has survived several disruptions so intense that the very pillars of the social order seemed on the verge of collapse. We are not the first nation that has faced the necessity
4
of adapting to social changes or of perishing because of the inexorable course of events. Such revolutionary changes in the past, however, have occurred only after prolonged periods of social stability, when social norms were able to develop in comparative tranquillity. Present-day social change is perhaps more bitter and intense than man has yet had to face. Society is becoming increasingly dynamic.
Life in preliterate society, on the other hand, appears to be virtually static compared to that of the western world. Problems of unemployment, housing, family organization, or personal demoralization seem comparatively simple where there is no landlord, no rising school of feminism, and no system of social control apparently opposed to the natural desires of man. Yet even this stability is illusory. Every anthropologist knows that the "primitive" man is constantly adjusting to a social order which is changing rapidly because of the impact of foreign culture. New religions, new modes of living, new bases of conduct have been imposed upon preliterate man by missionaries, traders, and the United States Marines. Even Robinson Crusoe on his lonely island was doubtless beset daily by new problems and the necessity of defining new situations. Any concept of a completely static society must remain, therefore, as a pure abstraction. For purposes of practical consideration, life must be viewed as a moving equilibrium of social forces.
Out of the commonality of human experience, man has adopted habits of thinking which he has crystallized into institutions and systems of social control. By common consent the traditions, mores, laws, and institutions become the rules in the game of life. Existence takes on an "essential orderliness" and assumes a routinized aspect which the average individual seldom questions. When minor crises arise, he is generally able to meet them successfully because the group has worked out certain conventional procedures. Behavior falls into established grooves. When the socially accepted habits prove inadequate to the new situation, however, the old equilibrium may be destroyed. Then it is that the social structure tends to become disorganized. Within limits, however, these disorganizing forces must be recognized as a part of normal expectancy —a characteristic of the dynamics of social life.
The social structure is built up through the introduction of new elements. Where the process of social accumulation is slow, the
5
social organization may be very stable. With an increased complexity of society and an acceleration in its rate of growth, the relative stability of the social structure is threatened. Living requires greater and greater adjustments. The problems of our own society have thus grown so complex and bewildering that we are faced with an adjustment without precedent in human history. Change is taking place at an accelerated rate not only in the material aspects of our society, but also in the non-material aspects which define and give meaning to the whole. Society has become, to an extent never before approached, an unstable equilibrium of conflicting forces. The understanding and control of these forces is the problem of our age.
The Dialectics of a Dynamic Society.— One of the most dramatic attempts to explain the organization and disorganization of a dynamic society was that made by Karl Marx and the disciples who have followed in his intellectual footsteps. The philosophy of Marx and the program of social action which is so closely related to it both rest upon an understanding of the forces of society which bring about social change. These social dynamics serve a definitely polemical purpose in the Marxian ideology. Both as a sociological explanation and a polemical instrument, this conception has been abundantly criticized by opponents and extravagantly lauded by partisans. We are not interested primarily either in the Utopian claims of the Marxists or in the bitter diatribes of their opponents. It is sufficient for our immediate purpose that Marx depicted with words of fire the dynamic nature of our industrial society.
The intellectual device which Marx used as a basis for his dynamic philosophy is known as the dialectic. This technique was developed and popularized in philosophical circles by the great
1 The best available summary of the various explanations of social dynamics is given in Newell L. Sims, The Problem of Social Change, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1939.
6
philosopher, Hegel. Marx inverted the Hegelian dialectic from an extremely idealistic philosophy to one based primarily upon the social and economic forces in a changing material world. The principle underlying the dialectic is, very briefly, that any social situation contains within itself the elements of its own contradiction and eventual destruction. It follows that all societies, no matter how well organized they may appear to be at any particular period in their history, are subject to disorganization from the contradictory forces which they maintain within themselves. An inevitable conflict arises sooner or later in any society between two contradictory sets of social institutions and class alignments. Out of this conflict, there evolves a new society with a new organization of social institutions and with another system of social relationships.
The dialectical process consists of three stages: (1) the thesis (any phenomenon at any stage of its development); (2) the antithesis (its logical opposite or pragmatic contradiction); (3) the synthesis (the new phenomenon which has emerged from the preceding period of disorganization). A given society may thus function in apparent calm and tranquillity for generations, only to suffer a sudden and apparently inexplicable collapse. Certain forces were present in the society beneath the surface which eventually led to its disorganization and the establishment of a new order. This new order will be drastically different from the society which it superseded, but it too will be a transitory phase. Eventually a third organization of society will appear which may continue for generations. Permanent social stability will, however, never be reached in the modern world. Social change never rests. The new synthesis becomes in its turn the basis for further social change.
In his analysis of social change, Marx applied the principle of the dialectic to the socio-economic system of production prevalent in any society and to the social institutions and class alignments which have evolved from this system. The techniques and methods of production are constantly changing in a modern industrial society. These changes in the physical structure go on at a more rapid rate than do the alterations in the institutional structure and the ideologies corresponding to the institutions. The ossification of the non-material elements in society gives rise to a rigid formalization of the social order. The "irreconcilable contradictions" between the various social institutions and patterns of behavior generate
7
numerous and bitter conflicts within the social organization. Men cling to their old ideas of family and property in the face of events which have drastically modified these social institutions. Attitudes and values which were applicable at one stage of the dialectical process have little or no relation to the new order of things. This disparity between the ideal and the actuality constitutes one of the most striking characteristics of a dynamic society. Social disorganization is the aftermath of such disparities.
While social disorganization in its various aspects is to be our major concern in this volume, any adequate understanding of its nature must depend upon an understanding of social organization itself. Social disorganization is the result of disturbed social relationships, and the normative aspects of human society become a pertinent matter in the discussion of such disturbances. If the student of social disorganization would understand the socially pathological, he should understand the socially normal, just as the physician should know the nature of health if he would understand the nature of disease. Since the term "social organization" subsumes the whole function and structure of society it must include man and all the ideas, knowledge, techniques, achievements, traditions, aspirations, fashions, folkways, mores, and institutions which have interpenetrated within an existent social order. Social organization is then that totality of human personalities and their conscious and unconscious attitudes, their crystallized and uncrystallized ideas and institutions which in complex interrelationship make up the framework of human existence. Cooley has defined social organization as "the total expression of conscious and subconscious tendency, the slow crystallization in many forms and colors of the life of the human spirit." Thus society must be considered from both its static and dynamic aspects. The dynamic forces are obviously the most disruptive.
Tangible evidences of the social disorganization brought about in a dynamic society will be considered in subsequent chapters. At this point we merely wish to suggest certain implications of the dialectical point of view to an understanding of social organization. In so doing we are holding no brief for the Marxian ideology or for any program of action based upon it. Marx was neither completely realistic nor consistent in his treatment of social change. To the extent that he has impressed upon subsequent thought the8
dynamic nature of the social process, however, students of social disorganization are in his debt.2 The Social Processes of a Dynamic Society.— A second explanation of social dynamics has been built up about the concept of social processes as developed by the sociologists. Social organization is dynamic because it consists of certain processes of social interaction which are constantly in a state of unstable equilibrium. An understanding of social organization thus requires a knowledge of social interaction in terms of social processes. Social processes have been defined by Park and Burgess as "the name for all changes which can be regarded as changes in the life of the group."3 Cooley similarly regarded social organization as "a complex of forms or processes each of which is living and growing by interaction with the others, the whole being so unified that what takes place in one part affects all the rest."4 The results of these complex social relationships have been viewed from a number of different standpoints, depending upon the particular process which the observer has considered basic. Some sociologists have believed conflict to be the fundamental social process; others have been equally certain that competition is the key to the enigma of social relationships; still others have held that the basic processes are association and dissociation.5 A more realistic approach to the problem of understanding the nature of social processes is to recognize that society is the product of a number of reciprocal and /interrelated processes. The most widely accepted classification of these processes has been made by Park and Burgess. Communication, conflict, competition, accommodation, and assimilation make up the dynamic organization of society in their system of sociology. Let us consider briefly the nature of these five social processes.
2 The analysis of Marx and Engels of the dialectical nature of social organization is found scattered through many of their more abstruse philosophical writings. For interpretations of the dialectical position cf. Sidney Hook, "Dialectical Materialism," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1933; Edmund Wilson, To The Finland Station, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York, 1940; Henry B. Parkes, Marxism: An Autopsy, Houghton Muffin Company, Boston, 1939. 3 Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1924, p. 5'. 4 Charles Horton Cooley, Social Process, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1922, p. 28. 5 Leopold Von Wiese, Systematic Sociology, adapted by Howard Becker, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1932.
9
TIlE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 9
1. Communication.-Communication is l)asic to all social interaction and fundamental to all social organization. lndccd, as John Dewey has pointed out, "society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication. 6 Only in so far as the members of a group or a society are in substantial communication with onc another can we look for organized or effective functioning. Communication must, consist of more than the mere formal process of transmitting and accepting verbal and non-verbal symbols if the society is to be adequately organized. Communication in final analysis involves commomi undcrstanding and common definition of the situation-in short, consensus. Complete unanimity of attitudes and values is seldom reached for any length of time in modern society. Most communication is inevitably incomplete and fragmnentary. Symbols can never mean exactly the same thing to all men who use them. NVords, phrases, and ideas arouse different trains of thought in different persons. Emotions accompanying the same word differ with different persons. Some degree of communication, however, must continue or the society will cease to exist.
2. Conflict-Communication between persons or groups may tend to bring about social harmony. Under other circuirmstammces, communication may result ii' conflict or competition. \Vhen the opposition or struggle between persons or groups is conscious and acrImonious, the process has been defined as conflict.7 Occasionally conflicts may produce desirable social ends, but in general they are destructive to the organization of the larger group. Such social conflicts as feuds, class struggles, and international wars are fundamentally disruptive amid tend to bring about the disorganization of any society in which they are allowcd free play. Conflicts are also active forces in the clmamigirmg equilibrium of a dynamic society.
3. Conipetitiozi.-When impersonal social forces are in opposition, the struggle is called competition. Where competition applies, the varions elements in society are interacting without any conscious personal motivation. As Park and Burgess have expressed it, competition is the process which "determines the distribution of population territorially and vocationally. 8 The rural and urban
John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Tue Macmillan Company, New York, 1916, p. 5.
Robert F. Park and Ernest \V. Burgess, op. cit., p. 574.
Ibid., p. soS.
10 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONpopulation densities, the interaction l)etween the individuals within thcse areas and l)etween the various areas themselves, the economic interdependence between nations and classes-these and similar elements in a dynamic society arc all determined by complex competitive processes.
4. Accommodation-Eventually men in conflict come to terms. In a similar way, the great competitive and conflicting groups and classes in society make certain mutual, if impermanent, adjustments whereby they can carry on their various activities with a minimum of friction. If the recently combative or competitive forces are evenly matched, the exhaustion of both sides may come before any cessation of hostilities takes place. In case of war, the victors generally dictate the conditions of the peace. If the interests of two powerful groups are at stake, as in the ease of industrial disputes, certain definite agreements may be niade in which both sides make concessions. \Vhen the conflicting groups vary in power, subordination of the weaker often results. \Vhatever the type of accommodation, however, the permanent stability of the social structure is affected. The resulting equilibrium may be relatively prolonged or it may be only a prelude to further conflict. The dynamic forces of society are still operative; even though their disorganizing effects may not be superficially apparent.
5. Assimilation-The process of assimilation is, in a sense, an unconscious adjustment to a changing social scene. ~Ihis is the process whereby peoples of divergent cultures are absorbed into a new cultural synthesis. Since it is impossible for persons to divest themselves of their past experiences, these contacts bring about a fusion of cultures. The various ethnic groups in America have each contributed significant elcrneiits to the culture which they have accepted and shared. Accommodation is often a conscious process and may take place suddenly and deliberately. Assimilation, on the other hand, is gradual and depends upon some degree of intimate communication between the members of the larger group.9
These basic social processes are never found in a pure or isolated form. The elements all function simultaneously and reciprocally in social organization. In the same dynamic society, political factions may be in open conflict with one another for the spoils of office,
Mary P. Follett, Creative Experience, Longmans, Green and Co., New York, 1924, particularly Chapter IX.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 11
eeonomie groups and institutions may be in competition, labor unions and corporations may be in the process of working out certain accommodative compromises, amid the Poles, Italians, and Scandinavians may be merging their common cultural values in the reciprocal process of assimilation. The America in which these processes are taking place simultaneously is a dynamic society.
Social Change in a Dynamic Soeiety.-The differential rate of social change is a third explanation of the coniplex nature of modern social organization. The dynamic character of modern social life may be regarded as the result of swift and often alarming alterations in our material and non-material culture. In earlier periods when society was relatively static, social change was correspondingly slow. The era of Washington has been said to resemble that of Nero more than it does our own modem machine culture. The impact of modern science and invention has altered our way of life so completely that many of its most characteristic aspects would be incomprehensible to the Father of our countryt'
Social change takes place whenever there is an introduction of new cultural traits into any given society. This introduction may take place by independent invention or by borrowing from other eultures. If the process of cultural accumulation is slow, the society is by definition comparatively stable. As the culture base increases in size and complexity by the addition of new traits, the relative stability of the society is seriously threatened. Living in a complex society requires more and more adaptability on the part of individuals amid institutions. The material and non-material dcments of culture tend to become further and further out of adjustment. Modern economic organizations cannot function effectively with our outworn legal structure. The mores become more and more unsuited to new situations. The foundations of the social structure totter as the inconsistencies between old social theories and new social practices increase in nuniber and intensity.
The manner in which these social changes occur may be considered under the following catcgorics: (i ) Social techniques. The productive techniques by which society carries on the business of making a living are often the first elements to undergo a change. This change takes place as the result of inventions within the cul
14) Cf. \Villiarn F. Ogburn, "Stationary and Changing Societies, American Journal of Sociology, 42:1631 (July, 1936).
12 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONture or borrowings from without. New machinery or improvements upon the old are constantly taking place as man seeks to.better his material circumstances. (2) Economic institutions. The economic relationships and institutions growing out of the underlying technological processes are the next to follow in the course of social change. Business grows larger as the cost of new machinery increases. New social classes arise about the different productive functions in an industrial society. (;) Social institutions. The institutions of the family, the school, the church, and the state are in turn affected by the changes in the larger economic and social world. The economic institutions with which man makes a living color his relationships with all other social institutions. (~) Non- material elements. the folkways, mores, myths, and ideologies tend to persist long after the situations which were their original ramon d'étre have undergone a complete change or have disappeared entirely. The differential rate of change among these various elements in the social structure in turn gives rise to the phenomenon of cultural lag, i.e., the failure of all the related aspects of a cultllrc complex to develop at the same rate. The manifold implications of cultural lag for social disorganization will be discussed at length in time next chapter. Suffice it to mention briefly here the steps whereby the dynamic aspects of society result from the process of technological change.lr
The nature of social change may be further illustrated by a concrete example. Consider the long chain of events following the "invention and popularization of the automobile: (1 ) Basic to the invention of the automobile were such technological innovations as the internal-combustion engine and the use of rubber for tires. These and hundreds of other technological changes had reached such a state of development shortly before the turn of the present century that the automobile appeared as the inevitable cultural outgrowth. (2) The rapid development of the automobile industry brought concomitant economic changes in related industries. The tremendous impetus given the steel, rubber, and glass industries by the manufacture of automobiles is a case in point.
it Cf. William F. Ogburn, Social Change, B. W. Huebsch, New YorX, 1922; Report of the Subconnnittec on technology, National Resources Cornmnittce, l'cchnological Trends and National Policy, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1937.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 13
The demand for labor in the automobile centers brought about large-scale shifts in population to Detroit and other cities in the same area. (~) The family, the church, the school, and the state have undergone i;nportant changes in their institutional structure and function as the result of the widespread use of the automobile. I'he family has become more mobile, the church has perforce come into competition with the automobile as a leisure time activity, and the local community has declined in importance as the automobile has increased the shopping range of the rural population. (~) The mores, attitudes, and values which arc incorporated in these basic institutions arc the last to change. Time lagbetwecn the changing institutional practice and the social sanctions growing out of this practice is the cause for much of the bewilderment and uncertainty of modern society. Similarly, many other such changes have had their impact upon the structure and function of institutions and the social relationships between individuals and groups iii a dynamic society.
Social Conbol in a Dynamic Society.-Soeial change, from whatever point of view it is considered, is basic to understanding a dynamic society. One of the chief difficulties in bringing about any permanent adjustment between the various elements in modern society lies in the relative rigidity in the social controls which have been erected. In the midst of changing techniques, economic processes, and institutional functions, men cling tenaciously to certain folkways mores, attitudes, values, and ideologies. These controls which the group imposes upon its menmbers impart a certain consistency and stability to human activities. At the same time, they tend to render the task of adjustment to the changing world increasingly difficult. We may point out briefly the nature of these controls?2
1. Folkways.-Students of sociology are so familiar with the importance of the folkways and mores in shaping individual and group conduct that there is little need for elaborate discussion here. Out of the random activities of the functioning organism, man has evolved a mass of group habit patterns. These habitual forms of behavior are handed down from one generation to the next and come to possess a definite social value. They become the "folkCf. Bernhard J Stern, "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological
Innovatiom,' Technological Trends and National Policy, op. cit., pp. 39-66.
14 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONways of the culture, So it is that the folkways become the only acceptable ways of acting, whether it be a matter of eating peas with a fork or conforming to certain forms of dress. Some of these social habits may have developed out of the slow and laborious process of trial and error and hence may possess considerable social validity. On the other hand, they may he the fortuitous survivals of purely accidental origins and as such possess no social validity whatever. In either case, they become the arbiters of conduct and serve as comparatively stable elements in a changing society.'3
2. The Mores-The mores possess a further social or ethical sanction. They have been defined as "folkways with a philosophy of social welfare attached and hence carry the implication of greater importance to the well-being of the group.'4 Individuals may violate certain of the folkways and still retain their status as reputable members of the group. If their behavior runs consistently counter to the mores, however, they are condemned and ostracized by their fellows. The mores remain as the absolute standard to which the individual must conform if he is to remain a respectable member of the functioning group. The compulsive power of the mores is strong in all societies and tends to approach the character of absolute social norms which must be obeyed without question.
3. Laws.-Laws have been called crystallized mores. As such, they are mores armed with the authority of the state, which may compel subservience and inflict punishment when it sees fit.'5 Murder is not only a social taboo, an infraction against the mores, it is also an infringement upon the laws of the land. Members of the group punish the murderer through the authority which the law provides. In order to be fully effective, a law must embody the mores. If legal enactments nun counter to the mores of a large pxoportion of the people, they may be virtually nullified by mass non-observance. The prohibition amendment was enacted into formal law contrary to the mores of a considerable minority of the population. The social control exerted by this law was at best random and chaotic.
4. Institutions.-Institutions are perhaps the most deeply in"William Graham Sumner, Folkways, Ginn and Company, Boston, 1906,
pp. 2-30.
14 Ibid., pp. 30-45.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 15
trenched of all the elements in our social organization. Sumner has giyen the classic definition of an institution as "a concept plus a structure. ~ Institutions represent values which have become incorporated into a social framework and hence constitute important units in the total structure of a dynamic society. They also constitute elaborate control devices, whose essential rigidity renders difficult the task of maintaining any social equilibrium. The major social institutions are generally conceded to be the family, the church, the school, the state, and economic institutions. Religious ideas incorporated into the framework of the church come to possess a definite rigidity. Educational ideas become embodied in elaborate educational institutions which by their very nature tend to develop a vested interest in a particular forni of training. The conceptions of the patriarchal family have become so closely associated with the institutional mores of the family that any change in the traditional pattern is considered a fundamental decline in the family itself. The functions of the state are notoriously subject to social ossification and hence arc difficult to alter when the social situation changes.'7
Basic institutions are not only rigid in structure; they tend to produce a group of advocates for the status quo on the grounds of its "essential validity. The theories advanced are usually born out of a reed for protecting existent social forms against doctrines which threaten their continuance. Those who support obsolete practices are firmly convinced of the absolute character of their cherished institutions. Thus child welfare projects arc resisted because they seem to undermine the prerogatives of the family. Labor legislation is strenuously fought because it calls into question the traditional right of the employer to hire and fire as he sees fit.'8 These and other similar attempts to justify firmly imbedded institutional values have been called "cultural compulsives. '9 They
~ For a discussion of the relationship of institutions to social problen~s,'' of. L. K. Frank, "Social Problems, American Journal of Sociology, 30:462- 473 (January, 1925).
For a stimulating discussioa of the myths which cnforce social stability in the modern world ci Thurman N. Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1937.
~ V. F. Calverton, "Modern Anthropology and the Theory of Cultural Compulsives, The Making of Man, The Modern Library, New York, 1931.
16 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONgrow out of vested interests in a culture and "represent the group interest in its psychological form. Such compulsives must be reckoned with in every society as forms of group rationalizations which attempt to exonerate the society of serious maladjustments. I'hese attitudes render society relatively impervious to change or suitable adjustment to external modifications. Men ignore social disorganization as long as their fundamental beliefs are not called into question. The presence of these rigid elements in society is responsible for the tenacity with which social change is resisted. The maladjustments of a dynamic society are accentuated by this resistance.20 At the same time, readjustment is also hampered by the persistencc of out-moded institutions. This has been especially true in the development of public welfare agencies.
Social Harmony and Social Dynamies.-Complete social harmony is manifestly impossible in a dynamic society'. A society in which all persons unite in common definitions of all the important situations has been reached only in the Utopias for which various men of good will have cherished dreams through the ages. There is no society in contemporary western civilization in which even an approximation of social harmony is evident. The disharmonious social elements, on the other hand, are appareiit in the divergent ideologies and hostile class alignments of the surviving democracies. These elements are also present, however much they are concealed, in the totalitarian states, in which "social organization has ofteii been imposed at the muzzle of a machine gun. Complete social harmony implies a unanimity of opinion and a stability in techniques and behavior patterns which are inconceivable in a rapidly changing society.
The nearest approximation to social harmony that ever existed in western Europe disappeared some seven hundred years ago. The harmony of the Middle Ages was marked by the relative absence of social change. In the mediaeval community, where conduct was defined by neighborhood opinion and by the church, considerable consensus was undoubtedly present. Henry Adams has given us a memorable picture of this social harmouy in his study of Mont St.
~ For a penetrating discussion of the problem of social control in a dynamic society cf. Willard Wailer, "Social Problems and the Mores, American Sociological Review, 1 :9zz-933 (Deceniber, 1936).
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 17
Mlichel and ChartresY' In mediaeval society any great disparity beween individual attitudes and social definitions was practically ion-existent. Transgressing the mores was rare. The great majority A persons accepted uncritically the duties and privileges of the 2on2nlunity and the church.
The cloistered harmony of the Middle Ages was rudely and pernanently dispelled by the profound changes which accompanied die commercial and industrial revolutions. The discoveries of new lands across the seas, the development of new trade routes and the resulting stimulation of conmmerce, the revolutionary conceptions Df the universe introduced by the great scientists of the Renamssammce
-all these have been discussed in a thousand histories, biographies, novels, and essays. Suffice it to point out here the startling implications of this "brave new xvorld upon the relatively harmonious social order of the Middle Ages. The social organization which Thomas Aquinas and Dante had reverently conceived disappeared completely, never to return.
The comparatively static culture of the Middle Ages has been replaced by a dynamic equilibrium of constantly changing forces. By their very nature, these forces can develop only an iniperfect harmony. In the present society, institutional miictabolism is occurring at the most rapid rate the world has ever known. No longer is there any essential harmony between the desires of the individual and those of the group or much less between the various desires of conflicting groups. iii mediaeval society there was little significant difference between individual and social interests. In the highly individualized life of modern urban society, where every man is motivated by basically individualistic ratter than communal ends, this agreement seldom exists. One man can and often does profit from another's misfortune. Social harmony is replaced by the competition and conflict of hostile individuals, institutions, classes, and nations.
[he modern world has thus become committed by the inexorable logic of events to a philosophy of social chamige. It is only in the totalitarian states that.an attempt is being made to turn back the clock and congeal society into a system of feudal amid "harmonious class relationships. In communities with a maximum of
21 Henry Adams, Mont St. Michel and Chartres, Houghton Muffin Corn pany, Boston, 1904.
18 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONsocial harmony and a high degree of social organization, social change takes place very slowly. Where men are motivated largely by one common purpose and where the division of labor is not highly specialized, there is little incentive to depart from traditional techniques and practices. Complete harmony of interests and attitudes produces intellectual stagnation and the uncritical acceptancc of existing social values. Disorganization is the price we must pay for social change and social progress.
Social organization and disorganization are thus purely relative concepts, dependent upon different degrees of disharmony of interests in a dynamic society. As modern society becomes increasingly complex, as social change increases in rapidity, the stresses and strains attendant upon social organization become more intense. Unless these strains are abated or neutralized, we may expect a cumulative increase in individual and social disorganization in the future. The task of social reorganization, of bringing comparative order out of social chaos, of introducing a new consensus into an individualized society, becomes correspondingly greater.
Social Organization and Social Normality.-The study of social organization and disorganization has been associated traditionally with the concepts of normality and abnormality and with the inevitable value judgments which accompany these concepts. An "organized society has been presumed to be normal and a disor&dnized society abnormal. This conception carries with it certain ethical and moral implications whereby the "normal is conceived to be the ethical, while the "abnormal is conceived in terms of immorality and undesirability. This moral dichotomy obscures to a considerable extent a realistic understanding of social organization and disorganization. The existence of such value systems is recognized as an important factor in the organization of society, but we should recognize at the same time the "natural character of many activities which are condemned by moral judgments. The degree of social organization or disorganization in a particular society is dependent in part upon the disparity in moml definitions among the members. As Wirth points out, the concepts of social organization and disorganization both have a normative basis.22
~ Louis Wirth, "Ideological Aspects of Soda! Disorganization, American Sociological Review, 5:472-482 (August, 1940).
TUE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 19
Social disorganization in modern society is in no sense an "abnormal phenomenon. Neither is it brought about by the sinister machinations of vicious and immoral persons. Social disorganization is rather the natural result of the breakdown iii social consensus that has been taking place for centuries under the impact of an increasing rate of social change. Those persons who consider social organization to be the normal (i.e., usual) situation are thinking in very much the same terms as those optimistic business men and politicians who consider prosperity as normal and depressions as abnormal states in the national economy. It is a human propensity to consider those phenomena which we prefer as normal manifestations of a desirable social organization and those which we dislike as the temporary maladjustments of that organization. Such interpretations make an understanding of individual, family, and cornmuriity disorganization extremely difficult and render effective social reorganization unlikely.
In a situation in which the social structure is seriously maladjusted by the rapidity and disparity in the rate of social change, the inevitable result is some degree of social disorganization. By the very nature of the social process, depressions are as "normal as prosperity, social disorganization is as "normal as social organization, and social change is more "normal than social stability. It is difficult to reconcile our wishful thinking about social stability and social order with the harsh reality of social change and social instability. We must bring about this reconciliation between the ideal and the actuality, however, if we are to adjust ourselves to a dynamic society. In a time of world crisis, we must face the facts of social change with insight and courage. Nostalgic mental excursions into the past are more dangerous now than ever before.
mc task of understanding social phenomena is further complicated because such items do not admit of the same objective consideration as physical or biological data. Certain human attitudes and activities, for example, arc the natural result of Certain combinations of circumstances over which the present generation has no control. Such activities as prostitution, crime, and political corruption are the natural products of existing social patterns and biological drives. Crimes against property, for example, grow out of the violation of the mores which sanction private ownership. Prosti.
20 SOCIAL DISORGANIZA'IIONtution is the inevitable concomitant of such social relationships as monogamous marriage and the prc-marital sex taboos between men and women of the same social class. Political corruption is the result of the democratic process operating in a laissez faire economy in which financial success is placed above political honesty. These are, of course, only partial explanations of complex social problems. The important consideration is that many of the activities which are defined as prima fade evidence of a disorganized society are the natural outgrowtbs of certain institutions and changes which are an integral part of that societvY3
From the point of view of their natural sequence, thesc and other indices of social disorganization might theoretically be con- ceived in the samc impersonal terms as the phenomena of birth, sickness, and death. Sickness is no longer considered evidence of moral turpitude. Mental derangement is now in the process of transition in popular folklore from being considered irrefutable evidence of diabolical possession to bcing recognized as merely another form of illness. In the distant future, crime nmv be viewed in similarly impersonal terms as the natural rcsult of certain social forces and not as evidcnce of deliberate moral depravity. The complicating factors which prevent arriving at a judicious and impartial understanding of such activities as crime, prostitutioti, and political corruption are the social definitions which accompany thcni. Tim sanction of the group alone determines the acceptability of anx' act or belief. The mores, as Sumner points out, can make anything right. The definition of the situation, not the situation itself, is the important eonsideration.24
Social definitions are themselves social products, growing directly out of the life of the group. The moral stability of the Middle Ages was the natural result of a social order that was relatively static and traditional. The breakdown of this stability was the equally natural result of social changes which dissolved the traditional social ties and rendered more difficult the estal)lishment of new ones. The definitions vital to oue period lose their vitality for another age. The conditions which originally gave rise to the norms
23 Willard Wailer, op. cit. Cf. also L. K. Frank-, Society as the Paticnt, American Journal of Sociology, 42:335-344 (Noveinhcr, 1936).
24 William I. Thomas, The Unadjusted Girl, little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1923, pp. 4>~.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 21have undergone such alterations as to be unrecognizable. The norms themselves linger on, like vestigial remains of an age that is gone forever75
Consensus and Social Organization.-Soeial organization is fundamentally a problem of consensus. \Vithont a general social agreement on basic issues, society cannot be said to exist. As \Virth points out, " there is no society without an ethos, i.e., without shared values, objectives, preferences, and the well-founded anticipation of the members that all the others recognize the rules of the society and will abide by them. 26 V/hen men fail to concur in their purposes, all the machine guns and police which a dictator may am ass are impotent to maintain the status quo. As Do Tocqueyule indicated a hundred years ago, "A society can exist only when a great number of men consider a great nnniber of things in the same point of view; when they hold the same opinions upon many suhjects, and when the same occurrences suggest the same thoughts and impressions to their minds. 27 In short, a minimum of agreement must exist before collective action is possible. When men begin to lose the fund of common understandings and expectations which make up their consensus, social disorganization may ho said to exist.
The concept of consensus may best be nnderstood in the simple terms of its literal derivation-namely, as a process of "feeling together hy'the majority of the members of a given society upon the important matters of their common life. Ibis substantial unanimity of opinion is a product of a way of life where all persons are enlisted in the search for a common goal, where men are animated by a common purpose. Consensus is a spontaneous product and cannot be enfotced by fiat or force. It is the intangible expression of the inner life of a society which isas difficult to define as it is important to understand if one is to grasp the essential element of social organization. Without some fundamental unanimity in a society, its physical organization is no more than a hollow shell. Park and Burgess have expressed its crucial importance as follows:
25 For a significant analysis of the nature of conduct norms cf. l'horsten Sellin. Culture Conflict and Crime, Social Science Research Council. New York, 1938.
~ Louis Wirth, op. cit.
27 Alexis Dc Tocqneville, Democracy ITI America, New York, 1899, Vol. 1, p. 398, quoted by Louis Wirtb, op. cit.
22 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION"Society is a complex of organized habits, sentiments, and social attitudes-in short, consensus. 28
The essence of consensus lies neither in the slavish insistence upon formal rules of etiquette nor in the performance of a series of ceremonies grouped about the peripheral elements of group life. Consensus is rather an expression of the common definition of situations that are of vital importance to the society as a whole. Such agreement takes the form of a general agreement npon such matters as the nature, role, and iniportance of religion in society; the duties of the family group toward its members and the obligations of the members toward the group itself; the nature of the property relationships and the relative importance of these relationships as compared to other values in the society. It is further concerned with the type of educational system in operation and whether the emphasis of that system shall be upon an uncritical preservation of the obsolete elements in the cultural heritage or upon a eritical examination of these elements. Consensus applies to the government of the society, the groups which this government serves, and its solicitude for the welfare of the mass of the citizens. Finally, consensus involves a basic agreement with reference to the relationship of the individual to the group. lhose societies which have spontaneously developed a high degree of solicitude for the welfare of the group as a whole rather than for the protection of the predatory activities of certain powerful individuals may be said to possess consensus in the fullest sense of the term. When this common point of view does not exist, the society is basically in a state of disorganization, even though the beggars arc no longer seen on the streets and the trains all run on time.
The phenomenon of consensus should also be considered from a point of view which we have already suggested-namely, the definition of the social situation. When the definitions of important social situations are essentially similar, when common understandings have grown up about th& basic social institutions and relationships, consensus may be said to exist. The values of any society are affirmed and created through the definitions which that society places upon certain important and recurrent situations.
28 Robert F. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, op. cit., p. r6i; cf. also Horace
M. Kallen, "Consensus, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1933.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 23Every marriage ceremony in the United States is a reaffirmation of the acceptance of the conception of the monogamous family. Every criminal apprehended and sent to prison is the redefinition of social values with regard to crime. Every department store purchase is an unconscious assent to the social norms related to private property.
The consensus of the group must continually strengthen and reaffirm these and other values if the society is to remain in a state of sound organization. For the groat majority of social acts must have a social definition before they can be adjudged good or bad. Juvenile delinquency, for example, mnist be constantly defined as such by the group before it can be regarded as truly delinquent conduct. The moral and ethical code of a society is thus in essence a set of regulations and implicit taboos built up by generations of persons who have learned to define the same situation in the same way and have transmitted their definitions to their children. All the manifold forms of group morality, whether immanent in the mores, formally incorporated in the legal statutes, or inscribed in letters of gold in holy books are basically nothing but "tIne generally accepted definitions of the situation. 29 By affirming these definitions on every appropriate occasion society maintains its basic consensus.
When all the niembers of a given society are in virtual agreement on the definitions of certain fundamental situations, that society is harmonious and organized. When there is general disagreement concerning the social implications of particular activities or creeds, the seeds of social disorganization have been sown. The social agreement which produces consensus is highly relative, ranging all the way from the complete social cohesion of the isolated primitive group to the stark conflict of interests within a nation in the throes of revolution. Modern societies fall between these extremes. Consensus is relatively strong in the small rural coinmunity and relatively weak in the large metropolitan area. Social disorganization increases where there is no general agreement, and individuals define the important interests of society in purely individualistic terms. Consensus breaks down under the impact of a new and pervasive individualism.ao
29 William I. flnooias, op. cit., PP. 42-43.
IC William 1. Thomas and Florian Znanieeki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (two-volume edition), Alfred A. Knupf, Inc., New York, 1927,
Vol. II, p. 117.
24 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONSELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Arnold, Thurman W., The Folklore of Capitalism, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1937. A study of the prevailing myths in the contemporary social order. The author examines some of the social controls which operate in our dynamic society.
2. Cooley, Charles horton, Social Organization, Charles Scribners Soiis, New York, 1909. The psychological forces that integrate social institutions and bring about social organization are depicted by one of the pioneers in the American sociological tradition.
-
~. Cooley, Charles Horton, SoCial Process, Charles Scribner's Soiis,
New York, 1922. The social organization is depicted as a dynamic
and impersonal social growth.
4. Kallen, Horace M., "Consensus, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1933. A discussion of certain of the basic implications of the concept of consensus by a distinguished social philosopher.
-
ç National Resources Committee, Technological Trends arid National Policy, United States Government Printing Office, \Vashmgton, 1937. An illuminating discussion of the role of technology
in social change. The fundamental implications of technological
elIaiIges in a dynamic society are considered both in specific and
in general terms.
6. Oghurn, William Fielding, Social Change, B. NV. Huebseh, New York, 1922. A penetrating discussion of the dynamics of social organization in terms of the complex processes of social change.
7. Oghurn, Nvilliam Fielding, "Stationary and Changing Societies, American Journal of Sociology, 42:16-31 (July, 1936). A cornparison of the structure of static and dynamic societies, with particular reference to the effects of social change upon the folkways, mores, and basic social institutions.
8, Park, Robert F., and Burgess, Erncst NV., Introduction to the Science of Sociology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1924. This discussion of the organization of society has played an important role in the development of sociological thought in America.
9. President's Research Committee on Social Trends, Recent Social Trends, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1933. The report of a distinguished committee of social scientists on the changes which took' place in American civilization during the first three decades of this century. The dynamic nature of social organization is illustrated with facts and figures.
io. Sims, Newell L., The Problem of Social Change, Thomas Y.
25
Crowell Company, New York, 1939. An extensive critical summary of the various theories of social change which have been propounded from the time of the ancients to the present day.
11. Sumner, William Graham, Folkways, Ginn and Company, Boston, 1906. The classic discussion of the folkways and the mores and their relation to the organization of society.
26CHAPTER II
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
Dynamic Aspect of Social Disorganization.-Social disorganization is a relative term. There may be all degrees of social disorganization, just as there may be varying degrees of social solidarity. Social organization and disorganization represent, in a sense, Tevcrse aspects of the sanie functioning whole. When the forces of social disorganization exceed those making for social stability, social problems arise. Social disorganization represents a breakdown in the equilibrium of forces, a decay in the social structure, so that old habits and forms of social control no longer function effectively. The dynamic nature of social interaction insures a constant rearrangement of the constituents of society. The resultant social change brings about the dissolution of certain institntional relationships and behavior patterns which are imbedded in the social structure. This social upheaval which makes way for a new synthesis may bring in its wake a considerable amount of disorganization. Such confusion becomes particularly pronounced when the breakdown occurs more rapidly than the corresponding forces of reorganization.'
The breakdown of the social equilibrinm may be considered from several points of view, but in this text we shall discuss the phenomenon of social disorganization with reference to its manifestations in the person, the family, the community, and the world community. There are, of course, certain difficulties of logic and emphasis arising out of any schematic approach to the complex problem of social disorganization. The organic unity of society, in which the individual and the group are but different aspects of the same collective whole, makes any rigid division into constituent elements impossible in any complete sense. Considered apart from the group,
1 Cf. Franklin H. Giddings, Studies in the Theory of Human Society, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1922, p. 231. -
26
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 27
the individual is no more than a logical abstraction. As Coolev has so eloquently pointed out, when we refer to thc individual and the group, we are not considering two distinctive phenomena but the same phenomenon from different angles.2 It is with such sociological reservations in mind that we present our discussion of the mdividnal, the family, the community, and the world aspects of social disorganization.
The Complex Nature of Social Disorganization.-In order to understand the full implications of a study of social disorganization, we must kcep in mind the complex nature of all social phenomena. Out of man's fruitless search for unique causes has come a recognition of the multiple factors which account for such characteristics of modern society as the decline in the acceptance of revealed religion, the changing structure. of the family, the increasing impor. tance of the central government, the "lowering standards of morality, or other equally patent indices of a dynamic society. These factors have all been regarded as singly responsible for social disruptions and social disorganization. Like the alchemists of old, reformers and would-be scientists have zealously sought for some simple solution to the problems of human welfare.
Even today in the present world crisis, for example, there are some persons who believe that all the disorganization of a dynamic society has its beginning in original sin. Other earnest souls ascribe the existence of such varied manifestations as crime, immorality, political corruption, unemployment, and divorce to the decline of the traditional controls of orthodox Christianity. Others would rely upon a reconstruction of the fundamental economic institutions to bring about the millennium. Still another group insists that the basis of all human woes lies in the biological field. If we would only eliminate the physically and mentally unfit, cry the eugenists, the social organism would automatically undergo a complete and rapid rejuvenation.
Each of these partisans ignores the selective nature of his interpretation. Imbued with the partial truth of his findings, each searcher for the one and only cause of social ills fails to eompre2 Charles Horton Coolcy, Human Nature and the Social Order, Charles
Scribners Sons, New York, içoz, pp. i-:; cf. also Robert E. Park and
Ernest NV. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1924, p. 24.
28 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONhend the complex ramifications of the problem as a whole. Such reasoning is called the "partictilaristic fallacy. Any realistic social understanding, on the other hand, must consider all the factors related to the particular manifestation of social disorganization which is under investigation at the moment. An excellent instance of reasoning on snch a faulty basis is evidenced in the research as to the "causes of crime.
In 1876 Lombroso published his anthropological findings on criminal man. In this study he asserted that the criminal was a distinct anthropological type, an atavistic being, marked by certain definite stigmata, including low forehead, receding chin, peculiar ears, etc.3 The idea gained widespread acceptance and was not suecessfullx- refuted until ~ when Charles A. Goring published his comparative study of English prisoners and students at Cambridge University. \Vith one gesture he completely upset the notion of the born criminal. Goring advanced the theory, however, that men were criminals because of the low grade of their intelligence.4 Goddard and many other psychologists seized upon this idea and produccd what seemed to be conclusive evidence that feeble-mindedness was the most significant cause of delinquent conduct.5 Soon, however, the validity of this premise was questioned, and when Dr. Herman M. Adler studied the prisoners in the Joliet Prison in iqi8 he found that by and large they ranked higher in intelligence than the men in the United States Army. Some students then began to ascribe delinquency to nsental disorders,6 others held that criminals were produced by faulty glandular functioning.7 In the meantime, those who were making delinquent conduct their life study began to suspect social factors. Some held broken homes to
For an English translation of Lombroso cf. Cesarc Lonibroso, Crime, Its Caoses and Remedies, translated by Ilenry P. Morton, Little, Brown & Company, Boston, .,qsi.
Charles A. Goring, The English Convict, his Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1913.
H. 1± Goddard, Jh Kaliik-ak Family, The Macmillan Company, New York-, 9'9; Juvenile Delinquency, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York,
1921.
Cf., for example, Dr. I lixon's point of view that all criminals have dc nientia praecox in French Strothcrs' articles in the World's Work, 48:275-286 (July, 1924); pp. 389-397 (August, 1924).
Cf. Max C. Sclilapp and Edward 1-I. Smith, The New Criminology. Livcright Publishing Corporation. New York-, i~z8.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 29
he the most frequent precipitating cause.8 It was not until complete case histories were made of a large number of individual delittqucnts that the etiology of delinquency came to be ascribed to a jrixtaposition of multiple factors. This has been well established by the work of Healy, Burt2 and others. Ihrough their research xve have come finally to recognize that delinquents and criminals possess practically the same individual characteristics as the non-delinquent population. There is no evidence that anti-social behavior is due to single selective factors. Instead, a complexity of unfortunate circumstances usually characterizes the heredity, background, and training of the vast majority who are brought into conflict with the law. A single untoward factor may be found in the background of tIme most normal. Many of our best citizens have endured poverty, broken homes, or ill health. Their total situation or background, however, has not been entirely unfavorable. When, on the other hand, we find a child handicapped on several counts by low mentality, poverty, a broken home, an immoral mother, and a bad neighborhood, we can be fairly safe in predicting that lie is apt to become a delinquent and a criminal.tm0
Social Processes and Social Disorganization.-As previously stated, a dynamic society contains within itself the germs of its own disorganization. This disorganization Th a highly complex process, involving a number of interrelated factors. Just as the broad social processes of communication, conflict, competition. acconiniodation, and assimilation are important contributory factors to social dynamics, these same factors are important elements in bringing about social disorganization.
Social process has been defined as "the mode in which a series of
Sophnnisha Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, The Delinqocnt Child and the IJosne, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1912.
Cf., for example, William Healy arid Augusta I. Bronncr, Delinquents and Criminals, Their Making and Unmaking. The Macmillan Company, New York, tmqz6; and Cyril Burt, The Young Delinquent, D. Appleton- Century Company, Inc., New York, 1923.
n Cf. V.p. J. lhomas and Dorothy S. Thomas, The Child in America, Alfrcd A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1928, pp. 372-374, for a discussion of the situational approach.
1tThe nature of social processes and their rclation to social disorganization received considerable attention at a meeting of the American Sociological Society. For a discussion of the conclusions cf. Emory S. Bogardus (editor), Social Problems and Social Processes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1933.
30 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONevents involving a number of human beings occur. ta Park and Burgess divide the social processes into four general categories:
(i) the historical (which does not specifically concern us here); (2) the cultural; (~) the political; (~) the economic.'5 The failure of these processes to function properly, or the failure of the individual to adapt himself to them, brings about maladjustment and potential disorganization. Let us consider in some detail the implications of these processes as they affect social disorganization.
The Cultnral Processes.-The cultural processes are those which "shape and define the social forms and the social patterns which each preceding generation imposes upon its successors. '~ Seeondary processes in this general category include conflict and assimilation, whose pathological manifestations bring about social disorganization. The prevalence of cultural conflict delays the participation of strangers in a common cultural life. Such conflict is readily apparent in the case of the mobile or migratory person, who often fails to adjust himself to a new cultural milieu. Cultural conflict may also be manifested in the disorganization of adolescents, sex demoralization, and in certain phases of family disorganization.
Conflict between large groups, such as nations at war, may have a certain unifying effect upon the internal structure of the combating groups. When the conflict is confined to members of the same group, as in civil war, disorganization results. Religious conflict between hostile denominations or sects is extremely detrimental to community solidarity. Conflict between racial or nationalistic groups results in isolation and segregation, the injurious effects of which are readily apparent. Conflict between boys' gangs and the police is both a cause and amm effect of juvenile delinquency. Conflict brings about a "confusion worse confounded of varying mores which renders any stable life organization very difficult. Floyd N. House comments on the pathological character of extended conflict by emphasizing the extremely limited degree of its organizing capacity. In the cases where conflict is internecine or intragroup, energies which might be constructively expended are exhausted in fruitless struggle.'5
12 Ibid., p. ix, Cf. also Earle F. Enhank, "Relationship of Social Processes,
op. cit., pp. lu-u;.
21 Robert F. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, op. cit., pp. 51-55.
Ulbid., p. 52.
"Floyd N. house, The Range of Social Theory, Henry llolt and Company, Inc., New York, 1929, Chapter XXIII, "Conflict and Disorganization.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 31
The Political Processes.-Politics is the science of power relaIationships as embodied in various formal agencies of social control. From another point of view, it is the study of certain phases of subordination and superordination.'6 The interest of the political scientists is not necessarily confined to the phenomena which arc ordinarily considered political. Any institutionalized social orgaiuization may exhibit political relationships with any other. Churches, schools, and business institutions may maintain political connections in much the same sense as sovereign states~. "The political process . . . goes on within the limits of the mores and is carried on by public discussion, legislation, and the adjudication of the courts. '7
The pathological phases of the political process include such antisocial behavior as delinquency, crime, disorder, revolt, revolution, and war. Corrupt political activity is an important example of such malfunctioning. The community disorganization resulting from political malfeasance cannot be attributed wholly to the evil desires of wicked men. The system, the process itself, is at fault. There is a basic flaw in the entire institutional structure. These phenomena are all, in varying degrees, violations of the conventional codes of behavior. The codes of behavior have resulted from group definitions of the social situation, which have become incorporated in a formal institutioiual framework. The law is a convenient example. Persons who violate socially sanctioned regulations are called eriminab. Their behavior has been arbitrarily categorized as anti-social.
Social disorder, revolt, and revolution and warfare are likewise departures from conventional behavior. Disorder is construed as disturbing the peace and the offender is haled into court on a statutory charge. Revolt is an unsuccessful and abortive protest against the political process. Its perpetrators are severely dealt with by the law. Revolution is a final and successful denial of the existing political, social, and moral structure. Such movements receive pragmatic sanction in the form of recognition from other integrations of political institutions. If we consider these revplutionary changes from the standpoint of the old regime, we find that they are lawless and highly disorganizing. In the eyes of the conservatives, social control has temporarily broken down. For the solid bourgeoisie this
e Cf. Park and Burgess, op. cit., pp. 688-703, for a discussion of the sociology of superordination and subordination.
"Thid p. 53.
32 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONis the supreme gesture of social demoralization. V/ar is the most disruptive of all political processes for it involves a breakdown in the peaceful equilibrium among nations. By armed force conflicting national groups strive to impose their will on each other.
The Economic Processes.- Thc economic process, say Park and Burgess, "is concerned with values that can be treated as comniodities. lS Competition is the primary social process operating in the field of economic activity. Personal and social disorganization may arise from an inability to compete with other persons because of some physical or mental incapacity. On the other hand, it may arise from an unwillingness to compete according to socially prescribed rules.
It has long been a source of pride to our political demagogues and industrial leaders that our society is one of free economic competition. ~lhousands of speeches have been delivered, dozens of books have been written extolling the virtues of "rugged American individualism'' and its related characteristics. The results of unrestricted social and economic competition, however, are not always so beneficent as these protagonists would have us believe. A large share of our social anarchy might be laid directly at the door of this unfortunate philosophy.
Modern society may be considered from tIme artificially simplified standpoint of competition. Through competition, broadly speaking, the individual may become ecologically distributed over the surface of the earth. Both social organization and social disorganization may be examined by the use of such ecological concepts and techniques. Often, how-ever, the individual cannot or will not compete. We then have the following pathological manifestations:
the dependent . . - who is unable to compete; the defective who is, if not unable, at least handicapped in his efforts to
compete. The criminal, on the other hand, . . . who is perhaps unable, but at any rate refuses, to compete according to the rules which society lays down. '9
At least two of these pathological aspects of competition, namely, dependency and defectiveness, are comparatively recent residues of the social processes. True, the poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind have always been with us. But they did not present such an
" Ibid.
~ Ibid., p. ~6o.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZKI'ION 33
impersonal and at the same time such a serious problem until after the industrial revohution. In primitive and prelitcrate societies there has always- been competiUon between man and the impersonal forces of nature or between hostile peoples. In times of war or famine, villages starved together. there was seldom the spectacle of a fexv living in plenty arid the rest dying of hunger. Individual competition, in the all-too-literal sense of "cut-throat, is a niodern pheiionlei)ori, one of the dubious blessings of our civilization. Men are free, with negligible hindrance, to amass as much in the competitive process as their acumen or their luck permits. They were also free, until recently, to starve as gracefully as they niight. Only when they molest others in the process are they brought before the bar of justice.20
Social scientists have both condemned and condoned the social consequences of this failure to conipete. lhomas R. Malthus was one of the first social scientists to concern himself seriously with the disorganization brought about by uncontrolled competition.2' l-Ierbert Spencer was a firm believer in the ultimate benefieeiiec of unrestricted competition.22 A generation after Spencer, when the miracles of evolution had failed to reveal themselves, Henry George stated that society might amass great quantities of wealth through the free play of competition. Poverty, how-ever, was produced at even greater speed.23 \Villiam Graham Sumner was an ardent exponent of laissez faire in economic and social affairs. He maintained that thme evil effects of competition would be progressively eliminated by natural forces.24 ~. A. Bonger held that a large part of modern criminal behavior might be traced directly to the poverty of the defeated competitor.25
We cannot make an exhaustive analysis of the social processes here. Many other social processes, whose number and nature have
20Thid, ~
~ T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principlc of Population, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, London, 1803.
"Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., New York, 1906, Vol. I, pp. 514-516.
" Henry George, Progrcs.s and I'overty, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., New York, 879.
24 Cf. William Grahani Sumncr, Folkways, Ginn and Company, Boston.
3906, pp. 164 if.
25 William A. Bonger, Criminality and Economic Conditions, Little, Browt. & Company, Boston, 1916.
34 SOCIAL DISORGANflATIONby no means been universally accepted, have not been considered in this brief discussion. In our subsequent discussion we do not attempt to impose a rigid classification upon the various manifestations of social disorganization. Criminal behavior, for example, is a violation of formally codified rules of behavior. Th,ere are also elements of cultural conflict apparent in the criminal's revolt against the mores. Finally, crime is definitely related to economic status, to the failure to compete according to approved definitions.
So it is with other specific manifestations of personal, family, community, and international disorganization. In some instances, they can be clearly analyzed in the light of the failure of one social process or a number of interrelated processes to function properly. We must continually bear in mind, however, that schematic analyses are always partial. they are valid only in so far as they offer greater understanding of the complex whole from which they have been derived.
Cultural Lag and Social Disorganization.-In addition to the disorganization arising from the processes of social interaction, the rigidity of institutions and mores also produces disruptions. In every society, the non-material aspects of culture tend to become so highly institutionalized that it is very difficult to change the rigid social systen~s set up by past geiierations. The social institutions which lend stability to society in many instances also contribute to social disorganization by their fixed nature and resistance to desirable change. To survive, an institution must be elastic enough to ndjust to changing social needs. Yet many social anachronisms persist until they eventually break down under the weight of their own inertia and augment the very disorder which they arc presumed to prevent. The formalism of the creeds and myths of certain institutions may thus not only lead to the disorganization of the institutions then,selves but also contribute to the disorganization of the society in which they operate. In Coolcy's terms, this process is "the decay of a body already dead. 20
In the gradual process of social change in any society new culture traits are constantly being added to the culture base. The addition of new material objects alters the habits and life schemes
20 Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization, Charles Sedhner's Sons, New York, 1927, p. 349.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 35
of members of the group. These in turn disrupt old values, for material traits incorporate the attitudes and values of the group. Modification of material culture inevitably modifies habits of thinking and acting. Modern technology thus alters economic society and disrupts established economic theories. The "value of a man can no longer be measured by his wages. A man can no longer be condemned as lazy and incompetent because he is unemployed. Even so, established social habits and ideas tend to take on a hallowed character and many people continue to place personal blame on those thrown out of work. In every society there is a similar reluctance to discard outworn institutions and outmoded ideas. This failure to adjust social habits to meet human needs produces unrest and social disorganization. Wherever cultural changes are relatively rapid, the social structure is continually disturbed by the conflict between the old and established way of life and the dynamic demands of the new situation. Social disorganization is part of the price of social change.
The failure of non-material culture to keep abreast· of material culture accounts for part of the disruption. Nothing changes so slowly as an idea. Once-accepted notions are invested with sacred connotations. Men will shed their blood to protect their belief in what is right, whether such beliefs involve religious ideas, political philosophies, or economic theories. Material culture changes with less opposition because the advantages of new inventions are more easily recognized. An electric refrigerator possesses definite improvements over the old ice-box. Automatic heat eliminates much of the drudgery imposed by the old-fashidned furnace. The automobile and telephone make possible communication for purposes of both bnsiness and pleasure. The advantages of changes in governmental policy, in religious ideas, or in the relative position of women are not so clearly demonstrable. Buying the latest type of automobile may be a pleasant adventure, and its mechanical advantages over older models and the horse and buggy are obvious. A new type of political philosophy, however, disrupts beliefs which are deeply tinged with emotion. This partially accounts for the willingness to accept new material cultural traits and the reluctance to change ideas and non-material culture. This disparity in the rate of change between material culture and non-material culture in itself pro-
36 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONduces disruptions. The disparity in such changes we designate as cultural lag.''27
The changes in our material c{ilture in turn include the necessity for readjustmcnts in our non-material culture. Modern means of communication and transportation have so altered the factor of distance that new problems of social control have arisen. A stronger central government is necessary when social interaction takes place over so wide an area as in modern society. "States rights diminish in importance when instantaneous contact with Washington is possible. With airplanes winging their way over the oceans, relationships between and within nations must inevitably change. Isolation policies lose their significance when we live in a closely interrelated world. Complete neutrality becomes virtually impossible when national interests are at stake in a world society. Similarly, scientific achievements in agriculture and industrial processes have altered our economic structure. Monetary values formerly depend:
cut upon scarcity are no longer valid in an economy of abundance. Inevitable alterations in economic practices and policies must follow such increases in food supply and manufactured goods. But apparently such changes never conic without thcdisrnptions which make us painfully conscious of the necessity for modifications of a non-material sort. Social attitudes in the field of economics, politics, the family, religion, education, social welfare, and recreation have all experienced the impact of changes in our material culture. But such changes in attitudes come slowly. We are always in a sense "governed by dead nmn's bones. How to hold fast to that which is good and at the same time discard that which is outworn is the niost difficult problem confronting any generation. It is an especially urgent problem in our rapidly changing world.
The Nature of Social Attitudes.-Sociial disorganization may thus result from machine production. Social disruption may also he related to conflicting attitudes and values. Whenever new patterns of behavior disavow old accepted norms, some form of conflict and disorganization results. Since the terms "attitudes and "values are so basic to our sociological frame of reference, an examination of thc meaning attached to these concepts is pertinent here.
The concept of attitudes has been defined with varying degrees
27 William F. Ogbnrn made the classic statement of this hypothesis in his book, Social Change, P. NV. Ilnehsch, New York, 1922, pp. 199-280.
TIlE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 37'
of objectivity and inclusiveness, from a relatively simple tendency to actY8 to the whole complex of "a man's inclinations and feelings, prejudices or bias, preconceived notions, ideas, fears, threats, and convictions about any specific object. 29 Thomas has been particularly instrumental in formulating a conception of attitudes to serve as a logical framework for social psychology. The essential characteristic in his concept of social attitudes is the actual or potential activity of some individual or group toward a social fact in their milieu. The nature of the attitude can be roughly measured 1w the character of the overt activity which it calls forth. "By attitude we understand a process of individual consciousness which determines real or possible activity of the individual in the social world20
Attitudes are not isolated concepts, existing without reference to specific objects. The tendency to act must he directed toward some end or social value. There is thus a functional reciprocity between attitude and value, as Thomas and Znaniecki point out. The social value is for them the object of the activity, the end result of the tcndcncy to respond. Any material or non-material phenomenon may become a value when an activity or tendency to activity is (lirected toward it. "The social value is thus opposed to the natural thing which - . - is treated as valueless; when the natural thing assumes a meaning, it becomes thereby a social value. These meanings may be many and varied, since any given social fact may he the object of a multiplicity of real or potential actsY' Fans has also indicated this dual nature of attitude and value, and the intimate and logical interrelationship between the twoA2
2~ By an attitude we mean a definite state or quality of consciousness, Involving a tendency to act in a characteristic way whenever an object or occasion which stinlulates it is presented. R. Ni. Maelver, Society, Its Structure and Changes, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York, 1931, p. 44.
~ b.. L. h'hurstone, Attitudes Can Be Measured, American Journal of Sociology, 33:531 (January, 1928).
~ William I. Thomas and Florian Znanieeki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1927. Vol. I, p. 2_.
1Tlhid., p.21.
~ Ellswortl, Paris, "Attitudes and Behavior, American Journal of Sociology,
34:278 (September, 1928). See also Kimbahl Young (editor), Social Attitudes,
hhcnry I-bIt and Company, Inc., New York, ig;i; and Florian Znaniecki, The
Laws of Social Psychology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, a~aç; I-badlcv
Cantrih, "General and Specific Attitudes, Psychological Monographs, XLII.
No. 5, Psychological Review Co., Princeton, 1932.
38 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONThe Nature of Social Vahyes..-Iluman values, in one form or another, have been a chief concern of philosophers from Periclean Athens to the present. We do not wish to beeomc.involved in any complex metaphysical tangle here. However, we niay compare briefly the conceptions of the philosophers on this important point with those of the sociologists.
Ralph Barton Perry, in his General Theory of Value,33 has defined a value as "any object of any interest. This definition corresponds almost exactly to that of Thomas. A value is thus some object of interest, which has acquired its value not from any intrinsic quality but because it is the end on object toward which activity is directed. Dewey holds substantially to this idea,34 as do many of the pragmatic and relativistic schools of philosophers.
There is, however, another and totally different concept of value, held by another group of nietaphysicians. To them a value is not the object itself, but the feeling that one has toward the object. Dewitt H. Parker, in his book, Human Valucs,a5 holds to this interpretation. He defines a value as "the experience known as fiilfillment of desire, or satisfaction. The value, in the last analysis, cxists always in the mind of the individual, never in the world of objective phenomena. Social objects may possess value, but they are riot in themselves values. Although we may designate certain social facts as having value, this quality is always implicit in our own mental processes, not in the thing itself. In Parker's words, "Things do not really have value; they only borrow value from the satisfactions corresponding. aG From this standpoint, values obviously belong to the inner life. The measure of satisfaction, not the object itself, is the real value. Bouglé has suggested the definition of value as "a permanent possibility of satisfactions. ~~ Here again the important clement is the judgment, the feeling that we have for a particular object, rather than the object itself.38
~ Longrnans, Green and Co., New York, 1926, Chapter V.
~ John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, Minton, Balch & Co., Inc., New York, 1929.
~ Dewitt H. Parker, Human Values, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1931.
8Thid., pp. zo-ai,
"R. MI. Sellars, Pouglé's Evolution of Values, Henry IIoIt and Company, Inc., New York, 19:6, p. i9.
~s Cf. also Frederick F. Lumley, Principles of Sociology, McGraw-I Iill Book Company, Inc., New York, 19:8, Chapter XXIV.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 39According to Cooley, human values are essentiallt thrccfold in character and involve "an organism, a situation, and an object. Values are classified on the basis of the objects about which the value-feeling has evolved. Stocks, clothes, men, and institutions may possess value but are not in themselves values. He further distinguislses between "human nature and institntional values. The former are those which have grown up about primary group relationships and hence are universal in human nature. They are values to all men at all times-love of a home, children, a bit of property. Institutional valucs, on the other hand, are those identified with a particular institutional structure. they are relatively transitory and their existence is measured by the life of the institution which generates them. Human and institutional values do not always harmonize. Out of their conflict much social disorganization arises.39
These theories of value are very closely related to the sociologist's definition of attitude, which, as a tendency to act, a feeling toward some particular object, is essentially an inner state of mind. The latter concept of value, as a personal and individual feeling of satisfaction, is undoubtedly metaphysically valid. However, for our purpose, the concept of a social value as the objective counterpart of an attitude is more practical from a methodological standpoint. It is more capable of measurement and verification; the choice, therefore, is one of expediency and ease of reference rather than of strict logic. We slaall thus define values as social objects which have a meaning for us, which we consider important in our life schemes; and attitudes are the way we feel about these values, and our tendency to act in a particular overt way with reference to them.
With the meaning of attitude and value clearly in mind, our next concern is with their relation to social disorganization. Thomas describes the process in terms of the decreasing influence of well- established codes of behavior upon individuals and groups.40 This decreasing influence of "existing social rules of behavior is in turn brought about by the growth of definitely anti-social attitudes. Our interest lies, with Thomas, in "the appearance of such attitudes as impair the efficiency of existing rules of behavior and thus lead to
~ Charles Horton Cooley, Social Process, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1922, pp. 234-288.
~Thumas and Znaniecki, op. cit., Vol. II, p. ti:8.
40 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONthe decay of social institutions. 4' A knowledge of the origin and genesis of these social attitudes and their attendant values is essetltial to an understanding of social disorganization. The decline in the influence of the group, as manifested by the superficial indices of social disorganization-vice, crime, delinquency, divorce, etc.- are of interest primarily to the social technician-the case worker. The sociologist is fundamentally concerned with understanding the iiature and evolution of the attitudes that bring about the more obvious manifestations.~2
Disparity in Social Valnes and Social Disorganization.-An effective social organization implies a basic harmony between individual attitudes and social values and depends upon common acceptance of a similar definition of the situation. When this definition breaks down, when there is no longer any social consensus, when individuals define the major interests of the group in selfish rather than in social tern~s, sonIc form of social disorganization is inevitable. Part of social disorganization and failure in group consensus is, however, the result of confusion rather than duplicity. In the years since the first World V/ar, many persons have pointed out the implications of this confusion in our social thinking. These warnings have ranged from the metaphysical forebodings of Oswald Spengler to the platitudinous profundities of Henry Ford. Sociologists have analyzed the collapse in social consensus from many diverse points of view. They all agree that the basic difficulty with modern society is a fundamental lack of universally accepted definitions in economics, politics, social welfare, and international policies.
The consensus which characterized former societies has irretrievably vanished. This decline has been a slow and gradual process, which has taken centuries to reach its logical conclusions in the moral anarchy of our war-torn world. Opinions as to the role of man in relation to the rest of the universe changed inevitably with
"Ibid., p. 1131.
42 In this connection, Somhart has indicated the task of the sociologist as primarily one of "understanding,' of acquiring knowledge "from within outward. Werner Somhart, Sociologic, p. 13, quoted in Leopold von \Vicse, systematic Sociology, adapted by Howard Becker, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Ncw York, 1932, p. 52. See also Macher, op. cit., for a discussion of thc necessarily qualitative nature of ninny of our sociological generalizations; also Maclver, "Is Sociology a Natural Science? Proceedings of thc American Sociological Society, 2$:2ç-35 (NIay, 1931).
TI-IF CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 41
the discoveries of physical science during the Renaissance, and have altered continuously with the subsequent increase in scientific knowledge. Traditional norms of a stable society have also changed, and the individual has become more and more confused as lie has
songht for some answer to life's complexities. New ideologies are themselves the result of man's constant quest for certainties which can give him a sense of stability in a chaotic world. From bitter experience he has learned that these certainties are difficult to find and even more difficult to retain against competing philosophies once lie has accepted theni.43
lhe unanimity which characterized the New England town meeting ~vhen concerned with important social niatters has disappeared. It can never be regained so long as we have a world of discordant behavior patterns and clashing ideologies. Tile changes in the material aspects of American culture with the evolution of tile industrial order have brought about maladjustments which will probably never be completely eliminated. The accepted social values of a democratic society received further blows during the prolonged economic depression, as divergent interests of the various classes came into sharp focus. Class alignments have developed as the various groups clashed in their definitions of such significant social concerns as relief, taxation, and regulation of business. Reorganizing society thus entails the forging of a new consensus in the midst of conflicting interests and points of view. This task challenges the social, technological, and intellectual resources at our conunand.
Social disorganization and the concomitant confusion and disorganization of the individual arc but two aspects of the same phenomenon. We shall discuss personal disorganization in detail in Chapter lii. We must point out here, however, that most people are accustomed to thinking of personal disorganization in terms
· solely of abnormal, perverse, or maladjusted individuals. Actually, such individuals are an index to the processes of disorganization within the larger group. For a variety of reasons, individuals who offend the mores cannot adjust themselves to the demands of the group. Sometimes group definitions are too rigid. Contradictions
~ Lawrcnce K. Frank, "Society as the Patient, Aincrica,i Journal of Sociology, 42:335-344 (November, 1936); cf. also Thurman MI. Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1937.
42 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONwithin the group make conformity to all rules difficult, if not well- nigh impossible, to weak and handicapped individuals.
Coiifusion in social values is indicated by the clash between rival ideologies. In the struggle between fascisni and democracy honest men shed their blood because of the disparity in their political ideologies. To the Fascists, democracy is an outmoded political form of the nineteenth century. Those upholding the democratic way of life believe it is the last hope of western civilization. Within our own body politic, major disputes in political philosophy hamper the effective solution of internal problems. the regulation of business is held by the New Deal to be a necessary measure of control over economic production. Industrialists regard this as a menace to profits arid to the safety of invested capital. Those interested in improving public health demand some form of state or socialized medicine. The medical profession, motivated by a desire to promote the financial rewards of its members, has strenuously opposed such developments. Welfare workers insist on the validity of government relief programs. Industrialists object to the burden of taxes which relief programs impose.
This wide variety of social definitions and disparities in social values will probably increase as society becomes more complex and more dynamic, unless some control of the expression of ideas is imposed. The man on the street will experience increasing difficulty in evolving satisfactory definitions of critical situations as a greater variety of social norms is offered for his approval and acceptance. The disruptive aspect of such a wide variety of definitions has been one of the major reasons for the spread of fascism. Leaders have despaired of uniting a country where so many diverse ideas were upheld. Antecedent to the control of ideas which fascism seeks to impose, man had been gradually turning away from his firm beliefs in universal and eternal moral values and had adopted a moral relativism. Such trends in social thinking have been variously designated as relativism, pragmatism, humanism, naturalismM These points of view have one general similarity, viz., their insistence on the human basis of all moral standards. The tolerance of such moral relativism by democracies has been a factor, perhaps, in their capitulation before the onslaught of the Fascist ideology. For the indefinite standards and values sanctioned by democratic
"Dewitt H. Parker, op. cit., p. 3.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 43
nations fascism has substituted a strong central government and demanded an absolute loyalty. Criticism of leaders or their motives is condemned. Rational processes involve thinking, thinking involves confusion in values, hence Fascists rule out thinking: Emotions become the basic element in a program for obtaining national unity and cohesion. The state becomes the highest good and the individual's subservience to the state his highest duty. Old misgivings and confusions disappear chiefly because of the cniotional contagion of the mass movement which induces allegiance to a new point of view.
For those who are able to maintain an intellectual perspective such a distortion of values is untenable. For those outside the spell of totalitarianism there is little virtue in the loss of human liberties for the promotion of governmental ends. From a psychological point of view fascism is an escape from the reality of a confused and painful world. But it is more than that. It is an organized attack on the confusion of the modern world. Most supporters of democracy believe fascism will prove to be a false Messiah. Time will tell. The conflict in present social values has produced the most disruptive and widespread social disorganization in history. Democracy may survive, but there is every reason to believe that if it does so it will be in au altered form. Perhaps in the historic words of the ancients, "This too shall pass away. At least we can be excused for believing that these are in a special sense "times that try men souls, and exclaim with Aristophanes, "Whirl is King, having driven out Zeus.
The Process of Social Disorganization.-It must be apparent that the process of social disorganization is derived from the conflicting social attitudes and values which make group consensus impossible. These discordant attitudes are not primarily the result of individual perversity. Those whose motivations are most selfish aiid hedonistic have built up their habit patterns in relation to the larger group. However disruptive their behavior may be, it is a product of social interaction. Even so an analysis of disruptive forces indicates that they may be classified in two varieties: ( ) the consciously directed anti-social forces and (2) the impersonal or"Walter Lippinaiin, A Preface to Morals, The Macmillan Company, New
York, i929, p. 4; cf. also Louis \Virth, "Ideological Aspects of Social Disorganization, American Sociological Review, 5:4>482 (August, i940)
44 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONganic forces which are aim outgrowth of the breakdown in social institutions and the disparity in definitions of social situations as discussed above. The disorganization process itself does not exist iii isolatiOn, however, but is also a part of what Albion W. Small has called the "incessant decomposition aiid rccomposition of relations within persons and between persons in a continuous evolution of types of persons and of associations. 46
(1) Consciously Directed Anti-social .t'orces.-Men may thus consciously attempt to subvert group purposes in order to advance their own selfish ends. They are thoroughly aware of their antisocial attitudes. Social values have no meaning for them. They ma'never have developed any appreciation for these values or thc~ may have consciously and ruthlessly discarded them. There has often been no socializing influence in the lives of those men whose motives are purely egoistic. Cooperation, or "mutual aid, the implicit counterpart of effective social organization, is not aim inborn tendency of the biological organism. Only through painful necessity have men come to recognize that the survival of the individual is in the long run dependent upon the mutual assistance of memh)ers of the group. Since there is no preexistent harnaony between individual attitudes and social values, it is comparatively easy for nien to develop anti-social purposes. The achievement of such purposes is made possible, however, only because they prey upon the natural desires of other men.47 Corruption in politics, the "Shame of the Cities, affords a draniatic example of such exploitation of hummian weaknesses.48 The desire for persommal gain, for material comfort, for the power and glamour which the possession of wealth entails, makes clever swindlers, gamblers, and criminals heroes of the masses. Easy money is often an affinity of easy virtue,
Vice areas likewise function because of human appetites, because individual desires are more deeply rooted than any sense of the social implications involved in their expression. Sex in its most tawdry form exists because it has capitalized biological urges at the expense of socially imposed ideals of chastity and family life. The
46 Quoted by Charles Ilorton Coolcv, Social Process, op. cit., P. :8, from the Americao Journal of Sociology, mS:zmo (Septeomber, 19a:).
~ Charles Horton Cooley, op. cit., pp. 175-576.
48 Lincoln Steffcns, The Shame of the Cities, McClure, Phillips & Conmpanv, Ne~v York, 5905.
II-IE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 4S
prostitute exists only because she is a means to man's sensual pleasure arid satiety. Bootlegging threatened the political foundation of our commonwealth because men resent legal restrictions of a sumptuary sort. The life of the criminal is thrilling because it satisfies mans craving for adventure and new experience. Sin, vice, crime, corruphon, all consciously directed anti-social forces, offer a prim. rose path of pleasurable activity, albeit they eventually lead to destruction. Beguiled by clever leaders and the desires of the moment,
is continually selling his soul for a mess of pottage.
(2) Impersonal Organic Forces.-At the same time, great imnpersonal forces beyond the control of individual men also bring about social disorganization. The breakdown of the world markets, the closed factories, the poverty stalking in the trail of unemployment, cannot be attributed to the consciously directed evil aims of any group or groups of men. The interplay of forces far beyond the foresight or control of men has wrought such disorganization that some critics hold civilization itself to be on trial.
In the current welter, many simple analyses have been applied to the problem. Every school of thought tends to find ~nankind at the crossroads, and each for a different reason. The present confusion and social unrest are explained on the ground that rulers arc uniutelhigemit, that capitalism has broken down, that war debts are staggering, that religion has declined, that immigration laws are lax, that there is too much or too little government in business, and so on, rid infinitum. Every man on the street has a ready panacea for the complex ills of society.
Main critics, for example, tend to condemn individual persommalities, yet any such condemnation, or attempt to delegate specific responsibility for the larger social problems, is based upon fatuous reasoning. A recent President of the United States was no more responsil)le for the morass in which the nation was floundering than his predecessors had been for prosperity. The "popular mind, the unthinking populace, covets a scapegoat which nmay be blamed for creating the disturbance brought about by impersonal forces. It is so much easier to seek vengeance again~t a personality adjudged anti-social than to work out a constructive plan for social engineering. It was far simpler to heap epithets upon cx-Kaiscr Wilhelm as the chief perpetrator of the first World War than to accept the responsibility for building aim organization which would prevent
46 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONsuch conflict. It is easier for fascist leaders to blame England for the present world conflict than it is for them to accept their own incapacities in the face of impending difficulties. Such sweeping condemnations unquestionably act as a sort of emotional catharsis for a strained social conscience. With naïve and childlike faith man has always assumed he could escape social and moral responsibility by attaching blame to some scapegoat.
The Crisis and Social Disorganization.-Although social disorganization is a continuous process, its more obvious and acute manifestations grow out of crisis situations. These in turn effect a breakdown in social habits. A social crisis may be defined as a serious disturbance in the habits, customs, or working life-patterns of the group.49 Similarly, an individual crisis is a disturbance of personal life organization. A social crisis induces many individual crises. A social calamity always affects the personal habits of members of the group involved. A panic, flood, or fire may cause serious injury, loss of money, or death of individuals and set in motion a train of disturbing complications.50 Occasionally the reverse is true. A crisis in the life of a leader sometimes produces a succession of shocks to the larger community. The death of a political boss or the financial failure of a great banker or industrial magnate may entail consequent social disaster. Kreuger's unscrupulous financial manipulations and the failure of Samuel Insull are two noteworthy instances in which one man's financial ruin entailed losses to thousands of others.
However, the effect of individual disorganization upon the group is not necessarily reciprocal. An individual may become disorganized with little or no perceptible effect upon the group.51 The general relation between crises and individual disorganization we shall discuss in a later chapter.
(i) Precipitate Crises.-Social crises in general may be resolved into two types, the precipitate and the cumulative. The immediate and precipitate social crisis occasions a sudden break in the habits
~ William 1. Thomas, quoted by Kimball Young, Source Book for Social Psychology, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1927, pp. 81-83.
50 For a somewhat different point of view in this connection cf.J. Blame Gwin, "Do Disasters Help? Social Forces, 8:386-389 (March, m93o).
~ Cf. Stuart A. Queen and Delbert M. Mann, Social Pathology, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1925, p. 19.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 47
of the group and the necessity for immediate action.52 Under precipitate crises we may include deaths of leaders, accidents, wrecks, famines, and "acts of God. All these require a definite reorganization in personal life schemes, and in the patterns of group life itself. A bank failure which causes immediate financial distress itt the community, wars which upset the whole social organization, pestilence and epidemics, collapses in the stock market are all precipitate crises. Crop failures which produce scarcity or famine, floods which destroy homes and carry with them a dread pestilence are other emergencies which require communities to face new and difficult situations with slight warning. Old habits are inadequate to new tasks. There is no time to plan. Something has to be done immediately, usually without satisfactory facilities. Since such prob~ lenis are continually arising, the social order is inevitably unstable.53 If society can surmount such difficulties, the crises may result finally in greater stability. For the time being, there is always social disorganization.
(z) Cumulative Crises.-Under the category of cumulative crises we may list the perplexing situations and circumstances that have developed slowly out of a long line of sequential events. The periodic insecurity of agriculture is an example par excellence. Part of the agrarian distress must be laid to the deflation in the price level following the post-war inflation of the first World War. Deflation came, however, at a period when assessed land values were disproportionately high, when mortgages were worth more than the land itself would fetch at market prices. This distress was further complicated by the unusual overproduction of foodstuffs made possible by scientific agriculture, which was in turn accompanied by a decrease in the effective demand for farm products. European purchasing power had so declined with peace times that Russia supplied the relatively slight demand. Consequently, the American farmer has been in an unprecedented state of unrest, as evidenced by his strenuous attempts to resist excessive tax burdens and the downward trend of his standard of living.
The problems arising in America in the assimilation of new
IZCf. ibid., pp. 1718.
~ It must be apparent, of course, that all crises are, strictly speaking, cumulative, since all are preceded by a certain series of events. The distinguishing character of the precipitate crisis must lie in its sudden, almost cataclysmic appearance.
48 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONethnic groups afford another example of a cumulative crisis. Out of the impact of the various alien cultures, serious problenis of conflict have emergedY4 A large share of our criminals and delinquents are the children of the foreign born; they are criminals and delinquents not because of any inherent criminal tendencies but because of the conflict between the customs and mores of the family and those of the larger school and community groups.55
Our international industrial order likewise experienced a cumulative trend of events culminating in the revolt of labor and mass movements during the current crisis of unemployment. The "technological tenuousness which Stuart Chase describes in Men and Machines has succeeded in displacing labor without taking into account the laboring man displaced. Out of this has grown the circular probleni of no work, no wages, hence no demand for the selfsame machine technology. The resultant decline in the productiou of goods also affects the upper economic group. The professional man must in turn accept a decreased demand for his services.
Certain crises, it should be pointed out, possess both precipitate and cumulative aspects. The second World \Var was, for example, no bolt from the blue. The appeasement policies of the European democracies were in direct recognition of the impending possibilities of armed conflict. Event upon event piled up until France aiid England were no longer willing to accept the threat of further encroachments by the Axis powers. The actual declaration of ~var, on the other hand, produced a precipitate crisis. A drastic change in the life schemes of the people in the warring countries necessarilv followed. The events leading up to this sudden change were, however, cumulative.
Voluntary Gronp CrisesY6-We have thus far considered the concept of crisis and social disorganization as though a crisis were always something imposed from without, some fortuitous incident or series of incidents which interrupted the even tenor of the group way of life. Znaniccki, however, points out that an exterior ele
~ Cf. Chapter XIII for a further discussion of "cultural shock.''
~ Cf. \Villiam Bolitho, "Gangster Traurnatism, Survey, 63:661-665 (March 1, 1930), and "The Psychosis of the Gang, Survey, 63:500-506 (February .
1930).
~ Florian Zuaniecki, "Group Crises Produced by Voluntary Undertakings, in Social Attitudes, op. cit., Chapter Xl.
TIlE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 49
rnent is not necessarily present in crisis situations. Groups often voluntarily and arbitrarily bring about crises by consciously departing from their traditional mode of life. Crises of this character may result from the attempt of the group to embark upon a radically new program of action. The conflict is waged, as Znaniccki remarks, "between the group as a super-individual structure and the'generality of its individual members. 57 Some persons are inorc sympathetic to change than others. The conservatives do not readily embrace novelty, even though it be imposed upon them b~ the majority.
When the change is very radical, when sacred or tabooed subjects arc molested, the conflict engendered may be most violent. MIlieu President Roosevelt decided that the United States should go off the gold standard in the spring of 933, he set in motion a crisis situation of this nature. The "sound money advocates were greatly dismayed and their clamorings brought about considerable uncertainty throughout the country. If the administration had infringed upon prerogatives even more sacred than the gold standard, if private property, for example, had been threatened, the crisis situation would have been immeasurably increased.
The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Russia and Mussolini's March oil Rome are other examples of a voluntary attempt to interrupt and alter the existing social order. The dynamic forces within the society brought about these drastic alterations in the traditional social order. Conflict situations arose between those persons who were sympathetic to the new order and those who clung fast to the old. In a completely homogeneous society, crises of this type could not occur. Every member of the group would be in accord with the general will of the group. Consensus ~vould be complete and there would be no social disorganization. Needless to say, consensus did not exist in Czarist Russia or pre-Fascist Italy. Consensus exists in the totalitarian countries today by virtue of a judicious mixture of propaganda and the threat of naked forcc. The moral homogeneity of these nations is more apparent than real.58
Statistical Indices of Social Disorganization.-We have considered certain of the more important causal factors which induce
5Tlhid., p. 288.
~ Louis Wirth, op. cit.
50 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONsocial disorganization. We may also consider certain quantitative and qualitative indices as to the prevalence of social disorganization. An index may be defined as a relatively simple phenomenon which indicates a more fundamental but less readily observable plmenomenon.59
The relation between an index to social disorganization and the more complex social process which has produced it is not alWays mnvarial)lc. There are many complicating factors in every social problem. It is also difficult to separate any social phenomenon from the social matrix in which it arises. Divorce, for example, is a complicated problem. It may be regarded as a fairly reliable index to family maladjustment and domestic infelicity. However, divorce is also an index to social recognition of the problems of family maladjustment. An increasing divorce rate may be the result of an increased knowledge of the legal devices for severing marriage or of changed conceptions as to the nature of marriage, e.g., the belief that no marriage should endure where love does not exist. Our high divorce rate may thus signify a decrease in marriage hypocrisy rather than an increase in marital maladjustment. Similarly, a decline in divorce rates-as evidenced during the depression-does not necessarily indicate that marriage knots are more firmly tied. As the Lynds point out in their study of Middletown, it was mOre difficult for women to be economically independent during that time.UO Divorces cost money and money was not always forthcoming. Furthermore, families found it easier to secure relief as a unit than when the husband and wife were separated.
In general, however, indices of social disorganization are fairly reliable indicators of the relative lack of unanimity existing in a given society. Indices of personal disorganization include statistics of juvenile delinquemicy, crime in all its manifestations, insanity, prostitution, drunkenness, suicide, and the like. Family disorganization is indicated (with the limitations discussed above) by rates of divorce and figures for desertion when the latter are available, as well as by rates of illegitimate births, venereal disease, and the like. Community disorganization may be indicated by the literacy
~ Carl A. Dawson and Warner E. Gettys, An Introduction to Sociology, Ronald Press, New York, 1929, p. 7i2.
60 Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown in Transition, Liar- court, ]3race and Company, Inc., New York, in937, pp. 152-mba.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 51
rate of the population, figures for irregular school attendance, rates of mobility and transiency, political corruption, vice, and crime.6'
We have said that no complete separation of individual, family, community, or international disorganization is possible. Consideration of the nature of these indices makes this even more apparent. Many of the figures are indicative of all four types of social disorganization. The amount of venereal disease, for example, is a measure both of the decline of primary controls and of the subsequent disorganization of the individuals who are so unfortunate as to become infected. The individual who becomes diseased through extra-marital sex relationships has clearly defined tile situation as hedonistic rather than as social. Venereal disease is also a mcasure of the extent to which the mcmbers of the society seek sexual satisfaction outside the sanctioned bonds of the family. Finally, a high rate of venereal disease in any community is an index of widespread community disorganizatiOn. Social controls are not functioning properly, vice is rampant, and other types of community disorganization are probably also present.62 V/ar meanwhile contributes to the disorganization of persons, families, and communities.
Another type of index of social disorganization is the figure for the number of persons on direct relief amid employed on work relief projects. Unemployment statistics have always indicated the amount and nature of economic disorganization found in any community at a given tiinne. The relative importance of this phase of social disorganization has increased immeasurably during the past decade- The enormous incrcasc in unemployment has cndangered the stability of our entire national structure. The bitterness with which various interest groups in the country disagree both as to the numbers of the unemployed and as to the most desirable method of dealing with them indicates the role which these statistics have come to play in the national consciousness. The full implications of the problem are discussed at length in a later chapter.
61 For an interesting and valuable attempt to measure certain aspects of the community cf. Edward L. Thorndike and Ella MI oodyard, "Indiyidual Differences in American Cities; Thcir Nature and Causation, American Journal of Sociology, 43:292-224 (September, 1937).
62 For an interesting discussion of the indices of social disorganization in their social setting cf. Stuart A. Queen, Walter B. Bodenhafer, and Ernest B. Harper, Social Organization and Disorganization, Thomas Y. Crowd1 Company, New York, 1935, Chapter I.
52 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONV/e merely wish to point out here the effect of such a situation upon the consensus of the society. When large numbers of persons are suffering the personal and family stresses and strains growing out of unemployment, social disorganization of other types is difficult to avoid.63
In view of the organic character of society it is clear that the majority of statistical indices suggest many more implications for disorganization than appear in the single phenomenon which they purport to measure. Crime, unemployment, divorce, venereal disease, mobility, transiency, illiteracy, and undernourishment are all indications of many different aspects of a disorganized society. The breakdown of consensus in contemporary culture takes a number of interrelated forms. Social disorganization is a complex
process.
Literary Indices of Social Disorganization.-'I'he literature produced in any society is a significant index of the attitudes and values of its most sensitive members. In our contemporary society the poets, novelists, and dramatists depict the changing scene in striking fashion. The great majority of these writers reflect, in one way or another, the lack of consensus which is so characteristic of the present social order. Let us examine a few of the most prom> uent literary figures of recent years in order to gain an insight into the disorganization of society which statistical indices fail to pro~tide. In this way we may read the social barometer and sec the signs of coming storms.
In The Coming Struggle for Power, 4 published in tile midst of the depression, John Strachey discusses certain significant examples of modern literature which in his opinion indicate a general collapse of the capitalistic order. He believes contemporary literature is itself indicative of certain fundamental and incurable maladies of our entire civilization. Such dire conclusions seem somewhat unwarranted, and the present authors do not wish to he interpreted as Cassandras of a moribund social order. On the other hand, we must grant that much of our niodern literature is graphically expressive of tile high degree of unrest, maladjustment, and
08 Ernest B. Harper. "Evidences of Social Disorganization and Types of Responses Thereto,' Social Forces, 14:81-86 (October. m935).
~ Covici Friede, Inc., New York, 2933.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 53
disorganization in our social order. Not even the most cheerful modern Pippa could claim that all is right with the world.
NI r. Strachey calls attention to three writers who come to the same paralyzing conclusion from three very different approaches. These men, Marcel Proust, D. H. lawrence, and Aldous Huxley, voice the same note of pessimism, contempt, and disgust for modern civilization. V/hen three such literary and social critics reach the samc end from differing points of departure, Strachey maintains that the society that produced then~ cannot he wholly sound.
Marcel Proust dckoted his life and his monumental life work, A Ia Rechcrche dii Temps Perdu (In Search of a Time that Is Past), to a minutely detailed investigation of upper French society as it existed before and after the first World V/ar. Both his life and his work were, in a sense, a prolonged "odyssey of snobbery,' for he spent a great part of his time and energy achieving an how orific position in the upper ranges of society and exploiting his success in his writings. With his penetrating intelligence he realized, in spite of his own aspirations, the falseness, the hollowness, and the sham of a social order iii which the salon of the Duchcsse de Guermautes was an acknowledged peak. The days of these dubiously fortunate persons were spent in an endless round of petty gossip, weary adulteries, and the futile social gestures of the drawing-room. his heroes arc for the most part stupid and sensual, or intellectual and vitally sterile, and his heroines are usually vulgar or dull or both. The society that he so pitilessly lays bare may he superficially pleasant, but beneath the mask Proust uncovers the grinning death's head of social decay. The salons are but sorry imitations of the stimulatingly intellectual "high society during the great age of France. 3 The traits which this group exhibit are in part those which brought France to her knees in the fateful summer of 1940. The cynicism, the remoteness from reality, the blind reaction of these classes contributed to the debacle of the Third Republic before the secret agents and the armored divisions of Adolph Ilitler.
65 Cf. Marcel Proust, A Ia Recherche du Tcmps Perdn, editions dc Ia Nouvelle revnc française, Paris, 1919-1923; John Strachey, The Coming Struggle for Power, op. cit., pp. 2o7~2o8; Ednsund Wilsoi', Mel's Castle, Charles Scribners Sons, New York, 1931.
54 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIOND. I-I. Lawrence presents a striking contrast to the French intellectual in background, training, and literary style. A coal miner's son, he rose to literary fame, triumphing over his cultural heritage by exploiting it. His wprk, however, indicates the same undertone of distrust for modern civilization that was expressed more delicately and subtly by Proust. Lawrence was also mightily concerned with the snobbery and privileges of the tipper classes. But he condemned them instead of aspiring to their status. Although apparently much concerned with the more clinical aspects of sex, his novels are in reality a continuous protest against class exploitation and injustice. He believed sincerely that society rested on false foundations. As a result, his work is suffused with a deep sense of frustration, evidenced in curiously devious ways. His protest is more than that of the artist in continual revolt against the converitions of a particular milieu. His is the voice of one "crying in the wilderness, bemoaning the disorganization that he sees on every hand. The social symbolism of a fusion of classes and the consequent abolition of privilege arc apparent throughout his works. His male characters are often lusty proletarians who meet and ravish the bored and dissatisfied wives of the upper classes. By such "demographic metabolism, the physical and social mingling of classes, lie would achieve an improved social order.66
Aldous Huxley represents a still different segment of contemporary literary society. A member of a family long distinguished for' literary and scientific attainmcnts, soon after the war of 1914-1918 he became known as one of the most promising representatives of the younger literary group. He writes in charming style of the intellectual and cosmopolitan world, but always in a tone of supreme and ill-concealed disgust. His most important volume to date, Point Counter Point is a monumcnt to the futility, the boredom, and the disillusion of the England of the 1920's. The characters who make their confused and trifling way through the pages cannot be admired for either their morals or their dispositions. But they may be considered as inevitable products of their era. They live in an epoch that is out of joint not only as a result of the
66 Cf. D. H. Lawrence, Soxas and Lovers, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, i~zz; Aaron's Rod, T. Seltzer, New York, m~zz; Lady Chatterlev's Lover, William Faro, Inc., New York, i93o, for expressions of this Weltanschauung.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 55
war but also from even more basic causes of which the war itself was the niost important manifestation.67
The crisis of the second World War shook England from its complacent lethargy. The revolutionary iniplications of that struggle were reflected in the society which both Huxley and Uwrence explored from diffcrent points of view. The highly stratified social order, whose rulers followed the disastrous policy of appeasement before and after Munich, will probably be succeeded by another and more democratic organization of society. The catastrophic destruction wrought by the German bombers may bring equally catastrophic changes in the tight little world of England.
A further panoramic view of the literature written betxveen the first and second World \Vars does much to confirm this belief that the old world and the old certainties have gone forever. In his epochal novel, Ulysses, James Joyce states his conviction that we live in a world of chaotic and transitory values. In The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann casts a nostalgic glance toward a tubercular haven, high in the Alps and far from the perplexities of a disorganized world. The great French novelist, Jules Romains, gives its an encyclopaedic picture of all phases of French society before and after the first World War in his series entitled significantly Men of Good Will. The "men of good will in France were as powerless to avert the war of 1914-1918 as they were to carry their part in the second World War to a successful conclusion. The Third Republic contained within itself the seeds of its own eventnal dcstruction. M. Romains calls attention again and again to these disruptive forces in French life.
Among the American writers, James T. Farrell presents such social disorganization as the heritage of modern youth. In his Studs Lonigan trilogy, he depicts the breakdown of social control amid consensus in the modern family and the church. These two institutions fail ignominiously to provide a satisfactory life organization for young Studs Lonigan from the sidewalks of Chicago. The other major institutions-the school, the state, recreational institutions, and the rest-all evidence the same depressing failure. Studs Lonigan is a story of personal disorganization, culminating in the utter
67 Cf. Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point, Doubleday, Dorm & Company, Inc., New York, 1928; Brave Ncw World, Doubleday, Doran & Company,
Inc., New York, 1932; cf. also John Strachey, op. Ott, pp. 211-215.
56 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION(lemnoralization and death of the leading character under the most
unhappy circumstances. The sordid saga of Studs Lonigan is also
a study of social disorganization. From childhood to death, he was a stranger and afraid in a world he never made. his was a disorganized world.68
Another index of social disorganization is given in the trilogy of John Dos Passos, appropriately called U. S. A. The characters in these novels are traced through the pre-war culture of the United States, the maelstrom of the first World War, and the period of maladjustment which followed. Their personal disorganization comes to a climax in the final novel, The Big Money. In this scathing indictment of American culture the leading figures are all broken in one way or another by the relentless impact of the pecuniary values which dominated the America of the 1920's. Personal and family disorganization follows in the wake of the pitiless search for the "big money which dwarfed all other considerations.69
Social disorganization in its starkest form is pictured in a novel ~vhich has been one of the most spectacular best-sellers of our time-The Grapes of \Vrath, by John Steinbeck. This is the story of the economic and spiritual decline of an entire area of our sands of great sections of the plains where hundreds of thou-
persons have been impoverished by the dust storms or driven out by the mechanization of agriculture. The Joad family are dispossessed of their land and begin their forlorn hegira to the fabled orange groves of California. There they are met with bitterness and distrust by the natives, who naturally resent this mass invasion of penniless wanderers. The tribulations of the Joads embody more than the pitiful story of a single family. The Joads are the disinherited, lost in a complex modern world through no fault of their own. Symbolic of the millions of the unemployed and the underemployed, the poverty-stricken and the tindernourished, they represent the third of our nation who live on the margin of destitution and want. Their disorganization is the reflection of a society from which perfect consensus has long since disappeared.~~
~ James T. Farrell. Studs Lonigan, The Modern Library, New York, 1938.
-
4
~ John Dos l'assos, U. S. A., The Modern Library, New York, ~
70 John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, The Viking Press, New York, 1939.
TIlE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION 57
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
i. Barnes, Harry Elmer, Society in Transition, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York, 1939. Ibis compendium of social problems is written with the vivacity which characterizes all of Dr. Barnes' work. Various manifestations of social problems are integrated about the concepts of social change and cultural lag.
2. Bogardus, Emory S. (editor), Social Problems and Social Processes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1933. Collected papers of the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society of 1931. The various contributors relate the nature and significance of the concept of social processes to the study of social problems.
;. Bossard, J. I-I. S., Social Change and Social Problems (revised edition), Harper & Brothers, New York, 1938. hn the revised edition of this standard work oil social problems, the author has incorporated much of the material that has appeared in recent years, particularly in the field of unemployment and its relief.
~. Frank, L. K., "Society as the Patient, American Joorual of Sociology, 42:;3s-344 (November, 1936). The author suggests that social problems should he studied as the products of a disorganized society, rathcr than as the manifestations of individual abnormality or depravity.
~. Gilliu, John L., Social Pathology (revised edition), Ii Appleton- Century Company, Inc., New York, ~g. This is a revision of one of the pioneer studies in the complex field of social problems.
6. Lynd, Robert S, and Lynd, Helen M., Middletoxvn in Transition, Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York, 1937. The authors returil to Middlctown after ten years to study the social changes and social disorganization brought about by the years of the boom and the depression.
7. Queen, Stuart A., and Gruener, Jennette R., Social Pathology, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1940. This study ot social pathology is built about the concept of social participation and the obstacles thereto. The discussion of the physical and mental barriers to participation is particularly valuable.
8. Queen, Stuart A., Bodcnhafer, \Valtcr B., and Ilarper, Ernest B., Social Organization and Disorganization, Thomas Y. Crowcll Company, Ne~v York, 1935. The authors disguss the disorganization of groups, institutions, and personalities in terms of a sound sociological frame of reference.
~. Thomas, Willian] I., aud Znanieeki, Florian, The Polish Peasant
58 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONin Europe and America (two-volume edition), Alfred A. Rnopf, Inc., New York, 1927. Vol. II, "Social Disorganization, particularly Chapter I in this volume, contains the most complete and reasoned analysis of the concepts of personal, family, and community disorganization that has yet been made. The relation of attitudes and values to social disorganization is clearly ontlined and is stressed throughout the treatment.
io. Wirth, Louis, "Ideological Aspects of Social Disorganization, American Sociological Review, 5:472-482 (August, 1940). A thoughtful discussion of the concept of social disorganization with particular reference to its nmnifestations in the contemporary conflict between democracy and totalitarianism.
585
CHAPTER XXI
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION
Family Organization and Society.?By the concept of family or-
ganization we subsume both the structure and the function of the
Intimate primary group. Family organization thus refers to the
marriage status and the relationships between parents and children.
The status of husband and wife, parents and children, their par,
ticular roles, duties, and responsibilities, their emotional attitudes,
and finally the related social sanctions, all determine the particular
form and activities of the family.
The family organization can obviously function only in reciprocal
relation to the larger social order. Each is inevitably and vitally
affected by the stability and organization of the other. The social
values and controls centered in other institutions also affect the
family. Just as the family is basic in the whole social structure, like-
wise the characteristics of family life are largely determined by
outside influences in the form of secondary contacts.'
The nature, of both family organization and family disorganiza-
tion is thus inevitably affected by the culture of which it is a part.
The acceptable patterns of behavior for a particular period deter-
mine how men and women meet the problem of family tensions.
Today the family indicates increasing instability as evidenced in
the number of marriages which end in divorce. This does not
mean that modern husbands and wives put an end to their mar-
riages out of sheer and willful perversity. But it does mean that
family tensions are more apt to lead to divorce than was true in
our grandparents' time. There were many unhappy marriages in
earlier periods, but "good" women did not seek divorce even
though they knew their husbands were philanderers. There were
1 Cf. E. B. Reuter and Jessie Runner, The Family, McGraw-Hill Book Com-
pany, Inc., New York, 1931, Chapter V, for a discussion of types of family
organization.
585
.
586 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
usually children to consider. A divorced woman had no status.
Moreover most women had no visible means of support outside
of the family group. Today this is changed. Women demand a
partnership relationship. A marriage in which there is no love and
respect is usually severed unless there are other important con-
siderations which prevent breaking up the family. The attitudes
and values of individual members of the family are determined by
the culture of the group. These in turn are affected by the mani-
fold economic, political, recreational, psychological, and educational
factors which determine the life patterns of individuals. The suc-
cess of a marriage is determined by the adjustment of the con-
tracting parties to each other. But it is also affected by the complex
aspects of our culture. The confusion and chaos of values in the
larger social world are reflected in the increased number of mar-
riages that fail.2
In developing the concept of family organization we might con-
ceivably concern ourselves with many different types of family: the
childless family, the companionate family, the widowed family, the
illegitimate family (composed of the unmarried mother and her
child), the so-called normal family of mother, father, and children,
and the larger family unit, including the kith and kin of the imme-
diate family group. All are variants of the intimate primary group.
Similarly, there are variant types of marriage?pair marriage, poly-
andry, polygyny, and group marriage?which characterize the basis
of particular family organizations. All of these represent clearly
enough social values which have crystallized into particular forms.
In the course of human experience and the growth of social ideals,
however, the permanent monogamic union has become the norm
of family organization throughout the civilized world.
Whatever the particular form of marriage sanctioned, the various
groups have reared social superstructures in the foam of folkways
and mores. These are the local regulations affecting the various
relationships within the family, and the activities by which the
family functions are fulfilled. In our own culture, marriage cere-
monies, licenses to wed, wedding rings, honeymoons, division of
labor between sexes, the cultivation of manly attitudes and
2 Cf. James S. Plant, Personality and the Cultural Pattern, The Common-
wealth Fund, New York, 1937, particularly Chapter VII, "The Personality and
the Family Pattern."
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 587
womanly graces, conventional taboos, and regulations of conduct
are all built up as a part of the family's superstructure.
The family in its parent-and-child relationships is a purely natu-
ral phenomenon upon which the status and social controls of
marriage have been erected. Whether we are considering preliterate
or civilized societies, the particular type of family organization owes
its existence to instinctive urges and distinctive social needs. The
two most obvious are the satisfaction of sexual impulses and sus-
tenance of the offspring. Out of the intimate interplay of per-
sonalities, other specific functions of the family have developed as
by-products of the smaller group's relation to the demands of daily
life. The deep-seated need for affectionate response is generally
identified with the sexual impulses, although it is not always so
associated. Commercialized sex barter bears witness to this possible
divorce. Generally speaking, however, a sympathetic attraction has
characterized the urge to sex satisfactions. The helplessness of the
child has further developed human sympathies in both the father
and the mother. The inferior physical strength of the mother and
her comparative incapacity during the stages of pregnancy and
childbirth have fostered the protective role which the husband and
father assumes. This role at the present time has declined in
importance somewhat because the state has taken over a large
share of his protective function. Because the father and mother
must assist the child during his formative years, the family has
also exercised an important educational function. Despite the for-
mal educational institutions, the role of parents as teachers is still
one of basic significance. In the family the child has his first
induction into group relationships. Here are provided the first pat-
terns for his social behavior. The recreational needs of the family
were formerly provided by the members themselves. This is still
true in a certain sense, even though the actual locus of the recrea-
tional activity may be remote from the family residence.
Inasmuch as it performs so large a share of the functions neces-
sary for a healthful existence, the family has come to be charac-
terized as a social and economic unit. All of the mores, folkways,
and institutional controls developed in regulating courtship, the
marriage ceremonies, and both the intimate and public relationships
of husband and wife are part of the superstructure reared upon
the recognition of the family's vital needs and traditional functions.
.
588 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
These functions represent crystallized social values born out of
group experience. While the family structure grows more rigid be-
cause of the "culture compulsives," the social situations are at the
same time constantly changing. The family as well as all other insti-
tutions must constantly make new adjustments as new needs arise.
The structure and functions of the family are so imbedded in the
mores that departures from the older norms are more disorganizing
both to the individual and to society as a whole than is true in the
case of any other institution. This rigidity in social control is espe-
cially marked in determining the various relations between husband
and wife.
The Nature of Family Organization.?The family is the most
similarity of values and attitudes among the various members.'
intimate social group. The unity of any group is a function of the
The family is no exception. Inasmuch as our subsequent discussion
is concerned primarily with the concept and practice of family dis-
organization, it behooves us to consider in some detail the implica-
tions of family organization. The "unity of interacting personali-
ties" in which the normal family consists is held together by
certain psychological factors. When these factors are present, the
family may be said to be an organized unity. When these factors
are not present, or when their cohesive power is loosened by internal
or external pressures, the family becomes disorganized. The re-
sultant breakdown in consensus may take the form of persistent
domestic discord, which may render harmonious relationships diffi-
cult although there may never be an open break of the formal
unity of the family. The tensions engendered by the fundamental
lack of family consensus may take the extreme form of desertion
or divorce. The disorganization of a particular family is then com-
plete, both sociologically and legally. The individuals must knit
up the tangled skein of their life organizations under new and
different circumstances.
Family organization is characterized by the following factors,
each of which is present to some degree in the normal and unified
primary group.
3 For a discussion of values and family organization, cf. Joseph K. Folsom,
"Changing Values in Sex and Family Relations," American Sociological Re-
view, 2:717-726 (October, 1937).
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 589
1. Unity of Objectives.?The organized family possesses an
essential unity of objectives. That is, the members of such a family
possess similar attitudes on the most important aspects of their
joint activities. This similarity of attitudes is related to such mutual
problems as the care and discipline of the children, their education,
the allocation of various items in the family budget, the location
of the home, the question of sex relations, and other matters of a
deeply personal nature. The organized family is one in which these
common objectives are similarly defined by all members of the
family. In the disorganized family there is a failure of the husband
and wife to define the situation in terms of common values.
2. Unity of Personal Ambitions.?In even the most perfectly
organized family the individual members possess different life or-
ganizations and different individualities. Complete harmony of
personal ambitions with the welfare of the family is always diffi-
cult, if not impossible, human nature in an individualistic society
being what it is. Nevertheless, the well-organized family is one in
which the individual members subordinate their interests to the
welfare of the family as a whole. A father who refuses to deny
himself any of his more expensive whims in order to feed and
clothe his family adequately is failing in a basic function. The
degree of individuality possible and desirable in the modern family
varies considerably from that of the preliterates. Among many
primitive peoples, the welfare of the family group is paramount. The
individual does not count apart from his family affiliations. In our
society such a complete identification is difficult where each adult
member "lives his own life." But the degree to which this unity of
definition is achieved is an index of family organization.
3. Unity of Interests.?The members of the Colonial family pos-
sessed substantially similar interests in all important respects, since
their lives were so largely circumscribed by the same narrow social
milieu. In matters of religious practices, education, recreation, and
economic activities, the various members of the family participated
as a unit. Such an identification is clearly no longer possible in
modern urban life of the large city, where the members of the
family develop different interests by virtue of their roles in the
various secondary groups. A considerable similarity of religious,
recreational, educational, and economic interests is characteristic
of the organized as opposed to the unorganized or disorganized
.
590 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
family. When the members of the group possess these interests in
common, the reciprocal relationships of family life operate much
more smoothly than they do when these interests are not present.4
American families are subject to infinite gradations in these
criteria of family unity. Perfectly organized families are rare, even
as completely disorganized families are the exception rather than
the rule. The majority of families muddle through. Their relation-
ships are occasionally marred by bickerings or tensions, but they
still continue to function on a fairly acceptable plane. For some,
however, the tensions become so great that the individuals cannot
continue their relationship. These tensions may be gradual develop-
ments, growing out of cultural dissimilarities of the members of
the family or disparities in age or religious background or funda-
mental values. The unity of the family may, on the other hand,
be broken by a severe and precipitate crisis which the resources of
the group are unable to overcome. The depression has constituted
such a crisis for a significant number of families. Other economic
difficulties have similarly acted to disorganize a family which
might otherwise have continued to function. The cumulative and
precipitate crises which disorganize the individual may also bring
about the disorganization of the family group. Some event or com-
bination of events has occurred to interrupt the even tenor of family
life. Our discussion of family disorganization will be concerned
primarily with these factors which destroy the unity of this primary
group.
The Nature of Family ,Disorganization.?In the broadest sense,
family disorganization may be thought to include any sort of non-
harmonious functioning within any of the several types of family.
Any such family disorganization may include not only tensions be-
tween husband and wife but those arising between children and
parents as well. Frequently it is true that tensions between parents
and children are serious problems requiring adjustment if they are
not to result in permanent friction.5 Such disagreements may
indeed result in tensions between husband and wife. As such, they
4 This analysis is adapted from Ruth Shonle Cavan and Katherine H. Ranck,
The Family and the Depression, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1938,
Chapter I, "The Depression as a Family Crisis."
5 For a penetrating discussion of this problem cf. Kingsley Davis, "The
Sociology of Parent-Youth Conflict," American Sociological Review, 5:523-535
(August, 1940).
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 591
very properly come into our discussion. The state takes little
cognizance of parent-child estrangements if the child is not
physically abused or if he is "over age." Parents may disown their
children by disinheritance?often with no ethically valid reason?
if their ego has been diminished by the behavior of a recalcitrant
child.6 Social values thus tend to make the rifts which arise be-
tween husband and wife take on a much more serious aspect than
in the case of any other disruption in family relationships. If the
husband or wife offends these socially accepted rules of conduct,
his or her behavior is immediately interpreted as an offense against
the group. The personal phases of family discord are thus largely
overshadowed by the disapproval which the group manifests when
existing norms are disturbed.
We shall limit our discussion of family disorganization to a con-
sideration of the disruptions in the marriage relation occasioned by
ing, we think of such disorganization in terms of its outward mani-
differences or tensions between husband and wife. Generally speak-
festations in divorce, desertion, separation, failure to support, physi-
cal violence, or angry quarreling. A deep-seated family tension may
exist where the legal and social fiction of a normal family life is
maintained. Among those of the Catholic faith, for example, we
must find many families in which there is no fundamental harmony
of purpose, no identity of attitudes or interests. Yet the family
endures because the church exacts a permanent monogamic rela-
tionship and seeks to secure it by making marriage a sacrament or
"means of grace." For those outside the pale of religious controls,
economic motives may prompt the wife to endure a marriage from
which love has long since fled. It may be hard for the wife to live
with a despised husband, but it may be equally difficult to start out
in the industrial world with no experience or training beyond that
of a none-too-efficient housewife. Constancy is often as expedient as
it is virtuous.
Family pressure likewise may prevent a complete break in a mani-
festly disorganized family. Duty to children on the part of older
married couples or fear of disapproval of parents on the part of
newlyweds may operate to prevent a marital break. Younger mar-
ried people may hesitate to break their marriage ties because of the
6Cf. Ernest R. Groves, "Parents Who Haven't Grown Up," Harper's Maga-
zine, 151:571-579 (October, 1925).
.
592 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
disappointment their parents might experience at this apparent dis-
regard of cherished ideals of constancy. Parents may even go so far
in their condemnations of divorce or separation as to prevent any
legal recognition of obvious domestic friction. A desire for revenge
when one wishes release and the other does not may cause the
"innocent" party to refuse a divorce. This is particularly true if the
person has had his sensibilities outraged or has been the victim of
real or fancied humiliation. judge Lindsey cites the case of a
woman who was "through with marriage" and desirous of a divorce
until she found that her husband was carrying on an illicit affair
and was even more anxious than she for legal severance of the mar-
riage tie. She then was determined to avenge herself by forcing
her husband to remain subject to the bonds of a marriage long
dead.7
In some cases the outward shell of family life may be maintained
while affectional interests are satisfied elsewhere in open or clandes-
tine relationships. Many wives in Europe are apparently willing for
their husbands to maintain mistresses, or else they endure passively
this and other forms of extra-marital relationship, provided the
marriage remains legally unbroken. In America, because of our
outward ascribance to Puritanical tradition, clandestine relations
probably represent the largest share of violations to vows of marital
fealty. Rather than run the risk of scandal, many men prefer to
"keep up appearances" while maintaining a mistress. Their wives
may never learn of the rival for their affections. By the very nature
of the situation we can have no exact knowledge of the number of
"kept" women.
Occasional sensational items in the daily press, knowing looks
on the faces of a man's associates or a woman's friends when she
goes unaccompanied to musicale or reception are in themselves
but vague inaccuracies for gauging such sex irregularities. In the
small town and village such indiscretions are rarely withheld from
common gossip. The secret relationship tends to become a recog-
nized "affair." The husband and wife who have grown apart, but
whose family responsibilities, social obligations, or business interests
7 Cf. Ben B. Lindsey, The Companionate Marriage, Liveright Publishing
Corporation, New York, 1927. Tolstoi's novel, Anna Karenina, gives us a grip-
ping literary presentation of the husband who thus refused to divorce his erring
wife.
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 593
necessitate keeping up outward appearances, may enter into such
relationships. Herein lies an unexplored field of social pathology,
thus far beyond the pale of social ventilation.
Although prostitution caters as frankly to the sex desires of the
unmarried as to the married, it'is nevertheless an objective evidence
of the disorganized marital status of many of its patrons. Here
again we have no adequate statistics. The figures and estimations
as to the number of prostitutes are incomplete for obvious reasons,
and there is no record at all for the group they serve. There can be
no doubt, however, that these hidden and inaccessible aspects of
domestic disorganization are at the same time highly significant,
though inestimable, indices of marital estrangement.
Social Values and Family Disorganization.?In certain com-
munities there may be so much social disapproval of divorce as to
make a family break unthinkable. Husband and wife are thus
literally bound by no ties save social pressure. But that pressure
may serve to keep them unwilling victims of a hollow marriage.
From the point of view of effective functioning, such families are
but shams imposed by social hypocrisy. Many men and women
somehow tolerate their marriage when all the presumed essentials
of cooperation and community of interest are lacking. Such mar-
riages are far from achieving the vital purposes of family life. At
the same time we must recognize that every normal family experi-
ences conflicts and must expect to overcome crises of a minor and
sometimes of a major sort. Every man and woman enters marriage
from a separate background, with different ideas and attitudes
born out of his or her own experience. Each possesses a scale of
values erected on the attitudes which were developed in a particular
social group. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that
distinctive personality traits of the one may unconsciously or con-
sciously irritate the other. Only by integrating the husband's and
wife's individual desires and attitudes can a successful family life
be achieved with a harmonious functioning of the interacting per-
sonalities."
Living together, whether in a boarding-house, college dormitory,
or hall bedroom, requires mutual give and take and the acceptance
of rules on the part of those making up the group. Many of the
'Cf. E. W. Burgess, "The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities,"
The Family, 7:3-9 (March, 1926).
.
594 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
adjustments within the family are a matter of unconsciously con-
forming to traditional attitudes, of accepting roles which conform
to the social values expressed in the folkways and mores. Hence
most women are content to submerge their identity in adopting
their husband's name without raising a question as to the underly-
ing significance of the practice. Most men, on the other hand,
assume the economic burden and support of the family quite aside
from the obvious economic contribution which their wives might
easily make. Many women accept masculine authority in matters
affecting basic decisions in the family organization with an ac-
quiescence that might well be surprising were it not for the weight
of precedence which men have long enjoyed in such matters. Thus
husbands generally have the final decision in establishing a resi-
dence, in matters of family finance, and in disciplining the children.
There has been a notable increase in the number of wives who
share in such authority. But an outstanding percentage of wives
ostensibly, defer to the husband's judgments, and an equally large
number of men presume as their prerogative the right to "refuse
to allow." Both roles arise from the unthinking acceptance of a
traditional point of view. Similarly, many husbands have presumed
that a woman should be ipso facto happy as his housekeeper, cook,
and body servant. They find it difficult to understand any rejection
of these roles. Time-worn social values force men and women alike
to subscribe and adjust to the pattern of behavior laid down by
the group.
When the socially sanctioned patterns of family life become too
rigid or conflict too seriously with personal attitudes, however, the
serenity of family life is disturbed. Just as formalism in the broadest
sense sows the seeds of social disorganization, likewise the ex-
cessively conventionalized type of family life tends to break down
when faced with the exigencies of a new situation. Family norms
tend to change. The family, like every other human institution,
should be organized to meet the present needs of men. These needs
cannot be adjusted to institutions that are essentially outgrown.
New inventions, new standards of living, new external situations,
have necessitated adjustments in life schemes and redefinitions of
social values. Hence they inevitably affect the family and familial
attitudes. Old situations yield to the new and old values are de-
stroyed with the acceptance of new standards. In this way, certain
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 595
aspects of the social organization lose something of their earlier sig-
nificance. If a woman is gainfully employed in the industrial world,
for example, and making necessary economic contribution toward
the support of the family, it is obviously idle to prate about her
place being in the home. If she has achieved professional success,
if she is as well educated and trained as her husband, she will look
to her husband as a comrade rather than as lord and master. Just
as it has long been the prerogative of men to take their right to
both marriage and a career for granted, she may see no valid reason
why marriage should be her "whole existence," and that existence
one of confinement to the four walls of the home. Whether or
not marriage is the first task of the wife or homemaker, many a
modern wife is demanding greater contact with the world of affairs
and some chance for self-expression outside the field of domesticity.
Needless to say, this challenge of social values has precipitated its
full share of the present chaos in family standards. Part of the
revolt against the old order has been expressed in inchoate and
half-crystallized attitudes. Women themselves are not altogether
certain what they want. They have proved that they can master
the arts and sciences if they apply their energy in that direction.
In America, in particular, they have even come to control a large
share of the total purchasing power. Unfortunately, professional
achievement is no measure of individual happiness. In their dis-
tinctive roles as wives and mothers women will probably always
perform their most vital tasks, both in the family and in the world
outside. The topic raises many pertinent questions which obviously
cannot be exhausted here.9
Again, modern commercialized recreation has made available so
many possible avenues for entertainment that it is idle to expect
the home to serve as a substitute for the movies, the bathing-
beaches, or Coney Island. It is no use to hie back in our thinking
to the days of the husking-bees, the square dance, and the reading-
circle. We must face the problems of the family as they exist today.
Changes in the body politic also affect other phases of family or-
ganization. The extension of state control over the whole domain
9Albert J. Nock raises a nice point of discussion here in his article, "A
Word to Women," in the Atlantic Monthly, 148:545-554 (November, 1931),
in which he maintains that woman's essential contribution lies not in her at-
tainment of equality with men but in her "civilizing force in the realm of
intellect, ntellect, religion, beauty, poetry, social life and morals."
.
596 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
of social relationships further alters the function of the family. A
child is no longer subject to the whim of his parents without some
restrictions on the part of the governing authorities. The family
is a microcosm which inevitably reflects the complicated whirl of
life in the larger society.
The Complex Nature of Family Disorganization.?Family dis-
organization is a multi-varied and complex process. Much of the
breakdown in family life as objectively evidenced in current prob-
lems of divorce, separation, and desertion, as well as in the more
subtle phases of domestic discord, must be ascribed to the complex
interplay of change and disruption in the social order.10 These
changes in turn have been so complex as to bring chaos and con-
fusion into our social thinking and our social values." The present-
day woman's status as a wage-earner, for instance, has altered her
attitudes toward entering marriage, and has often precipitated her
revolt against a subservience which has been socially defined for
her in the marital status. Her changed political role as a citizen, as
a voter, and before the law has given her a consciousness of au-
thority unknown at a former time when she was considered in-
capable of disposing of property, of voting, or of exerting social
influence in questions of public import. Changed religious attitudes
have made for a decline in the authority of ecclesiastical control
of matrimony. Marriages which seem doomed to eternal conflict
and discord can scarcely be conceived of as "made in heaven." The
demand for a life which will furnish rich rewards in terms of self-
expression will find little that is acceptable in a belief in the insolu-
bility of a relationship which is so easily broken.
The generally prevailing philosophy of individualism which we
find expressed in the hedonistic desire for material comforts and
for achievement of individual goals must also alter the social values
heretofore placed upon family stability. If men and women are
unwilling to sacrifice part of their own egoistic desires in order to
achieve a more effective marriage relation, many marriages must
10 Cf. James P. Lichtenberger, Divorce, A Social Interpretation, McGraw-
Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1931, Part II, especially pp. 247-358,
and Manuel C. Elmer, Family Adjustment and Social Change, Ray Long and
Richard R. Smith Corporation, New York, 1932.
"Luther L. Bernard has discussed the disorganizing aspects of the family's
adjustment to the changing cultural complex. Cf. his article, "The Family in
Modern Life," International Journal of Ethics, 38:427-442 (July, 1928).
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 597
inevitably fail. So long as men and women insist upon defining
their marital problems on the basis of individual attitudes, there
can be no possibility of integrating their purposes into a marriage
which might yield more socially significant values. So long as either
the husband or the wife continues to define his or her life scheme
from an "I" rather than a "we" point of view, there can be no
integrated or harmoniously functioning family.12 Yet if there is a
failure to achieve any effective integration of purposes, individual
attitudes and personal conflicts are bound to increase in intensity.
For one or a dozen reasons one or both individuals will find mar-
riage disillusioning and seek to escape its bonds. Out of these
intense personal tensions we have the immediate source of family
disorganization. Yet a large share of these clashing personal values
and conflicting attitudes and interests have their source in the con-
fused social values which modern civilization has produced.
Social changes have taken place so suddenly that many of the
new values are not crystallized, but are vague gropings or "half-
way" definitions. Our whole system of morals is in upheaval and
there is a wide disparity in opinion as to what should constitute
ideal family life 13. No generally accepted standard exists which we
can apply to family life or present to young people as a norm.
There are merely the standards which the orthodox and the unor-
thodox, the clergy, the laymen, the reformers, the sociologists, the
radicals are willing to accept for themselves.
Divorce has achieved a new status of respectability, it is true,
and it has been sanctioned by an increasingly large group of
sociologists, theologians, reformers, as well as laymen. But there is
nevertheless no universal agreement that divorce is a panacea for
marriage problems. The social sanction accorded divorce is merely
an evidence of new social values and new norms in family life.
Marriage is no longer regarded as a means of grace, but as an end
in itself. In so far as it is productive of human happiness and
effective functioning of husband and wife, it is to be considered
good. When it is destructive to the personality of either, or when
it yields irreconcilable conflict or discord, little worth can be at-
12 William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe
and America, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 192 7, P. 1167.
13 E. R. Mowrer has touched this point in his book, Family Disorganization,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1927, Chapter I, "Family Disorganization
and the Confused Ideals of the Modern Family."
.
598 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
tached to the relationship as such. Thus a new ethics of family
life is developing alongside the growing acceptance of divorce. As
a necessary device for release from an unsatisfactory marriage there
is a growing insistence that marriage as an institution must pro-
mote the well-being of men and women both individually and
collectively if it is to be regarded as a socially valid or permanent
union. This does not presuppose, however, that the normal
monogamic family in promoting the well-being of its members is
an idyllic relationship in which no conflict may enter. Rather, it
points to the necessity of emphasizing intelligence and cooperative
effort in adjusting problems which arise. The successful family is
not a family where there is no conflict. There are no such families.
The successful family is one in which husband and wife utilize
their resources to work out a satisfactory mutual relationship. The
disorganized family has been rendered unequal to its task by a
disparity in interest and attitudes.
The Process of Family Disorganization.?Family disorganization
seldom comes as a thief in the night. When a crisis situation arises,
whether it be the event of the first baby, a change in family resi-
dence, or an occupational transfer for the breadwinner, every fam-
ily must expect a certain amount of unadjustment or disruption in
the old pattern of living. In such crises the established habits
which the family has built up are inadequate to the new situation.
The unadjustment must be accepted as normal, as a part of the
everyday requirements of living. If the husband and wife cooperate
in meeting the problem, a satisfactory solution may be expected. If,
on the other hand, there is no attempt at working out a mutually
acceptable plan, there will be no possibility of harmonizing the
conflicting points of view. The family will become definitely malad-
justed even though no overt break is made, if there is no identity in
their interests and values. Husband and wife are then bound neither
by their affection for each other nor by a mutual goal. Some fami-
lies, it is true, continue in such a state of bickering and maladjust-
ment instead of severing their relationships completely. Some ac-
cept such a lot because of religious teachings. They fear to offend
either God or the clergy. Many women endure the fiction of a
loveless marriage because of their desire for the social and economic
security which the home provides. The interests of children de-
mand sacrifice of the personal happiness of the parents. Divorce is
.
THE CONCEPT OF FAMILY DISORGANIZATION 599
an admission of failure and pride probably keeps many from ad-
mitting their personal failure in the choice of a mate. In some of
the more conservative communities the fear of social disapproval
is an important factor in preventing a complete family breakdown.
Yet such families may be as disorganized psychologically as any
which have gone through the divorce mill.
Happiness in marriage is always relative. Similarly, the nature of
an unsatisfactory relationship must vary with individual attitudes,
temperaments, and ideals. When the denouement of the friction
eventuates overtly in divorce, desertion, or separation, we merely
have open admission of the disorganization which has previously
existed. Separation, desertion, and divorce are final stages of the
disorganization process rather than being in themselves "causes"
of the disintegration. They may be considered the objective indices
of such discord. With divorce the break is simply given legal recog-
nition. Desertion and separation are often earlier links in the events
leading up to divorce. In some instances they represent the final
stage. In any case they may be considered as semi-divorces. Once
the family has disintegrated, the possibility of reconciling conflict-
ing attitudes is extremely difficult, if not virtually impossible. The
ex-husband and ex-wife can seldom experience a true conversion
of personal wishes, resurrect the discarded "we" attitudes, and rein-
tegrate the broken primary group.14
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
i. Baber, Ray E., Marriage and the Family, McGraw-Hill Book Com-
pany, Inc., New York, 1939, Chapters XIV and XV. These two
chapters on divorce present an excellent picture of the broader as-
pects of family disorganization, in both its conceptual and its con-
crete manifestations.
z. Cavan, Ruth Shonle, and Ranck, Katherine H., The Family and
the Depression, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1938, Chap-
ter I. The first chapter of this study of the family in the depression
outlines briefly some of the implications of family organization and
disorganization as influenced by the crisis of the past decade.
3. Groves, Ernest R., The Family: Its Social Functions, J. B. Lippin-
cott Company, Philadelphia, 1940. This latest work of Dr. Groves
is an original analysis of the role of the family as a social institution.
4. Lichtenberger, James P., Divorce, A Social Interpretation, McGraw-
14 Cf. William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, op. cit., pp. 116g-1170-
.
600 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1931, Chapters X to XIV.
This is still a standard analysis in the field of marital disasters, even
though much of its statistical data is out of date.
5. Mowrer, Ernest R., Family Disorganization (revised edition), Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, Chicago, 11939. This book has made a
significant contribution to the problem of family disorganization.
The revised edition brings the original edition up to date, par-
ticularly with reference to the trend and ecology of family dis-
organization in Chicago.
6. Mowrer, Harriet R., Personality Adjustment and Domestic Discord,
American Book Company, New York, 1935. The extensive experi-
ence of the author in family counseling has made this study of
domestic discord an important addition to both the theoretical and
the practical aspects of family disorganization.
7. Plant, James S., Personality and the Cultural Pattern, The Com-
monwealth Fund, New York, 1937. The author is interested in
individual personality in the family setting and also in the family
in its larger cultural setting. He considers many of the cultural
factors tending to disorganize the family and the individuals
within it.
8. Reuter, E. B., and Runner, Jessie, The Family, McGraw-Hill Book
Company, Inc., New York, 1931, particularly Chapters XV and
XVIII. This standard college text contains considerable source
material on the disorganization of the contemporary family.
9. Thomas, William I., and Znaniecki, Florian, The Polish Peasant in
Europe and America, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1927, Vol.
II, PP. 1134-1170. This is a classic analysis of family conflicts in
terms of attitudes and values.
.
969
PART V WORLD DISORGANIZATION ___________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION
All times are "times which try men's souls," but we may be excused for thinking the disruption and chaos in the world today is of an especially serious nature. World disorganization is in a sense only a phase of the widespread social disorganization resulting from the swift impact of modern social change. World disorganization occurs because the whole world has become an interdependent society, and no effective international social structure has been erected to insure a stable social world. The League of Nations was a notable attempt toward this end, as we discuss in a later chapter, but because it had no compulsive power its social controls broke down when the most imperative need for such controls appeared.1 Every schoolboy knows that national isolation is a thing of the past, that whether we will or no we must live in the Great Society. The event of the second World War makes us painfully conscious of the outmoded nature of our old social institutions which have not adjusted themselves to the changes that science has made in our social order. With instantaneous communication and with enormous increases in contacts, the interests of all civilized peoples began to overlap. Science has made possible the most important of material peace-time developments. It has also perfected the most destructive of mechanized military equipment. The destructive aspects of scientific achievement divorced from ethics and morality give us pause. Curiously enough, the second World War came when the major western nations —with the exception of Germany and Italy— were committed to a program of peace. Hence offensive warfare has profited not only by the advancements of science, but also by the will to peace which prompted the democratic nations to reduce their armaments.
International disorganization did not begin with the second World War. The Russian revolution which startled the world
1 Because the concept of world disorganization is but a phase of the general topic "social disorganization," we shall not go into any extensive theoretical discussion of the theory of world disorganization.
970 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
in 1917 set in motion a train of influences which have had their impact upon the entire structure of western civilization. With one hundred and seventy-odd million people involved in an internal revolution, other nations promptly felt its effect. One by one thrones in Europe began to topple. In Germany the counter revolution took the form of Nazism, in Italy the Fascist movement. These in turn began to possess all the characteristics of a revolution. With the advent of the Rome-Berlin axis the die was cast. The totalitarian states of western Europe were united to secure themselves a place in the sun. When the Russian-German pact was signed in August, 1939, an even more striking change appeared. The dictatorship of the proletariat was uniting with the German dictatorship. Apparently the gross differences between the Russian experiment and National Socialism were converging in a new international alignment. We cannot expect to discuss all the ramifications of Revolution, Fascism and War. But in the chapters which follow we wish especially to present the major social implications of the revolutionary and fascist movements and to discuss the disruptive aspects of modern war. For fascism is an integral function of the breakdown of the world community which leads to war. Revolution, fascism, and war represent different but closely related phases of the disorganization in the modern world. An aborted or putatively impending revolution may lead to a dictatorship from the right which takes the form of fascism. This fascism may itself become a "total revolution." The dynamics of fascism are such that war is an inevitable result of the explosive qualities generated by the fascist dictatorship. The grim logic of world breakdown is thus complete. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have become three— Revolution, Fascism, and War.
CHAPTER XXXIV
REVOLUTION
___________________________________________________
Revolution and Social Disorganization.- Char1es the First of England slowly ascends the steps of the scaffold, with an expression of cool contempt on his aristocratic face for the crowd below him. Marie Antoinette jolts over the Paris cobblestones on her way to the guillotine while the rabble scream imprecations at "The Austrian Woman." A band of patriotic young Bostonians paint their faces, dump large quantities of tea into Boston harbor, and defy the sovereign power of Great Britain to discipline its rebellious colonies. Nicholas the Second, the little White Father and Czar of All the Russias, is shot down in a cellar; far from the Winter Palace. The Blackshirts of Mussolini stage a dramatic "March on Rome" and prepare to take over the government of Italy, while the army and the police look benevolently on.
In these and similar dramatic events we have the epitome of popular conceptions of revolution. When the dread specter of this most violent form of social change stalks across the land, kings and ministers tremble, policemen look to their sidearms, and shopkeepers shiver before their cash registers. But revolution is seldom so sudden, so spectacular, so disorganizing as this. The course of social change is lower, deeper. The reversal of social attitudes toward the basic institutions of the community is not alone the work of a skirmish between Roundheads and Cavaliers, the storming of a Bastille, a Boston Tea Party, or the mutiny of a few regiments of the Russian Imperial Guard. Revolution is rather the final critical culmination of a long series of social changes. The crumbling institutional controls break down. The basic consensus of the society is dissipated. Chaos and turmoil are inevitable until a new consensus is evolved. A revolution is a cumulative rather than a precipitate crisis.
Mental breakdown and suicide are the two tragic denouements
971
972 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
of personal disorganization. Desertion and divorce are the climaxes of family breakdown. Revolution and war are the two final cataclysms in the decay of an old order of communal and international organization. This parallel between the finalities in personal, family, and community disorganization cannot be drawn too closely. Life is not so logical, and social disorganization does not arrange itself in such a perfect dialectical framework. Strictly speaking, revolution and war are phenomena growing out of social disorganization on a super-community scale. They are the results of a breakdown in world consensus and carry in their train all manner of social disorganization with world-wide implications. Such colossal rearrangements of the status quo as the great French and Russian revolutions caused repercussions far from Paris and Petrograd. These social changes have raised ghosts which generations have failed to exorcise.
It is true, of course, that revolution produces acute disorganization in the immediate local communities. The confusion, murder, riot, and rapine of Paris, Petrograd, and Moscow during certain periods of social upheaval are ample evidence of community disorganization of a very real sort. We shall discuss many of these objective manifestations below. But we are particularly interested in revolution on a broader scale, as one of the most violent and drastic mechanisms of rapid social change in the experience of civilized man.
What Is Revolution?— Before we continue our discussion of the natural history of revolution, with the specific forms of social disorganization implicit in the revolutionary matrix, we should define our terms more accurately. Considerable confusion exists both in the popular mind and among social scientists concerning the exact nature of social revolution. We may profitably examine the literature at some length.
The term "revolution" has been applied to social and political upheavals ranging in importance and extent from the spasmodic and random "elections" in certain Central American countries to an exceedingly complex series of events, such as the Reformation or the "industrial revolution." Our major concern is with neither of these types of social movements, but rather with revolution as
REVOLUTION 973
a transvaluation of social values, a fundamental change in social attitudes toward existing social institutions. These changes in social definition involve in turn a certain amount of social disorganization, both before and after the actual coup d'etat or change of arbitrary political power.
Revolutionary disorganization may thus be differentiated into two general types. First, there is the unrest brought about by social and personal abuses, the petrifaction of existing institutions, and the impending collapse of the old regime. These forces tend to precipitate the revolution. Secondly, there are the excesses perpetrated after the ostensible ends of the revolution have been gained. These abuses are directed against the upper classes, the former oppressors, and the counter-revolutionists, who seek by force or strategy to restore the old order. In a very general sense these two aspects of disorganization may be considered as causes and effects of revolution, which will be discussed later.
Let us consider the various definitions of revolution advanced by scholars, historians, social theorists, and the revolutionists themselves. The concept of revolution has been approached from four somewhat different standpoints:
As a purely political phenomenon, a change in the location of power and sovereignty. As an "abrupt and violent social change" which takes various forms —religious, economic, political, industrial. The specific form that the revolution takes is determined by the types of institution with which the change is most closely associated. As a more sweeping and fundamental change of the entire social order, involving simultaneously all the material and non-material aspects of a culture. As a change in attitude toward the basic social institutions. From this point of view, the economic, political, or religious upheavals are merely the external manifestations of a deeper change in social attitudes toward the most important social values.'
This fourth conception of revolution corresponds with the logical
1 Dale Yoder, "Current Definitions of Revolution," American Journal of Sociology, 32:433-441 (November, 1926).
974 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
framework of the treatment of social disorganization advanced in this book. Here as elsewhere we are interested in social attitudes and their "objective counterparts," social values, as they are held by the great majority of the people toward the foundations of their common life. We may, however, profitably examine the various concepts of revolution somewhat more closely, indicating their relationships and contradictions.
Political Revolution.— The political scientist is concerned with the phenomenon of sovereignty, the location and employment of power. From Aristotle, through Machiavelli to Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini, the question of political control is an important one, involving the thought and energy alike of those who wish to retain the status quo and those who wish to overthrow it. The people cast aside one ruler and substitute another, who governs with an equally iron hand. Democracy violently replaces oligarchy; one prince poisons another; the aristocracy is thrust aside by the proletariat; Lenin follows Nicholas II; Stalin follows Lenin. To many students revolution is no more than the direct and forceful transference of power, an election characterized by broken heads rather than by cast ballots. Michel Ralea, for example, characterizes revolution as the seizure of public power by a segment of the population which had previously been in a subordinate position. The purpose of this unlawful conquest is the imposition of some new standard of values upon the group as a whole.2
The political nature of revolution is also emphasized by Kautsky in his study of social revolution. He points out that reforms are often gained by an oppressed class only after the power of government has been violently wrested from its rulers. Hence a revolutionist is anyone who attempts to seize political power for a class hitherto repressed. Political revolutions are but rifts in a ruling class; a social revolution implies a tumultuous upheaval from below. But whether the event be called social or political, Kautsky insists that the essential feature is still the shift of political power from one class to another.3
2 Michel Ralea, L'Idée de Revolution dans les Doctrines Socialistes, Paris, 1923, p. 30, quoted by Scott Nearing, leader of Labor Research Study Group, in The Law of Social Revolution, Social Science Publishers, New York, 1926, p. ii. 3 Karl Kautsky, The Social Revolution, translated by A. M. and M. W. Simons, Charles H. Kerr & Company, Chicago, 1903, pp. 8-9.
REVOLUTION 975Similarly, Ross speaks of revolution as "an abrupt shift of the center of dominance in society" which implies control of the state as the chief repository of power.4 Edwards has substantially the same concept of a sudden shift in sovereignty, a modification in the specific agency exerting control. He characterizes revolution as "a change brought about not necessarily by force and violence, whereby one system of legality is terminated and another originated."5 Other definitions reflect this same emphasis on the political changes involved. In each case there is explicit the concept of a change either in the mechanics or in the personnel of government by some extra-legal or illegal means.6
Trotsky gives us an excellent case study in his outline of the actual coup d'etat by which one Russian government was overthrown and another set up. The transfer of power from the provisional government to the Bolsheviks took place almost without bloodshed, if we except the struggle for the Winter Palace. With only a few thousand men, the Bolsheviks seized the strategic points throughout Petrograd —the telegraph, the telephone exchanges, the state bank, the railroad stations, the arsenals, the power plants, and the newspapers. Actual force was unnecessary for, as Trotsky contends, the people were for the most part in accord with the revolutionaries. The initial outbreak of the revolution served to unite the people temporarily under a common purpose. The internal dissensions came later)7 The provisional government, like that of the Czar, had few defenders at the crucial moment. This technological
4 E. A. Ross, Principles of Sociology, D. Appleton -Century Company, Inc., New York, 1930, p. 492. 5 L. P. Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1927, p. 2. 6 In this connection, it might be well to point out some of the terms that are erroneously applied as synonyms of revolution. Anarchy refers to that condition of society in which there is no government, revolutionary or otherwise. Brief periods of anarchy occur during the temporary hiatus between the overthrow of traditional power and the establishment of the revolutionary authority. Rebellion is an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow an existing government. A successful rebellion becomes a revolution. A revolt has many of the abortive characteristics of a rebellion; neither of them has the comprehensive philosophy of social change that is openly or implicitly at the basis of revolution. "Slaves make insurrection; soldiers or sailors break out in mutiny; subject provinces rise in revolt." 7 Alfred Meusel, "Revolution and Counter Revolution," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1934.
976 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
revolution was something new in the history of popular uprisings. Street fighting, barricades, and house-to-house struggles were passé.8
Revolution as Any Violent Social Change— Social change may arise either by peaceful, gradual, and almost imperceptible transformations in the social structure or by rapid and abrupt shifts in the organization of society. The first form of modification has been called "growth" or "evolution" and the latter has often been termed "revolution." From such a standpoint, it is as logical to consider a sudden and violent change in economic, religious, and social institutions as revolution as it is to so designate similar changes in the political order.9 The first type differs from the second mainly in that it is more inclusive. The dramatic sequence of events which followed Luther's defiance of the Pope, the sudden realignments in industrial organization occasioned by the introduction of the steam engine, or the modification of the social structure resulting from the invention and popularization of the automobile— all of these may truly be considered revolutionary events.
Le Bon employs the concept of revolution with some such meaning when he uses the term to denote "all sudden transformations, or transformations apparently sudden, whether of beliefs ideas, or doctrines."10 He recognizes, however, that many revolutions which completely alter the destinies of a people are not so spectacular as these sudden upheavals. Some changes are peaceful and gradual, although broad and general in their implications. When we consider this aspect of social change —namely, the modification of the entire social structure— we are concerned with the third concept of revolution.
Revolution and the Mores.— Disorganization of the most complete nature may accompany this third type of social change— the modification of the mores. This may develop moderately and slowly, in outward aspects at least, but eventually there is a
8 Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1932, Vol. III, Chapter VI; cf. also John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, 1919. 9 Delisle Burns, The Principles of Revolution, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1920, p. 112. 10 Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Revolution (translated), T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1913, p. 23.
REVOLUTION 977
complete alteration in the mores, accompanied by much confusion in the behavior patterns of the group. When the mores persist long after the conditions which produced them, society is ripe for revolution.11
Immediately after the outbreak of a revolution there is a period in which there literally are no mores. The old taboos have been violently dissolved and the new ones have not as yet arisen. The attempt on the part of the intellectual leaders of the revolution to produce arbitrary new mores is doomed to failure. Such traditional ways of thinking cannot be produced by fiat. During the revolutionary period all that was once held sacred tends to be rejected. The old order is regarded as outmoded in all its aspects. Religious, social, and moral standards are ignored or cast aside. The revolutionists, in other words, "throw out the baby with the bath." Revolution is more than a mere transfer of political power. It is, as Meusel says, "a recasting of the social order."12
In his discussion of revolution, Everett Dean Martin considers the concept in terms of such complete social chaos. "A revolution," he maintains, "is a social earthquake. The chief difference between an earthquake and a revolution is that the latter conceivably might be prevented by an honest, wise and strong government. Otherwise the analogy holds even to the physical aspects of the communities where either occurs."13 The social disorganization wrought by revolution exhibits the same meaningless sacrifice of human life, property, and social institutions as appear in the devastated wake of an earthquake. In the midst of the revolutionary struggle, cultural standards are degraded and supreme power falls into the hands of the fanatical and the misguided. Martin further maintains that revolution is "the supreme exhibition of mob behavior," with all its pathological manifestations. In periods of revolution the society which the civilized minority has attempted so carefully to erect is demolished by the unruly mob. Many of the old social values, according to Martin, come crashing down about our ears. The old social order, abuses and values alike, is cast into the discard by the
11 William Graham Sumner, Folkways, Ginn and Company, Boston, 1906, p. 86. 12 Alfred Meusel, op. cit. 13 Everett Dean Martin, Farewell to Revolution, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1935, p. 28.
978 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
powerful sweep of the revolutionary process. Revolution is the enemy of liberty and liberal institutions.14
Revolutions may be hastened by insurrection, by the incendiary activities of agents provocateurs, and by secret societies hostile to the existing order. But they cannot be created by any such simple means. The personalities of rulers, ministers, and generals play a significant role, but they also are not all-important. It is absurd, for instance, to suggest that the Russian revolution would have been averted if Kitchener had encouraged the Czar to continue the war. It is equally fatuous to maintain that if the Czar had agreed to appoint ministers acceptable to the nobles, the army, and the people there would have been no revolution. Trotsky contends that the only possible result of a change of personality or policy on the part of the monarch might have been either to hasten or to postpone the revolution slightly. Fundamentally, the revolutionary ele- ments would have been the same. By the same token, the Bolshevik party, caught unaware by the sudden outbreak of the February revolution, was certainly not responsible for the overthrow of the Imperial regime. When things, events, social movements are in the saddle, no man or group of men can do much to alter their inexorable course.15
A change in the mores has widespread repercussions in every phase of the social order. Sorokin has summarized this complex nature of social revolution. In his opinion, the ramifications of this phenomenon may be considered from four related points of view: (1) as a change both in overt physical behavior and in human attitudes and values; (2) as a biological change in the composition of society; (3) as a complete breakdown or severe dislocation in the basic social institutions; (4) as a change in the fundamental social processes. The entire culture, material and non-material, is eventually affected by this tremendous social disruption.16
Revolution and Social Attitudes.— As a direct corollary of this profound change in the organization of society, we have a corresponding
14 lbid., p. 27. 15 Leon Trotsky, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 96. 16 Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1925, p. ii. For a comprehensive statement of the changes in all phases of society which have convulsed Russia since the revolution cf. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism, A New Civilization? Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1936.
REVOLUTION 979
metamorphosis in social attitudes. Purely political revolutions involve merely a change in government and do not affect the attitudes of the masses toward the fundamental social institutions. Only when these changes strike far below the surface of society and touch the social values formerly held inviolate do we have a true revolution. The external events of the revolution are merely the objective manifestations of an internal change of attitude on a large scale. Once more our chief interest is directed to an understanding of the attitudes held by the principals in the great drama of social change.
Social attitudes are produced in the individual by the way of life to which he has been accustomed. The slow and gradual process of the organization of social attitudes is equaled by a similarly gradual process of their disorganization. These tenacious social attitudes must change before any significant or permanent revolutionary change in the social order will result. Without such a change, revolution becomes mere rebellion, insurrection, revolt. There was a lapse of twelve years between the "bloody Sunday" massacre of 1905 and the final overthrow of the Romanoffs. A significant change in the attitudes of the Russian people had taken place between those two dates. Similarly, the orderly revolution which ushered in the Spanish Republic was, inadequately grounded in the basic attitudes of a sufficiently large number of people to insure its permanency. Such behavior patterns as those clustered about the church and similar institutions of the old regime accounted in part for the strength of the counter-revolutionary forces of General Franco.
The importance of these basic modifications in the attitudes of the people is further attested by Thomas and Znaniecki. In their words, the first prerequisite to a true revolution is "a demand for new values for a whole group, community, class, nation." The second essential feature of such a violent social change is the conscious and deliberate abolition of a traditional social system. Concomitant with this social upheaval, there is a significant change in institutional relationships. Individual revolt is stifled or sublimated by such traditional institutional forms as religion and the class structure. Revolution must sweep aside such ancient and powerful barriers if it is to be successful.17
17 William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1927, Vol. II, Chapter V, "Revolutionary Attitudes."
980 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
Sorokin has further expanded this concept of revolutionary attitudes in his researches into the "internal disturbances" which periodically threaten to destroy the consensus of nations. He maintains that the most important element in the genesis of a revolution is a fundamental unsettlement in the social expectations and social values of a particular society. In his own words, "the main and indispensable condition for an eruption of internal disturbances is that the social system or the cultural system or both shall be unsettled."18 If this solid foundation of consensus is firmly established, the people may undergo poverty, starvation, and defeat in battle without revolting. If, on the other hand, this framework of social attitudes is disorganized, the members of the society have lost the chief stabilizing influence in their lives. Their definitions of right and wrong are no longer rigidly maintained and they are ready to break their age-old connections with the traditional social order.19
The Genesis of Revolutionary Attitudes
Revolution and Social Tensions.— A revolution signifies a change in social attitudes and any discussion of its causes involves a study of the genesis of these revolutionary tendencies to act. To a considerable extent, such attitudes are generated by the continued repression of millions of persons by the forces of their social milieu. The real causes of the social disorganization culminating in revolutionary action are thus the repressive forces in the social organization. The overt outbreak of revolution occurs when the repressions have brought about a high degree of social tension. Trotsky draws an analogy between the outbreak of these tensions and the process of human birth. Both the social revolution and the birth of the child are the unavoidable results of certain natural forces. When the hour of destiny has struck, nothing can prevent either the birth of the child or the outbreak of the revolution.20
Edwards and Sorokin both emphasize the importance of repressive influences in precipitating a revolution. For Edwards, such repressions as exerted by the janizaries of the Romanoffs or the Bourbons stifled either wholly or in part the free expression of one
18 Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, American Book Company, New York, 1937, Vol. III, p. 499. 19 Ibid., pp. 499-503. 20 Leon Trotsky, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 76.
REVOLUTION 981
or more of the four fundamental wishes —security, new experience, response, and recognition. The institutions of a pre-revolutionary society either violently repress such wishes or restrict their free expression. Revolution occurs when large numbers of persons are no longer able to submit passively to the continued repression.21
Within much the same social-psychological framework, Sorokin employs the concepts of instincts and reflexes instead of those of the wishes. Allowing for necessary changes in terminology, how- ever, the important element of repression as the generating factor in forming revolutionary attitudes is found in both treatises. We shall follow Sorokin's analysis of the various types of repressions, since they illustrate clearly and specifically the manifold phases of social disorganization which eventuate in revolution.22
1. Hunger.— The most fundamental innate reaction frustrated by the institutions of pre-revolutionary society is hunger. Impoverishment, hunger, and revolutionary attitudes are closely related. When a man is hungry, the sacred institutions of his fathers lose something of their hallowed importance. The starving man with much to win and little to lose is often unrestrained by ethical considerations and is more than willing to risk everything on the cast of the revolutionary die. Marie Antoinette is said to have asked naïvely why the hungry Frenchmen who had no bread did not eat cake instead. The masses in Moscow had not eaten a full meal for months preceding the revolution. The low standard of living in pre-revolutionary Russia is indicated by the average monthly income of the industrial workers. In 1913 the highest-paid industrial workers in Russia received approximately eleven dollars per month. Famished men have little respect for the institutions which made them starve.23
2. Property.— A second repression develops when men are deprived of the ability to own property or to achieve any sense of economic security. The penniless proletariat forms the foundation
21 L. P. Edwards, op. cit., pp. ~ The classic description of the abuses of a pre-revolutionary society is given in H. A. Tame, The Ancient Régime (translated), Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York, 1896 (revised edition). 22 Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, op. cit., Chapter XVII. Cf. also Robert Hunter, Revolution: Why, How, When? Harper & Brothers, New York, 1940, Chapter II, "When Men Revolt." 23 W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1935, Vol. I, p. 262. Cf. also ibid., Chapter XII, "The Revolt of Labor."
982 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
upon which the revolution is erected. When a large and increasingly vocal percentage of the population is unable to own a home and a modicum of real and personal property, no matter how modest, the seeds of demoralization have been sown. The foot. loose and aimless wanderer of the city streets, the workman who has been evicted from his cheerless tenement, the artisan who has seen his last bit of property taken away in payment for debt, the farmer who has been driven from his farm by the dust or the mortgage holder, all these have lost some of the most powerful ties which bound them to the existing order. Their relationships to the basic institutions of the community have undergone a significant change. Their attitudes suffer corresponding modifications.24
A revolution cannot succeed without some economic foundation. The human desire for more property and consequently more status is an important driving force. This desire, significantly enough, is held not only by people who have neither a cent in their pockets nor a roof over their heads. It applies equally, perhaps more vehemently, to the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie who have already tasted the joys of ownership. They in turn view with hungry eyes the large estates of the nobility, the rich, and the clergy.25
In striking fashion, Trotsky delineates the evidence of economic collapse which helped to precipitate the Russian revolution. Before the outbreak of the February revolution, the railroads were in a state of disorganization because of the failure of the government to replace vital rolling stock and other equipment. The economic resources of the country had been seriously depleted during the years of the war. Raw materials for production were lacking. The workers, the technicians, and even the administrators were insistently voicing their demands, many of them with an eye to open revolt if they were refused. Property owners became dubious about the safety of their goods. With falling profits, both the capitalists and the middle class were profoundly disheartened. The foundations of the economic order were undermined.26
3. Self-preservation.— Self-preservation is a third predisposition
24 Pitirim A. Sorokin, op. cit., pp. 373-375. 25 L. P. Edwards, op. cit., Chapter V, "The Economic Incentive and the Social Myth." 26 Leon Trotsky, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 412.
REVOLUTION 983
repressed during the last days of the old regime. Such repression may apply both to the individual and to the group. The hope of life is threatened during times of severe struggle, particularly when it seems that the entire group is in danger. Each person of military age is faced with the ever present thought of death. Often the nation itself faces the possibility of complete extinction as an autonomous group. War may serve as an antidote for revolution and many rulers have purposely involved their nations in a foreign war in order to bolster a tottering morale. But the war must be successful. If it fails, revolution is hastened.27
A dismal list of revolutions have followed defeats in foreign war. Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Russia all underwent revolutions of varying degrees of severity after their defeat in the World War. Russia suffered severe internal disturbances after her defeat by Japan in 1905. France ushered in the Third Republic by a revolution following her humiliation in the Franco-Prussian war.28 The Russian revolution was precipitated in considerable part by the discouragement and disorganization resulting from the unfavorable progress of the World War. The social organization of Holy Russia, patched and unsteady as it was in 1914, received its death-blow in the disastrous years from 1914 to 1917. The Russian proletariat, the middle class, and particularly the peasant soldiers in the trenches were tired of the war and hated the regime which had promoted it. "Land, bread and peace" were the rallying cries of the Bolsheviks in their successful attempt to overthrow the provisional government which carried on the war after the Imperial government had abdicated. The most important of these slogans was— Peace.
4. Sex.— A fourth repression which produces revolutionary tensions occurs in connection with the elemental sex drives of the masses of the people. Perhaps the most significant consideration in this connection is the inflammatory spectacle of flagrant sexual corruption among the privileged classes. There have been many notorious instances in pre-revolutionary countries of this shameless flouting of the bourgeois moral standards. Both the reckless Marie Antoinette and, more recently, the disreputable Rasputin, who
27 L P. Edwards, op. cit., p. 48. 28 Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 489-490.
984 SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
held his obscene revels under the protection of the royal family of the Romanoffs, are cases in point. It is possible that both the Queen of France and the Empress of all the Russias were entirely blameless in their personal conduct: The only moral defection of Marie Antoinette established by historical research was an inordinate love of gambling. Yet in both instances the foreign queens were the symbols of sexual license in the eyes of the masses, whether they themselves were guilty or not. The example set before the bourgeoisie by the dissolute entourage of Rasputin made every man fear for his own daughter and hate the Czarina for protecting such a vicious scoundrel. Again, the Reformation was hastened by the brazen effrontery of the clergy, the emissaries of the "Harlot of Babylon." A morally scandalized people are often quick to wreak vengeance on corruption in high places.29
5. Freedom.— A fifth type of pre-revolutionary inhibition is the repression of freedom, the trampling under foot of both civil and personal liberties. A passion for freedom, for the liberation from the bonds that hamper free expression, was the constantly expressed motivating factor for much of Trotsky's revolutionary agitation. His life was dedicated to righting these palpable injustices.30 Similarly, "liberty" in some form has been the battle cry echoing from a hundred barricades. It will continue to stir men to revolution. The fact that one form of repression is often exchanged for another equally unpleasant is not recognized until later.
The slogan of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" that rang in the streets of Paris was a clarion call to lovers of freedom all over the world to revolt and cast off their chains. Similarly, the patriots who picked off the British from behind the New England stone fences were animated by a desire for freedom from foreign economic and social domination. The revolutionary crowds that thronged the streets of Petrograd and Moscow thrilled to their newly found freedom from the rule of the Czar.
Revolutionary behavior with freedom as its goal is motivated in many cases by that type of collective representation which Sorel
29 E. A. Ross, Russia in Upheaval, D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., New York. 1918, pp. 168-170.
30 Leon Trotsky, My Life. An Attempt at an Autobiography, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1930.
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has called "the social myth."31 This concept embodies a vision, a Utopian ideal, a vaguely defined but very real hope for the future. The American revolution abounded in social myths, many of them borrowed from the French social philosophers, which concerned the inalienable right of every man to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The French revolution gave its famous triumvirate of "Liberté, Egalité1 Fraternité," to the world. The Bolsheviks have proclaimed a world-wide dictatorship of the proletariat. Basic to the social myth is a passionate hope of freedom from past oppression. This domination takes the form of martial law, summary court-martial of those dissenting from the letter and spirit of the law, lettres de cachets, unfair trials, terrorism of police and agents provocateurs— all of the instruments by which a dying monarchy desperately attempts to postpone the evil day.
6. Equality of Opportunity.— Finally, Sorokin maintains that revolutions are precipitated by the repression of the desire for self expression on the part of men with great innate abilities. That is, there is a denial of equal opportunity to all to receive attention commensurate with their talents and abilities. Such repressions are a function of the institutions of the old order. Men of ability in the lower classes cannot free themselves of these repressions without destroying the institutions themselves. Privilege has become so intrenched in the social matrix that many individuals cannot find adequate expression for their latent powers. Arbitrary bounds of class and caste, custom and law, interfere with the just rewards of merit and do much to swell the ranks of the revolutionaries. Such a system creates a large body of malcontents, men of talent and ambition who know they are doomed to oblivion under the existing social. organization. Lack of freedom for both the masses and the classes will produce disorganization in the end, just as steam that is pent up too long will eventually cause a violent explosion.
These cultural barriers to social advancement cause the disgruntled underlings the "have-nots" to hate and despise the "haves." They brood. When a Lenin is nursing his grievances in Switzerland, and when a Trotsky languishes in Hoboken, resentments inevitably smolder. Men of ability under such circumstances become
31 Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (translated), B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1912.
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the leaders of revolutionary movements. When the man who feels that he is born to lead knows in his heart that he will never have that opportunity under the present order, he becomes a potential agitator for its purposive and calculated overthrow.32
The Natural History of Revolution33
Often there is but a flimsy wall between the full realization of these balked dispositions and their overt manifestation in some form of preliminary revolutionary behavior. The fires of resentment will smolder only so long before they burst into the flame of open revolt.
Unrest.— The first stage in the process of revolution is a period of vague and inchoate unrest. People sense that there is some thing wrong, but they do not know what to do about it. There was a long period of discontent with the Tudors in England, the Bourbons in France, the House of Hanover in America, and the Romanoffs in Russia before open revolution broke out. We have many objective indices of this first stage in the process of revolutionary disorganization. A large increase in the mobility of all classes of the population is at once a symptom of unrest and a cause for further unsettlement. The pathological consequences of mobility are intensified during these troublous times. All classes join in the restless movement, both within their own country and in foreign lands. In a new environment, the émigrés and travelers may find customs that are more to their liking and that compare more than favorably with their own. Intellectual revolutionists, fleeing from Czarist oppression, ranged far and wide over the world. When the empire collapsed they came swarming back to Mother Russia, breathing hatred against their former oppressors.34
32 Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, op. cit., pp. 381-382; cf. Leon Trotsky, op. cit., for a discussion of the steps in the development of a revolutionary world outlook. This autobiography might almost be called a natural history of a revolutionary life organization. 33 The discussion of the "natural history" of revolution is taken in considerable part from L. P. Edwards' excellent discussion. Cf. also Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1938. 34 Cf. E. A. Ross, op. cit., Chapter IX, "Returning Revolutionaries." The author points out that these exiled revolutionaries were not all men like Lenin and Trotsky who had been working disinterestedly for world revolution. Many criminal outcasts, expelled by the Czarist police, were also among the returning revolutionaries. REVOLUTION 987
Large numbers of men, cut off from many important home and institutional ties, make up the proletarian rabble of the city streets. This group furnishes the stuff for the mobs of the revolution. In ordinary times the homeless man is bound by no customs, fears nothing and no one but the law and its minions. The revolution comes when thousands of men, homeless and otherwise, no longer fear even the policeman. With this increase in mobility during the pre-revolutionary period a heightened rate of vice, crime, and other specific indices of social disorganization is usually associated. Society is on the move, whether its members know it or not.35
Defection of the Intellectuals.— The second important stage in a revolution is the "transfer of the allegiance of the intellectuals" —those persons who control large sections of public opinion, who hold the ear of influential special publics— "the authors, the editors, the lecturers, the artists, the teachers, the priests, the preachers."36 The members of this group at one time were in complete sympathy with many of the ideals of the ruling class. They received their livelihood from ministering to the wants of those in power. But times change. Although the intellectuals may still be attached to the rulers through the necessary medium of the pay envelope, nevertheless they may be secretly fomenting disorganization against their nominal masters. "When the publicists," Edwards points out, "decide to support the repressed classes rather than the repressors, there is a decided quickening in the tempo of the revolutionary movement, though everyone is still ignorant that any revolution is to take place."37
Sorokin discusses this "speech bacchanalia" unloosed by the liberals before a revolution. There is a veritable flood of discontented and subversive propaganda in every conceivable form— newspapers, pamphlets, brochures, books. It is no accident that many of the great liberal movements in the history of political doctrine came before important revolutions. The encyclopedists, Voltaire and Rousseau, the pamphleteers in America, and the various semi-subterranean radical journalists in Europe before the Russian revolution are examples of this liberalizing of speech reactions.38
35 L. P. Edwards, op. cit., Chapter III, "Preliminary Symptoms of Unrest." 36 Ibid., p. 38. 37Ibid., p. 44. 38 Pitirim A. Sorokin, op. cit., pp. 4 1-42.
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The endless conversations of the Russian intelligentsia concerning social reform have been immortalized in the novels of Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Dostoyefsky. Many of the utterances of pre-revolutionary society are of the same relatively innocuous kind that amused these parlor intellectuals. As the revolution approaches, as social disorganization becomes imminent, they become more vociferous in their denunciations of the existing order. All manner of vicious scandals involving those in power are raked to the surface.
Violent attacks are made upon the upper class's way of life, the institutions for which they stand, and the cherished traditions of their system. No one is spared. No institutions are too sacred.39 Many of the ablest journalists, pamphleteers, editors, enlist in the crusade. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, John Dickinson, and many other patriots used vitriolic pens to advantage before the American revolution. Their efforts could be duplicated by similar instances in France and Russia. In such times, many of the intellectuals are merely deserting lost causes. Others are sincerely voicing, for the first time, their long-cherished hopes of a better social order. In any event, the existing regime, deprived of its ablest intellectual defenders, has suffered a body blow.
The Outbreak of Revolution.— The third stage in a revolution is "the emergence of the economic incentive and the social myth." We have already discussed these phenomena in some detail, so we may pass on to the fourth stage. The series of events briefly outlined above leads up to the actual outbreak of revolution, which sometimes takes place in dramatic and unmistakable fashion. More often, however, the significant nature of the initial event is not recognized until later. The participants seldom realize that they are making history. But when the masses sense that the once-feared authorities have been definitely and openly defied, they are quick to press on to further revolutionary triumphs.
The American revolution is usually considered to have been announced as much by the Boston Tea Party as by any other single event. The storming of the Bastille gave the French proletariat its first and sweetest taste of blood. Trotsky is undecided as to the most significant single incident in the outbreak of the Russian revolution. He suggests that it may have been the knowledge that the Cossacks were tacitly with the people in their struggle against the police.
39 L. P. Edwards, op. cit., pp. 49 if.
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This good news was communicated by a wink from one of the troopers to a friend in the struggling crowd, delivered on the twenty-fourth day of February, 1917.40 When the crowd sensed this momentous fact, they took heart, pressed on. The empire of the Czars practically collapsed of ifs own weight, with little or no organized pressure, "but as a result of an unorganized, almost anarchical popular movement, the success of which was the measure of the inner weakness and decadence of the old order."41 Whatever the nature of this final overt activity may be, it is the first and most striking signal of the impotence of the government. From that moment on, the power is definitely in the hands of the people. And they know it.
The Rule of the Liberals.— For an indefinite period after the outbreak of the revolution the power is held by the liberals, the moderate reformers, those who would conciliate both the Left and the Right, the extreme revolutionists and the old guard. Trotsky had nothing but contempt for the vacillations of these provisional coalition governments, who try vainly to be all things to all men. Such was the nature of the party that ruled Russia from February to October, 1917, when the Bolsheviks swept into power. In the early days of the revolution, the Left Wing group are not sufficiently powerful to combat openly the Liberal coalition. Perhaps the most striking reason for this temporary inability to cope with the situation is that most of the best revolutionary leaders are either imprisoned or exiled from the country. In the French revolution, the extreme Left Wing did not gain control until a provisional government had been tried and found wanting.
The conservatives emigrate to escape persecution both by the Liberals and by the Extremists. The rule of the Liberals is inevitably doomed. The precise length of their tenure of power is determined by their own immediate military strength, by the organization and leaders hip of the radicals, and by external events. In the Russian revolution the "normal" revolutionary sequence was tremendously complicated by the necessity of carrying on the World War at the same time. This war was extremely distasteful to the great majority of the people —workers, soldiers, peasants, bourgeoisie— to
40 Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 104-105. 41 W. H. Chamberlin, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 97.
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all, in fact, but the war profiteers and the officers. The Coalition government, led by Kerensky, wished to carry on military operations to the bitter end, assisted by the armed intervention of the Allies. But the Bolsheviks read the temper of the people more clearly— promised peace, and seized the power.42
The Reign of Terror.— Thus Radicalism succeeds Liberalism. With the rise of the Radicals comes war on two fronts. The emigrating conservatives arouse neighboring nations to intervene, and present a united royal or capitalistic front against the insurgents, depending on whether the revolution is democratic or communistic in character. War on the frontiers against foreign armies is complicated by civil war in the capital. This internecine struggle is forcibly and brutally terminated by the Terror. During this period, certain phases of social disorganization reach their height, both in extent and in intensity. The normal controls of the traditional mores are swept aside for the time being. The controls of the revolutionary government have not yet begun to function properly.
The period of the Terror is also that of the counter-revolution. The dispossessed classes attempt to reverse the social changes set in motion by the revolution. If this movement is successful, the upper classes resume the powerful role in the political and economic sphere from which they had previously been so unceremoniously ousted. A dictatorship from the Right follows, in which the revolutionary elements are ruthlessly stamped out. The collapse of the Paris Commune in 1871 and the subsequent execution of the Communards by the victorious counter-revolutionary forces is a striking example of the success of this type of movement. In the post-war period, the White dictatorship in Hungary following the brief Communist government of Bela Kun illustrates the same general process.43
The Terror is an attempt on the part of the revolutionists to guard against this forcible return to the old regime. Hence the period is often not so much one of random social disorganization as it is of the calculated inculcation of fear by the Extremists of the Left. In fact, the Terror may even represent an increase rather than a decrease in social control. Many of the excesses supposedly perpetrated during this period are invented by the revolutionary
42 The classic story of this seizure of power is told by John Reed, op. cit. 43 Alfred Meusel, op. cit.
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propaganda agencies. Many more are greatly exaggerated. For the primary purpose of the Terror —in so far as it may be said to have a purpose— is to terrify. Recalcitrants are frightened into line with the policies of the party in power. This regimentation is accomplished by stressing the unpleasant consequences to those who do not comply with the dictates of the new party. We must guard against accepting too uncritically reports of the excesses against property and person during the Terror.44
Social Disorganization and Revolution
The Personnel of Revolution.— The disorganization incidental to a revolution results in part from the personnel of the movement. Violent social change of this type enlists the cooperation of the lower classes of the city streets. Prisons are emptied, armies furnish their armed marauders to both sides, criminals are emboldened to commit depredations under the protecting cloak of the revolution. The most vicious classes among both the Whites and the Reds in the Russian struggle were recruited from the "inner enemies" of a normal society —the degenerates, the thieves, the murderers, the criminals of all kinds. Such groups are held in check by the police in an organized society, but during certain periods of revolution their plunderings are unimpeded.45 At one time during the Russian revolution bands of robbers and brigands infested the cities. These predatory gangs, armed to the teeth, operated from many of the large private mansions which they had seized. No man was safe from their depredations.46
Added to these criminal classes are the semi-criminals, who come to the fore during such perilous times. Persons who are customarily cowed by the law and have never committed an overt delinquency may yield to the influence of the mob when old restraints are withdrawn. When the formal social controls of the established order are weakened, many so-called normal persons may commit even more dastardly crimes than the habitually criminal.47 Many revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries are honest and law-abiding
44 L. P. Edwards, op. cit., Chapter VIII, "The Reign of Terror." Cf. also W. H. Chamberlin, op. cit., Vol. 1, Chapter XXIII, "Terror, Red and White." 45 Gustave Le Bon, op. cit., pp. 99-101. 46 R. H. Bruce Lockhart, British Agent, C. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1933, p. 239. 47 Gustave Le Bon, op. cit., pp. 99-10 1.
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citizens, fired with a sincere zeal to revolutionize the social order or preserve it intact, as the case may be. Often these persons deplore the disorganization which inevitably attends a revolution but are helpless to prevent it. Such persons, however, are often motivated by the dangerous doctrine that the end justifies the means. In the name of the revolution or the counter-revolution they may calmly send thousands of men, women, and children to their death with the serene confidence that they are acting for the ultimate welfare of humanity. Sincere revolutionaries must steel themselves against any humanitarian sentiments lest they betray the revolution. In the French revolution, Robespierre sent hundreds of innocent persons to the guillotine in the belief that he was advancing the cause of humanity.
Revolution and Property Rights.— When the revolutionary mob first realizes that the owners of jewelry, the fine houses, and all the other pleasant perquisites of wealth have fled or have been "liquidated," there is a wild rush to take whatever they can. The criminal and quasi-criminal elements in the revolutionary movement cannot resist this temptation, even though such thefts may be sincerely deplored by the responsible leaders. The early stages of revolutions are marked by wholesale "appropriations" of private property under whatever slogans may please the populace at the time. From the standpoint of the man of property, complete anarchy exists then. Such persons consider the disorganization of property relationships to be even more reprehensible than the loss of life which accompanies a revolution. Yet many revolutionists believe that all men have an equal right to the good things of life and. take the first opportunity to realize that belief. Others conceal their lawless desires under the pretentious phrase, "Steal what has been stolen." Under this first exhilarating freedom from constraint everyone steals from everyone else —the poor from the rich, the workman from his employer, the peasant from the landlord, the soldier from his officer, and so on. The most lawless elements have but one idea— to get as much as they can, by whatever means. The millennia of restraint and development of an acquired respect for property rights are temporarily nullified. Crimes against property increase many-fold.48
During the later days of revolution, the wheel makes a complete 48 Pitirim A. Sorokin, op. Cit., pp. 58-64.
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turn. Those who have substantially enriched themselves at the expense of others suddenly become very solicitous about abstract property rights. Moral judgments against stealing are resurrected which had been so carelessly cast aside after the storming of the Bastille or the first intoxicating days of proletarian power.49 The new ownership reactions are not entirely based upon the desire for unbridled individual appropriation, however. The state usually controls more and more of the property which was formerly privately owned. Men are shot for stealing from the state. The revolution often ends with a new conception of property rights based upon the state ownership of many new forms of property. The new rights are often guarded even more jealously than were the former personal property rights of the pre-revolutionary era.
Revolution and the Sex Mores.— To older generations which have been reared in an atmosphere of moral restraint the laxity and dissoluteness of revolutionary sexual conduct is one of the most damning indictments of a revolution. For revolutionary periods are traditionally marked by great physical license. Freedom of sex relations is openly advocated and practiced and the status and stability of marriage is seriously questioned. An insistence upon such transitory and physical pleasures is characteristic of many periods of rapid social change and social crisis. The traditional restraints are deliberately flouted by some persons in order to show their disrespect for every aspect of the old order. Other permanently dissolute persons in the community take advantage of revolutionary laxity to indulge in sex conduct which under normal circumstances would be forbidden by the mores and the laws alike.
The French revolution has left us many descriptions, some undoubtedly exaggerated, of the sexual debauches carried on under the aegis of the "Goddess of Liberty" and the "Goddess of-Reason." In the height of revolutionary enthusiasm, marriage was condemned as an institution fit only for timid poltroons. Men and women of courage, said the revolutionaries, took their love freely and openly, without bothering about the "bourgeois superstition" of marriage. Prostitution increased in Paris during those troubled days and many previously sober persons were influenced by the subtle poison of unrestraint.50 The "inner check" was conspicuously absent.
49 Ibid., pp. 60-62, also pp. 68-70. 50 lbid., pp. 9 3-97.
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Anatole France's classic story of a young man who was so interested in pursuing a young woman during the revolution that he completely forgot to notice the momentous events happening about him is a case in point.51
A similar situation prevailed during the early days of the Russian revolution, when drastic changes in the sex mores developed, especially in the urban populace. Chamberlin points out that the traditional sexual morality of the pre-revolutionary period was openly flouted. During the period of the civil war, he says, "there seems to have been much more promiscuous living together - than in earlier or later periods."52 Commercialized prostitution was almost completely wiped out by the Bolsheviks, who encouraged or forced prostitutes to enter institutions to cure themselves of disease and learn a trade. At the same time, however, young men and women deliberately abandoned conventional moral standards by openly living together without benefit of state, much less of clergy. For a time, divorce was to be had for the asking, abortions were legalized, and the single standard of morality was vigorously fostered by the authorities. The contemporary trend in Russia, however, is marked by a movement away from this revolutionary laxity and a return to stricter family ties.53
Revolution and Labor.— The cynic's contention that man is inherently lazy may or may not be in accord with the facts. The performance of certain necessary but unpleasant tasks, however, is often postponed as the workers become more revolutionary. At such times the desire for productive activity, for regular hours of work, is superseded by other considerations. The social disorganization leading up to the revolution has often so demoralized the economic structure of the country that the food supply is sadly diminished. The currency is often so inflated that money has little worth in the market place. The working classes brood over memories of real or fancied oppression. They begin to organize in the shops and factories. The murmurs of discontent swell to shouts as they talk of seizing the plants.54 It is difficult under these circumstances to distinguish clearly
51 Anatole France, The Gods are Athirst (translated), John Lane Company, New York, 1913. 52 W. H. Chamberlin, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 341. 53 Ibid. 54 lbid., Vol. I, pp. 265-266.
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between the legitimate demands of the underprivileged and the growing breakdown of economic relationships. The industrial efficiency of labor, measured in terms of per capita output, declines during revolutionary times because of the growing preoccupation with interests beyond the narrow confines of the job. Participation in workers' committees and plant soviets distracts the workers from their jobs. Men who are busy with the heady and herculean task of revising an entire society have scant momentary interest in the prosaic business of production. On the other hand, decreased industrial efficiency may mean conscious and willful sabotage, a blind and frantic expression of hatred for authority in any form. Both are definite indices of a temporarily disorganized economic and social system. Both are equally anathema to the owners and operators of industry.
In like manner, the number of strikes during periods immediately preceding revolution increases to an unprecedented degree. Both before and after the bloody suppression of the Russian proletarian demonstrations of 1905 the total strikes and the number of strikers swelled to large proportions. The revolution of 1917 occurred at a time of widespread labor agitation. Striking workers augmented the revolutionary crowds in the principal cities.55 Before the Bolshevik seizure of power in October, 1917, both military and industrial discipline had almost completely collapsed. Foremen and engineers who had incurred the wrath of the workers were roughly treated, sometimes even murdered. During the last days of the provisional government the workers were eager to drop their tools and listen to an agitator or take part in a demonstration. As the revolutionary tension increased, the workers were increasingly willing to take matters into their own hands. Whatever the combination of reasons, therefore, the labor habits and reactions of large numbers of men and women are changed by the revolutionary spirit.56
This freedom from traditional restraint was not confined to the workers in the large cities but was extended to every section of the country and penetrated every class in the population.57 The soldiers
55 Leon Trotsky, op. cit., Vol. I, Chapter III, "The Proletariat and the Peasantry." Cf. also Robert Hunter, op. cit., pp. 150 if. 56 W. H. Chamberlin, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 267 if. 57 For a moving literary account of the effect of the revolution upon the intellectuals, both those who sympathized with its aims and those who did not. cf. R. C. Hutchinson, Testament, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York, 1938.
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in the trenches refused to obey their officers and shot them down when they resisted this flouting of army discipline. The peasants committed numerous excesses against the persons and property of the landlords. Many of these revolutionary excesses were in direct retaliation for the centuries of abuses heaped upon the workers, soldiers, and peasants. Men were brutalized by the lives they had lived and were striking back in the only way they knew.58 The fact remains, however, that the old organization of the country was breaking up under the impact of violent social change, whatever the ultimate ethical implications of that social change might be. As Chamberlin points out, "All over the country, the masses of workers were in revolt, and this found expression in a great variety of ways, from cutting off electricity to outright murder."59
Revolution and Human Life.— In commenting upon the impact of the Russian revolution upon human life, Chamberlin summarizes the situation in a single sentence: "Human life was very cheap in those years." This disregard for human life is perhaps the most terrible self-indictment of the revolutionary process. The years of upheaval following the revolution of 1917 were years of terror, bloodshed, and murder. Thousands of men, women, and children were shot down in cold blood by the partisans of both the Reds and the Whites. Unbelievable cruelties were inflicted upon innocent people by both sides, each secure in the delusion that it was acting for the best. Innocent men were shot by the Red secret police on the mere suspicion that they were not whole-heartedly sympathetic to the new regime. Simple peasants were massacred by thousands by the White armies if there existed the slightest suspicion of Red sympathies. In these times, man was indeed a wolf to his fellows —homo homini lupus.60
To the loyal partisans of either side of the revolution, such con- duct is perfectly justifiable as a necessary, albeit unpleasant, means to an end. Trotsky explains how the Bolshevik philosophy justifies murder as a last resort. Revolutions cannot survive if they are liberal in their treatment of opponents. The more difficult the overthrow of the vested interests, the more drastic the revolutionary
58 In this connection cf. Walter Duranty, One Life, One Kopek, The Literary Guild, New York, 1937. 59W. H. Chamberlin, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 271. 60 Ibid., Vol. I, Chapter XXXVI, "The Revolution and Daily Life."
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dictatorship must be. According to Trotsky, temporizing is in the end more painful than severe and immediate action.61 The Spanish Republic pardoned many of the disloyal army officers who after- ward led the Franco rebellion. No such mistake was made by either the French Jacobins or the Russian Bolsheviks, who ruthlessly destroyed their conservative enemies. Under such circumstances human life paled into insignificance before the abstract ideal of the revolution. Gentle country lawyers became fiends in human form. The populace went to the executions as to pleasant and highly exciting forms of amusement.
Another reason for the callous disregard for human suffering and human life during periods of revolution lies in the fantastic and bitter hatreds which are released at these times. Many of the hatreds have been generated by the same forces which brought on the revolution— namely, the cruelty and oppression inflicted consciously or unconsciously upon the lower classes by the ruling class. When the tables are turned, slaves turn upon masters, serfs upon landowners, soldiers upon officers, workers upon foremen, the uneducated upon the educated— and wreak vengeance upon innocent persons for the wrongs they have suffered. This cruelty in turn begets new cruelty on the part of the immediate victims of revolutionary venom. The middle and upper classes hate the revolutionaries who have destroyed the old order and have inflicted suffering upon the exponents of that order. In each case, the innocent suffer with the guilty. In this extremely vicious circle, hatred and murder feed on one another, while suffering humanity pays the supreme penalty.62
Revolution and Religion.— The church is one of the most powerful institutions in any stable society. It is one of the pillars of the status quo, whether the political basis of that order be the monarchy of Louis XVI, the empire of the Czar of All the Russias, or the Spanish monarchy. As a vested interest in any social order, the church is one of the first institutions to come in conflict with a revolutionary regime. The established church, whether it be in eighteenth-century France or in twentieth-century Russia, Germany, or Spain, supports the old order because it is a part of the same social matrix. This is the principal reason that any revolutionary
61 Leon Trotsky, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 236. 62 W. H. Chamberlin, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 356-357.
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party must reckon with the power of the church if the revolution is to be successful. Religious and doctrinal considerations, as ordinarily defined, are not the most important factors in the conflict. Considerations of property, of temporal power, of education, of social control are paramount in these struggles between the church and the new state. Two ways of life, two forms of control, two institutional patterns are face to face with one another. The power of one of them must eventually be broken.63
This fundamental importance of the church in the social organization explains in considerable part the systematic attempt of the Bolsheviks to discourage and liquidate organized religion through- out the length and breadth of Russia. It accounts for the cry of the disciples of Voltaire in the French revolution to wipe out forever the old order of the church. It throws some light upon the persecution of the Christian faith by the Nazis and upon their attempt to substitute their warlike pagan faith for the worship of the gentle Christ. It is a commonplace to point out that revolution itself has become the religion of its devotees. The revolution is served with the same fanatical devotion as the militant churchman serves his church. The revolutionist will not hesitate to inflict human suffer- ing or take human life in the service of his stern mistress. Like the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of all dissenters from the revolutionary dogma is done "for the greater glory of God." The Deity in this case is the Spirit of Revolution.64
Revolution and America.— The Russian upheaval has ushered in a new phase of revolutionary movement —the rise of the proletariat. All other historical revolutions have been essentially bourgeois in character. The middle classes have, it is true, enlisted the help of the submerged classes in their collective enterprise and have promised them a complete redistribution of property, honors, and power. These have been largely empty promises, however, and the bourgeoisie have usually said goodbye to their sansculotte colleagues after the Bastilles have been stormed. In short, the middle classes have exploited the proletariat in such conspicuous instances as the English, the French, the American, and the German revolutions.
63 Cf. ibid., pp. 352-356. 64 Cf. Maurice Hindus, Humanity Uprooted, Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, New York, 1929, Chapters I-Ill.
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The thesis of bourgeois betrayal is the theme of a symposium on revolutionary prospects written during the recent depression. The authors individually and collectively warned of a revolution of the proletariat as the next logical step in the dialectic of history. This group of scholars, journalists, and engineers weighed the world of depression-ridden America in the balance and found it wanting. If conditions were not drastically remedied among the underprivileged millions of the country, the pundits warned of dire revolutionary consequences. From the colossal welter of social disorganization which they saw in the future they predicted the slow and painful emergence of a dictatorship of the proletariat, patterned upon the doctrines of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.65
The consensus of opinion in this symposium was that technological change, once the handmaiden of capitalism, would eventually prove its nemesis. The débâcle of the capitalist order will come as the result of the following series of changes: (1) Unemployment will become a chronic condition in all industrial and capitalistic nations. (2) The capitalists will continue to combine with the middle classes in transferring the economic burdens to the working class. (3) The farmers will come to a belated recognition that their debts cannot be paid and will join the industrial workers to form a united front against the upper classes. (4) The terrified bourgeoisie will offer palliatives to the working classes in the form of regulation of private enterprise and reforms of various types. These gestures, however, will be empty in the face of (5) a militant and class-conscious proletariat who will engineer the revolution in the United States as the Bolsheviks did in Russia. After the United States, the last and most formidable bulwark of capitalism, has succumbed to the victorious march of the proletariat, the socialization of the world will be but a relatively simple dialectical step in the great synthesis.66
This theoretical picture of proletarian revolution is clothed with the flesh and blood of unemployed workers, of strikers and union organizers, of strike-breakers and vigilantes in a study of depression unrest by John L. Spivak. His general thesis follows that of the group just presented, namely, that the American worker will be
65 Recovery Through Revolution, edited by Samuel D. Schmalhausen, Covici Friede, Inc., New York, 1933. 66 Ibid
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goaded by longer and more desperate periods of unemployment and lowered standards of living until he finally revolts and takes the means of production into his own hands.67 Such a drastic shift in the economic and social structure will not occur, says Spivak, until the federal government has exhausted its resources for conciliating the masses of the unemployed and undernourished. Funds for relief activities can be gathered through raising taxes, further borrowing, or inflation. He believes that the government will eventually be forced to resort to inflation, which will only serve to aggravate the situation in the long run. Bitterness, misery, and the disillusionment of the masses will eventuate in the final overthrow of the capitalistic system in the United States. Looking into the future through this blood-red crystal, Spivak sees "a period of great unrest, organized and unorganized revolts and bloodshed; a period . . . which will continue until the present economic system has been completely changed."68
These and similar pronouncements have certain obvious elements of wish fulfillment. Some of the predictions made in mid-depression have been fulfilled as the country has emerged from the trough of the business cycle. Others have proved wide of the mark. The situation in the United States as a whole, however, simply does not square with the revolutionary thesis presented with such alluring dialectical simplicity. In spite of the long and bitter attrition of the depression years and the unemployment which accompanied the selective recovery from the depression, the mass of people in the country remained fundamentally conservative. Security and not revolution has been the basic desire of the overwhelming majority, rich and poor, employed and unemployed, Republican and Democrat. American labor is on the whole as basically conservative as the middle and upper classes, desiring merely a larger share in the national income under the traditional economic and social order. The absence of a militant proletarian consciousness among American workers is a subject of interested comment by European scholars, accustomed as they are to the strict alignment of European
67 For a discussion of some of the propaganda methods calculated to bring this about cf. Harold D. Lasswell and Dorothy Blumenstock, World Revolutionary Propaganda, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1939. 68 John L. Spivak, America Faces the Barricades, Covici Friede, Inc., New York, '935, p. ix.
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class interests.69 The "American Dream" still dominates the attitudes of all classes of Americans and will continue to do so for a long time to come.70
This does not mean that social disorganization is completely absent from the contemporary scene. The report of the President's Committee on Recent Social Trends, written during the early years of the depression, voiced a cautious but unmistakable warning against a disregard of the pressing national problems of unemployment and underconsumption. The authors of Recent Social Trends disclaim any "attitude of alarmist irresponsibility," but they nevertheless point to certain unmistakable signs of social disorganization which may bring drastic social change in their wake. Other observers point to the revolutionary implications of such factors as the following: (1) There have been profound changes in the United States in recent years both in the machinery of production and in the ownership of the instruments of production. (2) Class alignments show signs of forming under the inexorable pressure of the changing economic foundation. (3) The working classes have seen their position strengthened by legislative and judicial action giving them the right to bargain collectively in unions of their own choosing. (4) The nation is still profoundly shaken by the prolonged crisis of the depression years, when many of the old institutions and traditional behavior patterns seemed in the process of dissolution.71
These and similar trends may point the way to a new organiza- tion of society. But this new order need not be ushered in by the rattle of machine guns or the roar of the crowds at the barricades. It may come quietly, unostentatiously, with a minimum of riot and excitement. The machine age of the last century and the power age of the present century came thus unobtrusively. The industrial revolution brought considerable social disorganization in its wake, as men were forced to modify their attitudes and their values to correspond to the changed situation. The desirability of these
69 Coetz A. Briefs, The Proletariat, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1937. 70 For additional comments on the possibilities of a proletarian revolution, cf. Henry B. Parkes, Marxism: An Autopsy, Houghton Muffin Company, Boston, 1939, Part III, "Revolution and the Proletariat." 71 George Soule, The Coming American Revolution, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1934, pp. 296-304.
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changes, however, is today not seriously questioned. In such a way may come the changes of the future. Life in a dynamic society cannot stand still.
Our discussion of revolution thus ends on a somewhat inconclusive note and with a paradox that is characteristically human. Is revolution the supreme example of social disorganization or is it the quintessence of social reorganization? In the field of social values, is the violent change of revolution a desirable or an undesirable influence? Is the sum total of human happiness advanced by such drastic modifications of the status quo? The patriot who is constantly lauding the glories of the American revolution is often the first to call out the constabulary to stamp out a hypothetical Communist plot. Will future generations throughout the world view the Russian revolution in the same light that they now do the English, the French, and the American? Has the increasing efficiency of social organization resulting from these upheavals compensated for the temporary breakdown in many vital phases of society? The social scientist cannot answer these questions. He must wait until all the evidence is in.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution, \V. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1938. A popular discussion of the natural history of revolution, written by a noted historian.
2. Chamberlin, NV. H., The Russian Revolution, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1935. This voluminous account of the period from 1917 to 1921 is one of the most authoritative descriptions of the great Russian revolution.
3. Duranty, Walter, One Life, One Kopek, The Literary Guild, New York, 1937. A sympathetic novel of the Russian revolution by the reporter who became one of the leading authorities on the Soviet Union.
4. Edwards, L. P., The Natural History of Revolution, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1927. This is a study of several important revolutions with a view to establishing an ideal pattern. The author outlines the typical stages in the natural history of these mass movements and suggests that they all follow a definite sequence, with minor local variations.
5. Hunter, Robert, Revolution: Why, How, When? Harper & Brothers, New York, 1940. A study of revolution written after
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"over forty years of study and of several years association with socialist and communist groups." The personal reminiscences of the author and his analysis of the economic factors precipitating revolution make this volume a valuable addition to the literature in the field.
6. Hutchinson, R. C., Testament, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., New York, 1938. A novel which depicts the impact of the Russian revolution upon the intellectual.
7. Le Bon, Gustave, The Psychology of Revolution, George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London, 1913. The author views revolution primarily as a manifestation of crowd behavior. The French revolution, with its disorderly Parisian mobs, is the principal source of the illustrative material.8. Martin, Everett Dean, Farewell to Revolution, NV. NV. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1935. A discussion of revolution by a noted social philosopher who deplores the excesses engendered by this form of social change.
9. Meusel, Alfred, "Revolution and Counter Revolution," Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1934. A scholarly analysis of the nature of revolution and its relationship to the process of counter-revolution.
10. Reed, John, Ten Days that Shook the World, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, 1919. An eye-witness account of the period immediately before and after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, written when the momentous events were still fresh in the author's mind.
11. Schmalhausen, Samuel D. (editor), Recovery Through Revolution, Covici Friede, Inc., New York, 1933. The possibility and character of world revolution against the capitalist order are discussed in this symposium by a number of leading intellectuals.
12. Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (translated), B. NV. Huebsch, New York, 1912. A French philosophical syndicalist justifies the violent revolt of the proletariat. He maintains that the oppressed classes are integrated into a compact and militant group by the fires of revolutionary violence.
13. Sorokin, Pitirim A., Social and Cultural Dynamics, American Book Company, New York, 1937, Vol. III. This volume contains an intensive statistical study of the "internal disturbances" which have disorganized societies at periodic intervals throughout human history. The data on war and revolutions are the most complete now available.
14. Sorokin, Pitirim A., The Sociology of Revolution, J. B. Lippincott
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Company, Philadelphia, 1925. A comprehensive statement of the sociological causes and effects of revolution. The author marshals an impressive array of disorganizing effects of this most violent form of social change.
15. Soule, George, The Coming American Revolution, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1934. The author reviews the literature of revolution and then applies the definitions of revolution to the American scene. He also weighs the possibilities of proletarian revolution and some form of fascism in the United States.
16. Spivak, John L., America Faces the Barricades, Covici Friede, Inc., New York, 1935. In this case book of internal dissension in the United States the author reports many of the specific situations which generate potential revolutionary attitudes.
17. Trotsky, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1932. A history of the most important revolu- tion of modern times by one of its principal participants. Trotsky was hardly an impartial observer of these great events, but his admitted bias does not nullify the value of the book to a student of social change.