34 chapters
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34 chapters
I: INTRODUCTORY Summary
I: INTRODUCTORY Summary
Common facts hard to understand. Social phenomena most important to modern life, yet least understood. Complexity no obstacle if system is known. Practical knowledge of sociology quite possible. Coexistence does not prove true association. Social rudiments cause pain. Human pain always conspicuous. “The Star of Suffering.” Religions rest on conception of essential pain. Suicide a human specialty. Pain a social condition, remediable and preventable. Physical environment largely mastered, present
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I INTRODUCTORY
I INTRODUCTORY
The most familiar facts are often hardest to understand. This is described by Ward as “the illusion of the near.” Because of nearness we get no perspective; because of continual presence we become used to one view and fail to perceive others. To the consideration of new facts we come with comparatively open minds, impressed by each item and its relation to the rest; but facts long known are supposed to be understood, and we resent the slight offered to our intelligence in the proposal to reconsi
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II: MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION Summary
II: MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION Summary
Social development affected by physical conditions. By our personal choice. We have overestimated the latter. “Natural” in contradistinction to “personal,” or genetic and teleological. Conscious acts most conspicuous to man. Recognition of some other forces at work. Man’s contribution to his own conduct. How individuals have promoted it, and the mass always retarded. How we retard evolution. Pterodactyls as conscious agents. Salutary effect of unconscious social processes. Our conscious behaviou
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II MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION
II MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION
The contribution of the human race to its own development is the distinguishing feature in social evolution. That prompt and simple reaction to the environment by which the evolution of sub-human species has been accomplished, is complicated, with us, by a delayed and uncertain reaction, due to stored energy and to the internal environment of man’s conscious mind. We are of course modified by conditions, and transmit the modification through heredity. The results in social formation and conduct
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III: CONCEPT AND CONDUCT Summary
III: CONCEPT AND CONDUCT Summary
Human evolution. New faculties and instincts. Egoistic concept useful to individual animal. Disadvantage of outgrown ideals. Persistence of social rudiments explained. Need of social scrap-heap. Social relations psychic. Despot only a concept. Concepts internal environment. Shipwreck and character. Maternal and sex instinct and concepts. Negro hero, power of concept on conduct. Man’s efforts to check his growth. Prejudice a physical brain condition. Healthy brain must be used. Virtue of “believi
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III CONCEPT AND CONDUCT
III CONCEPT AND CONDUCT
Human evolution involves the development of a number of individual animals into specialised functionaries of organic social life. This requires the gradual assumption of new faculties, new desires, new instincts, and new activities; and the gradual disuse and discarding of older ones. The egoistic mental make-up of a solitary animal, of a low savage, of any reversionary self-supporting human hermit, is advantageous to him as a separate creature; but disadvantageous to a society to which he might
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IV: SOME FALSE CONCEPTS Summary
IV: SOME FALSE CONCEPTS Summary
The ego concept, based on pre-human status. Our separate consciousness not human. Human consciousness collective. “We” human, “I” animal. Absurdity of individualism in organism. Pleasure-in-impression theory. Animal basis. Pleasure through motory nerves as well as sensory, and in us far greater. Pay Concept, animal basis, logical extremes in Heaven and Hell. Other forces also operative. Woman labour. Slave labour. Shame and agony resultant in concepts of eternal torture. Wage labour. Want theory
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IV SOME FALSE CONCEPTS
IV SOME FALSE CONCEPTS
As we shall frequently have to refer to certain major errors in popular thought, it will be as well to clearly enumerate and describe those selected. The field is wide,—each of those mentioned connects with many others,—and there may be serious question as to which antedates which; but difference on that point will not invalidate the actuality of their influence on conduct. The group mentioned in this chapter will be further described and elaborated later; this is merely to introduce them in som
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V: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I) Summary
V: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I) Summary
Idea of social organism, not new. Proposition stated. Proof advanced on three main lines. First, nutritive processes of collective and organic society. Men do not support themselves. World-wide production and distribution of food. Individual could not become baker or tailor, they are social functionaries. Organic evolution along line of modification to food supply. Man the only creature who has mastered his food supply, he makes that which makes him, he produces food. Production of food a collec
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V THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I)
V THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I)
The concept that society is an organic form of life is not new to the world. The popular mind, confronted with many conspicuous proofs of human solidarity, admitted the idea to one of those thought-tight compartments in which we keep such concepts as we are unable or unwilling to think through and hold in logical relation to our others. There it has remained, enlarging somewhat in course of time and loud events, and tending to modify such conduct as came its way to the social benefit. But since
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VI: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II) Summary
VI: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II) Summary
Social organism a natural life-form. Confusion from arbitrary and superficial distinctions. Social functions not physically hereditary. Village type. Earth-limits. Social life in Individual. Natural law under “imperialism.” Mistakes of social functionaries. Why society was developed. Tendency to revert. Wider consciousness and activity of Society. Social Soul. Race memory. Joy a social quality. Size of social feelings and actions. Early decoration. Fund of power. Social consciousness in young pe
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VI THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II)
VI THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II)
The Social Organism is as natural a life-form as fish, flesh, or fowl. It has been naturally evolved, its processes and appearances are as natural as those of any other part of creation. We do not recognise it because of the interference of that ancestral brain; and we are further confused in looking at it by our arbitrary classification, resting on old and false ideas. As physical geography is confused to a child’s mind by the demarcations and contrasted colours of the map of political geograph
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VII: THE SOCIAL SOUL Summary
VII: THE SOCIAL SOUL Summary
Our “common sensorium” the “human heart.” All human feelings common. Action and reaction between body and spirit. Cat and Sheep. Mob spirit, civic spirit, etc. Effect of institutions. Effect of industries. Confusion from Ego Concept. Prominence of painful processes. Widening social consciousness. Collective pleasure greatest. Team-work. Effect of position of women. Sex combat in industry. Altruism and Omniism. “Self” an extensible term. Organic relation. Progressive injury of egoism. Effect of s
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VII THE SOCIAL SOUL
VII THE SOCIAL SOUL
Some deny the organic concept of society on the ground that we human beings have no “common sensorium.” But we have. The most conspicuous and distinctive fact in our psychology is precisely that common sensorium. We call it in ordinary speech “the human heart,” or “the human spirit,” or “soul,” and quite correctly. It is human, and “human” is “social”; it is the social soul. The individual feels it, inasmuch as the brain, our medium of sensation, is lodged in an individual head; but what he feel
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VIII: THE SOCIAL BODY Summary
VIII: THE SOCIAL BODY Summary
Likeness between spirit and form, mutual modification. Love modified by form. The soul human. The body of society our manufactured things. Bones of dead societies. The thing made. Animal’s things all grow on him. Society secretes its material form. The thing marks the age. Axe-man, swords-man, pen-man, etc. Value of detachability of tools. Potentiality of human body. Value of exchangeability of tools. Vehicle of common use. Reaction of thing made on user. Body a machine we have to learn. Thing p
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VIII THE SOCIAL BODY
VIII THE SOCIAL BODY
We have seen, that in every living creature there is a close and vivid likeness between its spirit and its form, between body and soul. Given such a spirit and it tends to evolve such a form. Given such a form and it tends to evolve such a spirit. The form must limit and modify the spirit. Fortunately forms can change; and spirit, to grow, continually discards old forms and makes new. If anything succeeds in fixing a given form unchanged, so is the spirit within it imprisoned and checked in grow
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IX: THE NATURE OF WORK (I) Summary
IX: THE NATURE OF WORK (I) Summary
Familiarity of Work confusing to true thoughts, our general attitude due to false concepts. Veblen’s theory. Theory of Hebrew religion. Occasional dim perception of value of work. Effect of ego concept and pay concept. Effect of organic concept. Effect of Want Theory. Main thesis of author on Work. Physical organic action. Heart, as illustration. Social organic action. Individual consciousness no obstacle. Social circulation. Men not self-supporting. Waste, parasitism, disease. Evolution of Work
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IX THE NATURE OF WORK (I)
IX THE NATURE OF WORK (I)
Work is the most prominent feature of human life. So large a majority of human beings spend most of their lives at work that the few diseased and defective members of society who do not need scarcely be considered. As usual, the prominence and constant insistence on the facts about work have prevented our thinking much about it, and, when we did think, our mistaken basic concepts made us think wrong. Our general attitude toward work varies somewhat in accordance with race, place, and time, but i
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X: THE NATURE OF WORK (II) Summary
X: THE NATURE OF WORK (II) Summary
Life a verb. Vegetable life processes, animal and social. Work is human life. A sick society. Transmission of energy, pleasure in collective sensation. Pleasure in specific function. Pain of malposition and mal-nutrition. Recapitulation. Work is making, not taking. Squaw and hunter. Maternal energy. Bee. The motherised male. Short circuit of individual action. Production of food. Common defence. The social base and ensuing variation. Attendant evils. Personal consequences and social. Social trea
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X THE NATURE OF WORK (II)
X THE NATURE OF WORK (II)
Life is a verb, not a noun. Life is living, living is doing, life is that which is done by the organism. The living of a tree consists in the action of the roots in obtaining food; of the leaves in obtaining air; of the sap in circulating, distributing these goods; and in the processes of reproduction. The life of an animal is more complex. He has a somewhat similar internal mechanism; he breathes, circulates, and reproduces; but with him the fumbling root-tip has become a paw, a mouth, a whole
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XI: SPECIALISATION Summary
XI: SPECIALISATION Summary
Organisation means specialisation. Military organisation, trades-unions, and trusts. Guerilla bands in industrial organisation. Unspecialised primitive life, the higher the life-form the more specialisation. The “all-around” savage. Injury of our present specialisation under false conditions. Waste of energy. Man of thirty who died of old age. Canoe and steamer. Effect of errors. Normal conditions of specialisation: shorter hours, variety of work, wide education. Ownership in collective producti
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XI SPECIALISATION
XI SPECIALISATION
Human work being an organic process, it must of course specialise. Those who cry out against specialisation and seek to uphold a mythical “all-around man” are ignorant of the nature of social functions. The very first condition of organic life is division of labour, and as the organism develops the complexity of that division develops with it. The strength and efficiency of any organism depends not so much on its bulk and weight as on the prompt and perfect co-ordination of its parts. This is a
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XII: PRODUCTION Summary
XII: PRODUCTION Summary
Work is production and distribution. Joy of production. Transmission again. Pleasure in expression more than impression. Social stimulus. Arrested distribution. Increase in production. Shoes. Collective pride. “Owned” machinery. Effect of false concepts. George Eliot’s “Stradivarius.” Art recognised as world-service. The “Pot-boiler.” “Saving” and “serving” one’s country. Traitor and coward. Line of evolution in a productive industry. Effect of errors. “Duty to employer,” etc. Payment not the ri
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XII PRODUCTION
XII PRODUCTION
Work is in two main lines, Production and Distribution; to make something, or to hand it about, is human industry. To create is an intense satisfaction; to combine elements and produce new results, whether it be a bridge, a basket, or a loaf of bread—to make is in itself a joy. But so is it a joy to give something to somebody, whether at first-hand, or in a combination with many; to spread, to disseminate, to feel the current of human good flow through you; both functions are happy. The universe
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XIII: DISTRIBUTION Summary
XIII: DISTRIBUTION Summary
Distribution the field of most social disorders. Advantages of Distribution. Physical Avenues of Distribution. Mechanical means of Distribution. Social nourishment flowing around the world. Evils of local production and consumption. Social instincts developed by common interests. Love rests on service. International dependence means international peace. Long circuit, wide base, gives room for larger development. Present system of Distribution does not properly supply the world. Mysterious coagul
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XIII DISTRIBUTION
XIII DISTRIBUTION
When we come to the subject of Distribution, we are facing what may be called the main field of our social disorders. Under this head, and that of the next chapter, Consumption, come all questions of property rights, with the vast structures of the civil law ensuing; the whole money question—laboriously complex; the demands of the labour movement; the protests of the “leisure class”—we are on the great battlefield of modern thought. Let us approach it simply and naturally along the lines laid do
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XIV: CONSUMPTION (I) Summary
XIV: CONSUMPTION (I) Summary
Previous propositions. Alleged selfishness. Social instincts as natural as individual. Root error on Consumption shown in Heaven, Utopia, etc. Honour in acting. Contentment theory. Limit of happiness in getting, limited; in doing, unlimited. Pleasure in eating, result of idea. Effect of this concept on Society. Impression merely incentive to expression. Transmitters, not vats. Collecting mania. Nature of ownership. Right of property. Social relations psychic. Movable rights. Law of property righ
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XIV CONSUMPTION (I)
XIV CONSUMPTION (I)
We have laid down certain propositions in the preceding chapters, namely, that men are part of a great Social Organism; that as parts of it they are continually supplied with its stimulus and nourishment; that as parts of it so nourished and so stimulated, they must discharge the swelling current of social energy in social action, which is Work; and that the business of a conscious and intelligent Society is so to produce and distribute social wealth as to maintain and increase this flood of ene
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XV: CONSUMPTION (II) Summary
XV: CONSUMPTION (II) Summary
Resistance of false concepts to true. Spread of literature. Use of imagination. Hypothesis as to natural laws in consumption—free clothing—Veblen. An unnatural market. Commodity money a check to distribution and production. Real conditions. Enormous producing power of civilised man. Legitimate consumption. Truffles. Free transportation. Free provision reduces demand and increases productivity. Property rights and personal ownership. Evolution of ownership, ownership a psychic relation, a social
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XV CONSUMPTION (II)
XV CONSUMPTION (II)
Our minds are so thoroughly accustomed to thinking along false lines in economics that true and natural social processes, when described to them, seem but fantastic dreams. This is only according to the brain’s working habits; it takes time to change it, and we need much patience with ourselves and one another while changing. Fortunately for the age we live in, there has been so much change in so many lines that further progress is easy, compared to what it was a few centuries ago. Fortunately i
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XVI: OUR POSITION TO-DAY Summary
XVI: OUR POSITION TO-DAY Summary
Fact and delusion. American advantages and possibilities. Possible consciousness. Perverted Press. Falsely maintained position. Grade A and grade G. Soul paradoxes. Old Adam. Arbitrarily opposed “Leisure Class” and “Working Class.” Parasitism actual and potential. Dead matter in live body. Sour grapes. Charity an evil. Helplessness of rich man trying to establish right relation. Furnishing employment, i. e., furnishing payment. Unhealthy secretions resultant from over-consumption. Law of private
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XVI OUR POSITION TO-DAY
XVI OUR POSITION TO-DAY
The difference between our real position in social development, and that maintained in our minds, is very great. It is as if a strong, capable, rich man suffered from mania, had a delusion that he was a puny, feeble, evil-minded wretch, and acted like one. Could the delusion be removed, he would act like what he really was and be happy. Taking our own country as a type of social progress, what do we find to be its real conditions? In the first place, it has every material requisite for health an
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XVII: THE TRUE POSITION Summary
XVII: THE TRUE POSITION Summary
Duty of improvement for individual and race. Effect of Ego concept. Collective nature of Christianity—“‘our’ daily bread.” Unity of man. “Kingdom of Heaven.” First human duty to assume right functional relation to Society. Right social relation tends to develop all virtues, to eliminate all sins. Want Theory and theft corollary. Normal distribution prevents abnormal acquisition. Sins against property and person. Thieving produced by clot of wealth. Right organic relation. End of “the wolf,” of “
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XVII THE TRUE POSITION
XVII THE TRUE POSITION
To be—to re-be—and to be better, none can deny this order of duties; and the last is the highest. To become better as individuals has long been preached to us; to become better as a race is no unnatural proposition. Heretofore, the Ego concept ruling, we have supposed that this was only to be done by improving as many individuals as possible. And as individual conduct, ego-guided, consisted in each doing things for his own benefit, here and hereafter; our improvement has been somewhat hesitant a
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