Disorganization

“ The disorganization of political society which we see at work through the International and the Commune; the disorganization of moral society which we behold every day increasing through the ease with which the marriage-tie is dissolved, and the hold the state is claiming on children and even infants; the disorganization of religious society which we find in the ever-multiplying feuds of sects, like gangrene gradually eating away an unsound body ”

“ It is evident, as Proudhon has already pointed out, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labour. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people. ”

“ Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we call the disorganized condition of society: how ill many forces of society fulfil their work; how many powerful are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other disorganizations;—a sort of heart, from which, and to which all other confusion circulates in the world! ”

“ When the general is weak and without authority; when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixes duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter disorganization. ”

“ The disorganization which results from arbitrary laws, from habitual violation of laws, from corruption and injustice works like a poison on the psychophysical system. A similar unbalancing influence emanates from overstrong contrasts of poverty and comfort. ”

“ Of course, everything in this world tends to become organized. Eventually even those who believe in no organization at all must form a Society for the Promotion of Disorganization, if they wish to accomplish anything. And the medieval heretics, who loved the mysterious and wallowed in emotions, were no exception to this rule. ”

“ The real opposite of both formalism and disorder is that wholesome relation between individuality and the institution in which each supports the other, the latter contributing a stable basis for the vitality and variation of the former.
From one point of view disorganization is a lack of communication and social consciousness, a defect in the organ of language, as formalism is an excess. There is always, I suppose, a larger whole; the question is whether the individual thinks and feels it vividly through some sort of sympathetic contact ”

“ That the expected return of a time like that, in which gaunt figures and haggard faces about the towns and the country indicated the social disorganization, should excite men to a blind fury, was not unnatural. ”

“ Aside from these problems, localized in character, though world-wide in their distribution, there are a number of other problems of a world character which also are factors in the disorganization of economic life. ”

“ Who with any good-will and reflection will not see how much the want of coherence—the disorder, the want of combination, the parcelling out of labor and leaving it wholly to individual action without any organization, without any [47] large or general views—are causes which limit the possibilities of production, and destroy, or at least waste, our means of action? Does not disorder give birth to poverty, as order and good management give birth to riches? Is not want of combination a source of weakness, as combination is a source of strength? ”

“ And as an ally of established power we have to reckon with the inertia of social structure, something so massive and profound that the loudest agitation is no more than a breeze ruffling the surface of deep waters. Dominated by the habits which it has generated, we all of us, even the agitators, uphold the existing order without knowing it. There may, of course, be sudden changes due to the fall of what has long been rotten, but I see little cause to suppose that the timbers of our system are in this condition: they are rough and unlovely, but far from weak. ”

“ Such phenomena are already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of every special service and the descent of power into the hands of a numerical majority.—What plan, then, governs these societies in the way of reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type, what are the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? ”

“ We are in a society, where classes and groups face each other in a destructive way. They disorganise one another, precisely because each such group seeks to organise the world and humanity for themselves in their own way. This is the result of isolation in which social forces are organised separately - they do not reach a point of unity with a shared simplified organisation. This is the struggle of organisational forms.
So, the conclusion is confirmed: all the interests of mankind are organizational. ”

“ The strenuous organizing forms which appear to be the real constructors of society, or to construct society as such, must be continually disturbed, unbalanced, and detached by individualistic and irregular forces, in order that their reaction and development may gain vitality by alternate concession and resistance. ”

“ Complete disorganisation, in short, existed throughout the whole fabric of society; and no common principle of action could be found as a permanent bond in uniting the members of any great party together. ”

“ At a certain stage of development it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organization fetters them and keeps them down. ”

“ When the Government had assumed more form and regularity with increased proportions and the conviction, forced upon the most obtuse mind, that a struggle was at hand demanding most perfect organization, the looseness of a divided system had become apparent. ”

“ These fragmentations begin in the personality and extend through the entire social structure--from the individual, through the family, such voluntary associations as the sports club, the trade union, the merchants' association, the educational system, the political party, the municipal or the national government.
Unrestrained and undirected social fragmentation leads to conflict, destruction, perhaps to chaos. Success in politics rests on an understanding of the chaos and its causes and an integration of conflicting forces behind specific programs and around charismatic personalities. ”

“ Beset on every side by the cumulative evidences of disintegration, of turmoil and of bankruptcy, serious-minded men and women, in almost every walk of life, are beginning to doubt whether society, as it is now organized, can, through its unaided efforts, extricate itself from the slough into which it is steadily sinking. Every system, short of the unification of the human race, has been tried, repeatedly tried, and been found wanting. ”

“ The oscillations—that is, the political agitations which result from this struggle of labor against power—now lead to a depression of the central force, which compromises the very existence of society; now, exaggerating this same force beyond measure, give birth to despotism. ”

“ When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. ”

“ And step by step the lines of organization, once so precise, disappear. Similarly with social changes of an abnormal kind. A political outbreak rising finally to a rebellion, tends from the very first to obliterate the specializations, governmental and industrial, which previously existed. The disaffection which originates such an outbreak, itself implies a loosening of those ties by which the citizens are bound up into distinct classes and sub-classes. Agitation, growing into revolutionary meetings, 178shows us a decided tendency towards the fusion of ranks that are usually separated. ”

“ Anything which serves to impress ordinary minds with a sense of social equilibrium—to give them an object lesson in the substitution of leadership for anarchy—must be of immense value. Here was a community falling into wreck, cut loose from the orderly system of things, old duties and obligations forgotten, only hungry rights insisted upon. ”

“ Reorganization then may begin by the voluntary association of groups of such persons as are thoroughly in accord; these groups may form larger societies for certain special purposes of work or enjoyment; and these societies may agree with other such for still more special aims, and so on till all mankind is voluntarily organized. And since men are changeable in their ideas, purposes and whims, each of the group societies and their connections may dissolve and differently reorganize themselves, as often as they see fit, without ever applying constraint upon one another. ”

“ And when at last there comes positive insurrection, all magisterial and official powers, all class distinctions, and all industrial differences, at once cease: organized society lapses into an unorganized aggregation of social units. How the like holds true of such social disasters as are entailed by famine, needs not be pointed out. ”

“ But as these have been raised artificially, so their end is inevitably, dissolution. Society passes on, and guilds and corporations die; principles are established, and leagues become dissolved; tastes change, and then the association or society breaks up and comes to nothing. ”

“ It would be constantly displaced and shifted by the movement of all sorts of social forces—by changes of fashion, by abundance or scarcity of crops, by alterations in the technique of industry and by the cohesion or the slackening of the organization of any group of workers. But the balanced forces once displaced would be seen constantly to come to an equilibrium at a new point. ”

“ Or when a dearth causes commercial panic with its entailed bankruptcies, closed factories, discharged operatives, political agitations, food riots, incendiarisms; it is manifest that as, throughout the rest of society, there still exists the ordinary organization displaying the usual phenomena, these new phenomena must be regarded as adding to the complexity previously existing. Nevertheless, it is clear that such changes so far from constituting a further stage of evolution, are steps towards dissolution. ”

“ You say you want a just organization of life, but in fact you can exist only under an irregular, unjust organization. Should a really just organization be established, with no place for those who live on the labour of others, you all—landlords, merchants, doctors, professors, and lawyers, as well as factory-hands, manufacturers, workshop-owners, engineers, teachers and producers of cannons, tobacco, spirits, looking-glasses, velvet, etc., together with the members of the Government — would starve to death. ”

“ Its own practice is to foster the communication and coherence of these struggles. At the revolutionary moment when social separations are dissolved, the organization must dissolve itself as a separate organization. ”

“ In short, society must be reorganized, and a capable management put at the head. That the present management is incapable, there can be no discussion. It has drained the United Kingdom of its life-blood. ”

“ But organized injustice would disappear from our industrial organization; and with injustice would disappear dangerous, because reasonable, discontent, and the division into the two classes of the very rich and the very poor. Society would still exist in grades, but no longer in castes ”

“ Not an organization of any kind—political, religious, literary, philanthropic—but what, by its ever-multiplying regulations, its accumulating wealth, its yearly addition of officers, and the creeping into it of patronage and party feeling, eventually loses its original spirit, and sinks into a mere lifeless mechanism, worked with a view to private ends—a mechanism which not merely fails of its first purpose, but is a positive hindrance to it. ”

“ The pretensions of organisers suggest another question, which I have often asked them, and to which I am not aware that I ever received an answer:--Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organisers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race? Do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind? They say that society, when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction, because its instincts are perverse. ”

“ Every social organization is liable to misdirection, and this, among others, has been perverted to the furtherance of selfish and unprincipled purposes; for, like prejudices and habits of thought, organized institutions frequently survive the necessities which call them into existence. ”

“ Disorganized Labor cannot subdue the earth, hampered as it is by waste, by loss, by repulsive and dangerous tasks, by fruitless toil, by class hostilities, by warring communities, by the monopoly of gains, and by the thousand penalties incurred by disorderly opposition to Law. ”

“ Development of the militant type involves increasing rigidity, since the cohesion, the combination, the subordination, and the regulation, to which the units of a society are subjected by it, inevitably decrease their ability to change their social positions, their occupations, their localities. ”

“ All attempted organizations and systems and consistencies, some approximating far higher than others, but all only intermediate to Order and Disorder, fail eventually because of their relations with outside forces. ”