Social hierarchy

“ The origin of these divisions we have found in the hard and fast walk which mark off social groups and classes within a group: like those between rich and poor, men and women, noble and baseborn, ruler and ruled. These barriers mean absence of fluent and free intercourse. This absence is equivalent to the setting up of different types of life-experience, each with isolated subject matter, aim, and standard of values. ”

“ These differences are of several kinds; but riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit being the principal distinctions by which men form an estimate of each other in society, I could prove that the harmony or conflict of these different forces is the surest indication of the good or bad constitution of a State. ”

“ By this method we discover, for example, as such forms, superiority and inferiority, the erection of hierarchies, competition, division of labor, imitation, representation, and countless other types of human socialization. Only after all their separate forms, from their most primitive to their most developed types, have been inductively determined and psychologically interpreted, can we gradually solve the riddle: “What is society in its essence?” For society is surely not a structure so unitary that a single exhaustive definition is possible. ”

“ It may be literally true, that the chief formation of a long-drawn social life is not the relation of authority and subordination between parts of the group, not the gradation of its members into classes, not the systems of sustaining, transporting or regulating organs, but certain ideals and standards, certain likes and dislikes, certain admirations and abhorrences become common to its members. Here then, I venture to suggest, is the ultimate test of association. The abiding of men in the same neighborhood without conflict is mere aggregation. ”

“ The doctrine further teaches that the most perfect union, harmony, peace, and good-fellowship are compatible with great diversity of character, rank, occupation, and office; that this diversity, indeed, renders the union and harmony all the more perfect when the different parts in the social body are duly adjusted, and one life pervades them all. It shows us that gradations of rank and character may exist without pride, disdain, or tyranny on the one hand, or envy, jealousy, or humiliation on the other ”

“ In a word, the new settlement of English life upon the basis of class government, the exclusion of the mass of the people from public affairs, the decay (if you will) of a lively public opinion, the presence of that hopeless disinherited class which now forms the majority of our industrial population; the organisation of the universities, of justice, of the legislature, of the executive, as parts of one social class ”

“ Along with the good which a society derives from this self-asserting and self-preserving action, by which each division and subdivision keeps itself strong enough for its functions, there goes, among other evils, this which we are considering—the aptness to contemplate all social actions in their bearings on class-interests, and the resulting inability to estimate rightly their effects on the society as a whole. ”

“ In its deepest aspect, consequently, the social problem is the problem of preventing such divisions from dissolving the society into which they enter—of keeping such a highly differentiated society fundamentally sound and whole. ”

“ In advanced and complex societies, however, each individual belongs to a number of groups—to a town, a factory, a school, a home, a political party, a fraternal order, a church. In complex societies these groups are united to form the whole social structure. The individual belongs to society, therefore, because he belongs to one or more of the groups composing society, and his membership in society is dependent upon his membership in a social group. ”

“ Unless the mass of citizens have sentiments and beliefs in something like harmony with the social organization in which they are incorporated, this organization cannot continue. These sentiments proper to each type of society will inevitably sway the sociological conclusions of its units. And, among other sentiments, this awe of embodied power will take a large share in doing this. ”

“ Your ancient feudal system of government has been but little improved upon today over its primitive status, for you still draw well-defined lines of class distinction between God's children—lines of demarcation based on wealth and natal origin. With your inhabitants, communal standing and social distinction is proportionate to the wealth of the possessor or to the wealth or social standing of ancestors. ”

“ Certainly in the civilizations with which we are most familiar, political and economic forces, the principles of necessity and availability have led to the formulation of an ideology that would justify and promote the interests of the social group which was controlling and directing the community or communities in which the civilization was maturing. ”

“ But, along with the progress of this tendency to unity, we perceive that society was constantly becoming more diversified in character, and its elements more distinctly defined. The institution of chivalry, the troubadours, and minnesingers had played their part. Besides those great political and social powers, the Church, the barons, the kings, and the free cities, new classes were rising in society, giving it greater complexity, and, by their diversified activities and needs, urging it forward to a more comprehensive and centralized organization. ”

“ The principle of balance is stated by Professor Ross as follows: “In the guidance of society each social element should share according to the intelligence and public spirit of its members and none should predominate.”XXIII-41 There has been in the past, and even now there is in all countries, a bitter struggle taking place between classes apparently on the basis that some one class should rule all the other classes. Society has suffered immeasurably in this way. ”

“ Indeed, the highest or ruling class nowhere appears to keep up its numbers without considerable recruitment from below. So society, as at present organized, is always dying off at the top, and proliferating at the bottom, of the social pyramid.
The disastrous consequences of this sort of social organization may easily be apprehended, with a little reflection. (1) All societies, even those whose social structure is most rigid, have need of ability, discover it, and reward it by social promotion. ”

“ In this condition, as we have pointed out, and which cannot be emphasized too much on account of its importance, holds good in most, if not all societies, known to us from history, societies in which the organic, institutional structure of centralization predominated over the freedom of individual activity and the critical independence of personality. ”

“ On the practical side, they were found to have their cause in the divisions of society into more or less rigidly marked-off classes and groups—in other words, in obstruction to full and flexible social interaction and intercourse. ”

“ In the next place its long-established custom, of bringing men into association in pursuit of knowledge, is one which peculiarly fits it to help workmen, whose strength lies in that power of association which has covered some districts of England with a network of institutions—industrial, social, political, and religious. ”

“ And thence would spring society, free association, hundreds of associations which would regulate social life; though at the same time they would remain variable, in fact often opposed and hostile to one another. ”

“ Who are they who are held to consider and solve all questions, and how did they fall under this duty?
So far as I can find out what the classes are who are respectively endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social problems, they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less fortunate or less successful in the struggle for existence. ”

“ As we move beyond civilization onto a more mature and more complicated culture level, we may have a workable system of social priorities, but does our oncoming stream of manpower have the interest, the imagination, the competence, the sense of social responsibility and the staying power necessary to arouse in a series of generations the will and determination to carry out social policy? ”

“ The early communities troubled themselves little about individual ownership, and what government they had was for the most part essentially democratic—as being merely a choice of leaders among blood-relations and social equals. ”

“ When such a standard of individual competence has been attained by a sufficient number of individuals and is applied to economic and social questions, some attempt at social reorganization is bound to be the result,—assuming, of course, the constructive relation already admitted between democracy and the social problem. ”

“ There are an infinite number of other hypotheses, and when I shall later on speak to you of the projects of social order which this much-abused middle-class Republic has nevertheless brought to success, I shall show you without difficulty that the social regime of to-day is not the social régime of twenty years ago, and that it is in truth founded upon absolutely different principles. ”

“ It furnishes the prescribed rule for dealing with the ordinary occasions of life, which is for the most part accepted without inquiry and applied without reflection. It furnishes the appropriate institution for providing for each class of social needs, for meeting common dangers, for satisfying social wants, for regulating social relations. It constitutes, in short, the framework of society's life which to each new generation is a part of its hereditary outfit. ”

“ The view of theoretic civics as concrete sociology, and of practical civics as applied sociology may be more simply expressed as the co-adjustment of social survey and social service, now becoming recognised as rational, indeed in many cities being begun. ”

“ Now we are all members of societies by the dozen, and society is constantly acquiring the art of forming associations for any purpose, temporary or permanent, which imply no deep structural division, and unite people of all classes and positions. As the profounder lines are obliterated, the tendency to form separate castes, defended by personal privileges, and holding themselves apart from other classes, rapidly diminishes; and the corresponding prejudices are in process of diminution. But I can only hint at this principle. ”

“ We turn to some of the normal uses of this form of social organization, and mention first the satisfaction of transitory wants of society or the needs of a local group or of a limited class. Differentiation carries with it variation of tastes. We must expect with higher civilization a growing unlikeness of aptitudes and inclinations. People who like the same things drift together. ”

“ But human societies, although providing for the expression of original tendencies, are organized about tradition, mores, collective representations, in short, consensus. And consensus represents, not biological adaptations, but social accommodations.
Social organization, with the exception of the order based on competition and adaptation, is essentially an accommodation of differences through conflicts. ”

“ The institutions of existing states would come into comparison with the institutions of the Ideal State, their failures and defects would be criticised most effectually in that relation, and the whole science of collective psychology, the psychology of human association, would be brought to bear upon the question of the practicability of this proposed ideal. ”

“ Moreover, however distant the final consummation may be, there are, I think, many indications of an approximation. Nothing is more characteristic of modern society than the enormous development of the power of association for particular purposes. In former days a society had to form an independent organ, a corporation, a college, and so forth, to discharge any particular function, and the resulting organ was so distinct as to absorb the whole life of its members. ”

“ The whole institutional fabric was the outgrowth of the group of ideas and habits that belong to a state of society ignorant of and incapable of imagining any other form of organization than the clan held together by the tie of a common maternal ancestry. ”

“ When, therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and another as bad—one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. ”

“ A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige and power. ”

“ While, however, those successive compromises, which, during social evolution, have to be made between the changed natures of citizens and the institutions evolved by ancestral citizens, imply disagreements, yet these are but partial and temporary—in those societies, at least, which are developing and not in course of dissolution. For a society to hold together, the institutions that are needed and the conceptions that are generally current must be in tolerable harmony. ”