Special interest group

“ Moreover there are public interests, or claims which the organized political society may make, and social interests, or claims of society at large. Ultimately all interests, individual and public, are secured and maintained because of a social interest in so doing. But this does not mean that individual interests, the details of which the nineteenth century worked out so well, are to be ignored. ”

“ Yet special phases of thought are not really independent, but are to be looked upon as the work of the public mind acting with a less general consciousness—partly automatic like the action of the legs in walking. They are still responsible to the general state of opinion; and it is usually a general need of the special product, as shoes, banks, education, medical aid and so on, that gives the special group its pecuniary support and social standing. ”

“ If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like those of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of all the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that every social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance with its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical basis of life and the essential condition of all other development. ”

“ Employers and employees meet in conference. Watch those conferences. The difference of interest is not always the whole difficulty; there is also the difference of standard. Capitalist ethics and workman ethics are often opposed. We must accept le droit as a social product, as a group product, but we must have groups which will unify interests and standards. Law and politics can be founded on nothing but vital modes of association. ”

“ The reciprocity of interests, represents that rudimentary form of morality in which interests enter only into an external relation, through which they secure an exchange of benefits without abandoning their independence. In the incorporation of interests, elementary interests are unified through a purpose which subordinates and regulates them. The fraternity of interests, is that organization in which the rational or personal unit of interest is recognized as final, and respected wherever it is met. ”

“ When the great modern states took form and assumed control of societal interests, group sentiment was produced in connection with those states. Men responded willingly to a demand for support and help from an institution which could and did serve interests. ”

“ The type of government pleaded for in these pages is one which assumes that no special interest shall have precedence over the good of the social whole, and which requires that every separate interest shall be subordinated to and co-ordinated into a general scheme of social welfare. ”

“ In any event, it is obvious that the development in this country of two such powerful and unscrupulous and well-organized special interests has created a condition which the founders of the Republic never anticipated, and which demands as a counterpoise a more effective body of national opinion, and a more powerful organization of the national interest. ”

“ Chapter XXVI. Social Organization For Consumption. Individualism.—While the social organization is necessarily thought of as a group of individuals, whose individual wants and plans and growth and character must be the chief incentive for action, it is necessary to avoid the extreme of individualism. In escaping from the false analogy implied in considering society an organism, there is a tendency to make the individual not only of final importance but independent of association. Excess of competition is represented in the maxim, “Every man for himself.” ”

“ Again, partly by choice and partly by environment, we find society drawn together in other groups, more or less influenced by those just enumerated. From the earliest forms of social existence we find men are grouped together on the basis of wealth. The interests of the rich are common, as are also the {453} interests of the poor and those of the well-to-do. Nor is it alone a matter of interest, but in part of choice, that these groupings occur. This community of interests brings about social coherence. ”

“ With continued advance in the industrial arts the circumstances conditioning life will undergo a progressive change of such a character that the joint interest of the group at large, in the material respect, will progressively be less closely bound up with the material fortunes of any particular member or members; until in the course of time and change there will, in effect, in ordinary times be no general and inclusive community of material interest binding the members together in a common fortune and working for a common livelihood. ”

“ A common interest unites, and a separate interest disunites the members of every society; and did not the first preponderate among mankind, there would be no society at all. Those of the same nation may have a common interest relative to foreigners, and a separate interest relative to one another ”

“ The virile democrat in pursuing his own interest "under the law" is contributing effectively to the interest of society, while the social interest consists precisely in the promotion of these individual interests, in so far as they can be equally exercised. ”

“ The "common rule" has come into operation only where the ground has been prepared for it, where there has been a growth of group consciousness and unity. Under such conditions its use and observance mould individual ambitions and actions in some measure. It is a device which attaches the individual to the group, and interests the individual in the group advancement more than he otherwise would be. ”

“ The exigencies of life render it necessary that the different elements and forms of society should coöperate together for common interests. They strengthen the desire for social order, they quicken the spirit of organization. ”

“ The coherence of national, political, or religious groups depends primarily on the extent to which the gregarious instinct may be aroused. Allegiance to a group may, of course, be secured through participation in common ideals. This is illustrated in the case of the numerous literary and scientific associations that cut across national boundaries and knit into groups similarly interested persons all over the world. Groups may, again, be formed through common economic interests, as in the case of labor unions, or employers' associations. ”

“ Each Common interest was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it as a higher Collective interest, wrested from the individual activity of the members of society, and turned into a subject for governmental administration, from the bridges, the school house and the communal property of a village community, up to the railroads, the national wealth and the national University of France. ”

“ If public opinion is to be really effective, it will be necessary to have some method of dividing the community into small groups, and to allow each group to consume only the equivalent of what it produces. This will make the economic motive operative upon the group, which, since we are supposing it small, will feel that its collective share is appreciably diminished by each idle individual. ”

“ That the members should engage to afford their advice, assistance, and support to each other in promoting one another's interest, business, and advancement in life: that, for distinction, we should be called The Society of the Free and Easy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But whether we are explaining economic or political or ethical laws, we immediately proceed to bring a second man into friendly contact with the first so as to create barter, a market, subdivision of labour, an alliance, mutual interest, for one or other of these things is the driving wheel of progressive change. ”

“ Members have the duty to participate in social, economic, and cultural activities, particularly in the direction of the economic enterprises, and to critically examine production and community life in the light of party ideology and goals. ”

“ Grave inequalities of power and deep-lying differences of purpose have developed in relation of the several primary American activities. The millionaire, the "Boss," the union laborer, and the lawyer, have all taken advantage of the loose American political organization to promote somewhat unscrupulously their own interests, and to obtain special sources of power and profit at the expense of a wholesome national balance. But the foregoing examples of specialized organization and purposes do not stand alone. ”

“ He is at the same time the highest example of the communal animal. Mutual aid, organization into strictly rounded communities, labor for the good of the whole, is as declared in him as in the most developed community of the ants, and we admire the work of the latter simply because they repeat at a lower level the work of man. In truth, in man we have a splendid example of the existence of the individual initiative in connection with the communal organization. Specialism exists in a hundred forms. ”

“ Enlarge the spheres where the first civic attachments are formed; and let the community interest, so close to the individual interest, so flexible under the influence of men on credit, when its means are weak and its object too limited, come closer to the public spirit by acquiring more power and elevation. ”

“ History bears witness to the success with which large bodies of human beings may be trained to feel the public interest their own. And no soil could be more favourable to the growth of such a feeling, than a Communist association, since all the ambition, and the bodily and mental activity, which are now exerted in the pursuit of separate and self-regarding interests, would require another sphere of employment, and would naturally find it in the pursuit of the general benefit of the community. ”

“ It is essential to democracy that any group of citizens whose interests or desires separate them at all widely from the rest of the community should be free to decide their internal affairs for themselves. And what is true of national or local groups is equally true of economic groups, such as miners or railway men. ”

“ That the members should be influenced to interest themselves to their own welfare, and that of the public, by the love of doing good, rather than by the hope of gain, in order to take off from the esteem of the people all suspicions of interest in the persons of their representatives. ”

“ All that he says of relation implies that we must seek and bring into use those modes of association which will reveal true interests, actual interests, yet not particularist interests but the interests discovered through group relations—employer and employed, master and servant, landlord and tenant, etc. But, and this is of great importance, these groups must be made into genuine groups. If law is to be a group-product, we must see that our groups are real groups, we must find the true principle of association. ”

“ It will thus be easily realised how those persons who own Capital which they leave others to employ, and which personally they have had no hand in making, are for the most part relatives or representatives of the very persons who made it, and who made it actuated by the hope that their relations or representatives should succeed to it. ◆4 All history shows us that one of the most important and unalterable factors in human action is a certain solidarity of interest between men—even selfish men—and those nearly connected with them ”

“ To define the really democratic organization as one which makes expressly and intentionally for individual distinction and social improvement is nothing more than a translation of the statement that such an organization should make expressly and intentionally for the welfare of the whole people. The whole people will always consist of individuals, constituting small classes, who demand special opportunities, and the mass of the population who demand for their improvement more generalized opportunities. ”

“ The fulfilment of a simple isolated interest is good, but only the fulfilment of an organization of interests is morally good. Such goodness appears in the realization of an individual's systematic purpose or in the well-being of a community. ”

“ Self-managing communities of interest may also be formed on such foundations in other fields in which through the pooling of resources into joint funds specific common interests will be realized on the principles of reciprocity and solidarity. ”

“ The custom-association (Zollverein) became an idol of satisfied national vanity, and of cheerful hopes; science and art were growing fast; speculative researches of political economy met an open field in social life; men conscious of higher aims wandered afar into new homes, despairing to find a field of action in their native land. Material improvement was the ruling word, and the lofty spirit of freedom was blighted by the contact of small interests. ”

“ Thus, in order to maintain its integrity, a group with a predominant middle class needs a policy quite different from that of a group under aristocratic leadership, or one entirely without class divisions. ”

“ But if public spirit, generous sentiments, or true justice and equality are desired, association, not isolation, of interests, is the school in which these excellences are nurtured. The aim of improvement should be not solely to place human beings in a condition in which they will be able to do without one another, but to enable them to work with or for one another in relations not involving dependence. ”