No More Learning

Self-government, the benefit of which is established, indeed simply hides the danger of local parliaments in which egoistic class interests dominate. The cor- relation changes into that, so to speak, pathological exaggeration that has the gain of freedom accompanied by the gain of domination, as though by its completion and its contents.
From an altogether different angle, the type in question here--the further development of the group's and many comparable groups' liberation needing no subordination of others--is transformed into the striving or winning of domination--when we observe the differentiation that tends to come over a lower stratum during its climb to freeer or generally better living conditions. The result thereof is very often just that certain parts of a group similarly striving for the top really get to the top, which means, however, only that they become one part of the already previously dominant layers and the remaining others remain among the dominated. Of course this is especially the case where there already exists a separation of the dominant and the subordinate inside the upward-climbing stratum; then, after the rebellion against the com-
domination and subordination 207
? mon upper-level is ended, while in the background during the movement a distinction among the rebels immediately emerges again and makes it so that the previous occupants of the highest level are assimilated to this highest sector while the latter's heretofore comrades-in-arms become pressed down that much deeper. Something of this type was carried out by a part of the English labor revolution of 1830. The workers formed, in order to win the right to vote for parliament, a union with the reform party and the middle classes; the result was the passing of a law that endowed all classes with the right to vote--not only the workers. By the same formula, around the fourth century before Christ, the estates struggle in Rome had played out. The wealthy plebeians, who desired conubium36 and a more democratic filling of offices in the interests of their class, concluded an alliance with the middle class and the lower classes. The outcome of the whole movement was that those points of their program that pertained mainly to the upper classes were attained; the reforms that were supposed to lift up the middle class and the small farmers, however, soon came to nothing. And the Bohemian Revolution of 1848 went in the same manner, where the farmers eliminated the final remnants of legal villeinage. As soon as this had been attained, the differences that before and during the revolution had been rejected on grounds of the common subjugation were immediately in force in the situation of the farmers. The lower classes of the rural population demanded a division of the communal property. In the affluent farmers this awoke immediately all their conservative instincts, and they resisted the demands of the rural proletariat, in alliance with whom they had defeated the lords, in the same way as the lords had resisted theirs. It is an entirely typical occurrence: that the stronger, who indeed may have perhaps done the most, would then like to inherit the fruits of victory alone; the relatively prevalent contribution to the winning grows into the claim to absolutely prevailing contribution to the winnings. For its realization, this schema is greatly aided sociologically by what was already emphasized: that a rank-like stratification, in the widest sense, is present, and out of the lower stratum, risen as a whole, the stronger elements in it win attachment to the higher, heretofore com- bated stratum. Thereby the heretofore relative difference between the better and the worse placed elements of that stratum comes to be, as it were, absolute; the quantum of acquired advantages has among the
36 Latin: conubium, right to intermarry; Simmel gives it as das Connubium--ed.
? 208 chapter three
? former reached the threshold at which it turns into a new qualitative advantage. In a formally similar sense this occurred incidentally in Spanish America, whenever among its people of color an especially capable head showed up, who either inaugurated or inspired fear of a freer and better position for one's race. To such a person the patent was granted, "that he should count for white. " In that such a leader was assimilated to the ruling stratum, attained an equality at that level that eventually would have been able to be won for the leader and the leader's own race, the leader now had a superiority over the members of that race. Sensitive to this sociological type, for example, worker-friendly politicians in Austria have raised misgivings about the workers' committees, by which, though, the oppression of the workers is to be alleviated. They feared that these committees could lead to a worker aristocracy that would thereby be more easily drawn closer to the positions advantageous to the interests of the employer, and that the rest of the work force would thus pay a greater price. Thus what in general is the chance of the best workers in their class to advance, what at first glance appears to be documentary certainty of progress for the working class as a whole, in reality, however, is in no way favor- able for it. Since it is thereby robbed of its best and leading elements, the absolute rise of certain members is at the same time a relative rise over their class and, with that, a separation from it, a regular bleeding that robs it of its best blood. For that reason it is from the beginning advantageous to an elite, against which a mass of people is outraged, if they can get them to elect representatives who will lead the negotia- tions. In that way in every case the overpowering, overflowing onslaught of the mass as such is broken; it is first of all kept in check by their own leaders in such a way now that it is no longer done by the elite itself; these leaders exercise the formal function of the authorities over against the mass and thereby prepare the re-entry of the latter into the regimented.
In all this, from the most varied angles towards the unfolding phe- nomena, there remains always a constant sociological kernel: that the striving and winning of freedom, with its multiple negative and positive meanings, has at the same time the striving and winning of domina- tion as a corollary or consequence. Socialism as well as anarchism will deny the necessity of this connection. While the dynamic balance of the individuals that one can identify as social freedom appeared here as simply the point of entry--of a real or even only imaginary char- acter--from which the scale immediately again tipped towards one
domination and subordination 209
? side, they will declare its stabilization as possible just as soon as the social organization is no longer fashioned overall as domination and subordination, but as a coordination of all elements. The grounds that one tends to offer against this possibility, which, however, are not under discussion here, are to be joined together as that of the terminus a quo and that of the terminus ad quem:37 the natural differentiation of persons, not eliminated through any kind of discipline, is not to be permitted expression in a ranking towards above and below, towards commanding and obeying; and the technology of skilled work does require for its greatest completion a hierarchical structure of society, the "one spirit for a thousand hands," the structure made up of commanding and working. The constitution of the subjects and the claims of objective accomplishment, the carriers of work and the fulfillment of their goals, come together in the necessity of domination and subordination, so that causality and teleology consistently press for this form; precisely that would be its most distinctive and decisive justification and absolute necessity. There appears historically, nevertheless, sporadic attempts at a social form whose principal fulfillment could unite the ongoing real- ity of domination and subordination with the values of freedom, in order to abolish the former by introducing socialism and anarchism. The motive for this effort lies, though, exclusively in the feeling state of the subjects, in the consciousness of degradation and oppression, in the drawing of the whole 'I' into the lowness of the social level; and on the other hand in the personal arrogance, to which the externally leading position raises self-esteem. If any kind of organization of society could avoid these psychological consequences of social inequality, they would stay that way without further ado. One overlooks frequently the purely technical character of socialism: that it is a means to the cause of certain subjective reactions, that its final authority lies in the people and the attitude towards life being evoked by it. Indeed, as it is simply our mental construct, the means has become fully the goal; the rational organization of society and the abolition of command and subjugation appear as not worth talking about, not even as the value that calls for the realization of that personal-eudaemonistic outcome. However, in this, then, lies the actual psychological power that socialism has introduced into the movement of history. As mere means, however, it underlies the fate of every means: in principle never to be only that; since multiple
37 Latin: terminus a quo, starting point; terminus ad quem, destination--ed.
? 210 chapter three
? causes can have the same effect, it is thus never out of the question that the same goal can be accomplished through various means. Socialism, in so far as its establishment is meant to be dependent on the will of the people, is only the first proposal for the elimination of that lack of eudaemonistic fulfillment originating from historical inequality, and because it is so closely associated with the requirement for the removal of that lack, it appears tied to that removal. There is, however, no logical reason to tie the definitively crucial feeling of worth and even the good life exclusively to socialism, when it would be possible to dissolve the corresponding association between the domination and subordination on the one hand and the feeling of personal devaluation and subju- gation on the other. Perhaps this creates an increase of psychological independence of individuals' feelings about life from external activity overall and the position that the individual accepts inside its sphere. It leads one to suspect that whenever the activity of production increas- ingly becomes merely technological in the current of culture, it loses its consequences for the inwardness and personality of the person more completely. Actually we find the approximation of this separation as the sociological type of many developments. While personality and ability are originally closely affiliated, now, however, the division of labor and the production of products for the market, that is, for a wholly unknown and indifferent consuming public, cause the personality to withdraw ever more from achievement and from itself. Now the required obedi- ence may still be so absolute--it is no longer of any consequence for the level of attitude towards life or sense of self, because it is only a technical necessity, a form of organization that likewise remains in the confined realm of externality as manual work itself. This differentia- tion of the objective and the subjective elements of life, by which the subordination remains preserved in its technical-organizational worth but abandons its personal and internally depressing and class-reduc- ing consequences--is obviously no panacea for similar difficulties and suffering that commanding-and-obeying brings with it in all realms; it is in this area only the expression in principle of a very partially effec- tive tendency that in reality never comes to an unambiguous and final accomplishment. One of the purest examples is offered by the voluntary service of the today's military. The spirited and socially elevated man may here subject himself to the sergeant, indeed tolerate treatment that, if it were really a matter of his self and his honor, would drive him to the most desperate reactions. But the consciousness that he has to
domination and subordination 211
? yield not at all as an individual personality but only as an impersonal member of an objective procedure requiring such discipline does not let it come to a feeling of debasement and oppression--at least in most cases. Inside the economy it is especially the transition from manual labor to machine labor and natural compensation to wages that this objectification of domination and subordination favored, over against the worker solidarity in which the oversight and command of the master extended over all relationships of the members and entirely over the prerogatives of the purely work relationship.
The same developmental goal could be served by a further impor- tant type of sociological formation. Proudhon, as is generally known, wants to abolish all domination and subordination, in that he wants to dissolve those governing structures that have been differentiated out of the interaction of individuals as bearers of social powers, and re-ground all order and all cohesion on the unmediated interaction among free, coordinated individuals. But now this coordination is to be achieved perhaps by a continuity of domination and subordination when precisely it alternates: an ideal constitution, in which A is superior to B in a rela- tionship or in a time, but in another relationship or another time B is superior to A. The organizational value of domination and subordina- tion would thereby be conceded while its oppression, one-sidedness, and injustice would be abolished. There are now actually extraordinarily many occurrences of living societies in which this type of form has been actualized, albeit if only in a more embryonically, garbled, and disguised manner. An example within a narrow framework is perhaps an association of production workers in a company for which they elect a master craftsman and foreman. While they are subordinate to the one chosen in the work of the enterprise, they are dominant with regard to its general direction and results. While all groups in which the leader changes--either through election more commonly, or according to regular rotation, from the presidency down to the social club--carry forward this combination of domination and subordination from the simultaneous form into the chronological alternation, they win the tech- nical advantages of domination and subordination while avoiding their personal disadvantages. All the various democracies seek to accomplish this through the limited terms of their officials. Through this the ideal is realized that everyone gets the greatest possibility for a turn at some time; hence also the frequent prevention of re-election. The concur- rent domination and subordination is one of the most powerful forms
212 chapter three
? of social interaction and can form, with proper distribution across the diversity of fields, a very strong bond between individuals through the close interaction that it represents.
Stirner38 sees the essence of constitutionalism in this: "The ministers dominate over their masters, the princes, the deputies over their mas- ters, the people. " And yet in a deeper sense parliamentary government contains this form of correlation. If modern jurisprudence apportions all legal relationships into such an order of equality and of domination and subordination, so, too, must many of the earliest such by alternative forms of domination and subordination. The order of equality between two citizens may exist in neither possessing a prerogative over the other. While each, however, chooses a representative, and this representative has a say over laws that are in force also for the other, a relationship of alternating domination and subordination ensues, and indeed as an expression of the coordination. This form is generally of decisive importance for constitutional questions, as Aristotle already recognized when he distinguished between the portion of governmental power according to law, from the portion of governmental power according to administration. By a citizen, in contrast to a non-citizen, being a bearer of state power, it is still not said that the citizen does not belong somewhat inside the organization merely and permanently belongs to those who simply obey. Whoever may be numbered among the ? ? ? ? ? ? , those possessing fitness for military service, can belong, with regard to exercising governmental power, along with those of lesser fitness, to the ? ? ? ? ? ; while somewhat fewer people of higher valuation are eli- gible to hold office, those of lower valuation, however, are authorized merely to participate in the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . 39 A state oriented towards the first relationship turned out to be possibly an ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , towards the second, under some circumstances, a democracy. 40 The official here is subordinate to the government in general, whose bearers in the practi- cal organization are in turn subordinate to the official. One has both refined and generally given expression to this relationship in that the people as object of the empire were in contrast with the individual as a member coordinated with all the others: the individual is to be in that respect an object of duty in this corporate body. And certainly
38 Max Stirner (Caspar Schmidt, 1806-56), author of The Ego and His Own--ed.
39 Greek: ? ? ? ? ? ? (oligoi), few; ? ? ? ? ? (demos), people; ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (ekklesia), assem- bly--ed.
40 Greek: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (oligarchia), oligarchy--ed.
? domination and subordination 213
? this differentiation and likewise the unification of the group's life, still effected through the interchangeability of domination and subordina- tion, increase when one makes note of certain contents to which this form corresponds. One has lifted up as the strength of democracy--with full consciousness of the paradox thereof--that all are servants in the things in which they possess the most precise know-how, namely in the vocation where they must obey the wishes of consumers, the directives of business owners and managers or other contractors--while they, in the general political interests of the whole, are with command, by which they have no unique relationship of their own but that along with all others. Where the highest authority is at the same time competent, then the absolute subjugation of the lower ranks may be quite unavoidable; and if in a democracy the respective numerical majority possesses this concentration of knowledge and power, it would exercise tyranny no less dangerously than an autocracy. In order to not let it come to this split between those above and those below, but to preserve a unity of the whole, it would require this singular interlacing by which the highest power would be close to those who would be subordinate with respect to expertise! Nothing less than the design of the state would rest on the complicity of alternating dominations and subordinations between the same powers, which is what the parliamentary and church constitutions converged on after the Glorious Revolution in England. The clergy had a deep animosity towards the parliamentary regime and above all towards the prerogative that the regime demanded vis-a`-vis the clergy. The peace agreement took place--with regard to the main points--thusly with the church maintaining a special jurisdic- tion over marriage and wills and its sanctions against Catholics and non-churchgoers. Therefore it forgot about its teaching of irrevocable 'obedience' and recognized that the divine order of the world had place for a parliamentary order, to whose particular provisions even the clergy would be subservient. In turn, however, the church dominated parliament, in that an oath of entry was demanded which, without question, only members of the established church were permitted to affirm, absolutely no one of another faith--bluntly Dissenters. The reigning spiritual and earthly classes were interwoven in such a way that the archbishops maintained their place in the upper house over the dukes, the bishops over the lords, while all the pastors were subject to the patronage of the earthly ruling class. Thereby the local spiritual matters were again relinquished to the control of the parishes. This was the form of interaction that the otherwise clashing power factions
214 chapter three
? could achieve, thereby generally bringing about the state church of the 18th century and a unified organization of English life. Even the marital relationship owes its inner and outer stability and unity at least in part to the fact that it involves a large number of fields of interest, and in some of them, one party is dominant, in others the other party. Thereby emerges a mutual growth, a unity and at the same time certainly an internal vitality of the relationship, such as is hardly attainable by any other sociological form. What is identified as the 'equality' of husband and wife in marriage--as fact or as pious wish--will arguably turn out to be in large part such an alternating domination and subordination. At any rate there thereby emerges, especially when one notices the thousand subtle relations of everyday life, not comprehensible in principle, a more organic relationship than would a mechanical equality in the immediate sense; that alternation inherently implies that the respective domination would not appear as brutish command. This form of relationship formed even one of the firmest bonds for the army of Cromwell. The same soldier who blindly obeyed superiors in military circumstances often served during worship services as the sermonizer before these superiors; a corporal could lead the prayer in which the captain along with the rest of the congregation participated; the army that followed its comanders with- out question, when once a political purpose had been accepted, had thus for its part made prior political decisions that the commanders had to submit to. By this reciprocal alternation of domination and subordination the Puritan army maintained, as long as it existed, an extraordinary solidarity and stability.
Now this advantageous success of the form of social interaction under consideration depends, however, on the sphere inside of which one social element is dominant, having been very exactly and unam- biguously circumscribed from those in which the other is dominant. As soon as this is not the case, perpetual conflicts over authority will ensue, and the outcome will not be a strengthening, but rather a weakening of solidarity. Especially where a usual subordinate occasionally acquires a dominance that otherwise remains in the realm of their subordination, then, in part through the nature of the rebellion that this situation for the most part will support, in part through the absence of ability of the usually subordinate to dominate in the same realm--the solidar- ity and stability of the group will suffer. So at the time of Spain as a world power, rebellions broke out periodically in the Spanish army; for example, in the Netherlands. It was held together as a whole with
domination and subordination 215
? such frightful discipline, but it showed on occasion, nevertheless, an irrepressibly democratic energy. In certain nearly calculable intervals they rebelled against the officers, removed them and chose their own officers who, however, under the supervision of the soldiers, were per- mitted to stand and do nothing whatever that all the subordinates did not approve. The damage from such ongoing confusion of domination and subordination in one and the same realm requires no discussion. It is found likewise in indirect form in the limited terms of elected officials in many democracies; there is indeed the achievement that the largest possible number of citizens succeed sometime to a position of leadership--however, the other side of it is that long-range plans, conti- nuity of actions, consequentially adopted measures, technical perfections are often enough hindered. In the ancient republics, though, this rapid alternation was not yet damaging to this extent, in so far as their con- stitution was simple and transparent and most of the citizens possessed the requisite knowledge and training for the offices. The sociological form of those events in the Spanish army demonstrated, with very dif- ferent content, the great unhealthiness that emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the American Episcopal Church. The congregations were gripped precisely by a frenzied passion to exercise control over their clergy who were employed, however, precisely for the sake of moral and church control over the congregations! In the aftermath of this contumaciousness of the congregations, the clergy in Virginia for a long time afterwards were employed always for only a year. With one small adjustment, though formally similar in essentials, this sociological event occurred in official hierarchies where the superior is technically dependent on the subordinates. Higher officers often lack the knowledge of the technical details or of the actual situation. The lower officers are active their entire lives mostly in the same circle of tasks and thereby gain a specialist's knowledge of their narrow realms, which eludes those who move rapidly through various levels--whereas the latter's decisions, though, can not be administered without that detailed knowledge. With the privilege of government service, which knights and senators had in the Roman period of the Caesars, they did not mess around with theoretical preparatory training but simply left the acquisition of the necessary knowledge to praxis. This, how- ever--already in the last period of the Republic--had had the conse- quence that the higher officials were dependent on their understudies, who, not always changing, were to provide a definite routine for the conduct of business in the situation. This is in Russia a thoroughgoing
216 chapter three
? phenomenon, which becomes especially advantageous through the manner of allocation of offices there. Advancement takes place there according to class rank, although not only inside of the same depart- ment, but whoever has reached a certain class is often, based on one's desire or that of the superior even with the same rank, transferred into another entirely. So it was, at least until recently, not unusual that the school graduate, after six months' service at the front, became an officer without further ado; an officer obtained, then, under transfer into the corresponding official level of the military charge, some office in the civil service more appealing. One was on one's own in both cases to find one's way without appropriate preparatory training for the new situations. For this reason, technical ignorance of the higher officials for their positions emerges with unavoidable frequency, which renders the officials thus inescapably dependent on underlings and their know-how. The reciprocity of domination and subordination thus often makes the subordinates appear as the actual managers and the dominant as only the executives, and thereby damages the authenticity of the organiza- tion, just as a deliberately arranged alternation of domination and subordination can support it.
Beyond these specific formations the reality of sequential rule poses an entirely common sociological problem. Domination and subordination fashion, on the one hand, a form of objective organization of the soci- ety; they are, on the other hand, the expression of personal qualitative differences among the people. Now how do both of these determinants interact, and how is the form of social interaction influenced by the discrepancies of this relationship?
At the beginning of social development the domination of one personality over another must have been the adequate expression and consequence of personal superiority. There is absolutely no reason why, in a social situation without a firm organization that assigns individuals a priori to their positions, one person should be subordinate to another if neither power, piety, superiority in body or spirit or willpower, or suggestion characterizes the other--in short, the relationship of one's personal being to the other. Since the initial stage of social formation is historically unavailable to us, as a principle of methodology we must at least make the most likely simple assumption: a state approximating equilibrium. This operates as if derived from cosmology. Because we do not know the situation at the beginning of the world process, we must, with the most likely simplification, make the effort to deduce the origin and advance of varieties and differentiations from the homogeneity
domination and subordination 217
? and state of equilibrium of world elements. Now indeed there is no doubt that when those presumptions are taken in an absolute sense, no world process could begin, because they offer no cause for movement and differentiation; rather, some kind of a differentiating behavior of elements, as a minimum always, must be placed at the initial position in order to thereby render it comprehensible from out of the wider differentiations. Thus we are also constrained, in the development of social diversity, to assume a most simple fictive state; the minimum of diversity, which is required as the seed of all later differentiations, will have to be placed arguably thereby in the purely personal differences of the assets of individuals. The dissimilarities of people diverging from one another are thus first of all to be deduced from such qualitative individualizations.
So required or presumed of the sovereign in primi- tive times are perfections that are unusual to that degree or in that combination. The Greek king of the heroic period must not only be courageous, wise, and eloquent, but also as distinguished as possible in athletic exercises as well as an excellent a carpenter, shipbuilder, and farmer. The position of King David was based, as emphasized above, for the most part on his being at the same time singer and warrior, layman and prophet, and possessing the ability to fuse the earthly power of the state with the spiritual theocracy. From this origin of domination and subordination, which of course is still effective within society at all times and perpetually founds new relationships, permanent structures of domination and subordination still develop; individuals are either born into them or they achieve the particular positions on the basis of wholly other qualities from those that the domination and subordination in question originally established. This change from the subjectivity of sovereign relationships to one of objective formation and fixation is effected through the purely quantitative expansion of the realm of sovereignty. For this universally obvious relationship between the increasing quantity of elements and the objectivity of standards applicable to them are two actually opposed motifs of significance. The multiplication of elements contains at the same time an augmentation of the qualitative features active in them. With that, the improbability increases that some element of subjective individuality would have a similar or a sufficiently similar relationship to each of them. To the degree that differences accumulate inside the realm of rule or stan- dardization, the sovereign or the standard must try to dispose of its individual character and adopt a universal one, held above the fluctua- tions of subjectivity. On the other hand the very same expansion of the
218 chapter three
? sphere leads to division of labor and differentiation among its leading elements. The ruler of a large group can no longer, as the Greek king, be measure and leader for all its material interests; it requires rather a multifaceted specialization and compartment-like arrangement of the regime. Above all, however, the division of labor stands in correlation with the objectification of activities and relationships; it shifts the abil- ity of the individual into a proper connection outside the individual's sphere; the personality as a whole and inwardly rises beyond its one- sided activity whose purely objectively circumscribed results combine now first with those of yet other personalities into one totality. Case by case, person by person, the extent of such causes will have carried the resulting relationships of domination over into the objective form in which, as it were, not the person, but the position is what is dominant. The a priori of the relationship is now no longer the people with their characteristics, from which the social relation emerges, but these rela- tions as objective forms, 'positions,' quasi empty spaces and outlines, that are supposed to be actually 'filled' by individuals. The more fixed and technically elaborate the organization of the group is, the more objective and formal the schemata of domination and subordination are found, for which then only the appropriate persons are subsequently sought, or it finds its role occupants through the mere accidents of birth and other chance occurrences. In this connection it is in no way only a matter of considering the hierarchy of governmental positions. The moneyed economy generates a quite similar social formation based on the areas of its dominance. The possession or the lack of a certain sum of money means a certain social position, almost entirely independently of the personal qualities of the person who fills it. Money brought into relief the previously emphasized divorce between the person as per- sonality and as bearer of a certain individual performance or interest; anyone's property grants one who can seize it or somehow purchase it a power and a position that appear and disappear with the holder of this property, not, however, with the personality and its characteristics. People move through the positions that correspond to certain financial holdings just as purely incidental fill-ins go through fixed, given forms. That modern society, by the way, does not always exhibit this discrep- ancy between position and personality needs no emphasis. Rather in many cases, even through the dissolution of the objective contents of the position by the personality as such, a certain agility in its alloca- tion will be fashioned, which realizes the appropriate proportion on a new, often more rational basis--quite apart from the enormously
domination and subordination 219
? increased possibilities that the liberal structures in general give for the benefit of the position's corresponding powers--although the powers in question here are often so specialized that the domination won by them, nevertheless, does not accrue to the personality according to its total value. That discrepancy will occasionally reach its maximum extent even in certain intermediate arrangements, as the corporate and the guild-like. It has been rightly emphasized that the system of large industry would give the exclusively talented person more opportunity for distinction than previously. The numerical proportion of foremen and supervisors to workers is supposed to be smaller today than the numerical proportion of small craftsmen to wage workers two hundred years ago. But special talent is supposed to be able to lead much more certainly to a higher position. Whether it gets to this position is only the peculiar chance of the unfolding of personal quality and its place in governing or being governed, which is offered by the objectification of the positions, by their differentiation from the purely personal nature of individuality.
Socialism very much abhors this blindly accidental relationship between the objective graduation of positions and the qualifications of persons; its organizational proposals, though, result in this same sociological configuration because it requires an absolutely centralized, thus necessarily severely structured and hierarchical, constitution and administration; it presumes, however, that all individuals are a priori equally capable to fill every desirable position in this hierarchy. However, just that which thereby seemed meaningless in the present circumstances is highlighted from one particular angle, at least in principle. For in the pure democratic outcome the led choose the leaders; no guaranty is offered against the chance relationship between person and position, not only because one must be an expert oneself to elect the best expert but because the principle of election from the bottom up delivers accidental results widely throughout all extensive spheres. However, pure party votes are exempted from this; in them the meaningful or chance factor under consideration is precisely ruled out since the party vote as such certainly is not directed towards the person because that candidate possesses these definite personal qualities, but rather because that person is the--stated in the extreme--anonymous representative of a specific objective principle. The form of producing the leader for which socialism would logically have to reach is the random assignment of positions. Much more than the rotation that is, after all, never fully accomplished in extensive relationships, the slogan brings the ideal claim
220 chapter three
? of each to expression. It is therefore in no way democratic in itself, not only because it can also hold for a dominating aristocracy and stands as pure formal principle entirely beyond these antitheses, but above all because democracy means the actual participation of everybody; the drawing of positions of leadership however converts this into an ideal, into the merely potential right of every individual to succeed to a posi- tion of leadership. The detached principle fully severs the mediation between individuals and their positions that is carried by the subjective suitability; with this principle the formal organizational requirement of domination and subordination has generally become fully master over the personal qualities from which it had come.
Related to the problem of the relationship between the personal and the solely position-relevant superiority, two meaningfully sociological thought forms are distinguished. In view of actual inequality (dissolv- able only in a utopia) in the qualities of people, the 'rule of the best' is in any case the form that brings to expression most exactly and purposively in external reality the inner and conceptual relationship of people. This is perhaps the deepest reason why artists are so often aristocratically inclined; because every artistry rests on the assumption that the inner sense of things shows itself adequately in their mani- festation if one would just understand how to see these correctly and fully; the detachment of the world from its value, from the appearance of its meaning, is the anti-artistic mentality par excellence--the artist must recast the unmediated reality so much so that it would surrender its true, trans-accidental form, which is then, however, at the same time the expression of its spiritual and metaphysical sense. The psychological and historical connection between the aristocratic and artistic view of life was permitted thus at least in part a return to the idea that only an aristocratic order provides a visible form, their so to speak aesthetic symbol for the internal value relations of people. Now, however, an aristocracy in this pure sense, as rule by the best, as Plato viewed it, is empirically not realizable. First of all, because until now no practice has been found, by which 'the best' would be recognized with certainty and placed in position; neither the a priori methods of breeding of a ruling caste, nor the a posteriori of natural selection in free competition for the favored position, nor the so to speak average of persons elected from under or from above has shown itself adequate for that. There are additional difficulties yet for the assumption that people seldom content themselves with being under the superiority of even the best, because they want no superiority in general or at least none in which they
domination and subordination 221
? themselves would not play a part; and, furthermore, that the possession of power, even when acquired originally legally, tends to demoralize, not always the individual for sure, but almost always corporate bodies and classes--thus the opinion of Aristotle makes sense: certainly from the abstract point of view there would come to the individual or the family, who perhaps towers above all others in ? ? ? ? ? ,41 absolute rule over these others; from the demands of praxis, in contrast, it would be advisable to blend this rule with that of the masses; their quantitative superiority would have to work together with that of the qualitative. Beyond these intermediary thoughts, however, the highlighted difficul- ties of a 'rule of the best' can lead to a resignation to let equality in general serve as the practical control because it would introduce the lesser evil over against those disadvantages of--the logically solely justi- fied--aristocracy. Now since it would, however, be impossible to give expression with certainty and constancy to the subjective differences in objective relationships of domination, one is then supposed to discon- nect them generally from the determination of the social structure and thus regulate it as if they did not exist.
However, since the question of the greater or lesser evil in rule is to be decided only according to personal evaluation, the same pessimis- tic attitude can lead to the exact opposite conviction: that overall--in large as well as in small spheres--it has to be better to be governed by unqualified persons than none at all, that the social group must accept the form of domination and subordination more from internal and objective necessity, so that it is, then, only a fortunate accident if the objectively necessary, preformed position is occupied by the subjectively adequate individual. This formal tendency comes from quite primitive experiences and necessities. First of all, from the form of rule represent- ing or creating a bond: less accommodating times, without a multiplicity of forms of interaction available, often have no other means to bring about the formal solidarity of the whole than to subordinate individu- als not directly bound to it under its already associated members. At the time in Germany when the earliest constitution with personal and property equality in the community had ended, landless people lacked the active rights of freedom--if they did not want to remain without any bond to the commonwealth, they had to attach themselves to a master in order to participate indirectly as a protected member in the
41 Greek: ? ? ? ? ? (arete), virtue, goodness--ed.
? 222 chapter three
? public corporations. The totality had an interest in their doing this because it could tolerate no unconnected people in its realm, and for that reason Anglo-Saxon law made the landless explicitly responsible to 'be under a lord. ' Likewise in medieval England the interest of the community required that aliens place themselves under the protection of a lord. One belonged to a group when one possessed a parcel of one's own land; whoever lacked this and yet wanted to belong to it, they had to belong to someone who was bound to it in that primary manner. The general importance of leading personalities, with a rela- tive indifference to their corresponding personal qualifications, likewise appeared formally in some early manifestations of the principle of elec- tion. Elections to the medieval English Parliament, for example, appear to have been managed with astonishing negligence and indifference: based only on the borough designating a member to parliament; it appears that the designee was accepted whoever it was, thereby reduc- ing its importance--which was manifested no less in the indifference towards the qualification of the electorate frequently conspicuous in the Middle Ages. Whoever is simply present takes part in voting; no value appears to have been placed on legitimation or on a definite number of votes. Apparently this disregard for the electoral body is simply the expression of the disregard for the quality of the personnel resulting from the election. Quite generally the conviction of the necessity of coercion ultimately works in the same way; human nature simply needs it in order not to degenerate fully into purposeless and formless activity. It is completely the same with respect to the general character of this postulate whether subordination happens under one person and that person's arbitrary will or under a law: certain extreme cases excepted, in which the value of subordination as form over the nonsense of its content can no longer become master, it is only of secondary interest whether the law with regard to content is something better or worse, just so long as it acts with the nature of a ruling personality. Here one could point to the advantages of hereditary despotism--thus to a certain degree independent of the qualities of the person--especially where it is a matter of the integrative, political and cultural life of large territories, and where it is ahead of the free federation, which is similar to the prerogatives of marriage over free love. No one can deny that the force of law and custom holds countless marriages together, which morally speaking would have to come apart: persons are here subject to a law that does not suit their case. In others, however, the same coercion, although presently and subjectively felt as severe, is of irreplaceable
domination and subordination 223
? worth because it holds together those who morally speaking should remain together, but who, in some kind of a momentary disgruntle- ment, bad temper or feeling of vacillation, would separate if only they could, and would thereby irreparably impoverish or destroy their life. The marriage law may be good or bad with regard to its content for the respective applicable case or not: the simple force of remaining together that results from it develops an individual value of a eudaemonistic and ethical kind--outside of that of social functionality--which, from the pessimistically biased perspective here presumed, would not in general be realized upon the discontinuation of that coercion. Already each one's consciousness of being compulsorily bound to the other may make the solidarity utterly unbearable; in others, however, it will bring with it docility, self-control, cultivation of the spirit such that, at any possible time of breaking off, no one would feel moved to do so but rather feel drawn only by the wish to configure the current inescapable totality of existence so that it is as bearable as possible. The consciousness of standing under bondage in general, of being subjugated to a domi- nant authority--be it an ideal or social law, a voluntarily associating personality or a steward of higher norms--this consciousness is, as the case may be, revolting or crushing; probably, however, for the majority of people it is an irreplaceable foothold for the inner and outer life of our souls that seems--in the unavoidable symbolic expression of all psychology--to dwell on two levels: one deep, hardly or not at all flex- ible that bears the real meaning or substance of our being, while the other consists of currently dominant impulses and isolated excitements. The second would still, as is actually the case, more often carry the day against the first and allow the former no fissure through which the pressing and rapid shedding of its elements could come to the surface, unless the feeling of coercion, whatever the source, did not dam up its current, put the brakes on its vacillations and capriciousness, and thereby perpetually provide space and compensation to the persisting undercurrent. Compared to this functional significance of constraint as such, its particular content is of secondary importance. The mean- ingless may be redeemed by the meaningful, but even this now has its questionable meaning simply in that that it teams up with the former; indeed, not only the suffering from the force, but also the opposition against it, against the unjustified as against the justified, exercises this function of repression and interruption on the rhythm of the surface of our life, whereby then the deeper currents of the most private and substantial life, impervious to external repression, reach consciousness
224 chapter three
? and effectiveness. Now insofar as the force is identical with some sort of dominance, this combination shows the member-element in it that its individuality in governance is to some extent indifferent to the quality and law of domination, and that reveals the deeper sense of a claim of authority par excellence.
Indeed, it is in principle impossible that personal qualification and social position in the ranks of domination and subordination would thoroughly and completely correspond, no matter what organization one may propose for this purpose, and certainly based on the fact that there are always more people who are qualified for superior positions than it provides superior positions. Out of the typical workers of a factory there are certainly a great many who could likewise be just as good foremen or employers; of the common soldiers a great many who would fully possess the aptitude of an officer; of the millions of subjects of a ruler without doubt a great number who would likewise be good or better rulers. The divine right of kings is just the expres- sion of subjective quality not being decisive, but rather some other exalted authority, above human scale. Thus the breach between those who have attained a leading position and those who have the ability for it must not be roughly assessed very much lest it yield contrariwise many persons in dominant positions who are not qualified for them. For this type of incongruity between person and position appears more important than it is in reality. For one thing the incompetence inside a position from which others are led emerges especially glaringly, for obvious reasons, proving more difficult to conceal than a great many other human deficiencies--and certainly especially because just as many others, frankly qualified for the position, but subordinate, are standing right there. Furthermore this unsuitability in many cases does not at all come from individual defects, but from contradictory demands of the office, the immediate consequence of which is nevertheless easily imputed to the occupant of the office as subjective culpability. The modern 'national government,' for example, has in theory an infal- libility that is the expression of its--in principle--absolute objectiv- ity. Of course, measured by this fanciful infallibility, its real carriers frequently appear deficient. In reality the purely individual shortcom- ings of leading personalities are relative rare. Given the absurd and uncontrollable accidents by which people in all areas accede to their positions, it would thus be an incomprehensible wonder that an even greater amount of incompetence does not appear in filling them if one were not compelled to accept the fact that the latent qualifications for
domination and subordination 225
? the positions are very widely available. It rests on the assumption that republican constitutions upon the creation of their offices ask only for negative instances, that is, whether the aspirants hade made themselves undeserving of the office by some other kind of activity--whenever in Athens, for example, appointment was made by lot, it was simply examined whether the selected treated his parents well, his taxes were paid, etc. --thus only whether something against him was provided, so it was assumed that a priori everyone would be worthy. This is the deep insight of the proverb: "To whomever God gives a task, he also gives understanding for it. " Since the 'understanding' needed for filling the higher positions also exists in many people, evidently it does not reveal itself until someone, however selected, accepts the position. This incommensurability between the quantum of skills for ruling and that of their actualization is explained perhaps by the difference between the character of the person as a social entity and as an individual. The group as such is basic and in need of leadership; the characteristics that it displays as quintessentially common are simply those handed down, thus more primitive and undifferentiated, or easily suggestible, thus 'inferior. ' But in general as soon as a group formation of greater mass occurs, it is advisable that the whole mass be organized in the form of subordination under a few. That does not, however, appar- ently prevent every individual in this mass from supposedly possessing higher and finer characteristics. Only, these are of an individual sort, visible from a different perspective that does not arise from the common property and for that reason not helping improve the base level at which all are seen with certainty. It follows from this relationship that, from one angle, the group as a whole is in need of a leader, and it can thus offer many subordinates and only few dominant; from the other angle, however, every individual in that group is more highly qualified as group element then and thus as a subordinate.
The corporate principle and the current order come to terms with this built-in contradiction of all social formations between the fair demand for superior position and the technical impossibility of satisfying it, in that they construct classes into a pyramidal shape with an ever smaller number of members over others and thereby restrict a priori the number of the 'qualified' for the leading positions. This selection is not directed towards the available individuals, but, just the opposite, it predetermines them. From an abundance of look-alikes one cannot bring anyone into the earned position. For that reason these arrangements could serve as the attempt, contrary to the viewpoint of filling the position from the
226 chapter three
? individuals, to breed them for it. Instead of the slowness with which this can operate by way of heredity and of preparatory education, emergency procedures, so to speak, are also deployed that lift up the personalities to the capacity of leadership and governance, regardless of their previously existing quality, through authoritative or mystical rules. For the paternalistic state of the 17th and 18th centuries the subject was not capable of any kind of participation in public affairs; with regard to politics one remained forever in need of leadership. In the moment, however, in which someone occupies a public office, one receives at a stroke the superior insights and public spirit that makes one capable of piloting the totality--as though by civil service one would rise as by generatio aequivoca from being a minor not only to maturity, but to leadership, with all the necessary qualities of intellect and character. 42 The tension between the a priori lack of qualification of one for a determined superiority and the absolute qualification that one gains a posteriori through the influence a higher authority reaches its maximum inside the Catholic priesthood. Here no family tradition, no functional education plays any part from childhood on; indeed the per- sonal quality of the candidate is in principle unimportant over against the spirit existing in mystical objectivity, with which ordination to the priesthood endows one. The superior merit is not conferred on him just because he is by nature predetermined for it (whether or not this can contribute naturally and establish a certain differentiation among the authorized), also not by chance, whether he has from the beginning been an appointed or not appointed--but the consecration accomplishes it, because it conveys the Spirit, the unique qualification for the accom- plishment to which the Spirit calls. That God gives to one, whom he gives an office, also the understanding for it--here this principle is most radically realized, from both its sides (that of former ineligibility and of that afterwards), through the 'office'-created eligibility.
? 42 Latin: generatio aequivoca, spontaneous generation--ed.
CHAPTER FOUR CONFLICT
That conflict is of sociological significance, in that it engenders or modifies communities of interest, solidarity, and organization, is never disputed in principle. In conventional opinion, however, the question must seem paradoxical whether or not conflict comprises a form of association irrespective of its consequences or concomitants. At first this appears as a merely semantic issue. If every pattern of interac- tion among people is an association, conflict too, which is certainly one of the liveliest patterns of interaction, one that is logically impos- sible to limit to a single participant, by all means counts as a form of association. In fact, the actually dissociating activities are the origins of conflict--hate and envy, need and desire. A conflict breaks out only based on them; thus it is actually a curative move against the dualism leading towards division, and a way to work out some kind of unity, even if by annihilating one party--somewhat like the most acute phe- nomena of illness often displayed in the exertions of the organism to free itself from disturbances and harms. This is not in any way what the commonplace saying, "Si vis pacem para bellum,"1 indicates, but in general this special case branches off from that. Conflict itself is only the resolution of the tension between opponents; that it ends in peace is only a single especially obvious expression of its being a synthesis of elements, an opposed-to-one-another that belongs with the for- one-another under one higher concept. This concept is marked by the common opposition of both forms of relationship in contrast to the mere mutual indifference between elements; the rejection as well as the dissolution of association are also negations, but it is precisely in this difference that conflict in contrast identifies the positive moment that is interwoven with its negating character in a unity that is only apparently but not actually breaking up.
From the viewpoint of the sociologically affirmative nature of conflict all social constructs undergo a characteristic ordering. Notably appearing
1 Latin: If you want peace, prepare for war--ed.
? 228 chapter four
? immediately is that, when the relationships of people with one another-- in contrast to what each is with oneself and in relationship to objects-- comprise the matter of a particular observation, the traditional objects of sociology comprise only one subdivision of this expansive science defined really by one principle. It appeared as though there were only two standard objects of the science of humanity: the entity of the individual and the entity from individuals, the society, as though a third were logically excluded. Then conflict as such finds no place where it could be studied apart from the contributions that it makes to the forms of immediate unity in society. It is a sui generic fact, and its classification under the concept of unity would be both forced and futile because it means, in fact, the negation of unity. Now, however, it appears as a comprehensive classification in the theory of the relationships of those people who make up a unity, thus distinguishing the socially supportive in the narrower sense from others that work against unity. But now it is to be kept in mind that every actual historical relationship tends to share in both categories. However, just as the individuals do not achieve simply the unification of their personalities, harmonizing their contents completely according to logical or objective, religious or ethical norms, but just as opposition and strife precedes not only such unity, but are functioning in it in every moment of their lives--so there could not be any kind of social unity in which the converging directions of ele- ments would not be permeated inextricably by the diverging ones. A group that would be the quintessentially centripetal and harmonious pure 'union' is not only empirically unreal but would also manifest no real life process; the society of saints that Dante saw in the Rose of Paradise may behave that way, but it is spared any change and develop- ment, while the sacred gathering of church fathers in Raphael's Disputa is already represented, if not as an actual conflict, still as a consider- able difference of moods and directions of thought from which all the enthusiasm and real organic coalescence of the gathering flows. As the cosmos needs 'love and hate,' attractive and repulsive forces, in order to have a form, so society also needs some quantitative ratio of harmony and disharmony, association and competition, good will and ill will, in order to arrive at a specific formation. But these divisions are not at all merely sociological liabilities, negative proceedings, so that the defini- tive, real society would come about only through other positive social powers, and for sure always only so far as they do not hinder it. This commonplace view is quite superficial; society as it exists is the result
conflict 229
? of both categories of interaction, which appear completely positive with respect to both. 2
The misunderstanding, that as the one tears down what the other builds up, and as what is finally left over is the result of a subtrac- tion of it (while in reality it is better identified as that of addition of it)--this misunderstanding likely originates from the double meaning of the concept of unity. We designate as unity the consensus and the combination of social elements, in contrast to their divisions, dissocia- tions, disharmonies; a unity, however, also means to us the complete synthesis of persons, energies, and forms into a group, the final total- ity of it, in which the integrative, in the stricter sense, as well as the dualistic relationships are included. So we are led back to the group formation that we sense as 'integrative,' with respect to those of its
2 This is generally the sociological case of an opposition in views of life. In the usual view, two parties of life stand everywhere opposed to one another, one of which sustains the positives, the actual content or even substance of life itself, the other, however, in its meaning is non-being, of which, following its negation, then, the positivities con- struct authentic life; thus joy and sorrow, virtue and burdens, strengths and deficiency, successes and failures act out the given contents and breaks in the process of life. A different one appearss to me, however, as the highest concept that is indicated vis-a`- vis these opposing pairs: all these polar differentiations are to be grasped as one life, even in what is not supposed to be from a single ideal and is merely a negative, not supposed to feel the pulse beat of a central vitality or to awaken the whole meaning of our existence from both parties; also that which appears as isolated, disturbing and destructive in the all-encompassing context of life, is necessarily positive, not a void, but the fulfillment of a role reserved for it alone. Now there may be a height--away from everything that at the objective level and in the scale of values is encountered by all as a plus and minus, as in opposition to one another, confronting one another mutually incompatibly--by which it is nevertheless felt as an intertwined unitary life. To reach this height or to continuously grasp it may be denied to us; too gladly we think of and sense our essential being, which we actually and ultimately mean, as identical with one of these positions; depending on our optimistic or pessimistic sense of life, the other appears to us as superficial, accident, something to be eliminated or removed, so that the true life united in itself would rise. We are everywhere implicated in this dualism--which the text will presently explain further--from the narrowest to the most extensive provinces of life, personal, factual, or social: we have or are a totality or unity that separates into two logically and factually contrary factors, and we then identify our totality with one of these factions and experience the other as something foreign, not actually something proper to us, and negating our central and full being. Life stirs continually between this tendency and the other--the tendency that also allows the whole actually to be the whole, that the unity that still concerns both objects separately also actually stimulates life in each of the two and in their combination. The right of the latter tendency, however, to lay claim to the sociological phenomenon of conflict is all the more called for as strife puts forth its socially destroying power as an apparently indisputable fact.
? 230 chapter four
? functional components that apply as specifically integrative--therefore with the exclusion of the other wider additional meaning of the word. Contributing to this imprecision is the corresponding ambiguity of the division or opposition from the other side. While this displays its negating or more destructive meaning among the individual elements, it is naively concluded that it would have to function in the same manner for the relationship of the whole. In reality, however, what between individuals is considered as a negative thing from a particular angle and in isolation, something detrimental, need not likewise function in any such way inside the totality of the relationship, for there is here--as perhaps the competition of individuals within an economy shows most simply--along with others, a whole new picture of interactive patterns unaffected by the conflict in which the negative and dualistic plays its rather positive role, apart from what was perhaps destructive in indi- vidual relationships.
These more complicated cases exhibit here two rather contradictory types. First the superficially close, infinitely many life relationships of inclusive commonality, such as marriage. Not only for marriages gone unequivocally awry but also for such that have found a tolerable or at least bearable modus vivendi--a certain measure of disagreements, inter- nal differences, and outward controversies that, after all and in spite of everything, preserves the bond, is in general organically bound to, and not to be separated from, the unity of the sociological formation. Such marriages are in no way less of a marriage for having conflict in them; rather they have developed as these definitively characteristic totalities from just such elements, to which this quota of strife irreducibly belongs. On the other hand, the thoroughly positive and integrating role of antagonism emerges in cases where the structure is characterized by the clarity and carefully preserved purity of social divisions and strata. Thus the Indian social system is not only based on the hierarchy of castes but also directly on their mutual revulsion. Animosities keep not only the boundaries within the group from gradually blurring--so that they can be consciously cultivated as guarantees of existing arrange- ments--but they are moreover also directly sociologically productive: they often give classes and personalities their initial reciprocal relation, which they would not have discovered or not in that way if by chance the objective causes of the animosity had indeed existed but unaccom- panied by the feeling and the expressions of animosity. It would in no way always result in a richer and fuller community life if the repelling and, viewed individually, even destructive energies within it were to
conflict 231
? disappear--as when a more extensive fortune results when its liabilities cease to exist--but rather in a picture changed just as much and often just as unrealizable as after a cessation of the forces of cooperation and affection, helpfulness and harmony of interests. This holds not only on a large-scale for competition, which determines, purely as a formal relationship of tension and quite apart from its objective consequences, the state of opposition and distance of the elements, but also wherever the association depends on the spirit of the individual souls. Thus, for example, the opposition of an element against someone with whom one is already in a social relationship is therefore not merely a negative social factor because it is frequently the only means whereby it becomes even possible for us to be in association with actually unendurable personalities. If we did not have the power and right at least to offer opposition to tyranny and obstinacy, capriciousness and tactlessness, we would not put up at all with relationships to people from whose character we suffer such things; rather we would be pushed to steps of such desperation that would for sure dissolve the relationship, although they are not exactly 'conflict. ' And indeed not only on account of the fact--while not essential here--that oppressions3 tend to increase if one surrenders to them quietly and without protest; but opposition grants us an inner satisfaction, diversion, relief--just as it gives humility and patience under other psychological circumstances. Our opposition gives us the feeling of not being completely oppressed in the relationship; it allows our power to prove itself consciously and thus initially lends a liveliness and interactive ability to relationships from which we would have withdrawn at all costs without this corrective.
In fact it not only achieves this when it does not come with notice- able results but also when it does not come to light from the outset at all, when it remains purely internal; even where in practice it is hardly expressed, it can produce inner balance--sometimes even for both sides of the relationship--a calm and an ideal sense of power, and thereby save the relationship whose continuation is often inconceivable to out- siders. Opposition is, then, an aspect of relationship itself; it is tied to the same rights by the other bases of the existence of the relationship; it is not only a means of preserving the relationship as a whole, but one
3 'Oppressions' translates Bedru? ckungen, which could also be translated 'depres- sions'--not entirely unreasonable in this context; maybe Simmel even intended the double entendre--ed.
? 232 chapter four
? of the concrete functions in which this relationship in reality consists. Where the relationships are purely superficial and thus not of practical consequence, the latent form of conflict provides this service: aversion, the feeling of a mutual alienation and repulsion that at the moment of close contact, brought about in some way, would immediately erupt into explicit hate and conflict. Without this aversion, urban life, which brings everyone daily into contact with countless others, would not have any kind of imaginable form. The whole internal organization of such interaction is based on an extremely intricate gradation of sympathy, indifference, and aversion of the most momentary as well as enduring kind. The sphere of indifference is thereby relatively small; the activity of our souls, though, responds to almost every impression of another person with some kind of specific feeling, whose subconsciousness, fleetingness, and motion only appear to neutralize it in indifference. Actually this latter would be as unnatural to us as the vagueness of random reciprocal suggestion is unbearable, and antipathy, the harbinger of active antagonism, protects us before both of these typical threats of the metropolis; it secures the distances and avoidances without which this type of life could not be led at all: its measure and its ingredients, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is fulfilled--this forms an indivisible whole from the configuration of urban life, with the motives that are unifying in the narrower sense; what appears intuitively in this as dissociation is in reality thus only one of its elementary forms of being a society.
If therefore the conflictual relationships do not also produce a social structure by themselves but always only in correlation with unifying energies, so that only both together constitute the concrete entity of group life--so the former are hardly distinguished in this respect from the other social forms that sociology infers from the diversity of actual existence. Neither love nor the division of labor, neither common conduct towards a third nor friendship, neither party membership nor domination and subordination needs bring into being or maintain dictatorially a historic unification, and where this is however the case, the process thusly characterized by that already contains a plurality of distinct forms of relationship; it is then simply the essence of human spirits not to allow themselves to be bound together by one thread, in the same way that scientific analysis does not stop with the elementary unities in their specific bonding strength. Indeed, perhaps this whole analysis, still in an objectifying and apparent reciprocal meaning, is a mere subjective act: perhaps the bonds between the individual elements
conflict 233
? are indeed frequently rather uniform, but that unity is not within the grasp of our understanding--it is precisely by the richest and substan- tively most complex living relationships that this mystical unity becomes most strongly conscious to us--and it simply remains then to present them as the functional combination of a plurality of binding energies. These are limited and reciprocally modified until the picture comes into relief that objective reality arrived at in a much simpler and unified way but one resistant to articulation through understanding. However, the procedures play out in the individual soul as well. In every moment these processes are of so complex a kind, harboring such an abundance of manifold or contradictory vicissitudes, that identifying them with one of our psychological concepts is always incomplete and actually falsifying: even the life moments of the individual soul are never connected by just one thread. Nevertheless, even this one picture is that which analytical thinking goes about creating from the inaccessible unity of the soul. Certainly there is much that we have to conceive of as in themselves fully unitary--as a blend of emotions, as a compound of multiple drives, as a competition of conflicting feelings; however, the calculations of understanding lack a schema for this unity, and so it must construct it as a resultant of multiple elements. When we are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by things, when noble and base characteristics appear to be blended in an activity, when the feeling for someone is made up of respect and friendship, or from paternal or maternal and erotic impulses, or from ethical and aesthetic values--then these are certainly frequently in themselves fully unitary as actual mental processes, but we can describe them only indirectly and therefore render them into a concert of manifold mental elements with various analogies, prior motives, or external consequences. If this is correct, then compound relationships between several souls must in many cases also be essentially unitive. The distance that characterizes the relationship between two associated people, for example, often appears to us as the result of an affection that would have had to produce a much greater closeness, and of an animosity that would have had to actually drive them completely apart; while each is delimiting the other, that objective measure of dis- tance simply seems to emerge. This can, however, be quite incorrect; the relationship is from the inside invested in this distance; it has, so to speak, from the very beginning a certain temperature that does not at first come about as a balance of an actually warmer and an actu- ally cooler condition.