No More Learning

In pronounced patriarchal circumstances, in contrast to the present, the 'house' counted as an objective end and value in itself, towards which the housewife and the domestic servants worked together. Even with a full personal subordination, this creates a certain equalization carried by the interest that the servant, bound firmly and permanently to the house, tends to experience. The 'Du,' the domestic servant, expressed in one respect one's subordination as person; in another respect, however, it put the servant on a level closer to the children of the house and inserted the servant that much more intimately into the organization. Thus this relationship of obedience is oddly in force at just the opposite pole of its development into some measurable kind of objective conception: with complete patriarchal subordination, whereby the household still has, as it were, absolute value, which the work of the housewife serves likewise just like that of the domestice servant, albeit in a higher position; and then with com- plete differentiation, where work and service for trade are objectively predetermined, and personal attachment, which is the correlate of subordination of indeterminate measure, does not come into play. The current position of the domestic servant as member of the household, especially in the major cities, has lost the one objectivity, but not yet won the other; the whole personality is no longer subjectively engaged in the objective ideal of the 'house,' though without being able to actually withdraw from this because of the demand for a kind of complete service. Finally the relationship between officers and common soldiers may exemplify this type of form. Here the tension between the
196 chapter three
? subordination inside the organism of the group and the equalization that arises through service is shared under the concept of the defense of the fatherland that is imaginably the broadest and understandably manifests this breadth most noticeably in the field, where on the one hand discipline is most unmerciful, on the other hand, however, com- radely relationship between officers and the rank and file is required, in part, by unique situations, in part, by the morale of the whole. In peacetime, where the military is in the position of being prohibited from the methods of its purpose, its technical structure unavoidably develops psychologically into the end purpose, so that the domination and sub- ordination on which the technicalities of the organization rest stand in the foreground of consciousness, and that peculiar sociological hybrid of equalization through common subordination only comes under an objective concept when the situation changes calling this concept as the actual purpose of the military into consciousness.
Such double roles of the individual--one occupying a dominant or subordinate position inside the organization of the contents of one's unique life, this organization as a whole, however, standing under a ruling concept that every one of its members obtains an equal or nearly equal position in relation to everybody on the outside--these double roles let the purely form-sociological situation become one of peculiarly mixed feelings in the life of its carrier. An employee of a large business may have a leading position in it; however, as soon as that employee is in a position before the public and for that reason is acting ideally for the business as a whole, the employee will behave zealously and devotedly. In contrast, these elements in the frequent pride of the subordinate--the servant in the aristocratic household, the member of free-standing intellectual or social circles that at this level are still only peripheral--coalesce in order to represent the worth of the entire circle and its concept all the more energetically before all those standing outside, since they seek to obtain, in the negative way of differentiation from others, the fixed internal-external position, which is granted them only imperfectly by a kind of positive relation to the circle itself. The greatest formal multiplicity of this type is offered perhaps by the Catholic hierarchy. While every member is bound by a blind, unresisting obedience, the lowest member, nevertheless, also stands apart from every layperson in absolute height at which the idea of eternity rises over everything temporal--and at the same time its highest member is professed 'the servant of the servants'; the monk, who may be absolute dictator inside his order, clothes himself with the
domination and subordination 197
? deepest humility and servility before every begger; but the brother of the lowest order is with all unconditionality of church authority superior to the earthly prince.
Besides this cross-cut through the phenomena of domination and subordination, which orders them according to the question whether one or many, whether persons or objective structures bear the weight of governance, another is allowed to emerge in the sociological per- spective that alters the degrees of domination, especially as it relates to freedom and the conditions for it. This line will be pursued in the following investigations.
Where multiple and dynamic dominations and subordinations exist in a group--be it as a unified hierarchical construction, be it as a mul- tiplicity of dominant-subordinate relationships existing side by side--the group will as a whole derive its character essentially from subordination, as it is evident especially clearly in bureaucratically regulated states. For the strata extend downward in rapid proportion. Where thus domina- tion and subordination in general stand in the foreground of form- sociological consciousness, the quantitatively predominant sides of this correlation, that of subordination, will color the totality of the picture. Based on entirely unique combinations, the impression and the feeling of an overall domination of a group can also certainly ensue. The pride and the contempt for work of the Spanish originates from their having for a long time the oppressed Moors as their workers; when later they had exterminated and expelled them and the Jews, there remained to them indeed only the aura of the dominant, while there were no longer any subordinate people present who could form a complement to it. At the time of their highest glory it was particularly expressed among the Spanish that, because they wanted to take a position as a nation in the world, in the individual states the nobility would assume the positions of military officers and civil servants. Something similar, only on a more solid foundation, had already appeared in the Spartan warrior democracy. Because, while it oppressed the neighboring tribes, it did not enslave them but allowed them their land and treated them only as serfs, these developed together into a lower stratum that formed a gentry over against the totality of full citizenship--so they behaved very much among themselves democratically. This was not a simple aristocracy that from the beginning had arranged the more unlawful elements together into a group unity. But it was actually the entire original state that, in preserving the status quo through the substruc- ture of that stratum, made the totality of its membership, as it were,
198 chapter three
? into an aristocracy. Also in more characteristic respects the Spartans repeated the principle of universal domination: the Spartan army was so stratified that it consisted in large part of commanders.
At this point the peculiar sociological type of form crops up: an element's arrangements, which could arise only in their relationship to another and possess their content and meaning in relation to that other, becoming, nevertheless, autonomous from all interaction-dependent qualities of that element. That one is dominant presupposes an object of domination; the mental reality by itself can avoid this conceptual necessity up to a certain degree. The one internal motif involved points to Plato for sure. Among the endless variety of realms of sovereignty, by size and content, in respect to sovereignty as such, as function, there would be no difference: it would be the one and the same capacity to command, which the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? as well as the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? as well as the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? would have to possess. 31 For that reason the actual ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? is for him not necessarily the practitioner of the highest execu- tive power, but the one that possesses the 'science of command'--no matter whether or not one has something to command. This originated thus in the subjective ground of the relationship of sovereignty, which arises not only as the correlate of a real relationship of rule, but exists independently of its material existence. The 'born king' requires, if you will, no land, he is king, he does not need it to become one. If the Spartans formed no aristocracy, but felt themselves nevertheless noble, the Spaniards had the consciousness of lordliness, even as they no longer possessed servants--so this has that deeper meaning: that the interaction of the lordly relationship is the sociological expression or the actualization of the more internally determined qualities in the subject. Whoever adopts this is a ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , a ruler; one side is, so to speak, dropped out of the two-sided relationship, and exists only in ideal form, without which the other would thereby lose the importance that would be one's due within the relationship. While this then occurs for all the members of a larger group, it gives expression to the idea that they see themselves overall as manifesting 'equality,' without having to underscore by that name precisely wherein their equality lies. The fully enfranchised citizens of Sparta were called simply the '? ? ? ? ? ? . 32 The
31 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (politikos), politician; ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (basileus), king; ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (despotes), despot; ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (oikonomos), head of household--ed.
32 `? ? ? ? ? ? , equals--ed.
? domination and subordination 199
? aristocratic nature of their political and economic position in relation to the other levels is fully self-evident, so that they use as identification for themselves only their formal relationship to one another and did not have to mention at all what constituted the contents of other strata. A similar feeling lies overall at the foundation, where the aristocracy signifies itself as peers. They exist, as it were, only for one another; the others do not concern them even enough to give expression in their collective identity to their superiority--on their account indeed only one kind of identification is needed. 33
The other type, the concept of domination without realizing the logically required correlate of the corresponding subordination, lies in the transfer of forms produced inside a large circle to a small one whose relationships do not justify it. Specific positions in an expanded circle make up a power, a measure of domination, a meaning in itself, that they lose as soon as they are repeated in a smaller circle without changing their form. However for all that, they also bring into these the tone of superiority and command with them that they possessed there and that has become, as it were, a determination of such a position substantially independent of the relation that carried it. The
33 This is only an example of a general sociological occurrence. A number of elements have the same relation to a definite condition; the latter gives content and meaning precisely to the uncertain group interest. Now it happens that this decisive point on which the elements converge disappears from the identification, indeed, perhaps from consciousness, and only the fact of the equality of the elements--thus taking place exclusively in relation to that point--finds emphasis. So the aristocracy, as mentioned, not only often identifies itself as peers, but with the same name many French cities in the 12th and 13th centuries identified their jurors and judges. When the 'Society for Ethical Culture' was supposed to have been founded in Berlin, a brochure about it appeared under the title, 'Preliminary Communications of a Circle of Like-minded Men and Women. ' Not a word was offered about in what the equality of views actually consisted. In the Spanish Chamber, around 1905, a party formed that identified itself simply as the 'Party of the United. ' A party-type group of Munich artist colleagues in the nineties called itself 'The Group of Colleagues,' without adding any wholly officially used title that would then make up the contents of collegiality and distinguish this combination from a union of colleagues among school teachers or actors, agents or editors. These inconspicuous events contain the most striking sociological fact that the formal relation of certain individuals can become master over the contents and purpose of this relation; this could not occur in all that labeling if it did not somehow reveal the direction of social consciousness. The elements of a group being of equal right, their being like-minded, their being colleagues, has won an extraordinary importance over the substance that it clothes in these sociological forms, and with respect to that the latter now have an overall meaning. And the practical conduct, very much deter- mined by matter excluded from the naming, is manifest countless times indeed, upon a more exact examination of such groupings, in the relevance and the effectiveness of those pure types of relation and formal structures.
? 200 chapter three
? communication here is often a 'title' to which close relationships allow hardly a trace of meaningful power, whose aplomb, however, it has still maintained from its origin in the outlying group. The Dutch Rederikjers, a kind of mastersinger in the 15th century, had in every one of its many groups kings, princes, archdeacons, etc. I remember the 'officers' of the Salvation Army, the 'high degrees' of the Free Masons: a Free Mason chapter in France, 1756, declared its members "sovereign and born princes of the whole order"; another, a little later, called itself Conseil des Empereurs d'Orient et d'Occident. 34 Of course, it is not only the purely spatial-numerical size of the groups, whose transformations effect the transposition of an originally dominant position in relation- ships that release them from their logically required subordination and allows in spite of that the cachet of domination. Contractions of the group's life in the sense of intensity could cause this as well. What the entire Hellenistic reality destroyed during the period of the emperor was the restriction of its sphere of significance, the evacuation of all deeper or wide-ranging content--while a feeling still able to or having to protect some kind of superiority, an ambition that carried its ideal from the great past to feudalism, had survived this past. With that arose that empty ambition that eventually was celebrated by the victor in the festivals, the officers of a meaningless commune, the inhabitant of a seat of honor or of a recognition by statue, by a public of idlers for the wordsmithing of the speaker who yet lacks any political influ- ence--the ambition arose by which all these suggested a feeling of significance and prerogative without any real superiority. The height over the average level in which the social preferences and privileges of this plane of persons was raised would not at all have been capable of being introduced in the real structure of the Greek society of that time. Descending from the previous meaning of the community that offered overall a foundation for the same kind of superiorities, they were now, without changing their dimensions, instituted in much smaller propor- tions and made possible precisely because of their lack of content, a general search for social positions of elevation that were missing the lower-level correlate. And it introduces here, to a certain extent regressively, an odd multi-leveled interconnected character into human activities that the primitive, 'sympathetic magic' shows in great purity: one believes, phenomena lying outside the human spheres of power to
34 French: Council of the Emperors of the East and West--ed.
? domination and subordination 201
? be able to be called forth for that purpose, so that one produces it in smaller measures in oneself. So with many kinds of peoples, pouring out water is a strong rain enchantment. The power of the universal concept is in every way so far-reaching that one believes, with some kind of a minimal or one-sided realization of it, to have won for it in general even more of its reality on much higher levels of extensity and intensity. A phenomenon of 'authority' shows the type, of interest to us here, of this behavior in a particular modification. The internal dominance that someone has won on the grounds of a one-sided ability or quality very often helps acquire 'authority' in question and responsi- bilities and perspectives that have nothing at all to do with that actual guarded excellence. Even here then the partially existing and justified 'domination' will carry over to a complete relationship in which the correlate of an actually 'ruled' realm is missing. Only, the paradoxi- cal phenomenon of the absolutely developed level of domination has changed here as into another dimension, for which the logically required measure of subordination is lacking, a dimension that has, as it were, absorbed this or only imaginarily possesses it.
I begin with a group as a whole being able to bear the character of subordination without the actual corresponding measure of domination existing in it practically and comprehensibly; the opposite is formed by the cases here treated, in which a domination as an absolute quality seems to exist, resting on no corresponding measure of subordination. However, this is a rare form; rather the opposite of the former gener- ally appears as freedom for all. Taking a closer look however, liberation from subordination shows up almost always at the same time as the gain of some kind of command--be it the hitherto opposing dominant group, be it a newly constructed level designated definitively now as subordination. As the greatest English constitutional historian once said of the quarrel of Puritanism: "Like every other struggle for liberty it ended in being a struggle for supremacy. "35 Now this general scheme is, of course, not often realized in an entirely pure type, but rather mostly as one tendency simultaneously at work among many fragmentary, refracted, modified forms, deriving, nevertheless, from that foundational drive; substituting domination for freedom is always noticeable, and I now apply myself to its essential types.
35 Simmel gives this in English--ed.
? 202 chapter three
? For Greek citizens both values were in general not sharply separated in the political realm. What they lacked was the sphere of individual rights that protected them from the claims and arbitrariness of the gen- eral public and that would have guaranteed them a truly independent existence as well as constitutional freedom vis-a`-vis the state. For that reason there was freedom actually only in one form: as a contribution to the rule of the state itself. This is consistent with the sociological type, particularly the communistic movements of antiquity, in which the aim, though, was not the abolition of private property but rather greater participation in it on the part of the disinherited. And finally, on the lowest level, at which gaining a superiority is out of the ques- tion, this principal form of behavior is repeated: the Greek slave revolts hardly ever led to the blasting of slave fetters overall, but rather to a narrower, more tolerable burden from them; the revolts rose up more against the singular misuse of the institution rather than the demand for its fundamental abolition. It typically makes a difference whether what is supposed to be achieved--protection from danger, the redress of grievances, the gain of desired worth--is through abolition of the sociological form that was the carrier of all those negativities, or still within this preserved form. Where wholly constructed relationships are firmly based on domination and subordination, the liberation of the subordinate does not necessarily mean universal freedom, which a change of the social form from the ground up would presume, but rather only a step up onto that plane of those who rule; this leads to some logically inherent practical contradictions and will be examined later. The result of the French Revolution for the third estate--apparently its mere liberation from the privileges of the privileged--meant the gain of domination in both the above-mentioned senses; by its economic muscle it made the heretofore higher estates dependent on it; in this way, then, however, it was momentously consequential, along with its complete emancipation, that in the same process there was formed, as it were, a fourth estate, which the third exploits and over which the third could lift itself. Therefore one cannot in any way draw the simple analogy that the fourth estate would want to do today what the third would have done then. This is a point at which freedom manifests its relationship to equality, indeed also the necessary breaking apart of the relationship. When universal freedom rules, so likewise does uni- versal equality; since with the former only the negative is set, that no kind of command exists--a setting where on account of its negativity the otherwise most differentiated elements can be together. Equality,
domination and subordination 203
? however, which thus appears as the first consequence or accident of freedom, is in reality only the passageway through which the rapacity of human beings must pass as soon as it seizes the oppressed masses. No one is typically content with the position occupied vis-a`-vis one's fellow creatures, but rather everyone wants to capture one in some way more favorable.
When then the newly developed majority feels the wish for an elevated lifestyle, the very first expression of it will thus be that they want to have and be the same as the upper most ten thousand. Equality with the higher groups is the first proffered content with which the drive for its own elevation is realized, as manifested in any close circle, be it a school class, a merchant class, or a hierarchy of officials. That belongs to the grounds of the fact that the anger of the proletariat, for the most part, is not turned towards the highest strata but against the bourgeoisie; because these are seen immediately above the prole- tariat, they are identified by the proletariat as the step on the ladder of fortune that is the next for them to climb, and therefore on which, for the present and in the interest of rising higher, their consciousness and their desire are concentrated. The lower want to be the same as the next higher up; it is all the same to them, as experience shows a thousand-fold, that this situation, the earlier epitome of their striving, is nothing further than the point of exit for a farther one, only the first station of the path going on endlessly towards the most favorable position. Overall, where one sought to realize equality, one has from this new floor turned the striving of the individual effectively into a striving to surpass the others in every possible way. Being equal, which comes logically with freedom, so long as it is in force in its pure and negative sense as not-dominated, is in no way its definitive aim--so often also the inclination of human beings to view the next essential or achievable step of one's series of desires as the finally satisfying one, which has deceived them. Indeed, the nai? ve lack of clarity transposes superiority into what drives freedom beyond the stage of equality; because, whether really accomplished or not, the expression of typical truth in every case is that of a coal carrier to a richly clothed lady in the year 1848: "Indeed, Madame, now everything will be equal: I will go in silk, and you will carry coal. " This is the unavoidable outcome of what was mentioned earlier: that one does not only have freedom, but it also needs to be used for something. So the 'freedom of the church' concerns itself in no way merely with the liberation from dominating earthly powers, but even thereby to pass over into a domination of them. The teaching freedom of the church, for example, means that
204 chapter three
? the state contains citizens who are saturated by it and stand under its influence, whereby the state then often enough falls under its rule. Of the class privileges of the Middle Ages it has been said that they were often a means to help win the freedom of all, including the disfran- chised, by means of a comprehensive effective tyrannical pressure. If this is accomplished, however, the continued existence of privilege oper- ates now in the sense that the freedom of all is again restricted. The freedom of the privileged produces a situation whose inner structure certainly brings with it the freedom of all as its consequence or condi- tion; however, this freedom carries in itself latently the preference of those elements from which it has come, and which over time, under the currently won freedom of movement, actually reverts back again so that the freedom of the rest is restricted.
This augmentation of freedom through domination gains a particular form here, where the freedom of a participating group inside one of a larger, especially state association, is in question. Such freedom is intro- duced historically in many ways as the more or less extensive peculiar jurisdiction of that group. With that, then, freedom means that the group as a whole, as a trans-individual unity, is set up as the master over its individual members. What is critical is that the specific circle does not have the right to just any decision it likes--this would not subordinate its members to it--but rather a right to its own law, since this coordinates them with the large circle surrounding them, which incidentally the law manages and thereby unconditionally subjugates everyone affiliated with it. The smaller group tends to hold to it then with utmost strictness, so that its membership submits to its court because it knows its freedom is based on it. In medieval Denmark a guild member permitted a claim against another to be pursued only before the guild's court. The claim- ant is not prevented externally from also bringing it before the public court of the king or the bishop; however, this is valid--wherever, as one supposes, the guild expressly permitted it--for a wrong against the guild as well as against the guild member concerned and is for that reason subject to judgments from both. The city of Frankfurt had received from the Kaiser the privilege that at no time an external court should be called against its citizens; after that, in 1396, a citizen of Frankfurt was arrested because he had filed a claim against another Frankfurter who owed him money, with an external court. Here both sides can have freedom: on the one side a being respected, a right, a power to assert, on the other side an exclusion, a contemptuous indifference on the part of the higher power--so it is not a counter case that the
domination and subordination 205
? medieval Jews enjoyed their own jurisdiction with their lawsuits among themselves, but it seems rather to have signified a disfranchisement and neglect. It was entirely different with the Jews of the Eastern Empire during the time of the Caesars; Strabo says of the Alexandrian Jews, for example, that they had their own higher court that decided their cases--a special legal position that turned into a source of hatred for the Jews. And this happened certainly because the Jews claimed that their religion requires an administration of justice unique only to them. This tendency went so far in medieval Cologne that it was reported as fact that, for a short time, Jews had had the privilege to decide cases by a Jewish judge even against Christians. In such phenomena the individual was perhaps not freer from the group than under the rule of common law; however, their group thereby enjoyed a freedom that the rest of the citizens felt ostensibly as an exemption. The prerogative of a circle with its own administration of justice is in no way based on the specific contents of its administered law; its members being simply subjugated to it alone is really, as Form, a freedom. The guild masters fought against the cooperative jurisdiction of the trade unions, even where their area of decision making was quite narrow and contained to some extent only the maintenance of propriety and the good customs. For they knew very well that the codes and practices of the morals police from these unions gave the journeymen a consciousness of solidarity, of professional honor, of organizational autonomy that functioned as support and strong comradeship over against the masters. And they knew that this sociological form was fundamental and, if it was once conceded, the further expansion of its content depended only on current relationships of power and economics. The general substance of this freedom of the whole is the subjugation of the individual--whereby then the indication suggested above is that it need not in any manner indicate a materially larger freedom for the individual. The doctrine of the people's sovereignty, over against the princely, as it arose in the Middle Ages, signified throughout not the freedom of the individual but that of the church in place of the state to rule over the individual; and just as in the 16th century monarchical actions take up the ideas of the sovereign people and ground their rule on a kind of private law contract between princes and people, so also the individual is not supposed to become free but be subjugated directly by the domination of the church's confession and of the professional groups.
Indeed, the eminent interest of the relative whole in the rule over its individuals, resulting in the proposed position of such an especially
206 chapter three
? limited and privileged circle, often leads to a situation in which those special courts of jurisdiction are more rigorous than the large encom- passing circle that permits them this exemption. The Danish guilds, of which I have already spoken, determined that if a guild member breaks the business contract in force with another, that member, as vendor, is obliged to pay twice as much to the buyer than would have to be paid to the king's officials if the vendor were not a guild member, and twice as much to all the guild members than would have to be paid to the city. The structure of the larger circle, as such, allows it to give the individual more freedom than the smaller whose continued existence depends more directly on the behavior of every individual member being advantageous to it; it must also always prove itself anew through the strictness of its legal judgments; so it is trusted by its members as it exercises firm and worthy rule over them and gives the state author- ity no reason for remedial intervention. However, this regime over its members, in which its freedom consists, can become a worse reality than just legal harshness. The great independence of the German cit- ies required, indeed until into the 16th century, its uttermost develop- ment; then, however, produced an oligarchic class- and blood-rule that oppressed most severely everyone having no share in the authority; only the rising state powers, in a nearly two-hundred-year struggle, put a stop to this tyrannical exploitation of the cities' freedom and were able to guarantee the freedom of the individual from them. 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.