Part 6 (1/2)

This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

The prevalent conviction that the wealthy cla.s.s is by nature conservative has been popularly accepted without much aid from any theoretical view as to the place and relation of that cla.s.s in the cultural development. When an explanation of this cla.s.s conservatism is offered, it is commonly the invidious one that the wealthy cla.s.s opposes innovation because it has a vested interest, of an unworthy sort, in maintaining the present conditions. The explanation here put forward imputes no unworthy motive. The opposition of the cla.s.s to changes in the cultural scheme is instinctive, and does not rest primarily on an interested calculation of material advantages; it is an instinctive revulsion at any departure from the accepted way of doing and of looking at things--a revulsion common to all men and only to be overcome by stress of circ.u.mstances. All change in habits of life and of thought is irksome. The difference in this respect between the wealthy and the common run of mankind lies not so much in the motive which prompts to conservatism as in the degree of exposure to the economic forces that urge a change. The members of the wealthy cla.s.s do not yield to the demand for innovation as readily as other men because they are not constrained to do so.

This conservatism of the wealthy cla.s.s is so obvious a feature that it has even come to be recognized as a mark of respectability. Since conservatism is a characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the community, it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence to conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our notions of respectability; and it is imperatively inc.u.mbent on all who would lead a blameless life in point of social repute. Conservatism, being an upper-cla.s.s characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-cla.s.s phenomenon, is vulgar. The first and most unreflected element in that instinctive revulsion and reprobation with which we turn from all social innovators is this sense of the essential vulgarity of the thing. So that even in cases where one recognizes the substantial merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman--as may easily happen if the evils which he seeks to remedy are sufficiently remote in point of time or s.p.a.ce or personal contact--still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be a.s.sociated, and from whose social contact one must shrink. Innovation is bad form.

The fact that the usages, actions, and views of the well-to-do leisure cla.s.s acquire the character of a prescriptive canon of conduct for the rest of society, gives added weight and reach to the conservative influence of that cla.s.s. It makes it inc.u.mbent upon all reputable people to follow their lead. So that, by virtue of its high position as the avatar of good form, the wealthier cla.s.s comes to exert a r.e.t.a.r.ding influence upon social development far in excess of that which the simple numerical strength of the cla.s.s would a.s.sign it. Its prescriptive example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other cla.s.ses against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon the good inst.i.tutions handed down from an earlier generation. There is a second way in which the influence of the leisure cla.s.s acts in the same direction, so far as concerns hindrance to the adoption of a conventional scheme of life more in accord with the exigencies of the time. This second method of upper-cla.s.s guidance is not in strict consistency to be brought under the same category as the instinctive conservatism and aversion to new modes of thought just spoken of; but it may as well be dealt with here, since it has at least this much in common with the conservative habit of mind that it acts to r.e.t.a.r.d innovation and the growth of social structure. The code of proprieties, conventionalities, and usages in vogue at any given time and among any given people has more or less of the character of an organic whole; so that any appreciable change in one point of the scheme involves something of a change or readjustment at other points also, if not a reorganization all along the line. When a change is made which immediately touches only a minor point in the scheme, the consequent derangement of the structure of conventionalities may be inconspicuous; but even in such a case it is safe to say that some derangement of the general scheme, more or less far-reaching, will follow. On the other hand, when an attempted reform involves the suppression or thorough-going remodelling of an inst.i.tution of first-rate importance in the conventional scheme, it is immediately felt that a serious derangement of the entire scheme would result; it is felt that a readjustment of the structure to the new form taken on by one of its chief elements would be a painful and tedious, if not a doubtful process.

In order to realize the difficulty which such a radical change in any one feature of the conventional scheme of life would involve, it is only necessary to suggest the suppression of the monogamic family, or of the agnatic system of consanguinity, or of private property, or of the theistic faith, in any country of the Western civilization; or suppose the suppression of ancestor wors.h.i.+p in China, or of the caste system in india, or of slavery in Africa, or the establishment of equality of the s.e.xes in Mohammedan countries. It needs no argument to show that the derangement of the general structure of conventionalities in any of these cases would be very considerable. In order to effect such an innovation a very far-reaching alteration of men's habits of thought would be involved also at other points of the scheme than the one immediately in question. The aversion to any such innovation amounts to a shrinking from an essentially alien scheme of life.

The revulsion felt by good people at any proposed departure from the accepted methods of life is a familiar fact of everyday experience. It is not unusual to hear those persons who dispense salutary advice and admonition to the community express themselves forcibly upon the far-reaching pernicious effects which the community would suffer from such relatively slight changes as the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, an increased facility of divorce, adoption of female suffrage, prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages, abolition or restriction of inheritances, etc. Any one of these innovations would, we are told, ”shake the social structure to its base,” ”reduce society to chaos,” ”subvert the foundations of morality,”

”make life intolerable,” ”confound the order of nature,” etc. These various locutions are, no doubt, of the nature of hyperbole; but, at the same time, like all overstatement, they are evidence of a lively sense of the gravity of the consequences which they are intended to describe.

The effect of these and like innovations in deranging the accepted scheme of life is felt to be of much graver consequence than the simple alteration of an isolated item in a series of contrivances for the convenience of men in society. What is true in so obvious a degree of innovations of first-rate importance is true in a less degree of changes of a smaller immediate importance. The aversion to change is in large part an aversion to the bother of making the readjustment which any given change will necessitate; and this solidarity of the system of inst.i.tutions of any given culture or of any given people strengthens the instinctive resistance offered to any change in men's habits of thought, even in matters which, taken by themselves, are of minor importance. A consequence of this increased reluctance, due to the solidarity of human inst.i.tutions, is that any innovation calls for a greater expenditure of nervous energy in making the necessary readjustment than would otherwise be the case. It is not only that a change in established habits of thought is distasteful. The process of readjustment of the accepted theory of life involves a degree of mental effort--a more or less protracted and laborious effort to find and to keep one's bearings under the altered circ.u.mstances. This process requires a certain expenditure of energy, and so presumes, for its successful accomplishment, some surplus of energy beyond that absorbed in the daily struggle for subsistence. Consequently it follows that progress is hindered by underfeeding and excessive physical hards.h.i.+p, no less effectually than by such a luxurious life as will shut out discontent by cutting off the occasion for it. The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.

From this proposition it follows that the inst.i.tution of a leisure cla.s.s acts to make the lower cla.s.ses conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought. The acc.u.mulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale. It is a commonplace that, wherever it occurs, a considerable degree of privation among the body of the people is a serious obstacle to any innovation.

This direct inhibitory effect of the unequal distribution of wealth is seconded by an indirect effect tending to the same result. As has already been seen, the imperative example set by the upper cla.s.s in fixing the canons of reputability fosters the practice of conspicuous consumption. The prevalence of conspicuous consumption as one of the main elements in the standard of decency among all cla.s.ses is of course not traceable wholly to the example of the wealthy leisure cla.s.s, but the practice and the insistence on it are no doubt strengthened by the example of the leisure cla.s.s. The requirements of decency in this matter are very considerable and very imperative; so that even among cla.s.ses whose pecuniary position is sufficiently strong to admit a consumption of goods considerably in excess of the subsistence minimum, the disposable surplus left over after the more imperative physical needs are satisfied is not infrequently diverted to the purpose of a conspicuous decency, rather than to added physical comfort and fullness of life. Moreover, such surplus energy as is available is also likely to be expended in the acquisition of goods for conspicuous consumption or conspicuous boarding. The result is that the requirements of pecuniary reputability tend (1) to leave but a scanty subsistence minimum available for other than conspicuous consumption, and (2) to absorb any surplus energy which may be available after the bare physical necessities of life have been provided for. The outcome of the whole is a strengthening of the general conservative att.i.tude of the community.

The inst.i.tution of a leisure cla.s.s hinders cultural development immediately (1) by the inertia proper to the cla.s.s itself, (2) through its prescriptive example of conspicuous waste and of conservatism, and (3) indirectly through that system of unequal distribution of wealth and sustenance on which the inst.i.tution itself rests. To this is to be added that the leisure cla.s.s has also a material interest in leaving things as they are. Under the circ.u.mstances prevailing at any given time this cla.s.s is in a privileged position, and any departure from the existing order may be expected to work to the detriment of the cla.s.s rather than the reverse. The att.i.tude of the cla.s.s, simply as influenced by its cla.s.s interest, should therefore be to let well-enough alone. This interested motive comes in to supplement the strong instinctive bias of the cla.s.s, and so to render it even more consistently conservative than it otherwise would be.

All this, of course, has nothing to say in the way of eulogy or deprecation of the office of the leisure cla.s.s as an exponent and vehicle of conservatism or reversion in social structure. The inhibition which it exercises may be salutary or the reverse. Wether it is the one or the other in any given case is a question of casuistry rather than of general theory. There may be truth in the view (as a question of policy) so often expressed by the spokesmen of the conservative element, that without some such substantial and consistent resistance to innovation as is offered by the conservative well-to-do cla.s.ses, social innovation and experiment would hurry the community into untenable and intolerable situations; the only possible result of which would be discontent and disastrous reaction. All this, however, is beside the present argument.

But apart from all deprecation, and aside from all question as to the indispensability of some such check on headlong innovation, the leisure cla.s.s, in the nature of things, consistently acts to r.e.t.a.r.d that adjustment to the environment which is called social advance or development. The characteristic att.i.tude of the cla.s.s may be summed up in the maxim: ”Whatever is, is right” whereas the law of natural selection, as applied to human inst.i.tutions, gives the axiom: ”Whatever is, is wrong.” Not that the inst.i.tutions of today are wholly wrong for the purposes of the life of today, but they are, always and in the nature of things, wrong to some extent. They are the result of a more or less inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation which prevailed at some point in the past development; and they are therefore wrong by something more than the interval which separates the present situation from that of the past. ”Right” and ”wrong” are of course here used without conveying any rejection as to what ought or ought not to be. They are applied simply from the (morally colorless) evolutionary standpoint, and are intended to designate compatibility or incompatibility with the effective evolutionary process. The inst.i.tution of a leisure cla.s.s, by force or cla.s.s interest and instinct, and by precept and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the existing maladjustment of inst.i.tutions, and even favors a reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme which would be still farther out of adjustment with the exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the immediate past.

But after all has been said on the head of conservation of the good old ways, it remains true that inst.i.tutions change and develop. There is a c.u.mulative growth of customs and habits of thought; a selective adaptation of conventions and methods of life. Something is to be said of the office of the leisure cla.s.s in guiding this growth as well as in r.e.t.a.r.ding it; but little can be said here of its relation to inst.i.tutional growth except as it touches the inst.i.tutions that are primarily and immediately of an economic character. These inst.i.tutions--the economic structure--may be roughly distinguished into two cla.s.ses or categories, according as they serve one or the other of two divergent purposes of economic life.

To adapt the cla.s.sical terminology, they are inst.i.tutions of acquisition or of production; or to revert to terms already employed in a different connection in earlier chapters, they are pecuniary or industrial inst.i.tutions; or in still other terms, they are inst.i.tutions serving either the invidious or the non-invidious economic interest. The former category have to do with ”business,” the latter with industry, taking the latter word in the mechanical sense. The latter cla.s.s are not often recognized as inst.i.tutions, in great part because they do not immediately concern the ruling cla.s.s, and are, therefore, seldom the subject of legislation or of deliberate convention. When they do receive attention they are commonly approached from the pecuniary or business side; that being the side or phase of economic life that chiefly occupies men's deliberations in our time, especially the deliberations of the upper cla.s.ses. These cla.s.ses have little else than a business interest in things economic, and on them at the same time it is chiefly inc.u.mbent to deliberate upon the community's affairs.

The relation of the leisure (that is, propertied non-industrial) cla.s.s to the economic process is a pecuniary relation--a relation of acquisition, not of production; of exploitation, not of serviceability.

Indirectly their economic office may, of course, be of the utmost importance to the economic life process; and it is by no means here intended to depreciate the economic function of the propertied cla.s.s or of the captains of industry. The purpose is simply to point out what is the nature of the relation of these cla.s.ses to the industrial process and to economic inst.i.tutions. Their office is of a parasitic character, and their interest is to divert what substance they may to their own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand. The conventions of the business world have grown up under the selective surveillance of this principle of predation or parasitism. They are conventions of owners.h.i.+p; derivatives, more or less remote, of the ancient predatory culture. But these pecuniary inst.i.tutions do not entirely fit the situation of today, for they have grown up under a past situation differing somewhat from the present. Even for effectiveness in the pecuniary way, therefore, they are not as apt as might be. The changed industrial life requires changed methods of acquisition; and the pecuniary cla.s.ses have some interest in so adapting the pecuniary inst.i.tutions as to give them the best effect for acquisition of private gain that is compatible with the continuance of the industrial process out of which this gain arises.

Hence there is a more or less consistent trend in the leisure-cla.s.s guidance of inst.i.tutional growth, answering to the pecuniary ends which shape leisure-cla.s.s economic life.

The effect of the pecuniary interest and the pecuniary habit of mind upon the growth of inst.i.tutions is seen in those enactments and conventions that make for security of property, enforcement of contracts, facility of pecuniary transactions, vested interests. Of such bearing are changes affecting bankruptcy and receivers.h.i.+ps, limited liability, banking and currency, coalitions of laborers or employers, trusts and pools. The community's inst.i.tutional furniture of this kind is of immediate consequence only to the propertied cla.s.ses, and in proportion as they are propertied; that is to say, in proportion as they are to be ranked with the leisure cla.s.s. But indirectly these conventions of business life are of the gravest consequence for the industrial process and for the life of the community. And in guiding the inst.i.tutional growth in this respect, the pecuniary cla.s.ses, therefore, serve a purpose of the most serious importance to the community, not only in the conservation of the accepted social scheme, but also in shaping the industrial process proper. The immediate end of this pecuniary inst.i.tutional structure and of its amelioration is the greater facility of peaceable and orderly exploitation; but its remoter effects far outrun this immediate object. Not only does the more facile conduct of business permit industry and extra-industrial life to go on with less perturbation; but the resulting elimination of disturbances and complications calling for an exercise of astute discrimination in everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary cla.s.s itself superfluous.

As fast as pecuniary transactions are reduced to routine, the captain of industry can be dispensed with. This consummation, it is needless to say, lies yet in the indefinite future. The ameliorations wrought in favor of the pecuniary interest in modern inst.i.tutions tend, in another field, to subst.i.tute the ”soulless” joint-stock corporation for the captain, and so they make also for the dispensability, of the great leisure-cla.s.s function of owners.h.i.+p. Indirectly, therefore, the bent given to the growth of economic inst.i.tutions by the leisure-cla.s.s influence is of very considerable industrial consequence.

Chapter Nine -- The Conservation of Archaic Traits

The inst.i.tution of a leisure cla.s.s has an effect not only upon social structure but also upon the individual character of the members of society. So soon as a given proclivity or a given point of view has won acceptance as an authoritative standard or norm of life it will react upon the character of the members of the society which has accepted it as a norm. It will to some extent shape their habits of thought and will exercise a selective surveillance over the development of men's apt.i.tudes and inclinations. This effect is wrought partly by a coercive, educational adaptation of the habits of all individuals, partly by a selective elimination of the unfit individuals and lines of descent.

Such human material as does not lend itself to the methods of life imposed by the accepted scheme suffers more or less elimination as well as repression. The principles of pecuniary emulation and of industrial exemption have in this way been erected into canons of life, and have become coercive factors of some importance in the situation to which men have to adapt themselves.

These two broad principles of conspicuous waste and industrial exemption affect the cultural development both by guiding men's habits of thought, and so controlling the growth of inst.i.tutions, and by selectively conserving certain traits of human nature that conduce to facility of life under the leisure-cla.s.s scheme, and so controlling the effective temper of the community. The proximate tendency of the inst.i.tution of a leisure cla.s.s in shaping human character runs in the direction of spiritual survival and reversion. Its effect upon the temper of a community is of the nature of an arrested spiritual development. In the later culture especially, the inst.i.tution has, on the whole, a conservative trend. This proposition is familiar enough in substance, but it may to many have the appearance of novelty in its present application. Therefore a summary review of its logical grounds may not be uncalled for, even at the risk of some tedious repet.i.tion and formulation of commonplaces.

Social evolution is a process of selective adaptation of temperament and habits of thought under the stress of the circ.u.mstances of a.s.sociated life. The adaptation of habits of thought is the growth of inst.i.tutions.

But along with the growth of inst.i.tutions has gone a change of a more substantial character. Not only have the habits of men changed with the changing exigencies of the situation, but these changing exigencies have also brought about a correlative change in human nature. The human material of society itself varies with the changing conditions of life.

This variation of human nature is held by the later ethnologists to be a process of selection between several relatively stable and persistent ethnic types or ethnic elements. Men tend to revert or to breed true, more or less closely, to one or another of certain types of human nature that have in their main features been fixed in approximate conformity to a situation in the past which differed from the situation of today.

There are several of these relatively stable ethnic types of mankind comprised in the populations of the Western culture. These ethnic types survive in the race inheritance today, not as rigid and invariable moulds, each of a single precise and specific pattern, but in the form of a greater or smaller number of variants. Some variation of the ethnic types has resulted under the protracted selective process to which the several types and their hybrids have been subjected during the prehistoric and historic growth of culture.

This necessary variation of the types themselves, due to a selective process of considerable duration and of a consistent trend, has not been sufficiently noticed by the writers who have discussed ethnic survival.

The argument is here concerned with two main divergent variants of human nature resulting from this, relatively late, selective adaptation of the ethnic types comprised in the Western culture; the point of interest being the probable effect of the situation of today in furthering variation along one or the other of these two divergent lines.