"Modernization and Inequality", 1965

MODERNIZATION AND INEQUALITY

by Reinhard Bendix

Introduction

Modernization is a term which became fashionable after World War ITI.
It is useful despite is vagueness because it tends to evoke similar asso-
ciations in contemporary readers, Their first impulse may be to think of
“the modern" in terms of present-day technology with its jet-travel, Space
exploration, and nuclear power. But the common sense of the word "modern"
encompasses the whole era since the 18th century when inventions like the
steam engine and the spinning jenny provided the initial, technical basis
for the industrialization of societies. The economic transformation of
England coincided with the movement of independence in the American
colonies and the creation of the nation-state in the French revolution.
Accordingly, the word "modern" also evokes associations with the democra-
tization of societies, especially the destruction of inherited privilege
and the declaration of equal rights of citizenship.

These changes of the 18th century initiated a transformation of
human societies which is comparable in magnitude only to the transformation
of nomadic peoples into settled agriculturalists some 10,000 years earlier.
Until 1750 the proportion of the world's active population engaged in
agriculture was probably above 80 per cent. Two centuries later it was
about 60 per cent, and in the industrialized countries of the world it
had fallen below 50 per cent, reaching low figures like 10 to 20 per cent
in countries that have a relatively long history of industrialization. In

Great Britain, the country which pioneered in this respect, the proportion

of the labor force engaged in agriculture reached a low of 5 per cent in

1950.7

Wherever it has occurred, the modernization of societies originated
in social structures marked by inequalities based on kinship ties, heredi-
tary privilege, and established authority of varying stability. By virtue
of their common emphasis on a hierarchy of inherited positions, pre-industrial
societies have certain elements in common. The destruction of these features
of the old order with the consequent rise of equality appear as one hallmark
of modernization. As a result, most (if not all) thinkers of the i9th
century

-. exhibit the same burning sense of society's sudden,
convulsive turn from a path it had followed for millenia.

All manifest the same profound intuition of the disappearance
of historic values — and, with them, age-old securities,

as well as age-old tyrannies and inequalities ~ and the

coming of new powers, new insecurities, and new tyrannies
2

And, as Professor Nisbet adds, "sociology in Europe was developed almost
wholly around the themes and anti-theses cast up by the two revolutions
and their impact upon the old order.""? We owe many insights to this
intellectual tradition and nowhere more so than in the study of social
stratification. From the vantage~point of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, it was plausible to emphasize the contrast between the social
hierarchy characteristic of "traditional" societies and the individualism
and mobility of a social structure primarily based on contract and the

division of labor. Yet this perspective also tended to give an oversimplified

view of traditional societies, of modern society, and of the process of
transition from the one to the other. In good measure this oversimplifiation
resulted from theoretical constructions based on the European experience.
However, the last two centuries provide materials for a more differentiated

interpretation, which is the object of the following presentation.

The sense that the late 18th century represents a hiatus in intellec-
tual perspective as well as a new departure in the history of Western civili-
gation is as common among scholars as is the related connotation of the
term "modern" among people at large. Before the 17th and 18th centuries,
the world of nature and of man was conceived as an emanation of Divine
providence. Since then our thinking has been restructured in all fields
of learning. As the idea of God became fused with that of Nature, the
concept of the universe created at the beginning of time as gradually
replaced by the idea of an infinitely various and endlessly active process
of evolution. The idea was applied in parallel fashion to our understanding
of the growth of knowledge, to a new conception of God as in Scheliing's

Naturphilosophie, and to an ethical interpretation of world history as in
Kant's view that "all the excellent natural faculties of mankind would
forever remain undeveloped" if it were not for man’s nature with its
quarrelsomeness, its enviously competitive vanity, and its insatiable

desire to possess or to rule.” Here was one of many schemes by which
thinkers cf the late 18th and early 19th centuries linked the fractious
qualities of individual men with the concept of a self-contained regularity
or lawfulness attributed to the social world. While Kant used a teleological
construction in this respect, classical economists like Adam Smith asserted

that man's propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another

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gave rise to actions obeying an impersonal law, like the law of supply

and demand. By their actions in society individuais conform to a regularity
or higher principle without intending to do so. Phrases like the "end of
nature" or the “invisible hand" by which Kant and Smith referred to such

a higher principle may be considered a survival of an earlier belief in
Divine providence or a harbinger of later concepts of "society" and

"economy."

In any case, they helped to usher in a new view of the social
world as an impersonal structure possessing attributes or principles of its
own.

This shift in intellectual perspective was reflected in ideas about
the changing nature of society. The common denominator of the8e ideas may
be put in the form of three related tenets. (A) The industrial revolution
in England and the contemporary, political revolution in France were so
drastic in their consequences as to make the old and the new social structure
mutually exclusive. As a result, ideas about society were formulated in
terms of a pervasive contrast between tradition and modernity. Underlying
this contrast is a conception of each type of society as a social system
characterized by the functional interdependence of its component parts
and a balance of forces among them. Hence, "traditional" and "modern"
societies appear as two types of structure, each with its own built-in
tendency towards self-maintenance or equilibrium. - (8B) From the vantage-
point of Europe in the late 18th and early i9th centuries both revolutions,
and much of the social change that followed, appear as phenomena that are
internal to the societies changing. Accordingly, explanations of social

change have emphasized the continuity and interconnectedness of changes

within each society, so that a certain lawfulness is attributed to its

structure, while the impact of extraneous factors is ignored or minimized.
Especially prominent among these explanations have been those which attri-
bute change to various forms of functional differentiation; the most familiar
idea here is the increasing division of labor. - (C) The third ———e
that ultimately industrialization will have the same effects wherever it
occurs. This follows (or appears to follow) from a combination of assump-
tions. Industrialization and, more vaguely, modernization have certain
necessary and sufficient prerequisites and cannot occur in their absence.

Once these are given, however, industrialization is inevitable. Aliso, these
processes of change have certain necessary and inevitable consequences. If
carried far enough, modernity will drive out tradition and fully industrialized
societies will become more and more alike. A special variant of these assump-
tions is Marx's belief that the English industrial development provides the
classic modei which countries that industrialize later are in large measure
— to follow.

The three tenets mentioned here are not strictly separable; they are
special applications of one intellectual tradition. This tradition -- the
theory of social evolution -- has many ramifications that are of no concern
to us here. But its three underlying assumptions of social systen,
increasing differentiation, and developmental inevitability form a coherent
approach to the study of intedeettcatton from which the approach to be
discussed below will have to be distinguished. To do this it will first =
necessary to characterize and criticize this intellectual tradition, because

it has dominated our thinking about social change since the enlightenment.

Intellectual Legacies

The present essay is concerned with changes in social stratification
as causes and consequences of modernization. To be manageable at all, this
statement requires further delimitation. A first step in this direction is
a fuller appreciation of the laeas about inequality which accompanied the
rise of industry in Europe and which reflected an awareness of a new society
in the making. No attempt is made to differentiate the several synonyms of
inequality like stratification, ranks, classes, orders, etc. or to settle
on a consistent use of one of these terms; the very profusion of this voca-

bulary is part of the evidence to be considered here.

Ls
In his Essay on the History of Civil Society, first published in
1767, Adam Ferguson attributed the progress of a people to the subdivision
of tasks (Adam Smith's division of labor) which at the same time improves
the skills of the artisan, the profits of the manufacturer and the enjoy~
ment of consumers.
Every craft may engross the whole of a man's attention,

and has a mystery which must be studied.... Nations of

pe ee eee, eee ae

: 7.

tradesmen come to consist of members, who beyond their
one particular trade, are ignorant of all human affairs,
and who may contribute to the preservation and enlarge-

ment of their commonwealth, without making its interest

an object of their regard or attention.
Thus each man by attending to his business only is distinguished by his

calling, has a place to which he is fitted, and yet is unwittingly united

with every other "in furnishing the state its resources, its conduct, and

Pad

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its force." In Ferguson's view the differences among men are a direct

outcome of the habits they acquire in practicing different arts, though
he allows that differences in talent and the unequal division of property

also play a part.

Some employments are liberal, others mechanic. They

require different talents, and inspire different senti-
ments; and whether or not this be the cause of the
preference we actually give, it is certainly reasonable
to form our opinion of the rank that is due to men of
certain professions and stations, from the influence of

their manner of life in cultivating the powers of the

mind, or in preserving the sentiments of the heart./

Accordingly, the ranks of society are high or low in proportion as they

avoid the character of the sordid. Those who are bound by considerations

of mere subsistence are degraded by the "object they pursue, and by the

means they employ to attain it," while those belong to a superior class

who are bound to no task and are free to follow the disposition of their

mind and heart.

Ferguson was well aware that increasing division of labor exacts
a price. Members of the superior classes might possess a comprehensive
view of society, but the ends they seek to accomplish are best promoted

by mechanical arts requiring little capacity and thriving best “under a

8

total suppression of sentiment and reason.” ® Another Scotch philosopher,

John Millar, pointed out that the improvement of every art and science
which followed from the division of labor, also produced in the worker
who is employed in a single manual operation a "habitual vacancy of
thought, unenlivened by any prospects, but such as are derived from future
wages of their labor, or from the grateful returns of bodily repose and
dios. The burdens of the laboring classes and the division of society
into the great classes of owners and wage earners are simply a new form
of the ancient division between masters and servants. Even though distress
is widespread among the lower classes, nothing must be done to relieve 7
The argument is familiar from the writings of Edmund Burke. The
laboring people are poor because they are numerous, while the class of the

rich is so small that even if ali their goods were distributed it would

bring next to no benefit to the poor.

But the throats of the rich ought not to be cut, nor
their magazines plundered; because, in their persons, they
are trustees for those who labor, and their hoards are the
banking houses of the latter. Whether they mean it or not,
they do, in effect, execute their trust, -- some with more,
some with less fidelity and judpment....

Let compassion be shown in action, ~- the more, the

better -~ according to every man's ability; but let there

be no lamentation of their condition. It is no relief
to their miserable circumstances; it is only an insult
to their miserable understandings.... Patience, labor,
sobriety, frugality, and religion should be recommended

to them; all the rest is downright a

In Burke's view poverty is a perennial evil, while the mutual dependence
between rich and poor is an attribute of all societies. Against the modern
heresy which questions whether the rich are worthy or asserts that the poor
deserve a better fate, Burke maintains that the division between rich and
poor is eternal, that the rich are as worthy as men can ever be, and that
it is the interest and duty of the poor to practice faith and humility in
their dependence on their betters.

In England this advocacy of a traditional rank-order was buttressed
by the new arguments of laissez-faire, or it was attacked by the ancient

an At the same time, there was a growing body

arguments against injustice.
of opinion in many parts of Europe which reflected alarm at the discrepan-
— between rich and poor as well as the sense that the impoverishment or
destitution of the people represented a new phenomenon and an increasing
threat to the social order. The idea of a growing bifurcation of society
into two opposed classes, as well as the doctrine of pauperization, which
are familiar to modern readers from the writings of Karl Marx, were in fact
beliefs spelled out by manv European writers during the 17th and 18th
dubisies.”” Since the following discussion deals with the ideas of men
of letters in the early phases of industrialization and a

it will be useful to say a word about their own position in that period cf

transition. In Western Europe men of letters experienced industrialization

Is

as an emancipation from their previous subservience to the Church and to
private patrons. At the same time, industrialization created a mass public
and a market for intellectual products, thus accentuating the elitism of
some, the populism of others, and the alienated ambivalence of all intel-
lectuals. The society ushered in by a new technology, a rising middle
class, and the rapid aggravation of social problems as countryside and
city were transformed, appeared to men of letters as so many manifesta-
tions of a materialism that challenged humanistic values.” This sense

of challenge is reflected in the ideas about social rank which men of
letters formulated to take account of the changes occurring in industriali-
zing societies. In so doing they have often played off a mythical past or
a utopian future against the sordid present. To exemplify these ideas and
indicate something of their ubiquity, I shall take examples from Germany,
France, and the United States. These judgments about social ranks in a
period of transition reflect something of both, the experience and moral
sense of men of different secial ranks and the moral sense with which the

writer himself regards the role of different groups in that transit-on.
The first example contrasts a conservative and a humanist critique
of commercialization in late 18th century Germany. In 1778 the publicist
Justus M¥ser complained in an article on "genuine property" that in his
day the German language had lost its capacity to designate an owner's
inalienable relationship to his seoperty.*" At one time ownership of land
included associated rights in addition to those of proprietorship, such as
the right to hunt, to vote in the National Assembly, and others. Each of

these rights had been known by distinctive terms which gave a clue to the

specific rights an owner enjoyed in perpetuity. He could sell or otherwise

dispose of the land itself, but he could not divest himself of these

rights any more than a purchaser of the land could acquire them. Méser's
critique of the change of language is thus at the same time an indictment
of moral decay resulting from an easy transfer of property. The relation-
ship between an owner and his property is in his view a source at once of
personal identification and social stability. These are ensured only as
long as ownership of land confers on the proprietor rights and privileges

which give him status in the community and can be obtained by inheritance

only, not by purchase. |

The humanist critique of commercialization looks at flent glance
very similar to that of MUser. Trading as weil as the ownership and care
of property undermine an individual's integrity, because his every act
and thought turns on considerations of money and economic expediency. Man
is ruled by that which should be at his service. In his novel, Wilhelm
Meisters Lehrjahre, originally published in 1? , Goethe expresses this

view when he writes:

What can it avail me to manufacture good iron whilst
my own breast is full of dross? Or to what purpose were
it to understand the art of reducing landed estates to
order, when my own thoughts are not in —n
But Goethe's hero goes on to relate this anticommercial view to the
conflicting personal values of the Burger and the aristocrat. The latter,
he claims, has polished manners in — with his lofty social position,

but he does not cultivate his heart. The Blirger cannot make such preten-

sions. For him the decisive question is not "whe he is," but what "“discern-

ment, knowledge, talents, or riches" he possesses.

1 a

He must cultivate some individual talent, in order to
be useful, and it is well understood that in his existence
there can be no harmony, because in order to render one
talent useful, he must abandon the exercise of every
athex
Thus, to Goethe's hero, the aristocrat has high social standing but a
cold heart, the Birger may gain distinction by his attainments but in the
process sacrifice his personal development -- and only the artist is in a
position to pursue the “harmonious cultivation of his antares
The resemblance between these views does not go beyond their common
rejection of commerce. MUser looks backwards towards a society charac~
terized by a rank-order of privilege and subordination based on land and
the rights associated with landownership . He attributes to that society
not merely stability, but ideal qualities of mind and feeling such that
man’s relations to his fellows are in harmony and his werk an adequate
outlet for his capabilities. Against this mythical image of the past, the
commercialization of property appears as a decay of civilization. Goethe's
hero reacts very differently. To him the aristocrat of old appears as a
man whose human worth stands in glaring contrast to his social position; even
his polished manners are an unearned byproduct of inherited privilege. The
Birger may lack manners, but while his individual attainments establish his
personal worth against rhe, aetoroesen, .theds onesided development is a
liability in comparison with the hero's idealization of the artist. While
Miser makes the preservation of a stable social order the precondition of

all other desirable values, Goethe's hero sacrifices privilege, economic

attainments, and indeed social order itself to the cultivation of personality.

13.

The two opinions from late 18th century Germany reflect a provincial
setting in which economic change itself was quite slow, but in which imagina-
tive men witnessed more rapid changes taking place in England and France.

The classic document portraying this response is Goethe's epic poem Hermenn

und Dorothea in which the upheavals of the French Revolution are commented
on from afar and in eloquent contrast to the well-being and contentment of

18 Under these circumstances reflec-

an average, small-town Birger family.
tions about the effects of commerce on the ranks of society tended to be
abstract both in their wusaiete references to the past and their humanistic
celebration of personal values. Yet, with the advance of commerce and
industry during the first decades of the 19th century, eritical reflections
on the impact of these changes continued in a similar manner.

Across an interval of more than two generations one may compare the
contrast between MYuser and Goethe's hero in Germany with the contrast
between de Bonald and Proudhon in — According to Bonald, industry
has increased the material wealth of the country, but it has also produced
civic unrest and moral decay. Members of families employed in industry,

.» work in isolation and frequently in different industries.
They have no more acquaintance with their master than what
he commands and what little he pays. Industry does not
nourish all ages nor all sexes. True, it employs the child,
but frequently at the expense of his education or before he

is sufficiently strong for such work. On the other hand,

when a man has reached old age and can no longer work, he

lis

is abandoned and has no other bread than that which his
children may provide or public charity bestow....
The Andustrial laborer/ works in crowded and seden-

tary conditions, turms’ a crank, runs the shuttle, gathers

the threads. He spends his life in cellars and garrets.

He becomes a machine himself. He exercises his fingers

but never his mind.... Everything debases the intelli-

gence of the industrial sateen
In these respects the agricultural worker is in a superior position, above
all in the moral sense. On the land the different classes work alongside
each other and at the same tasks; children and old people are cared for
and productively employed at tasks commensurate with their capacities.
Agricultural work is not only healthy in contrast with industrial, it
also furthers the intelligence of the peasant or farm laborer. Cultiva-
‘tion of the land demands attention to varied tasks, furthers neighborly
cooperation, and through contact with natural processes lifts thought
"to that which endows the earth with fertility, gives us the seasons,
makes the fruit eipen. =" Where Miéser emphasizes the sociai stability and
moral worth achieved by inalienable property rights, Bonald emphasizes
that similar values are inherent in the nature of agricultural work, For
Bonald as for Muser, the material benefits of commerce and industry are
not worth the price in human values they exact. Both writers make this
moral evaluation in the process of imputing certain attributes to social
classes, whether these are landed proprietors or agricultural workers.

Proudhon's critique of industrialization (1846) has much in common

with that of Bonald. The perfection of tools and the specialization of

13s

work have a destructive effect upon the personal and intellectual creative-
ness of the individual. ‘In proportion as art (technology) advances, the
artisan vienna Proudhon depicres the helplessness of industrial
workers; he feels that the division of labor transforms men into machines
and subjects them to piece-meal slavery. The concentration of wealth by
the few and the degradation of the many by the division of labor are as
much anathema to Proudhon as to Bonalid. The small proprietor, especially
the peasant, is fer both the symbol of moral worth and individual

freedom.

Yet this critique of industry and praise of agriculture stems from
diametrically opposed values. — Bonald favors agriculture, because it
strengthens the intelligence of the cultivator, his ties with God and
nature, his family life and his relations with his neighbors. Proudhon

favors the agricultural proprietor, because he sees him as the solitary

man who tills the soil for his family and is the equal of every other,

the unencumbered master of his fate.
eoein France, two thirds of the inhabitants are interested
in landowning.... Agricultural labor, resting on this
basis appears in its natural dignity. Of all occupations
it is the most noble, the most healthful, from the point
of view of morals and health, and as intellectual exer-
cise, the most encyclopedic. From all these considera-
tions agricultural labor is the one which least requires
the societary forms.... Never have peasants been seen to
form a society for the cultivation of their fields; never

will they be seen to do so....

16.

It is otherwise with certain industries, which require

the combined employment of a large number of workers....

In such cases, workman is necessarily subordinate to

workman, man dependent on man. The producer is no longer,

as in the fields, a sovereign and free father of a family;

it is a il teak nets.”
For Proudhon the peasant is the ideal anarchist, whose ability to maintain
his family by his own efforts makes all government unnecessary. Whereas |
Bonald considers that inequalities among men are given by nature and,
therefore, merely recognized by society, Proudhon believes that "the
hierarchy of capacities cannot be allowed as a principle and law of organi-
setae. Bonald idealizes agriculture because it is the bulwark of
traditional society against the ravages of ne Proudhon does so

because it enables every man to obtain a modest subsistence for his family

by himself, it levels social differences, decreases mutual dependence, and
hence enhances human freedom.

One may add to these examples a brief reference to similar arguments
on this side of the Atlantic. Here conservative views like those of Burke
or Bonald, which had — openly expressed during the first decades
following the Declaration of Independence, became less publicly acceptable
during the 1830's.7" But the belief in inequality which became politically
inexpedient even among New England conservatives, became a matter of deep

conviction in the regional society of the South. In this context conserva-

tive views of social rank became linked with an attack on Northem indus-
trialism, on one hand, and a defense of slavery, on the other. In his

Sociology for the South, George Fitzhugh denounces men of property who are

A? «

masters without the feelings and sympathies of masters, engaged in the
selfish struggle to better their pecuniary condition and hence without
time or inclination to cultivate the heart or the head.” Fitzhugh
reiterates the theme which is already familiar to us: that the division
of labor may make men more efficient, but also confines the worker to
some monotonous employment and makes him an easy prey of the capitalist,
who considers him solely in monetary eevee In this setting the standard
argument against the division of labor, which Marx emphasized so much,
is used in a defense of slavery! For Fitzhugh contrasts the moral desti-
tution of the free laborer, hated by his employer for the demands he makes
and by his fellow workers because he competes for employment, with the
moral attainments and domestic tranquillity of the South, which is founded
upon the parental affection of the masters and child-like obedience of the
slaves.” This view is strangely echoed by Orestes A. Brownson, a New
England cleric and radical Christian who had identified himself with the
workers in the 1830's, and later became converted to Catholicism. Through-
out Brownson attacked the moral degradation imposed on both employers and
workers. When one finds that writers as different as Bonald and Proudhon
idealized the agriculturalist, it is perhaps not surprising that men as
different as Fitzhugh and Brownson at certain points agree about slavery:
Between the master and the slave, between the lord and
the serf, there often grow up pleasant personal relations
and attachments; there is personal intercourse, kindness,

affability, protection on the one side, respect and grati-

tude on the other, which partially compensates for the

18.

superiority of the one and the inferiority of the other;
but the modern system of wages allows very little of ail
this: the capitalist and the workman belong to different
species, and have little personal intercourse. The agent

or man of business pays the workman his wages, and there

ends the responsibility of the employer. The laborer has
no further claim on him and he may want and starve, or
sicken and die, it is his own affair, with which the
employer has nothing to do. Hence the relation between
the two classes becomes mercenary, hard and a matter of
arithmetic.
And then Brownson continues in a language that is not essentially different
from the language of the Communist Manifesto:
The one class become proud, haughty, cold, supercilious,
contemptuous, or at best superbly indifferent, looking upon
their laborers as appendages of their steam-engines, their
spinning-jennies, or their power-looms , with far less of
esteem and affection than they bestow on their favorite
dogs or horses; the other class become envious, discontented,
resentful, heakits, dering under a sense of injustice, and :
waiting only the —-s to right themselves,“"
The examples given may be sufficient. They seem to suggest that
in the late 18th and early 19th century men of letters were made deeply
anxious by what they considered the a crisis in human relations brought

about by industrialization. As Karl Mannheim has pointed out, these critics

base their opposition to industrial society on moral grounds that are

19.

strikingly similar despite the deep political division between conservatism
and cadiention,”” In their view the modern industrial development leads

to the alienation of men -~ from their fellows and from the project of
their work. Men become alienated from one another as their relations come
to be governed by monetary considerations. As equals compete with one
another, as employer and worker strike bargains solely in terms of material
advantage, the ties which bind men to each other lose their basis in senti-
ment and a sense of obligation and come to rest on economic interest alone.
With the assertion of rights, freedom is obtained for the individual, but
at the price of fraternity. Similarly, men become alienated from the
product of their work. Industry depends on the division of labor, but as
that division progresses men become appendages to the machine. As their
work becomes increasingly monotonous, the opportunity to develop and
‘exercise their emotional and intellectual faculties steadily decreases.
These themes have been the standbys of social theory for almost two

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soeborten .”

The themes are important for our understanding of modernization.

By their incoporation in the work of Karl Marx, they have been a dominant
influence on modern thought, because of the unique way in which Marx
combined the sense of moral crisis described above with his claim that his
approach represented a scientific study of society. Reflections on Marx's
theories are legion; here they will be pursued only to the extent that the
reader can form an independent judgment of the difference between the
presentation which follows and this most influential treatment of social

classes in the process of modernization.

20.

ei

"The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of

class struggles." The Communist Manifesto begins with this sentence, yet
Marx's work as a whole does not contain a sustained analysis of sociai
classes. The third volume of his lifework, Das Kapital, breaks off after
four paragraphs of a chapter which was to be devoted to this topic. The
paradox has often been commented on, but it is more apparent than real.
Probably Marx had said what he had to say about social classes, since it
is not difficult to summarize his views. °*
For Marx classes are but the agents of social change, their ulti-
mate determinant is the organization of production. His reasons for this
assumption go back to early philosophical considerations. Today these
would be considered existentialist in the sense of inferences derived from
basic exigencies of human experience. Men cannot live without work they
also propagate their kind and hence — into the social relations of the
family. Men use tools to satisfy their needs; as basic needs are satis-
field, new needs arise and techniques of production are improved. The
proliferation of needs and improved techniques put a premium on cooperation
based on some division of labor, for divided labor increases productivity.
How labor is divided depends on the organization of production, specifically
on the distribution of property in the means of production. It is, there-
fore, the position which the individual occupies in the organization of
production with regard to that distribution of property, which indicates
to which social class he belongs.

In the wifinished chapter on class, mentioned above, Marx distin-

guishes between wage-laborers, capitalists, and landlords which form the >

three great classes of capitalist society, and the “infinite distinctions

of interest and position which the social division of Ledhere creates among
workers as among capitalists and landuenets."""" In a complex society,
individuals are distinguished from one another in a great many ways, even
when they belong to the same class. Thus, individuals who depend entirely
upon wage-labor may still differ greatly in terms of income, consumption
patterns, educational attainment, or occupation. Efforts to ascertain
class membership by grouping people in terms of their similar share in

the distribution of material geoods, skills, and prestige symbols, only
produces statistical artefacts in Marx's view. For him "class" refers to
a@ process of group formation in which people are wnited despite the
"infinite distinctions of interest and position" which divide them. To
be sure, a shared position in the organization of production is the neces-

sary condition of a social class. But only the experience gained in making

a living, and particularly the experience of economic and political conflict,

would prompt workers, capitalists, or landowners to develop a consciousness
of class and become united in action. Marx specified a number of conditions
that would facilitate the process. Where communication of ideas among
individuals in the same ees position is easy, repeated economic conflicts
will lead to a growth of solidarity and a sense of — opportunities.
Profound dissatisfactions arise from an inability to control the economic

structure in which the ruling class curtails the economic advance of the

group and subjects it to exploitation. In Marx's view a social class becomes

en agent of historical change when these dissatisfactions lead to the forma-
tion of political organizations so that a fully developed class is a poli-

tically organized group, capable of overcoming in action the distinctions of

interest and rank that divide it.

This interpretation of social class was based in the first instance
on Marx's detailed observations of the English labor movement which he

himself systematized in the following words:

Large-scale industry assenbles in one place a crowd of
people who are unknown to each other. Competition divides
their interests. But the maintenance of their wages, this
common interest which they have against their employer,
brings them together again in the same idea of resistance
-- combination. Thus combination has always a double ain,
that of putting an end to competition among a on to
enable them to compete as a whole with the capitalist. If
the original aim of resistance was that of maintaining wages,
to.the extent that the capitalists, in their turn, unite
with the aim of repressive measures, the combinations, at
first isolated, became organized into groups, and in face
of the unity of the capitalists, the maintenance of the
combination becomes more important than upholding the level
of wages. This is so true that English economists have been

astonished to observe the workers sacrificing a substantial

._ part of their wages in favour of the associations, which in

the eyes of the economists were only established to defend

wages. In this struggle -- a veritable civil war -- all the

elements for a future battle are brought together and developed.

Once arrived at this point the association takes on a political

teenies

23%

This conception of class as a group gradually emerging to self-consciousness

and political organization in the course of economic and political struggles

was at once analysis and projection. Analysis in so far as Marx systema-

tized his observations of emerging working-class movements in England from
the late 18th toe the middle of the i9th contury.”” Projection in so far as
Marx generalized from this analysis, both with regard to the formation of
classes in the past (for example, that of the bourgeoisie under feudalism)
and with regard to the development of a revolutionary working class in the
future. ‘The latter views applied not only in England but in all countries
undergoing a capitalist development such as England had experienced since
the 18th century. We should understand what gave Marx confidence in
predicting that the struggle he analyzed would eventuate in a revolutionary
overthrow and reconstitution of society. |

The first point to be mentioned is Marx's acceptance and dramatic
elaboration of the ideas briefly described above. Like Ferguson, Millar,
MYser, Goethe, Bonald, Proudhon, Fitzhugh, Brownson, and a host of others,
Marx was deeply impressed by the moral crisis which capitalism had wrought
in man's relation with his fellows and his work. To cite Marx's views on
alienation at this point would be to repeat many of the moral reflections
cited earlier (albeit in more Hegelian language) and what has been elaborated
in a thousand ways by critics of modern society since his i.” But Marx's
elaboration of widely shared beliefs assumed special significance. The
reason is, I believe, that for him the mounting alienation of men was part
of an economic process in which repeated and severe depressions together
with the capitalists' restrictive practices would create an ever increasing

discrepancy between the forces and the organization of production, or, in

24.

simpler language, between the economy's capacity to satisfy human needs
and the satisfaction of needs which is actually achieved. Marx's economic
analysis seeks to support this ee in view of the impor-
tance he attached to it he had no reason to feel that he had neglected

the analysis of social class. His analysis is distinguished from the

many other writers who developed similar themes by the belief that he had

proved man's alienation to be a symptom of the final phase of “pre-history."

Marx belongs to the large company cf men who observed the destruction
of traditions and the smailer —s of those who welcomed the technical
and economic changes which were revolutionizing the old order. However, he
sees the difference between then and now in a very special way. Earlier
epochs were marked by "manifold gradations of social rank," but the modern
era tends towards a simplified antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat.
While this prediction has not stood the test of time, it is of a piece with
his view that all previous history is pre-history. Never before had the
social world been stripped of all its traditional practices and religious
beliefs; only now had it been revealed as it really is, capable of a

rational ordering by men who have come within reach of satisfying all their
desires. Eventually, the classless, communist society of the future would
establish true equality among men. Though he refused to speculate about

this new order, Marx was emphatic that world history was nearing its decisive
turning point. In his view man's productive potential had become so great
that the deprivations of inequality and hence the substitute gratifications
of religious beliefs had become obsolete. Wor the same reasons human rela-

tions have become transparent so that the social order is now capable of

Zod»

being "consciously regulated by freely associated men in accordance with
a settled stan," Marx believed that this equalitarian society of the
future would bring about a complete break with the past, leading to a

cessation of class struggles and freeing men from being at the mercy of

circumstances not of their own choosing. For the first time in history

men had the opportunity to establish a rationally planned society. To
cope with this world historical turning point, Marx devoted his life work
to an analysis of those cumulative conditions, endemic in the capitalist

organization of production, which would bring about the final revolutionary

struggle.

The third point to be noted is the famous paradox of Marx's deter-
minism. On the one hand, he predicted that the contradictions inherent
in capitalism would inevitably produce a class-conscious proletariat and
a proletarian revolution. On the other, he assigned to class-consciousness,
to political action, and to his own ecientific theory a major role in
bringing the inevitable about. The paradox is "sesolved" once it is
remembered that for Marx the eventual revolution as well as the subjective
actions and ideas which help bring it about, are condi anid of the mounting
contradictions between the potential for productivity and the actuality of
exploitation. Marx “explains” the eventual political maturity of the prole-
tariat, the constructive role of "bourgeois ideologists" as well as his own
scientific theory as creative responses to contradictions which are the
product of capitalism.

For Marx "all hitherto existing societies" encompass the "pre-history"

of class struggles as contrasted with the classless society of the future.

All his attention is focussed on analyzing the last phase of that pre-history.

26.

Accurate, scientific understanding of this phase is ultimately indispensable
for choosing and guiding political action, but capitalism aisc jeopardizes
all constructive and undistorted use of intelligence. Between these two
positions there is a fundamental ambivalence. Marx wants to know, accurately
and dispassionately, but since his own theory of the socio-historicai founda-
tion of knowledge casts doubt upon the possibility of a science of society,
he also wants to make sure that the knowledge gained will play a constructive
role in human affairs. Accordingly, his lifelong work on economic theory,
cast in a scientific mold, and his moral vision cf an ultimate revolt against
alienation support each other. Science "shows" that alienation must get
worse, and the worse alienation gets, the more it will function as the
historical precipitant of the truth which will finally emancipate mankind.
This ahistorical view of the last, critical phase in heme history brings

to a climax that shift in intellectual perspective which had its most impor-
tant initiator in Thomas Hobbes' materialist view of man, and which we have
sketched above in several interpretations of society and social class in

the early period of industrialization.

Critical Reminders
As European societies approached the "modern era," men of letters came
to think about social differences with an awareness of a new society in the
making. The preceding survey characterizes that awareness. At this point
it is appropriate to reconsider the three assumptions underlying this intel-
lectual tradition, to which I referred earlier (see pp. 4-5).
(A) The idea of a breakthrough to a new historical era is a common-

place of social thought since the 18th century, as mentioned earlier. Its

eid

common denominator is the contrast between tradition and modernity, which

has been reformulated in many different ways, but almost always with an

emphasis on the past stability of social relations and the normative order

in contrast with the myriad instabilities of the present. This approach has

been so pervasive that even today it is difficult to be free of its influence.

Yet there are indications that its insights do not outweigh its deficiencies.
1. The greater the contrast between tradition and modernity, the

more one will come to think that the second rises only at the expense of the

first. One will not icok for "modern" elements in the context of tradition

or “traditional” elements which remain or recur in the context of modernity.
By overdrawing the contrast between one type of society and another we
impart to both a degree of homogeneity that is quite unrealistic.

2. Also implicit in this contrast is a theory of cultural decay,
which is the romantic reversal of the theory of progress. We commit the

"fallacy of the golden age," when we attribute stable norms and expectations

to the social order of the past and interpret the present as a cumulative

falling away from that ideal condition. Traditional societies are not
that stable and orderly, nor is modern society that unstable or devoid
of compensations,

3. Assessments of this type are obviously partial. However, we
forego the degree of detachment which we can attain, by our failure to
specify the conditions under which the assessment is made or the criteria
which are employed in it. Contrasts between types of society, or the
abruptness of change from one to another, obviously depend upon our frame
of reference. For example, comparisons between Western societies in 1750
and 1950 yield greater contrasts than comparisons of these societies in,
say, 1750 and 1820. We can communicate our assessment of the abruptness
or continuity of change only if we explicitly state with regard to what
criteria we arrive at our judgment.

For our purposes it is instructive to apply this consideration to
the idea of a breakthrough to a new historical era. Possibly Marx has
contributed more than anyone else to this conception, especially by his
interpretation of the uoursaotete as the collective, historical agent
which "created" the revolutionizing effects of modern industry.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has
put an end to all feudal patriarchal, idyllic relations. It
has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound
man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no
other nexus between man and man than naked seif-interest,

than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly

estasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of

a

29

philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical

indation.....°”

Such dramatization of world history in terms of rising and declining classes

militates against a proper investigation. The fact is that in England as

the first country to industrialize the "bourgeoisie" was not as revolutionary

and the aristocracy not as traditional, nor the two classes as divided, as
this interpretation presupposes. (We shall return to this topic.) More
generally, Marx attributes to one collective agent all the preconditions in
Western European history which contributed to the eventual breakthrough of
the industrial and the democratic revolution. These preconditions, and the
distinctive character of Western-European history with them, hardly begin
and end with the role of the bourgeoisie.

Against the view that tradition and modernity are mutually exclusive,

I wish to maintain that even the two revolutions of the 18th century are

best understood as culminations of specifically Western-European continuities,

i.e. that "modern" elements were eulaout long before the modern era. (By
the same token the traditional social order had distinctive attributes not
found in other civilizations.) The point may be iilustrated with regard to
the bases of social action. Kinship ties, religious beliefs, linguistic
affiliations, territorial communalism, and others are typical forms of asso-
ciation in a traditional social order. None of these ties or associations
have disappeared even in the most highly industrialized societies. But some
of them had been weakened by the ascendance of Christianity, others by the
Renaissance and Reformation, and others still in the course of the struggles
between absolutist rulers and the estates. It may be recalled that Max

Weber's lifework documents the proposition that Christian doctrine and the

So a
. +

30.

revival of Roman law militated against familial and communal ties as foci

of loyalty which compete effectively with the universal claims of legal

procedure and the Christian faith. The ethnical wniversalism of the Puritans
and its subsequent secularization were later links in this chain of precon-

ditions. By these prior developments in Western Europe men were freed very

gradually for such alternative solidarities as those of social class,
arising from market relations and an increasing division of labor, and of
national citizenship. To this day the relative decline of "traditional"
and the relative ascendance of “modern” solidarities remain or recur as
social and political issues. In my view there was indeed a breakthrough
to a new historical era, but this was the result of continuities reaching
back into classical antiquity which came to a head in a specific time and
place owing to the very particular conditions of English society in the
17th and 18th centuries.

(B) This element of continuity was neglected in the face of what
appeared as an abrupt contrast between tradition and modernity. But in
other respects continuity was emphasized. Many writers of the late 18th
and early 19th century considered the division of labor a major factor in
promoting social change, and hence tended to explain social change as a
phenomenon internal to the societies changing. (This mode atl exp lanetled
goes back to antiquity, but there is no need to consider the historical
background.) To them the growth of commerce and industry -~ ultimately
prompted by self-interest -~- depends upon the subdivision of tasks, to
use Ferguson's phrase, and that subdivision determines the ideas and
actions of men, provides the basis for the difference between social

classes and hence gives rise to political actions. Accordingly, the

i ‘ Waal?) } *
" o — ¥e ay
.. ee eo ere = Pe a“

= ea ees te eT ee

Sis

political structure of a society, and indeed its international position,
are seen to depend in the long run on the organization of production.
This is the context in which Marx interpreted nationalism and religion
as ideological weapons employed by the ruling classes in order to divert
the workers from their "true" aim of organizing politically and preparing
the coming revolution. Similarly, he predicted a growing international
solidarity between the same social classes in different capitalist coun-
tries, since he assumed that like economic sub-structures engender like
class-interests irrespective of nationality. Such predictions turned
religious beliefs and national differences into passing phases or
secondary complications which could not alter the long-run effects of
the division of labor.

Against the view that the modernization of societies is to be
understood principally as a result of internal changes, I wish to maintain
that following the breakthrough in England and France every subsequent
process of modernization has combined intrinsic changes with responses to
extrinsic eels.” The great lacuna of the interpretations here opposed ©
is their failure to account for the rising tide of nationalism which
throughout has accompanied the process of industrialization. Yet this
rising tide can be explained by a simple restructuring of what we know
about social agitation during the 19th century. The economic advance of
England and the stirring events of the French revolution were witnessed
from afar by men, to whom the economic backwardness and autocratic institu-
tions of their own country appeared still more backward and autocratic by
comparison. Under these conditions cultural life tended to become polarized

between those who would see their own country progress by imitating the “more

Pee y nee wee Ce ee ae eo ‘a ve . . .
PO on eS | a a ee ee Oh EE Sees ‘~. —

Jee

' and those who denounced that advance as alien and evil

advanced countries,’
and emphasized instead the wellisprings of Strength existing among their own
people and in their native culture. This reaction was typified by the
Westernizers and Slavophils of Tsarist Russia, but the general pattern has
occurred again and again. It has been a mainspring of nationalism, of
movements for national independence, and of concerted drives toward indus-
trialization.

During the 19th century working-class agitation involved very
difference processes. Initially, workers experienced industrialization as
economic destitution exaeevheted by legal and political changes which --
often under the slogan of individual freedom -- made a mockery of their
position as members of the community. For workers this experience meant
a second-class citizenship re-enforced by police measures and the ideolo-
gical indignities heaped upon them from the pulpit and in public debates.
Radical agitation among workers represented a protest against this type
of discrimination, involviag a strong civic component entirely compatible
with the strong hold of nationalist beliefs among them. They wanted to be
accepted in a national community whose leading spokesmen questioned their
moral — and eee but this civic component is
frequently missing from the radical agitation of intellectuals, since
their citizenship was never in question. At times, these two kinds of
agitation have been joined in blends of nationalism and socialism, where
the workers’ protest against second-class citizenship and the intellec-
tuals' ambivalence about the comparative backwardness of their country

and their own role in it, were not sufficiently assuaged. But these

points were largely obscured by Marx, who treated the nationalist beliefs

as

Noes ay ee ee ee eo oo AEP ow 3 are, wo dy, cals
pitti i Side bcs sa F Day ola ie Sy ee
Piel (ore ee eae i . fee ie weg A Piet > ee ae

er . xp sa:

he Oat en eee mend
x
Wer ve
ta et TP Ce ee pen ee as See See > Nene

aoe

of workers and intellectuals as a passing phase, largely the result of
manipulation by the ruling classes, and who attributed to workers types
of dissatisfaction (i.e. the alienation resulting from the division of
labor) more often found among intellectuals. Since his theory emphasized
changes internal to the society, it appeared of relatively little impor-
tance to him that most countries have had to follow the lead of England
and France and hence have had to respond to advances made beyond their
frontiers. Yet this is one reason why nationalism has been a constant
feature of modernization.

(C) Neglect of these considerations because of an emphasis on the
internal continuity of social change has had special implications for our
understanding of industrialization. England was the first country to indus-
trialize and in Marx's view she exemplified the "laws of capitalist develop-
ment.'' Writing in 1867, in his preface to the first edition of Capital,
Marx declared England to be the classic ground of the capitalist mode of
production. England was more developed industrially than other countries.
As they enter upon the path to industrialization, these other countries
will wndergo developments comparable to those of Engiand because of the
tendencies inherent in the capitalist organization of production. Marx
made this prediction on the assumption that the same organization of produc-
tion generates everywhere the same or similar transformations of social
classes and the political structure. But, as an empirical proposition,
this assumption is misleading. Once industrialization had been initiated
in England, the technical innovations and the institutions of the economi-
cally advanced country could be used as a model in order to move ahead more

rapidly than England had, and also as a warning in order to mitigate or even

34.

avoid the problems encountered by the pioneering country. Marx himself
noted this possibility, but did not consider it seriously. He declared
that his analysis of the advanced country could only help to "shorten the
birthpangs" of similar developments in other countries, for the capitalist
mode of production is governed by the same laws or inevitable tendencies
wherever it eccucs," By making politics and government entirely dependent
upon the economic structure, Marx precluded recognition of the importance
which governmental initiative would have in countries that followed in the
wake of English industrialization.

The point is a general one. Industrialization itself has intensi-
fied the communication of techniques and ideas across national frontiers.
Taken out of their original context, these techniques and ideas are adapted
so as to satisfy desires and achieve ends in the receiving country.
Certainly, such adaptation is affected at every point by the resources and
economic structure of the country, but Marx tended to make necessities out
of contingencies. He did not give full weight — historical traditions
which affect the social structure of every country and with it the capacity
of a people to develop its opportunities. Nor did he consider that this
structure is modified materially by the international transmission of tech-
niques and ideas and by attempts to control the process and repercussions
of industrialization politically.

Marx was not alone in neglecting these considerations. The view that
policies and government are products of social forces, has a certain basis
in historical fact, difficult as it obviously is to separate facts from

reflections upon them. Conservative as well as radical critics of commerce

and industry made economic activities the basis of social class, whether

ads

they emphasized money, trade, materialism, the ownership of property, ofr
most generally the division of labor. Hence, most observers of early

industrialization thought economic change the primary factor, whether .

they believed that governmental measures reflect that change, as the
radicals did, or that these measures were needed to avert its worst conse~
quences, as the conservatives did. In England, the work of the classical
economists enhanced this consensus, because opposition to mercantilist
policies argued for less regulation of economic affairs and hence for a
secondary role of government. As governmental controls over the economy
were reduced, as guild regulations were abandoned, as labor mobility
increased along with population, trade, and manufacture, it became very
plausible to consider that society and economy possess a "momentum" of
their own, while government merely responds to the impact of social forces.
At this time, office holding was still a form of property ownership so that
the idea of authority as an adjunct of ownership partly described the
society. In addition, the industrial revolution first occurred in England,
among the continental countries England alone lacked an absolutist tradi-
tion with its basis in a standing army, and she was also characterized by
a more permeable upper class than the countries of the Continent. It was
indeed a wnique constellation of circumstances which gave new emphasis to
the old view that social change is internal to the society changing, that
social change originates in the division of labor, and that, consequently,
government or the state are products of the social structure. It may be
suggested that this intellectual perspective unduely generalizes from a

very limited phase of the English experience.

36.

The comparative study of modernization and inequality can be
advanced, I believe, by an alternative perspective, which sees society
and government as partly interdependent and partly autonomous spheres of
social life. This perspective is directly applicable to the distinction
between early and later phases of industrialization. Against the Marxian
assumption that England exemplified the "laws of capitalist development,"
I wish to maintain that no country would or could begin the process of

industrialization de novo, once the breakthrough had been achieved. Rather,

follower societies seek to adapt the technical and social experience of the
pioneer societies for their own purposes, but in attempting to do so they
typically lack the antecedents that were characteristic of Western Europe.
Typically, also, they have resorted to considerable governmental initative
in the effort to bridge the gap that has been created by the pioneer
societies. In this way modernization became a national political objec-
tive already during the 18th century: Peter the Great was perhaps the
first modernizer in the current sense of the term. Accordingly, the
following discussion deliberately emphasizes the role of government in

the modernization of societies, and along with this its role in the

distribution and redistribution of opportunities.

OT »

An Alternative Perspective

There is a ready alternative for the three tenets examined in the
preceding discussion. I shall state this alternative here in general form
and with regard to its implications for the — of social stratification.

(A) Social change is a continuous process, however sharp the
contrasts appear to be between different social structures. The idea of
a break between pre-industrial conditions and an industrializing society
is sawp ly false. Concepts which emphasize contrasts or discontinuities are
indeed indispensable analytic aids, but should not be mistaken for descrip-
tions of societies as functioning wholes. Evidence concerning changes of
social stratification in the course of industrialization does not present

the simple picture of a declining aristocracy and a rising bourgeoisie,

which the ideas I have surveyed have suggested to us. In the European

context there is evidence rather of the continued economic and political
pre-eminence of pre-industrial ruling groups as well as of the continued,
subordinate role of the "middle classes" throughout the period of transi-~

tion to an industrial wostexs."” The entire character of the modernization

which results eventually depends upon the nature of this transition. Typi-

cally this is a period of readjustment or transformation marked by tensions

between the changing economic structure and the political framework of

industrializing societies. To dismiss all this as a remnant of the past

(or a disequilibrium) which will disappear sooner or later means simply to

eliminate the course of events and its repercussions in the interest of

preserving the conceptual contrast between tradition and modernity.

(B) All societies have an internal structure and an external setting.

It is legitimate to separate these two dimensions for analytic purposes, and

38.

to neglect one or the other if it is irrelevant for the problem under
consideration. But the study of industrialization must attend to the
external setting of societies even if its focus is on changes internal

to shale social structures, because industrialization through its
influence on the means of communication is international in scope.
Consequently, an analysis of this pattern of social change, focussing
primarily on the repercussions of the division of labor, fails to

consider the diffusion of ideas across national frontiers. This omission
is reflected in the fact that the ideas about social change reviewed above
make much of standard social classes like workers or capitalists, but
neglect or entirely omit the role of intellectuals. Yet with the possible
exception of England, intellectuals have played a major role in helping

to transform the social structure of their society in the course of its
industrialization, and have done so more often than not in reference to

prior economic and political developments abroad.

(C) There are no "laws of capitalist development." It is quite

true that certain consequences follow from an increasing division of labor,
but these are embedded in the particular transition from a pre-industrial
to an industrial structure which distinguishes one society from another.
Since follower societies are characterized by considerable governmental
initiative in the attempt to "modernize," the social structure of their
"transitional phase" should be a primary focus of analysis rather than be
dismissed as a survival of the past. My contention is that the repercus-
sions of industrialization are not mere by-products of that process itself,
but will be shaped in considerable measure by the politics of transition

and hence by a social structure which reflects pre-industrial conditions.

4

4

It is suggested, therefore, that a comparative study of moderni-
zation and inequality focus on (a) the structure of ruling groups either
as a legacy of pre-industrial conditions which is still viable, or as a
series of readily organized ad hoc groups, where that legacy is not viabie;
(b) the emerging role of intellectuals and of educational institutions
which together constitute a society's principal channel of communication
with reference to advanced, foreign ideas and developments; (c) government
employment, access to education, and economic activities as equally impor~
tant sources of social stratification in the period of transition. Ail
three foci point to the importance of the political dimension in the
comparative analysis of modernization, and in conclusion it may be useful
te consider this emphasis on a more abstract level,

One can distinguish between three views of the relation between
society and government: that society is an object of state-craft, that
politics and government are products of social forces, and thirdly that
society and government are partly interdependent and partly independent
spheres of social life. All three views can be related to specific histori-
cal contexts which encouraged their formulation at one time as well as to
circumstances today which rekindle our concern with Gens The preceding
survey of ideas about stratification in an industrializing society exem-
plifies the second view, which I now propose coer with the third
which sees society and government as interrelated, but autonomous forces.
This third view also emerged in response to the transformations of the early
modern period and a brief reference to these conditions will set the stage
for the more abstract considerations which follow.

During the 18th century philosophers of the enlightenment contrasted

40.

man in a "state of nature" with his virtues and sentiments as yet unspoiled
by civilization and man as a citizen whose subordination to the conventions
of society does violence to his integrity and dignity as aman. The revolu-
tionary implications of this view are apparent when one recalls that in the
traditional view state and society (civitas and societas civilis) were iden-
tical because both encompassed only those persons who possessed the civic
status of an independent livelihood, thereby excluding from that status the
majority of the people who were jooemiente Now, all those traditionally
excluded from civic status came to be seen as possessing the "rights of
man." In this way the claim to citizenship Ex ali adults is at the basis
of the concept "society" which originally is contrasted with a "state" that
encompasses only the privileged few.

One theoretical elaboration may be cited here in order to illustrate
how the distinction between society and the state wes retained, while the
conflict between them was "resolved." In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel
accepts the market model of classical economics by noting that the arbi-
trary self-interest of individuals through their interactions gives rise
to the laws of the market. Yet self-interest is not sufficient to explain
either the existence of organized government or the fact that government not
only permits, but encourages the development of the individual and of parti-
cular interests. These results are achieved under three conditions. Hegel
points out that in pursuing their own ends individuals also aim at universal
ends of government; the property owner, to cite a favorite example, also
wishes the security of all other property owners. The officials of govern-

ment as a class possess a consciousness of right and a developed intelligence.

41.

And where the sovereign works on this ciass from the top while corporation-
rights press on it from the bottom, the officials will be prevented from
using their education and skill "as a means to an arbitrary eveanny 0"
This conception of society and the state points to the problem of
absolutist regimes of the 18th set early 19th centuries and their attempt
to "manage" the transition from the estate-societies of the Middle Ages to
the class~societies of the modern nation-state. As European sovereigns
turned from patrimonial rulers into "first servants of the state" and
developed an administrative apparatus of the bureaucratic type, they evolved
the conception, and often increased the power, of a paternalistic welfare
state. Though earlier powers of the aristocracy were often curbed in the
process, the pre-eminent social position of this estate and its hereditary
prerogatives in government and the "estate assemblies" remained intact.
Accordingly the "state" was embodied in a government of officials under a
sovereign and in the pre-eminent position of the first estate. Following
the French revolution, civic "society" sought to have its interests and
claims recognized through constitutional reforms which would accord not
only consultative but legislative functions to representative assemblies.
But such reforms were denied or remained nominal. Aristocrats and govern-
ment officials dominated assemblies elected on a restricted basis, while
private associations and the development of public opinion were narrowly
circumscribed or prohibited altogether. This tension between "state" and
"society" appears as a peculiarly Continental phenomenon. By contrast in
England, “society” was represented in a powerful Parliament and hence was a
part of the "state" so that the concept "society" could not be used in

| At

radical opposition to the "state," as it was on the Continent.

42.

Historical experiences of this kind can be made the basis of a
theoretical perspective which affords us a general vantage point for the
analysis of industrializing societies. It avoids looking upon government
as a by-product of secial forces and hence presupposing its impotence, or
looking upon it as an all-powerful instrument of rule, as the earlier
theories of absolutism did. Rather, it calls for an empirical determina-
tion of the interplay between society and government. Let us now consider
the implications of this vantage point in abstract terms, |

Throughout history men have attempted to use the authority of govern-
ment in their own behalf, either to enhance their economic and social posi-
tion as well as their control over their feilow men, or conversely to
obtain government aid to assist them in their poverty and against those
who would exploit them. Saying this much already implies the distinction
between society and government. The latter can aid men in their struggle
over the distribution of life-chances only if it possesses some authority
of its own that is not itself derived from the inequality of conditions.

No doubt, a government's ability to do so is more or less limited, and
certainly governmental officials of all levels are involved in social
relations themselves. But the frequency with which men seek government

aid suggests that its powers, while limited, are considerable, and the
social involvements of officials will not fully account for their exercise
of authority or the general compliance with that authority. This is a very
old problem of political theory and as such not germane to this discussion.
For present purposes it will suffice to say that effective authority pre-
supposes some element of neutrality, often symbolized by a ceremony or

emblem of office, which enjoys a degree of shared recognition by officials

a a ae ee ee ee ee ee

Sif Sere Th ee ee Pe
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43.

and the public at large. From an analytic standpoint it is, therefore,
useful to distinguish between the actions of men in society, prompted as
these are by individual and socio-cultural motives, and the actions of men
who have been formally designated to act in an official capacity.

Such a distinction is proximate, obviously. The disengagement of
officials from their personal ideas and interests is never complete. And
although a government's symbolic claim to neutrality will rarely be abandoned,
its actual neutrality may be entirely nominal. Indeed, in one respect
governments are not, and cannot be, neutral arbiters of the inequalities
arising from the division ot Labor, even where they make — valiant
efforts in this respect. The possession and exercise of authority is
itself an index of inequality, since it must exclude the bulk of thoge who
do not hold office. Hence, if it is true to say that men have always sought
the aid of government in their affairs ~~ and have done so in partisan
fashion, it is just as true that governments have very often considered
the unequal distribution of life-chances among the people one of the oppor-
tunities and instruments for the exercise of rule. The analytic distinction
between society and _— highlights rather than obscures the reciprocal
relations between these two spheres of thought and sttion, ”

Having considered this perspective in these very general terms, it is
now useful to move a step closer to the problems concerning us. With regard
to the modernization of Western European societies, two systems of authority
can be contrasted, one in which government is an adjunct of high position in
a social hierarchy, the other in which that authority is pations,"™ It

will be seen that in both structures the role of government is indispensable

to an understanding of social stratification.

Medieval political life depended on the link between hereditary or
spiritual rank in society, control over land as the principal economic
resource, and the exercise of authority. Representation in judicial and
deliberative bodies was pre-empted by the traditionally privileged estates.
Rights and liberties were extended to members of the estates or to corpora-
tions rather than to individual subjects; likewise duties were imposed as
a collective liability. Accordingly, functions of government were the right
of a large number of corporate bodies and of families of hereditary privi-
lege enjoyed on the basis of “immunities' granted or held in perpetuity.

Each corporation or noble family with their possession constituted an autono~
mous jurisdiction, to which the individual looked for the safe-guarding of
his rights, and to which he owed his principal allegiance in a politics of
fealties, alliances, and feuds. Relations among these jurisdictions rather
than among groups formed on the basis of similar social and economic condi-
tions make up the medieval social structure. Thus, the right to exercise
authority was synonymous with participation in the struggle over the distri-
bution of rights and obligations. Within this framework, people were
excluded from any direct participation in political affairs, if their rank
or status excluded them from access to control over land; subjects in posi-
tions of economic dependence were classified in the household of their master
and subject to his authority. - In this setting collective actions based on
affinities of interest have a distinctive character. For these affinities
are circumscribed by the jurisdiction to which one belongs so that families

of high and low rank within the same jurisdiction have more in common than

families of the same rank in different jurisdictions. This intra-jurisdic—

tional solidarity may break down, as it did in Western Europe when peasants

45.

escaped to the towns or when craft~- and merchant-guilds in the 1lth century
revolted against their feudal overlords. But the individual peasants gained
their freedom from an old master by submitting to a new one, and artisans
and merchants joined forces in order to obtain recognition for a municipal
jurisdiction of their own, every bit as particularistic in its policies as
the ee it replaced.

Contrast this model with that of the modern nation-state. Now the
link between governmental authority and inherited privilege or the grant
of immunities to corporate bodies is broken. The decisive criterion of the
nation-state is the substantial separation between the exercise of govern-
mental functions and the privilege accorded to families or individuals of
rank by virtue of heredity or special corporate status. Major functions of
government such as the adjudication of disputes, the collection of revenue,
the control of currency, military recruitment, the organization of the mail,
the construction of public facilities, and others have been removed from the
political struggle in the sense that they cannot be appropriated by privi-
leged individuals or groups and on this basis parcelled out among competing
jurisdictions. Politics ceases to be a struggle over the distribution of
authoritative powers and becomes instead a struggle over the distribution of
the national product and over the administrative implementations which affect
that distribution. Accordingly, the emergence of a nation-state is coter-
minous with the development of a body of administrators and judges whose
recruitment and policy execution have been separated, albeit gradually, from
their previously existing involvement with kinship loyalties, hereditary
privileges, and property interests. Nationwide and codified laws and adminis-—

trative rules provide guidelines for official conduct in these and other respects.

46.

In this setting collective actions based on affinities of interest are made
possible by a teal we e provides "individuais with facilities for
realizing their wishes."" Now powers are conferred “upon individuals to
create, by certain specified procedures and subject to certain conditions,
structures of rights and duties within the coercive framework of the Lae
The stipulation of these procedures and conditions as well as the framework
of coercion are in the hands of a central government with its corps of offi-
cials. But the emphasis is on the powers conferred upon the individual,

who is free to pursue his interests separately, or jointly with others, as
long as he abides by the conditions laid down for the legally valid creation
of rights and duties. Accordingly, groups form on the basis of similar
social and economic conditions, when and insofar as these conditions induce
in the individuals concerned an ability -_ willingness to use the legal
powers at their disposal for the purposes of collective action. And by

such actions groups often create "structures of rights and duties" of special
advantage to themselves, which may include not only a more or less monopo-
listic appropriation of "life chances" but also attempts to secure favorable
policies and rulings from the government.

In sum, the first model involves a legally recognized hierarchy of
social ranks based on differential access to jand and the correlative right
to the exercise of governmental functions. By contrast, the second model
is based on a legally recognized equality of the power to create rights and
duties, a socio-economically differentiated ability and wiilingness to use
these powers, and a government which monopolizes certain rule-making, coer-
cive and facilitating functions. In both cases our understanding will be

enhanced, if we consider the socio-economic differentiation of the population

47.

in relation to the exercise of governmental authority, rather than make
one of these spheres of thought and action into a by-product of the other.
The two social structures [I have sketched represent models derived
from, and limited by, the Western European experience. They are useful for
an understanding of the first breakthrough towards industrialization, but
shed little light on its repercussions throughout the world in the 19th and
20th centuries. The point of this distinction has been stated earlier. In
Western Europe the countries pioneering industrialization benefitted from
antecedents that freed the individual for the solidarities of class and
nation and thus prepared the ground for the ascendance of modern industrial
society. Elsewhere these antecedents were (or are) lacking. Moreover, con-
trary to the Marxian assumption, no country would or could begin the process

of industrialization de novo, once that breakthrough had been achieved.

Rather, follower societies seek to adapt the technical and social experience
of the pioneer societies for their own purposes. Thus, follower societies
like Russia and Japan lacked the antecedents characteristic of Western Europe,
and they have typically resorted to considerable governmental initiative in
the effort to bridge the gap that has been created by the pioneer societies.
In the following studies Russia and Japan are singled out for special atten-
tion -- in addition to England -- because their industrialization has been
successful and because in industrializing they —_— followed strikingly
divergent paths of their own (notwithstanding the large amount of cultural
borrowing which is a consequence of coming late). Attention to their pre-
modexrm social structures in the etoneus of transformation will show in both

cases patterns of stratification that were strikingly different from those

familiar to us in the West.

a 7 4, ¥
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48.

As follower societies Russia and Japan are distinguished not only
by their successful industrialization, but also by their political indepen-
dence, unity, and consequent capacity for government action. By contrast,
many follower societies of Latin America, Africa, and Asia experienced the
repercussions of Western industrialization in a position of economic and
political dependence, in the absence of antecedents conducive to moderni-
gation, and in the absence of effective government. Though today most of
these societies have become political independents, their social structures
reflect histories of “modernization by outside imposition" and hence
patterns of inequality unlike those to be found in countries which remained

independent in the course of their modernization.

a

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49.

Footnotes

1. See Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population
(Baltimore: Ps Books, 1964), pp. 24-28. By focussing attention on
the technical and economic effects of the process, Cipolla provides a
comprehensive formulation of what is meant ky induscriatteadion. ‘Nothing
like that ——- be achieved with regard to “modernization," which is
more inclusive and refers, albeit vaguely, to the manifold social and poli-
tical processes that have accompanied ee in most countries
of Wester civilization. The following discusSion contains contributions

towards a definition of "modernization."
2. See Robert A. Nisbet, Emile Durkheim (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-
Hall, 1965), p. 20.

a Jpi6., Bs 21 Bs

4. Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan
Intent,’’ in Carl J. Friedrich, ed., The Philosophy of Kant (New York:.
Modern Library, Random House, 1949), p. 121. Note the relation of this view
with the intellectual tradition traced in Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of
Being (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Brothers, 1960), passim.

5. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Fifth
ed.; London: T. Codell, 1782), pp. 302-303.

6, Ibid., PPpe 303-304.

Ts Ibid. » Dp. 308-309.

S. Ibid., p. 305.

9. See John Millar, "Social Consequences of the Division of Labor,"

reprinted in William C. Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow, 1735-1801 (Cambridge:

At the University Press, 1960), pp. 380-82. This volume contains a reprint

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of Millar's Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, first published in 1771.
10. Edmund Burke, “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795) ,"' in

Works (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1869), V, pp. 134-135.

11. Burke himself used the laissez-faire doctrine to support his
argument by "showing" that the law of supply and demand governed the wages
paid to labor and that interference with that law would merely aggrevate
the condition of the poor. The traditional argument against the injustice

of this system is exemplified by William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Poli-

» Fw Ee De Priestley,

tical Justice and its Influence on Morais and Happiness
ed. eseuvat University of Toronto Press, 1946), I, pp. 15-20. ;

12. Cf. the survey of these opinions by Robert Michels, Die Verelen-
dungstheorie (Leipzig: Alfred Kroener, 1928), passim.

13. For a case study of this complex in Engiand cf. Leo we
and Marjorie Fiske, "The Debate over Art and Popular Culture," in Mirra
Komarovsky, ed., Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: the
Press Press, 1957), Pp- 33-112.

14. Justus MYser, SUYmtliche Werke (Berlin: Nicolaische Buchhandlung,

1842), IV, pp. 158-162. I owe this reference to the article by Karl Mannhein,

é
cited below. ‘

15. J. W. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s A »renticeship (tr. by RB.
Dillon Boylan; London: Bell and Doldy, 1867), p. 268. See aiso Baron

Knigge, Practical Philosophy of Social Life (Lansingburgh: Perriman and

Bliss, 1805), pp. 307-308.
16. Knigge, op. cit.,
17. See Werner Wittich, "Der soziale Gehalt von Goethes Roman

Hauptprobleme der

"Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,‘''' in Melchior Paliyi, ed.,
JA.

Soziologie, Erinnerungsgabe fllr Max Weber (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,
1923), II, pp.

18. For documentation of the re and Literary life of the
period cf. W. H. Bruford, Germany in the 18th Century (Cambridge: At the
University Press, 1939), passim. The literary and philosophical response
to the French revolution is analyzed in Alfred Stern, Der Einfluss der
franzoesischen Revolution auf das deutsche Geistesleben (Stuttgart:
Cotta, 1928), but I know of no comparable summary treatment of the German
response to English industrialization. Cf., however, Hans Freyer, Die

Bewertung der Wirtschaft im philosophischen Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts

(Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1921) for some relevant materials.
19. M. de Bonald, Oeuvres Completes (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1864),
II, pp. 238-239.

20. Ibid. Note in passing that this contrast between agricultural

and industrial work is made in almost identical terms by John Millar, years
earlier. The difference between Millar's liberalism and Bonald's conser-
vatism seems to be reflected only in Millar's emphasis on the knowledge

of the peasant and Bonald's greater stress on his religion. Cf. Lehmann,
op. cit., pp. 380-382. As Max Weber has pointed out, this emphasis on the
piety of the peasant is a distinctly modern phenomenon, related to invidious
contrasts between town and country. See Max Weber, Sociology of Religion

(Boston: The Beacon Press, 1963), p. 83.

21. P. J. Proudhon, A System of Economic Contradictions or The

Philosophy of Misery (Boston: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1888), I, p. 138.
22. P. J. Preudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th

Century (London: Freedom Press, 1923), p. 215. This work was written in 1851.

“4 Foe Pane ees

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23. Proudhon, Philosophy of Misery, p. 132.

24. Cf. Norman Jacobson, The Concept of Equality in the Assumptions

of the Propaganda of Massachusetts Conservatives, 1790-1840 (Ph.D. Disser-

tation, University of Wisconsin, 1951).

25. George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South (Richmond: A.Morris

Publisher, 1854), pp. 233,235.

26. ibid., p. 161.

27. Ibid., pp. 106-107, 253-254. A major analysis of this Southern

ideology in historical perspective is contained in W. J. Cash, The Mind of

the South (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, 1954), passim.

28. Orestes A. Brownson, Works (Detroit: T. Nourse, 1884), V,
pp. 116-117. This passage was written in 1857, after the author's conver-
sation to Catholicisn.

29. Karl Mannheim, "Conservative Thought," in Essays in Sociology
and Social Psychology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), pp. 74-164.

30. A searching analysis of different meanings of "alientation" as
a central tenet of anti-capitalist ideology is contained in Lewis Feuer's
essay on this concept in Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich, eds. ,Sociology
on Trial (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), pp.
That men of opposite political persuasion have come to employ this concept
is analyzed sociologically by René Kinig, "Zur Sozioclogie der Zwanziger
Jahre,"' in Leonhard Reinisch, ed., Die Zeit ohne Eigenschaften (Stuttgart:
W. Kohlhammer, 1961), pp. 82-118.

31. The following account is based in part on Reinhard Bendix and
Seymour M. Lipset, "Karl Marx's Theory of Social Classes," in Class, Status

and Power (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1953), pp. 26-35.

Dae

32. See T. B. Bottomore and Maximilien Rubel, eds., Karl Marx,

Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (London: Watts &
Co., 1956), p. 179. My italies.

33. Cf. T. H. Marshall's definition of class as "a force that

unites into groups people who differ from one another, by overriding the

i

differences between them." See his Class, Citizenship and Social Develop-

ment (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1964), p. 164.

34. Bottomore and Rubel, op. cit., pp. 194-195.

35. A recent massive study by E. K. Thompson, The Making of the
English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), passim, enables us
to a this Marxian perspective in that it describes the movements
Marx observed with the benefit of another hundred years of scholarship.
However, the author faithfully reproduces Marx's own blindness to the
strongly conservative elements that were an enduring part of working-class
agitation (by treating these elements as a passing phase) as well as to the
mounting gradualism of the labor movement (by terminating his study in the
1830's).

36. A convenient compilation of relevant quotations from Marx is
_contined in Bottomore and Rubel, op. cit., Part III, chapter 4. To my
knowledge the most penetrating analysis of this complex of ideas is that
of Karl Lbwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche (New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston, 1964).

37. Karl Marx, Capital (New York: The Modern Library, 1936), p. 92.
Marx attributed religious beliefs and ideologies which disguise the “actual”
relations of men in society, to the conflicts of interest engendered by its

class structure. It was therefore logical for him to anticipate that the

54,

q 1

advent of a classless society would coincide with the "end of ideology,’

since then the “need for ideology" would disappear. Human reiations
become transparent, once the interest in distorting them vanishes.

38. See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto,

in Lewis Feuer, ed., Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy by Karl

Marx and Friedrich Engels (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co.,
1959), p. 9.

39. So, of course, did the initial development of England depending
as it did on intense competition with Holland. The point that social
structures cannot be understood by exclusive attention to their internal
developments is a general one. Cf. Otto Hintze, “Staatsverfassung und

Heeresverfassung,"' in Staat und Verfassung (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1962), pp. 52-83. The essay was originally published in 1906.
40. Karl Marx, Capital, pp. 12-13 (from the preface to the first
edition).
41. For emphasis on, and a general statement of, this approach
cf, Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1947), pp. 12-13, 135-137. The viewpoint is applied

to English history in striking, if polemical fashion by J. H. Hexter,

Reappraisals in History (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, 1963),

pp. 71-162.

42, Cf£. Reinhard Bendix, "Social Stratification and the Political

Community" Archives Europeenes de Sociologie, I (1960), 182-190.

43. Thus, Kant still excludes from the status civilis all appren-

tices, servants, children, women, and others whose livelihood and protection

involves a position of obedience to those who possess “bourgeois independence."

fo

Cf. Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morais, Part I, sec. 43, and esp. sec. 46.

44, T. M. Knox, ed., Hegei's Philosophy of Right (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1942), pp. 161, 193, 268. Cf. Lbwith, op. cit., for an
analysis of related intellectual developments in the 19th century.

45. Cf. Werner Conze, "Das Spannumgsfeld von Staat und Gesellschaft,
in Werner Conze, ed., Staat und Geselischaft im deutschen Vorm'¥rz, 1815-
1848 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1962), pp. 207-269 as well as the other
contributions to this volume.

46. This reformulation of the contrast between society and the state
is derived from the work of Max Weber. Cf. my discussion in Max Weber, An
Intellectual Portrait (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., 1962),
chapters 4 and 9. The analogous juxtaposition of society and the state in

Durkheim's work is analyzed in Bendix, “Social Stratification and the
2

Political Community."

47, The following statement is based on the more extended discus-
sion of this contrast in my book, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964), chapters 2-4.

48, H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

2961), 6: 27:

ra

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

BERKELEY * DAVIS * IRVINE * LOS ANGELES * RIVERSIDE * SAN DIEGO * SAN FRANCISCO SANTA BARBARA * SANTA CRUZ

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA 92502

12 December 1965

Dear Reinhard:

I am disgracefully tardy in acknowledging "Modernization
and Equality". I read it eagerly and immediately, but I have been

so enmeshed in Department toils in this, the one, year of my
chairmanship that I hafe had energy for little else. Howa
department as small as ours can involve as much to do--even

at this time of the year when budgets, courses, catalogue,
preparation and submission of M.A. Program are in the air---

I do not, frankly, know. Now I can say feelingly what 1 used
to sy rhetorically: the Department chairman is the hardest-
worked, least-rewarded, leasépeappreciated memberxm of the
University hierarchy. Oh well, it is but for the year; relief
is in sight!

Your paper delights me, and 1 can foresee collaboration
between the two of us sometime in the future that would certainly
be stimulating and fruitful for me at least. (1 am thinking, of
course, not of this or this subject, which is yours alone, but
of areas within which the approach contained here would join
nieely with my own).

l agree with what ypu write, bottom of P.2 et. seq.e,
on the oversimplification. It made for striking and fertile
departures in social theory, but has made for a degree of
conventionalization of perspective that just about dominates

comparative study of institutions today. I am referring to
the conceptual contrasts that are moted, a s you note, in the

contrast that seemed to so striking in the early 19th. By
the way, do yu know Raymond Williams’ fascinating book,
Culture and Society, 1780-1950. I wanted to use it in my

community course this sprin g, but am distressed to learn that
Anchor is letting it go out of print. Anyhow there are some

(chiefly. literary) expressions of the contrast that I had
never run into before reading Williams.

I don't know Moser except at second hand and then
vaguely, but 1 am fresh from reading the paperback selected
Conversfations with Eckermann and therefore appreciative the
more of your Goethe reference.

I must reread Millar, but I am skeptical of more
than merely technical correspondence of views between him and

Donald (Footnote 19). I don't have access here to Honald's
Oeuvres. Are your citations from his Comparison of the

Ye ce 1 ak

GR: Comments on "Modernization and Inequality."

The essay is elegantly written and consistent in its logic.

However, the discussion in the Complex Western Societies seminar

showed the kind of arguments that will be used by critics. Some

of the criticism appears to me valid enough to require some anti-

cipation in a revised version of the chapters

I suspect ¢6hat quite a few readers will react like Sornhauser
and point to the growing body of literature that sees the "transitional
phase" of industrialism no longer in terms of a hiatus between tradition
and modernity. I suggest that you say something--perhaps in a footnote--
on studies like those by Norman Jacobs and James Abegglen, which have
emphasized the importance of cultural continuities for the success
of industrialization in Japan. Jacobs seas Communist industrialization
in China in relation to the older patrimonial traditions and argues
that capitalism was less likely to succeed in China than in Japan.

Bellah also may fit in.

The point is that some functionalist researchers have stressed
continuity and thus avoided too sharp a contrast between tradition
and modernitye My recollection of their writings is not fresh enough
to say how adequately thay took into account external influences;

I suspect it is not"crucial"to their analysis,to use a favorite

term by Parsons.

In addition, 6f course, functionalists maintain that they are
much concerned with boundary exchanges or interchanges (as Kornhauser
said). Kornhauser's argument was possible, I believe, because you
shift from the analysis of historical ideas to your contemporar
alternative without explicitly acknowledging that the literature of
the last decade has moved away from the tradition which you analyse.
es. Redfield, for example, belongs into the old tradition.

Smelser also raised a predictable point: Do you deal with a historical
analysis or an analytical perspective? You are concerned with both, of course.
I don't think he was satisfied with the turn of the discussion--one
difficulty is exactly that the functionalist approach is so much indebted
to the old set of theories at the same time that Jacobs et ale have given
up the view of the irreconcilability of modernity and tradition.

There is another difficulty: Different elements of the older perspective
are retained by different groups of writers:
le The mass-culture critics in part retain the fallacy of the golden age 3
2x they argue in terms of historical fact;

2. The Marxists and their quasi-Marxist counterpart among American economists
tend towards determinism and stress ultimate similarity--again in terms
of historical fact;

3. Functionalists do not proceed from substantive theories (as 1 and 2),
but from a systems approach that also derives from the older perspective.
However, they may be nearer to your own perspective on the level of
historical analysis.

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July, 1966
Comments on R, Bendix, :Modernization and Inequality"

Discussant: Austin T. Turk

I. Very thoughtful, very useful paper. Especially noteworthy:

1, Rejection of strong tendencies for analysts of societal changes (a) to
conceptualize "traditional-modern" individiausly -- to perpetuate the nostalgic
and romantic critique of modernization that (particularly in the case of contemporaz
intellectuals) measures the "dehumanization" of mankind against an idealized
world of free, creative individuals -- world which whas never ecisted and, to be |
blunt, seems impossible, (b) to overgeneralize from European devt.lopments: construc T <
from limited histories are generalized as necessary stages (e.g., Marx) in the
modernization, or development, or -~- an equivalent word when European man was more
sure of himself -- civilization of all human societies. Further, Bendix notes
how the theoretical bias toward "social systems analysis" and the methodological
concomitant of this bias --the compilation of "attribute check-lists" -- repeat
the old overgeneralizing tendency by neglecting the timing and sequence of
changes in particular historical cases, and by assuming ~- implicitly -- that the
significance of differences among societies at a given point is to be interpreted
against an evolutionary path built out of the histories of the North Atlantic

nations,

2. Stresses importance of fact that modernization has already reached a
high point in some nations for understanding the development of "follower" nations,
In this connection, Bendix notes the importance of distinction betwean overall
modernization and piecemeal-introduction of "elements of modernity" -- with impli-~
cations for the new kinds of problems confrenting newly modernizing nations, e.g.,
the need for an educated elite to work on closing the gap between follower and
advanced, yet potential for increasing problems of control and coordination (given
that an "effective" political structure is also an essential for development. )

3. Counters the prevailing tendency in social theory to minimize the political
in dealing with social change, noting that while government "is an integral part
of the social structure," it "may have the capacity of altering it significantly."

(56)

II. Following points for further discussion and clarification:

1. Methodological

a, Prof. Bendix's alternative to the invidious and overgeneralizing concep.
and methods of a great many figures from Tonnies and Durkheim to Parsons, Lerner,
and Rostow is to me not clearly an alternative. The idea of limited constructs
developed out of knowledge of some, but not all, societies (see ASR, August 1963
Bendix article) sounds reasonable as a first step toward genuinely comparative
sociological studies, but when do we reach the point where we can essay less
historically restricted *- and by my criteria, more sociological -~- work? I am
uneasy with this something somewhere between historical and sociological work,
if this something is anything more than a temporary expedient to enable us to
learn enough about some limited ("two or more") number of societies to move with
real confidence toward comparative sociology. Anything that hints at capitulation

-2=-

by sociologists to historicism bothers me, though I don't think the issue can
ever be disposed of without some kind of agreement on what kinds of questions
we are trying to ask and answer. I. e., what is a "sociological" question?

b. Assuming that we all agree that we must have "before" and "after"
notions, as well as notions of "developmental sequences," in order to deal with
social changes, and that we must generate concepts out of what we already have
some knowledge of -- i.e., Western experiences (What else?) -- then how can we
avoid the risk of being wrong when we try out these concepts in non-Western
societies? As Bendix points out, the dangers of overgsneralization arise only
when these constructs are used to predict, rather than simply to suggest what
to look for, But if we are not to try to use whatever conceptual tools we have
to explain and predict -- assuming as a matter of course that we alter these tools
where they prove to be inadequate -- what use are they? We always risk being
wrong when we put something to the test; that, however, is the game: to test our
ideas, In any case, I wonder whether Bendix himself hasnot perhaps come close to
slipping from the admittedly limited constructs of "traditional" and "modern"
into the more general, yet apparently equivalent (56), constructs of "follower"
and "advanced" in order to say -~ and not merely suggest how one might go about
saying -- something about the modernization of new societies.

ec, On method more specifically, do we gain or lose in quality of
analysis by throwing out the whole idea of "attribute check-lists" instead of

adding timing and sequence variables? My inclination is to side with Bendix, but
how to answer a "hard" scientiest who poses the question”

2. The relations between modernization and structures of power~authority is
a criticel issue to which Bendix has given needed emphasis. However, several

questions are suggested by his discussion:

a. I continue to wonder just how far we can go ~~ along with Eisenstadt

("tendency toward mass participation in the center"), Bendix ("fundamental
democratization"), and many others -~ in associating modernization with democrati-
gation. Even though (1) status inequalities are no longer hereditary in "advanced"
social orders, and (2) authority-power relations are not as simple as a ruler-
ruled dichotomy (with many kinds of formal and informal constraints operating on
both governors and governed), it seems a little premature, at least, to characteriz
the changes as "democratization" -- even in the sense of incre asing "class-
formation of the lower strata" (implying their greater geographical mobility, liter.

access to public employment, etc, -~- 1, 44, 64, 56). It is an empirical question
still as to whether or not modern, "advanced society" societial decision-makers hav

greater or lesser power to affect the life chances of the ruled -- and indeed to
coerce, manipulate, punish individuals and groups -- than do traditional, "follower
society" rulers. In reference to specific points in the paper:

(1) Does equalization of access to public employment really imply
such a radical change from the elitism taken to be characteristic of traditional
(at least of traditional European) orders? I recall M. Weber's fear that bureau-
cratization might well mean Jess, not more, freedom of action for individuals.

To plug individuals from wider and wider sections of a population into bureaucratic
jobs is not the same as providing them with societal decision-making power.

-3-

(2) Increasing literacy does not mean, necessarily, that the common
man gains in power. The franchise, ability to handle verbal symbols, citizen
armies, and similar elements of "democratization" clearly do increase the political
"importance" of the people. But is their importance more that of resources than
that of decision-makers? A trained, and trainable, population, responsive to verbs
stimuli, is a much greater resource than a pre-literate mass unable to "think for
itself," However, is it not perhaps true that increased verbal skills not only
make the problem of controlling and using the people more complex, but also open
up new dimensions for manipulation ~~ new channels, or opportunities for
propagandistic, symbolic persuasion?

b. With regard to the extent to which "cultural norms" are accepted, the
contrast between "traditional" and "modern" seem to be overdrawn. Is it "probably
true that traditional socieities are characterized by universally accepted
cultural norms"? (42, 43ff,) (I am not sure what is meant by "cultural norms"
here. I define such norms as language, symbols representing and to some degree
constituting certain psychic states, or feelings regarding the rightnees~wrongness
of life patterns.) Certd nly the solidity of "primitive" cultures has become
increasingly open to question. All social orders, it seems, have dimensions of
conflict which have to be periodically resolved or transformed in some way. . .
sometimes through violence, (See Bendix, Nation-Building, 1964, L522, }

Whether we are observing traditional or modern societies, the fundamental issue
which is never finally settled is that of who shall decide and who shall have

to accept decisions. There is, one may posit, never full consensus in any social
order on this issue. I might note in passing that I find the elitism of
traditional European societies to be empirically unsound when we extend -- by
equating modernity and advance (56) -- our thinking to the point of talking about
the modernization of non-European peoples. Not all pre-moderns have had the

kind of elitist structure which Bendix takes to be characteristic of traditionals.

(42-44)

c, Finally, in regard to the proposition "that governmants play a larger
role in the modernization of relatively backward than of relatively advanced
socieities:" (53) If one takes England and Holland as the "advanced" referents,
then it does appear that governments have played a larger role in the initial
modernization of other ‘countries than in these. However, the vast proliferation
of development, investment, fiscal, tax, and other machinery for direct and
indirect economic control in all nations as they reach more "advanced" status

suggests that modernization implies the enormous expansion of public ( governmenta!
control of economy. My point is a qualification, not a denial, of Bendix's proposit
that the historical fact upon which the proposition hangs is indeed a singular
event — which I see as severely limiting the sociological utility of the
proposition as I understand it. One might say that "once upon a time" * events
did work out as the proposition states, but that as a general proposition this
one is far more historical than sociological -- implying that one may grant
the validity of the proposition without seeing how it helps us to explain or predict
much of anything about later events, Government interven tion, planning, control
becomes a woiversal -- I am suggesting ---after the first modernizing countries
"take off."

Overall evaluation: I am grateful for the emphasis which has been given to
political processes, but I am inclined to make a much stronger case for the
significance of such processes. Secondly, I am =~ perhaps brashly ~~ more anxious
to get on with the attempt to state specific explanatory and predictive proposition,

-L-

about the relations among power-authority and other variables, and subject
these propositions to as rigorous tests as possiblei-- revising and rejecting
particular concepts and propositions in light of the results.

Patil
of
~ all

For Professor Bendix = on ‘modernization! discussion in
the seminar.

Using the notion of 'referent society' is a very interesting one
for discussing modernization. Because many models of development are present -
ideal ones as well as real ones = I would use this term tied in with the
idea of'problems' or 'sets of problems' that the leadership in developing
societies face . Thus, in law, the problem of law-finding can be solved
by the intoduction of a Western code; the problem of legal training ma y
be tied into that of general education, and handled ina fa r different
way than has been am the historical experience of the referent society;

the problem of the administration of the la w may take yet a nother form.

Thus: I would keep the first sentence as is. Then :

"During the time when the state is modernizing and when the nationalist
and modernizing groups are being built, we find that referent societies

are used as models, providing guidelines for the answering of certain probe

lems or sets of problems for the new leadership. The xitutmxrieaixand social
in the new nation

conditions /that prevail at the time when problems are faced will determine

the wa y in which elites interpret and carry out the ideas borrowed from

abroad,"

David Makofsky

F °K FRE. BEXMOMX

RONALD ¥e-Lin Cheng
Nov. 18, 1965.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE STUDY OF MODERNIZATION

Other Sphere to be studbed

The influence of kinship on stratification and equality in the pro-
cess of modernization

Study Structure of ruling groups

(1) Who are the ruling groups? definition?
(2) Do we only study its structure or also its values, norms, etc.?

Study of Intellectuals

(1) Who are the intellectuals?

(2) Do they have a structure as a group?

(3) Are there values legitimize & norms regulating their interactions
as a group?

(4) Are there sanctions to bind them together?

(5) Are they a group at all?

Study of Education system

(1) Do we only study the structure and norms of education system?

(as Hang thes$s indicates).
2) Are we gbing to study the yalues which legitimized the type of
akties
education and the groups,should be educated?

Suggestions for Comparative Studies

Study Institutions

Defined as a set of normative pattern of values, norms, sorial
structures and sanctions, with fhe function of meéting certain social
neéd(§), and is widely accepted as binding in a soceity or part of a
society.

Compare institutions by holding Need(s) constant

«i |
Which perform the fuction of gorvine the same need(s). For

instance, if wé take the institution of governmental bureaucratie administra-

tion of two countries, which suppose to perform the function of Bebo 5 the
same needs of centralized gpvernmental administration. Then, it will

be an empirical question, whether each of the two institutions do satisfy
the need(s) and to what extent according to the variations in their

respective values, norms,structures and sanctions.

This method can be used to study institutional changes

1) Im one social unit
a) With need(s) constant, to see changes in any of the four components

effect changes in other components of the same institution.
(b) To see change in need(s) effect changes in the institution.

(2) Compare institution serving same need(s)

(a) With need(s) constant to compare changes of the instituation in

the two units.
(b) To compare changing need(s) effect change in the institution in

the two units.

Modernizatian

Modernization may be defined as a type of social change, initiated
intellectual
in 18th century Europe by the greet industrial, political and urban

revolutions, and consisting in the subsequent social transformations

in other countries confronted with the task of adopting more advanced
ideas and techniques from abroad, so as to close the gap with the“more
developed referent societies, without having to reject the still valid

indigen@us cultural values that do not impede progresse

Jean= Guy Vaillancourt

July, 1966

Comments on R, Bendix, :Modernization and Inequality"

Discussant: Austin T. Turk

I, Very thoughtful, very useful paper. Especially noteworthy:

1, Rejection of strong tendencies for analysts of societal changes (a) to
conceptualize "traditional-modern" individiously -- to perpetuate the nostalgic
and romantic critique of modernization that (particularly in the case of contemporar
intellectuals) measures the "dehumanization" of mankind against an idealized
world of free, creative individuals -- world which whas never ecisted and, to be
blunt, seems impossible, (b) to overgeneralize from European devs lopments: construc 7 <
from limited histories are generalized as necessary stages (e.g., Marx) in the
modernization, or development, or ~~ an equivalent word when European man was more
sure of himself -- civilization of all human societies, Further, Bendix notes
how the theoretical bias toward "social systems analysis" and the methodological
concomitant of this bias --the compilation of "attribute check~-lists" -- repeat
the old overgeneralizing tendency by neglecting the timing and sequence of
changes in particular historical cases, and by assuming -- implicitly -- that the
Significance of differences among societies at a given point is to be interpreted
against an evolutionary path built out of the histories of the North Atlantic

nations,

2. Stresses importance of fact that modernization has already reached a
high point in some nations for understanding the development of "follower" nations,
In this connection, Bendix notes the importance of distinction betwean overall
modernization and piecemeal introduction of "elements of modernity" -- with impli-~
cations for the new kinds of problems confrenting newly modernizing nations, e.g.,
the need for an educated elite to work on closing the gap between follower and
advanced, yet potential for increasing problems of control and coordination (given
that an "effective" political structure is also an essential for development.)

3. Counters the prevailing tendency in social theory to minimize the political
in dealing with social change, noting that while government "is an integral part
of the social structure," it "may have the capacity of altering it significantly."

(56)

II. Following points for further discussion and clarification:

1. Methodological

a, Prof. Bendix's alternative to the invidious and overgeneralizing concep.
and methods of a great many figures from Tonnies and Durkheim to Parsons, Lerner,
and Rostow is to me not clearly an alternative. The idea of limited constructs
developed out of knowledge of some, but not all, societies (see ASR, August 1963
Bendix article) sounds reasonable as a first step toward genuinely comparative
sociological studies, but when do we reach the point where we can essay less
historically restricted =- and by my criteria, more sociological -- work? I am
uneasy with this something somewhere between historical and sociological work,
if this something is anything more than a temporary expedient to enable us to
learn enough about some limited ("two or more") number of societies to move with
real confidence toward comparative sociology. Anything that hints at capitulation

wo Den

by sociologists to historicism bothers me, though I don't think the issue can
ever be disposed of without some kind of agreement on what kinds of questions

we are trying to ask and answer. I. e., what is a "sociological" question?

b. Assuming that we all agree that we must have "before" and "after"
notions, as well as notions of "developmental sequences," in order to deal with
social changes, and that we must generate concepts out of what we already have
some knowledge of -- i.e., Western experiences (What else?) -- then how can we
avoid the risk of being wrong when we try out these concepts in non-Western
societies? As Bendix points out, the dangers of overganeralization arise only
when these constructs are used to predict, rather than simply to suggest what
to look for, But if we are not to try to use whatever conceptual tools we have
to explain and predict -- assuming as a matter of course that we alter these tools
where they prove to be inadequate -- what use are they? We always risk being
wrong when we put something to the test; that, however, is the game: to test our
ideas. In any case, I wonder whether Bendix himself hasnot perhaps come close to
slipping from the admittedly limited constructs of "traditional" and "modern"
into the more general, yet apparently equivalent (56), constructs of "follower"
and "advanced" in order to say ~~ and not merely suggest how one might go about
saying -- something about the modernization of new societies.

c., On method more specifically, do we gain or lose in quality of
analysis by throwing out the whole idea of "attribute check-lists" instead of
adding timing and sequence variables? My inclination is to side with Bendix, but

how to answer a "hard" scientiest who poses the question”

2. The relations between modernization and structures of power~authority is
a criticel issue to which Bendix has given needed emphasis. However, several

questions are suggested by his discussion:

a. 1 continue to wonder just how far we can go ~~ along with Eisenstadt
("tendency toward mass participation in the center"), Bendix ("fundamental
democratization"), and many others -~- in associating modernization with democrati-
zation. Even though (1) status inequalities are no longer hereditary in "advanced"
social orders, and (2) authority-power relations are not as simple as a ruler-
ruled dichotomy (with many kinds of formal and informal constraints operating on
both governors and governed), it seems a little premature, at least, to characteriz
the changes as "democratization" -- even in the sense of increasing "class-
formation of the lower strata" (implying their greater geographical mobility, liter.

access to public employment, etc, -~- 1, 44, 64, 56). It is an empirical question
still as to whether or not modern, "advanced society" societial decision-makers hav:

greater or lesser power to affect the life chances of the ruled -- and indeed to
coerce, manipulate, punish individuals and groups -- than do traditional, "follower
society" rulers. In reference to specific points in the paper:

(1) Does equalization of access to public employment really imply
such a radical change from the elitism taken to be characteristic of traditional
(at least of traditional European) orders? I recall M, Weber's fear that bureau-
cratization might well mean less, not more, freedom of action for individuals,

To plug individuals from wider and wider sections of a population into bureaucratic
jobs is not the same as providing them with societal decision-making power.

-3-

(2) Increasing literacy does not mean, necessarily, that the common
man gains in power. The franchise, ability to handle verbal symbols, citizen
armies, and similar elements of "democratization" clearly do increase the political
"importance" of the people. But is their importance more that of resources than
that of decision-makers? A trained, and trainable, population, responsive to verbs
stimuli, is a much greater resource than a pre-literate mass unable to "think for
itself," However, is it not perhaps true that increased verbal skills not only
make the problem of controlling and using the people more complex, but also open
up new dimensians for manipulation -- new channels, or opportunities for
propagandistic, symbolic persuasion?

b. With regard to the extent to which "cultural norms" are accepted, the
contrast between "traditional" and "modern" seem to be overdrawn. Is it "probably
true that traditional socieities are characterized by universally accepted
cultural norms"? (42, 43ff.) (I am not sure what is meant by "culwral norms"
here. I define such norms as language, symbols representing and to some degree
constituting certain psychic states, or feelings regarding the rightneges~-wrongness
of life patterns.) Certa nly the solidity of "primitive" cultures has become
increasingly open to question. All social orders, it seems, have dimensions of
conflict which have to be periodically resolved or transformed in some way...
sometimes through violence. (See Bendix, Nation-Building, 1964, 15-22.)

Whether we are observing traditional or modern societies, the fundamental issue
which is never finally settled is that of who shall decide and who shall have

to accept decisions. There is, one may posit, never full consensus in any social
order on this issue. I might note in passing that I find the elitism of
traditional European societies to be empirically unsound when we extend -- by
equating modernity and advance (56) -- our thinking to the point of talking about
the modernization of non-European peoples, Not all pre-moderns have had the

kind of elitist structure which Bendix takes to be characteristic of traditionals,

(42-44)

c, Finally, in regard to the proposition "that governmants play a larger
role in the modernization of relatively backward than of relatively advanced
socieities:" (53) If one takes England and Holland as the "advanced" referents,
then it does appear that governments have played a larger role in the initial
modernization of other ‘countries than in these. However, the vast proliferation
of development, investment, fiscal, tax, and other machinery for direct and
indirect economic control in all nations as they reach more "advanced" status

suggests that modernization implies the enormous expansion of public (governmental
control of economy. My point is a qualification, not a denial, of Bendix's proposit
that the historical fact upon which the proposition hangs is indeed a singular
event -~ which I see as severely limiting the sociological utility of the
proposition as I understand it. One might say that "once upon a time" events

did work out as the proposition states, but that as a general proposition this
one is far more historical than sociological -- implying that one may grant
the validity of the proposition without seeing how it helps us to explain or predict
much of anything about later events. Government intervm tion, planning, control
becomes a universal -- I am suggesting -~--after the first modernizing countries
"take off."

Overall evaluation: I am grateful for the emphasis which has been given to
political processes, but I am inclined to make a much stronger case for the
significance of such processes. Secondly, I am ~~ perhaps brashly -~ more anxious
to get on with the attempt to state specific explanatory and predictive proposition.

-L=-

about the relations among power~authority and other variables, and subject
these propositions to as rigorous tests as possiblei-~ revising and rejecting
particular concepts and propositions in light of the results,

SOCLAE-ENEQUALEPY AND MODERNIZATION

LU ct utero Popes: bor heer Linea uahs
ec) Nuk'y Lin) Lice hire, (rn prrth stat)

Reinhard Bendix

Institute of Industrial Relations
University of California, Berkeley
June, 1965

CHAPTER I

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

L

More than a century ago Alexis de Tocqueville obasrved that the
"nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming
more equal, but it depends upon themeslves whether ths principle of equality
ia to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledges or barbarism, to
prosperity or wretchedness.” History has confirmed this premonition.

And although the course of events == as well as reflection and research=->
have also revealed ever new social. and personal problems resulting from
increasing equality, the ideal of equality has lest little of its appeal.

This first chapter attempts to clear the ground for ths comarative
studies which follew. I begin with the proposition that inequality is
universal, Debates concerning this preposition have enlivened the study
of social stratification since the end of World War If, They are relevant
here as the most general framework for the study of inequality and moderni=
gation. This transformation of our secial world (sbout which more presently)
arose in a context of social inequalities and helped te overcomes some of
these while creating new inequalities in turn. One purpose of this mono=
graph is te show how these complexities are still compatible with
TocqueviLie’s assertion.

Next I consider the reorientation of sociel thought resulting from
the impact of industrialisation and democratization since the middle of

1°a

the 18th century. The conceptual vocabulary which we still bring to the
- gtudy of incquality originated in the course of this reorientation and
awareness of that context can guard us against a facile or unwitting use
of presuppositions. Specifically, the rise ef industrial civilization
in EBareps was accompanied among ethers by a critique of commerce send
industry culminating in Kerl Marx's theory of soc’al classes, The study
of “social inequality and modernization" can best be intreduced by a
eritical appraisal of Marx's theory, which remains useful es a comprehen-
sive account, even if it is employed, as it is here, as a benchmark for a
different interpretation.

The study of inequality is controversial, partly because there

See tobe WES we
—_~ Kops fears *,

* ; : 3 al Re ae ce a fa *
a Pet ae oh punks i iF ak é z .
Tn emt ow 20 emg "Sow = 1oseerte, Senge a age ese? oe
>

Prien eee = ERO yee
+ .

, Hr om ee istatieter ty ae

many overlapping approaches to the subject, and partly because statements
about equality or inequality are not easily made or received in a dispas-
Sionate spirit. This much seems agreed upon by most students of the
subject. Certain inequalities are biological attributes of the human
condition and hence universal. Differences in sex, age, physical vigor,
intellectual endowment, and others are found in all societies. In saying
this one must add quickly that only a "substratum" of these differences
is wniversal in the strict sense. No one can escape aging, but societies
vary in their evaluation of this fact. Some prize youth, others prize old
age. No one denies differences of hereditary endowment, expecialle at the
extremes of idiocy and genius, of sickness and health, nor can he fail to
acknowledge the major differences due to culture, upbringing, atid) wilniies
tion. But it has not been possible to disentangle these dimensions
despite notable studies of identical twins. Native endowment may be
insufficient, but where it is average or better the experts are not prepared
to predict how much an individual may accomplish if he has adequate motiva-
tion and ideal educational opportunities. In view of such uncertainties |
oa statements of universals refer to the problematics of the human condi-
tion. In all societies men must cope with differences among them that
arise from their biological attributes, and in so doing they come to
structure their relationships in ways ak ee culturally and historically
patterned.

Before going further, it is best to add some comments concerning
this statement. That differences of age or endowment engender problems
confronting men in all societies, state a fact that is both. obvious and

profound. Everyone knows such facts, but for the individual to come to

eee OR Pee ee eee eee)
— oo = OS - — oe ae = — 7 —— O——— = ra —_—— = 7. Se et ” = 7 —, ——
= = 2 . _ = — ao. ST. eee = oo - a . oe ee oe ae ———— —e = ll eel ee Sal ——* .

terms with their implications taxes his mind and heart. Where the ideal
of equality is abroad in the land, it is hard for a very gifted man to
face up to the fact that opportunities to develop his gift are denied hin,
while apparently stupid or a have the goods of the world at
their command. Even where there is no thought of equality, it iSNhard

for an old _ to relinquish his honored place as it is for a young one

to wait util their is "room at the top." In societies around the world
there are —— standardized ways of acting and reacting in the face

of such recurrent axtawactes of personal experience. The satis~
factions or dissatisfactions which result have been interpreted throughout
history as part of a transcendant order, though -- aside from Hinduism --

religious doctrines give on the whole more attention to universals like

birth and death, which all men have in common, than to wiiversals like

age or endowment in which men differ, Seciclogists interested in propo=
sitions applicable to all societies have emphasized that religious
rituals sanctify the conventions and ceremonies which embody the spirit
and norms of the commmity end thus re-enforce the individual's particio
pation in a culture's pattern of insouality.

Attempts have been made to apply this approach to the universal
phenomenon, of inequality. There is no society in which all men are equal;

indeed -- in view of the biological differences between men -- it is diffi-

cult to give a precise meaning to the idea of complete equality. But over —

and above the biological differences (though not unrelated to them) there

*
oe Var ee oe ery PY ee eee a.

’
ee ee, me ogee ee ae
A
: MS e
= >
’
ys

is also a wiiversal inequality engendered by the division of labor and
manifest in the distribution of rewards. It becomes a question, then,
of how a biologically differentiated population is allocated to the
various positions encompassing the occupational division of labor, and
motivated to do the work these positions call for.
Men have always dreamed of a world in which distinctions
of rank did not occur. Yet this dream has had to face a
hard reality. Any society must distribute its individuals
in the positions of its social structure and induce them
to perform the duties of these positions. It must there-
— solve the problem of motivation at two levels: to
instill in “_ proper individuais the desire to occupy
certain positions and, once in these positions, the desire
to perform the duties attached to then.>
At this highly abstract level, it is a question of "positions" not of
individuals, of the reasons for the Scsptcnaientt fact of stratification,
regardless of its particular forms." (Italics added.) Accordingly, Davis
formulates a proposition explaining "the general function of inequality."
‘men ee the best reward and hence have
the highest rank which (a) have the greatest importance
for the society and (b) require the greatest training or
talent. The first factor concerns the relative functional
contribution of the position as compared to others; the
second concerns the relative scarcity of pérecane! for

filling the position.”

Thus, inequality is ubiquitous in human societies, and some or much of this

ubiquity is explained by the scarcity of talents and the differential
importance of the work to be done.

But how interested are we in what is true of ell societies, and
how much do ™ explain by universal imeem As scon a3 we move
from “ubiquitous inequality? to insquality in its particular forms, the
terms of our universel proposition bristle with unresolved asbignuities.
Though mon in all societies differ in their talents, end their work varies
dn its pleasure, difficulty and importance, the recognition of talent, the
importance and difficulty of the work performed, and the distribution of
rewards are matters of contention. Sach contentions may net be as ubie
quiteus es the division ef lsbor itself, but they occur in all literate
civilizations, and hence in all secieties in which inequality is a paramount
iseue.” The reason is simply that inequality es such may be wbiquiteus and
ineradicable, but any particular form of inequality is not. Men have
indeed dreamed of a world in which distinctions of rank would not occur,
but in doing so they have opposed specific inequalities. Ani they have
been right in rejecting interpretations of the social order which declare
that any particular inequality refiscts a univercal necessity. They have
been wrong, however, in supposing that by removing inequality in a particuler
form they can also remove inequality as such. As yet no one has discovered
an incontrovertible method of distinguishing between dispensable ani indig~
penssble inequalities, and hence of deducing any “particular form" from
the "universal fact" of inequality." Men who have struggled egainst such
particular forms in times past, obviously acted in the belie? that specific
inequalities oppressed them amd had become intolereble, Among

them there have always been a few, who recognize that new inequalities
will take the place of the old, but who nevertheless join such movements
in the hope that these new inequalities will be more humane. Such a man
was Tocqueville who joined the democratic movement of his time in the
belief that “it may be God's will to spread a moderate amount of happiness
over all men, instead of heaping a large sum upon a few by allowing only

a small minority to approach perfection,"

i 1

To know that inequality is universal is useful as a stopgap
egeinst romantic illusions. But deductions from thet uiverzal can at
best set the stage for the study of inequality in its "particular forms."
The present study is concerned with those forms of social inequality which

have been the causes and consequences of modernization. To be manageable
at all, this statement will require further delimitation, but at the outset
we should have a view of the forest, not the trees.

Modernization is a term dich became fashionable after wna War II.
Despite its vagueness it is useful because it tends to evoke similar asso-
ciations in contemporary readers. Their first impuise may be to think of
“the modern" in terms of present-day technology with its jet-travel, space
exploration, and nuclear power. But the common sense of the word "modern"
encompasses the whole era since the 18th century when inventions like the
steam engine and the spinning jenny provided the initial, technical basis
for the industrilalization of societies. This great change in the economic

structure of England coincided with two great political revolutions: the

movement of independence in the American colenies and the creation of a

nation-state in the French revolution. Accordingly, the word "modern®
also evokes associations with the democratization of societies, especially
the demands for equal rights of citizenship.

| Medernization in this very general. end Western sense of the word
has been achieved through an ever increasing division of lebor, in order
te bring out the social and culture] as well as the economic aspects of
that division, sociologists have called it “differentiation of roles.*
These phrases are complementary. Ever since the industrial revolution
of the 18th century this process of division or differentiation has been
commented on é$ a universal aspect of modernization; we will turn to these
comments presently. Even in the underdeveloped countries of today, whose
eventual indusirialisation remains in somes dovbt, it is still true thet
contact with Western culture and the effort to modernize result in a
"differentiation of roles." But this universe] consequence or atiribute
of modernization may be no more interesting than the universal atiributes
of insquality, For there may be significant differences — types of
industrialization, and specifically betweea a division of lebor which wes
based on, aS well as promoted by, a declines of lingeistic, racial, reli-
gious, and kinship ties, and another which was or is accompanied rather
by a continued or even an increasing prominence of thease ties. At any
rate, studies of inequality and mocernization have been impeded for a
long time by tacitly goneralizing from the "differentiation of roles*®
characteristic ef the Western experience, antl just Lor that reason it is
important to begin with a critical reassessmert of that experience.

The gense that the late 13th century represents a dividing line
in history is as common among scholars as is the related connotation
of the term "modern" among people at lerge. ‘the exact import of thie
historical discontimity is a matter of argument, but there is also good
reason for setting our doubts aside. The twin processes of industrialio
gation and democratization have transfermed the economic and social.
structure of the Western countries and this transfermation has been

accompanied by a change in intelisctuel outlook. =
ait

Before the 17th and 18th centuries, the worid
of nature and of man was conceived as an emanation of Divine providence.
Since then, the sciences have restructured our thinking and social
sciences like economics and sociology have altered our understanding of
the social world. By introducing concepts like “economy" anc "society"
they have advanced a view which attributes a self-contained regularity
or lawfulness to that world. Classical economists like Adam Smith asserted
that man's "propensity to truck, barter and exchance one thing for another"
gave rise to actions obeying an impersonal law, like the law of supply and
demand. And Immanuel Kant observed that in the aggregate the frequency of
marriages conformed to an impersonal, statistical pattern, even though the
decision to marry en the individuals concerned as an entirely

personal choice. In this way,