The Politics of Democratic Socialism

An Essay on Social Policy

E. F. M. Durbin

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429638756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Published in 1940, The Politics of Democratic Socialism covers a number of subjects including social psychology, economic history, Marxist doctrine and the academic subject of politics to name a few. With Durbin's compulsion to explain and defend the views about social and economic policy that he believes to be true, makes this an interesting, insightful and educational book for those who want to learn about socialism and democracy.

PART I

CO-OPERATION AND CONFLICT

An account of Recent Investigations into the Causes of Warfare

A SOCIAL structure is a nexus of present relationships. It lives only as it is maintained by the will of social beings in the present.… It is like a web that exists only as it is newly spun. If it seems to persist through time, it is because the attitudes and interests of social beings persist, so that they will its continuous existence. The most sacrosanct and seeming-permanent institutions exist by no other right and in no other strength than that which they derive from the social beings who think and act in accord with them….

R. M. MACIVER — Society, its Structure and Changes

§ 1

Introduction — The Problem

THE greatest single achievement of science in the twentieth century consists, or so it appears to me, in the light that has been thrown upon the formation of personal character. As a result of the observations and reflections of the analytical psychologists, we are now in a position to understand in a way that was quite impossible before this work had been done the nature of the causes that determine the behaviour of individual human beings.¹

For reasons that I have just discussed, it is highly probable that an increasing knowledge of the individual will also throw light upon the nature of society. This a priori expectation is borne out in practice.

But I am faced by an immediate practical problem. I think it obvious that psychological and anthropological studies contribute enormously to our understanding of every important social institution: the family, property, law, the distribution of authority and power in society, loyalty to the State, religion, co-operation, political conflict and war. Indeed, I would go further and affirm that it is impossible to understand these things as fully as we might without some knowledge of the light thrown upon them by the most recent addition to the armoury of the humane sciences. Those who still think that it is possible to study society without the aid of individual psychology stand in the intellectual position of the doctors who refused to modify their views of human physiology and pathology for a generation after the discovery of the circulation of the blood or the existence of microscopic parasites. Intellectual conservatism is one of the most obstinate of vested interests.

Yet it is clearly impossible in this book, which is concerned primarily with the principles of economic and social policy, to attempt even the briefest systematic outline of the significance for the social sciences of the developments of character-psychology. Not only would such an attempt occupy the rest of the book, but I am not in the least competent to make the attempt. Only a person with a technical knowledge of analytical psychology and of comparative social institutions would be in a position to undertake such a task. On the other hand it would cast an atmosphere of unreality over my whole discussion of social policy if I neglected completely the contributions of psychology and anthropology to the origin and development of social institutions. What then am I to do?

The only possible solution to this problem lies in selection. All that I can hope to do is to lay before the reader an elementary account of the contributions made by these subjects to some one central social problem that has an important bearing upon the choice of social policy. That is what I propose to do in this Part.

For my purpose I have selected the problem indicated by the title of the Part. I propose to consider the light thrown by psychological evidence upon the causes of co-operation and conflict between individuals and groups in human society. I have selected this particular problem for two reasons:

In the first place it is a central problem. All other questions of policy and history are subordinate to it. No society can continue to exist unless peaceful co-operation can be maintained within it. War is the negation of both community and society, at least between the groups taking part in it. In one important sense the maintenance of society is the maintenance of co-operation, and the dissolution of co-operative habits into conflict is the dissolution of society itself.¹

The over-riding importance of the decision between co-operation and war in the case of nations needs no emphasis from me. Our very lives depend upon it.

It is certain, therefore, that this is a central problem for the scientific study of society. For the same reason it is a central problem for the study of social policy. Few questions of policy, raised within or between the nation states that compose the modern world, do not involve at some stage in their development the choice between these two fundamentally different methods of achieving the purposes of individuals and of groups. The choice between individual and group co-operation on the one hand, or conflict on the other, is the first question that has to be decided in every discussion of political method. It is, therefore, of the very greatest importance to understand the light that has been thrown by the recent advances in psychology and anthropology upon the forces that determine this choice.

In the second place this is a practicable task, since a great deal of work has been done by anthropologists and psychologists upon the causes of peacefulness and aggressiveness. It is also practicable for me, since it is the one broad psychological problem that I have done something to study, in co-operation with a practising psycho-analyst, Dr. Bowlby.¹

The work to which I refer is very scattered and unsystematic. Four groups of persons and four methods of study have made their contributions to our common pool of knowledge. The animal psychologists, and particularly Dr. Zuckerman in The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes, have thrown much light upon the primitive sources of aggressiveness and fighting in the animals most nearly related to the common ancestor of men and other animal species. Child psychologists, and particularly Professor Susan Isaacs, in her Social Development in Young Children, have discussed at length the growth of co-operation and the sources of conflict among children. The anthropologists have between them accumulated a great store of information on the subject of primitive warfare, and the analytical psychologists have made an intensive study of the origins of love and hatred in the civilized adult. There is therefore a considerable body of evidence in existence — scattered, but accessible.

Does this evidence, when it is brought together and analysed, throw any light upon the factors predisposing human beings to struggle or combine? Are there any distinguishable causes of social peace or warfare in this sense? Dr. Bowlby and I were led, by a survey of the evidence, to believe that there are such general factors. The rest of this Part will be taken up by a discussion of them.

§ 2

The Distribution of Co-operation and Conflict

The first point that emerges clearly from the evidence is the wide distribution in society of both these fundamental types of human behaviour.

The extreme form of conflict between persons and between groups is that of fighting — conflicts in which force is used. Now fighting is plainly a common, indeed a universal, form of human behaviour. It occurs in all periods of history and in the time before history — to judge by the behaviour of primitive peoples. It occurs in all types of social group, from the wars between civilized nations, through a descending order of civil war, riot, and public disorder to the personal fighting of adults and children. It is everywhere present, and cannot therefore be traced to the conditions created by certain forms of society, like those of capitalism and the nation state, whose distribution in space and time is much more limited than the distribution of fighting. The simple causes of fighting must lie in the character of human beings common to all periods of history and all types of society — that is, to the qualities of human nature itself.

The same is true of the practice of peaceful co-operation. Fighting, or the extreme form of conflict, while universal in distribution, is not continuous in time. The most warlike groups and the most aggressive individuals spend considerable periods in peaceful toleration of, and positive co-operation with, other animals or persons. Most organized communities have enjoyed longer periods of peace than of war. The greater part of human activity — of man-hours — is spent, not in war, but in peaceful co-operation. The scientific problem is, therefore, twofold — why is there peaceful co-operation? And why does peaceful co-operation sometimes break down into fighting? The practical problem — at least, for lovers of peace — is how peaceful co-operation is to be preserved against the universal tendency exhibited in history for it to degenerate into war.

§ 3

The Causes of Peaceful Co-operation

What then, does the evidence suggest, are the simplest causes of peaceful co-operation? Here it is necessary to distinguish between groups with and without ‘government’ — that is, an apparatus of force constructed with the conscious and explicit purpose of preserving peace within the group. Clearly the existence of a powerful organization taking action to preserve peace constitutes in itself a strong and immediate cause for the appearance of peace.¹ With the consequence of this obvious point we shall be concerned at the end of this Part. For the moment, however, we are interested in a prior and more fundamental question. What are the causes of peace in a group without government or any effective machinery for the restraint of fighting? Why do animals co-operate in the absence of any agent powerful enough to prevent them from fighting?

Now a survey of the life of mammals in general, and of apes and men in particular,² suggests that the causes of peace in the absence of government are, for the extra-familial group,¹ of three main kinds:

1. The obvious, most important, and overwhelming advantage to be derived from peace lies in the division of labour and the possibility of thus achieving purposes desired by the individual, but obtainable only by active co-operation with others. This is so plain in the case of adult human society that the point is scarcely worth elaborating. The whole of the difference in the variety of satisfactions open to the individual in isolation and the same person in the active membership of a peaceful society, measures the advantages to be derived from continuous co-operation between adults. The extent of co-operation in any groups other than adult human societies is, of course, much more limited. But groups of children co-operate in simple tasks, and in games that require a specialization of function between the individual members of the group. And there is some evidence to suggest that apes exhibit still simpler forms of co-operation, and that even mammals who hunt and live in herds develop simple differentiation of function for various common purposes of defence or attack.²

Co-operation extends enormously the opportunities for life and satisfaction within groups that have developed it. It is reasonable to presume that these advantages are also causes of co-operation, since many of the results of co-operation are of survival value. In any case, few persons would wish to deny that the sovereign advantages of co-operation are for adult human beings one of the main causes of voluntary peace.

2. In the case of apes, there is also evidence that satisfaction is found in the mere presence of others of the same species.³ Whether this satisfaction is exclusively sexual — i.e. whether the advantage lies in the possibility of varied relations with the opposite sex — there is not sufficient evidence to determine. In so far as it is sexual, such gregariousness may easily become a source of conflict within the group. This we shall see in a moment. But in so far as pleasure is felt in the mere presence of other members of the group, there is a force binding those members together in peace.

The counterpart of the primitive sociability of the apes in children and adult human beings is obvious. Its relationship to sexual promiscuity remains as obscure in human beings as in apes, but the existence of a pleasure felt in the presence of human company could scarcely be denied. Sociability is therefore an independent cause for the existence and stability of society.¹

3. The reasons for co-operation so far mentioned are all self-regarding advantages. They derive their importance from the existence of kinds of individual satisfaction that can only be obtained with the aid of others. It is not, however, to be supposed that self-regarding ends are the sole causes of peaceful co-operation. It is obvious that in the development of the child there is to be traced the emergence of an interest in others for their own sakes, a gradual but growing recognition of the rights of others to the kinds of advantage desired by oneself; and finally in the fully developed personal relationships of friendship and love, the positive desire for the loved one’s happiness as a good for oneself. From reflection and logic this care for the good of others can make the common good a personal end. The existence of a general desire for the common good is clearly a force making for peace in adult society. But its power will only extend as far as the idea of the common good extends.² If the common good is only felt to reach to the limits of a racial, or a geographic, or a social group, there will be no force in this recognition of the limited common good within the group to prevent the use of force outside and on behalf of it.

All this is very important, but it is also very obvious. It is indeed the commonplace of pacifist literature. It is never difficult to find reasons for peaceful co-operation. And with such overwhelming advantages in its favour, the real problem is why peace so frequently degenerates into fighting. It is consequently much more in the study of the actual breakdown of peaceful co-operation among apes and children and grown-up people that recent descriptive work has brought new light. The work that we, that is, Dr. Bowlby and I, think to be of greatest interest on this point falls into two parts. There is first the careful work of observation that has been carried out by Dr. Zuckerman on apes, and on children by Dr. Susan Isaacs. This work does much to throw into clear perspective the simplest causes for aggression and fighting in the absence of government. The second clue to the puzzle is to be found, in our opinion, in the mass of descriptive material laid bare by the anthropologist, and in the case-papers of patients treated by the therapeutic technique of psycho-analysis. I propose, therefore, to distinguish in this brief survey between the simple causes and forms of aggressive behaviour common to apes and to human beings on the one hand, and the more complicated forms exhibited by human beings alone, on the other. For an account of the complications added by the faculties of the adult human mind, we shall offer a brief and necessarily controversial interpretation of the significance of the anthropological and psycho-analytical evidence as to the origins of personal and group-aggressiveness.

§ 4

The Simpler Causes of Fighting

The evidence taken from the observation of the behaviour of apes and children suggests that there are three clearly separable groups of simple causes for the outbreak of fighting and the exhibition of aggressiveness by individuals.

1. One of the most common causes of fighting among both children and apes was over the possession of external objects. The disputed ownership of any desired object — food, clothes, toys, females, and the affection of others — was sufficient ground for an appeal to force. On Monkey Hill disputes over females were responsible for the deaths of thirty out of thirty-three females in a short period of time.¹ Two points are of particular interest to notice about these fights for possession.

In the first place they are often carried to such an extreme that they end in the complete destruction of the objects of common desire. Toys are torn to pieces. Females are literally torn limb from limb. So over-riding is the aggression once it has begun that it not only overflows all reasonable boundaries of selfishness but utterly destroys the object for which the struggle began and even the self for whose advantage the struggle was undertaken.

In the second place it is observable, at least in children, that the object for whose possession aggression is started may sometimes be desired by one person only, or may be desired by him merely because it is desired by someone else. There were many cases observed by Dr. Isaacs where toys and other objects which had been discarded as useless were violently defended by thei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• Dedication
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I — CO-OPERATION AND CONFLICT
• PART II — CAPITALISM IN TRANSITION
• PART III — THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
• PART IV — SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY
• PART V — THE STRATEGY OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX I — CRUELTY UNDER DICTATORSHIPS — BY JANE SAMUEL
• APPENDIX II — THE ‘CLASSICAL’ DEFENCE OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
• APPENDIX III — STATISTICS