Social Pluralism a Realistic Analysis
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SOCIAL PLURALISM A REALISTIC ANALYSIS Homer was wrong in saying: "Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away. Heraclitus A.J. BAKER Copyright © 1997 A.J. Baker. This book is copyright. Other than for the purposes and subject to the conditions prescribed under the Copyright Act, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. National Library of Australia CIP: Baker, A. J. Social pluralism: a realistic analysis. ISBN 0 646 32616 3. I. Social sciences - Philosophy. 2. Pluralism (Social sciences). I. Title. 300.1 Cover designed by Pat Woolley. Printed in Australia by Fast Books, a division of Wild & Woolley Ply Ltd, Glebe CONTENTS Page 1. Social Categories and Social Science 1 2. Social Atomism, Monism and Pluralism 16 3. Classes, Elites, Democracy 32 4. Organization, Oligarchy, Intellectuals 55 5. Ideology and Illusory Belief 76 6. Socio-Psychological Factors 97 7. Socio-Sexual Theory 126 8. Pluralist Determinism 147 9. The justification of Policies 164 AUTHOR'S NOTE The general conception of social pluralism presented is derived from the teaching of John Anderson; in developing that conception I proceed, in part, by examining views of such pioneer social theorists as Marx, Michels, Mosca, Sorel, and especially Pareto; and in my detailed arguments and explanations I also draw on the work of a number of more recent writers, including some philosophical analyses made by John Mackie. I should like to express my thanks to Paul Foulkes, Mairi Grieve and Bill Harcourt for encouraging me, and to Margaret Gilet for her careful processing of the manuscript. A.J.Qim) Baker, who is a graduate of Sydney and Oxford Universities, taught history for a year in New England University College and subsequently taught philosophy for many years in Sydney, Waikato and Macquarie Universities and briefly in St. Andrews University and the University of Washington, Seattle. In Sydney he was a student of John Anderson and a colleague of his and of John Mackie, and also a leading member of the Libertarian Society and the 'Sydney Push'. He has published two books on Anderson's thought, Anderson's Social Philosophy and Australian Realism, and numerous articles on philosophy and social theory. Nowadays he often writes in Heraclitus. ISDN 0 646 32616 3 1. SOCIAL CATEGORIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE Senses of "Pluralism" The aim of this book is to present a concise, realistic analysis of social pluralism. This will involve making cross references to some areas of philosophy, philosophy of history, sociology and political science. But the positive, general sense in which "social pluralism" is here understood needs first to be made quite clear. This is because the word "pluralism" and associated phrases are bedevilled by variations and ambiguities in their use. Thus, to mention some other uses, 1) the sense of variety or difference conveyed by the terms is sometimes emphasised to the point of making friction or antagonism the key issue, as in the description of the German Weimar Republic as "pluralist" because of the destabilizing presence in it of incompatible, especially Nazi and Communist, forces, and in similar descriptions applied by political scientists to certain new African countries because they were formed by the union of disparate and often hostile peoples or tribes. And compare the description of the division between Muslims and non- Muslims in England over the Salman Rushdie affair as revealing a "pluralism". Differently, 2) there is the description of some past British writers, including Guild Socialists (whose influence was greatest in the period up to the early 1920s) as "pluralists" because, while they were critical of liberal or laissez-faire individualism, they also opposed bureaucratic centralized State control, and instead favoured smaller scale social organizations - i.e., they offered a pluralist- type account of the actual ways of workings of certain organizations and combined this with support for certain policies and values. Then, 3) there is the particularly value-oriented tendency, common today amongst writers and commentators, to emphasise issues about "democracy" and to appropriate the term "pluralism" to mean simply "democratic pluralism" or "pluralist democracy". This thus obscures key informative uses of "pluralism", and also runs together the evincing of socio-moral attitudes and the analysis of socio-political factors and affairs in a way that does not help objective inquiry. The concern of this book, however, is primarily with the pluralist ways of working of socio-political affairs, i.e., with social pluralism in a wide, factual sense and to mark this I shall also use, as an equivalent to it, the virtually unused term social complexism. There is an evident parallel between pluralism as a type of socio-political theory and the pluralism found in the history of philosophy. There the term (like so many other philosophical "isms") also has had its variations of use, including such recent ones as the description of Wittgenstein as a pluralist because of his belief in the varieties of language games, and a use of the term in ethics to refer to endorsement of moral "relativism" or "subjectivism". But in its primary sense pluralism—i.e., philosophical or ontological pluralism—can be described in a clear and unambiguous way if we refine a distinction once notably made by the American philosopher William James between pluralism and monism. [1] When we do so we can distinguish three ontological positions: 1) monism, the view that things are so connected together that what there is, reality, is simply One— or, according to Hegel's more sophisticated monism, the apparent differences between things really form an Absolute or Organic Whole or Unity; 2) atomism, the view that connections between things are only apparent, and what there is really only consists of innumerable disconnected ontological atoms or units or simples; and opposing both monism and atomism, 3) pluralism or complexism, the view that what there is consists of an infinite number of complex states of affairs, each involving innumerable wholes as well as innumerable parts, innumerable connections as well as innumerable differences. In a parallel way we can distinguish three general theories about the nature of society and history, each of which has had its sponsors in social thought. Thus, social pluralism is a view which stresses the complex and pluralistic character of society and its ingredient and intersecting phenomena, including organizations and other social groupings or complexes. It therefore rejects the two views 1) social monism or social totalism, which treats society as basically a single whole or totality to which social parts or sub-wholes are essentially subordinated, and 2) social atomism, the view that (for example) it is individual persons or citizens conceived of as unitary, as more separate than they are socially connected, that comprise the principal social factors or determinants. Although there are these parallels, it should be noted that if we take the sensible course of endorsing pluralism in philosophy, the situation is not so simple as to enable us to take the a priori short cut of inferring from if on its own the truth of social pluralism. This is because philosophical pluralism is also compatible with some versions of social monism and social atomism—its general complexist contentions would not be falsified if, say, society did happen to be a (factual) organic unity or totality in the way claimed by some functionalists in social theory, or again if, say, individual (but complex) persons were the principal social factors. Categories As part of its general position, social pluralism assumes that there is no difference in principle between social and non-social material, i.e., that society is in fact part of "nature", and that social material is there, complex but available for realistic-empirical investigation. To be quite clear and thorough about the nature of this material, let me refer to a basic philosophical question, that concerning the "categories", and bring out the bearing this has on social material. Although it is arguable that no philosophy can avoid making at least tacit assumptions about the categories, discussions of the subject are now uncommon. In the history of philosophy, however, there has been a number of explicit theories, which can be analysed as involving two main approaches. One approach is that of Aristotle who presented a set of ten categories. But in so doing he thought of them as logical, general classes of compartmentalized items: quality predicates (e.g. blue), quantity predicates (e.g. large), relation predicates (e.g. older than), and so on, are exclusive; what is one category cannot belong to another category. In this approach he was later followed by Bertrand Russell (theory of types of terms), and Gilbert Ryle who treated categories as based on types of words or expressions. Ryle in particular, although he did give currency to the good expression "category mistake" (e.g. confusing a whole with a part or a relation with a quality), was sometimes so liberal in his methods of detecting category differences that he was led to multiply them beyond necessity, as when he suggested that even e.g. bridge terms such as "trump", "slam" and "finesse" belong to different categories. These terms are actually all instances of relations. The other, and preferable approach in the history of category theory is that placing emphasis on categories as pervasive features of whatever is. This approach derives from Kant and was adopted by Hegel, and in this century by two other category philosophers, the Australian-born Samuel Alexander and the Australian-based John Anderson.