THE WAY TOWARDS ’MODERNITY’ door W. F. WERT HEIM

1 INTRODUCTION1

During the second half of the nineteenth century, evolutionist theory was in full swing both in biological and social sciences. The first half of the present century showed, as far as the theory of social evolution is concerned, a vigorous swinging back of the pendulum — at least in scholarly circles of the western world, while Marxist writers still tended to endorse evolutionism in the cruder form elaborated by Friedrich Engels in his Origin of Family. Since the nineteen-fifties there is again a turn of the pendulum and a resurgent interest in evolutionist theories — though stripped of their unilinear exaggerations and dogmatic generalizations. One of the most sophisticated attempts to reintroduce human evolution as a viable concept is the booklet on Evolution and Culture, edited in 1960 by Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service as a most significant con­ tribution to the centennial anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. The authors show convincingly that the attempt by Julian H. Steward and others to reduce human evolution to the process of progressive adaptations of human culture to divergent physical environments, the so-called ’multilinear’ evolutionist school, only covers the less significant part of the evolutionary process. Besides what the authors call ’specific’ evolution, which fundamentally is no more than a passive type of adaptation to the physical milieu as a source of cultural variations, we can observe as an overall trend in human history a process of ’general’ evolution, encompassing mankind as a whole. As a matter of fact, the anti-evolutionist tendency, more in particular in American cultural anthropology between the two world wars, has never been shared by those concerned with the more concrete problems of social change outside the western world. On the contrary, the ab­ sence of a viable theory of evolution of mankind has led those con­ cerned with the pressing problems of that part of the world implicitly to embrace the crudest type of unilinear evolutionism. Economic theo­ ries of underdevelopment and development,2 sociological theories of a

1 The present article is a slightly modified version of a chapter from a draft for the first part of a study in preparation on Evolution and Revolution, issued as a mimeographed Preliminary Publication by the Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, Afdeling Zuid- en Zuidoost-Azie, Universiteit van Amsterdam. The present introduction is a short summary of the preceding chapters of my paper. 2 The best-known specimen of such a simplistic ’development’ theory is Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 1960.

146 transformation of ’traditional’ societies into ’modern’ ones through a ’transitional’ stage,3 were built during the fifties upon an unsophisti­ cated and naive assumption that the western model of ’development’ was fit for the whole world. But at the same time these crude assump­ tions proved that something like an ’evolutionary’ theory was needed and that we could get rid of such simplistic views only by a serious attempt to develop a more sophisticated evolutionary theory. What is first of all needed as a basis for such an evolutionary theory is to try to establish the criteria according to which a given historical process is to be assessed as fitting within the evolutionary concept. Thinking in terms of evolution presupposes that it is not identical with human history nor with ’social change’; and that criteria can be estab­ lished by which we may distinguish processes that are conducive to ’progress’, that is to say to ’general evolution’, from those that imply stagnation or even regression. A specific type of regression, linked with an over-specialization owing )to ever-increasing adaptation to the physical environment, has been called by Clifford Geertz ’involution’ — the reverse of ’evolution’.4 Instead of the usual criteria of general evolution as presented by an­ thropologists like Leslie A. White, Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service, such as the amount of energy production, division of labour, rate of complexity and size of a society, I would like to put forward a more general concept: that of emancipation. This concept includes both the aspect of emancipation from the bonds of nature and that of eman­ cipation from the bonds of society. This is not the place to elaborate further the concept of emancipation.5 But I would like to add, that this concept is, in my view, more basic and fundamental than other criteria such as those advanced by the authors mentioned before. A highly significant corollary of ’social emancipation’ in human history is the concept of ’cooperation’, which precisely implies phenomena such as growing division of labour, increasing complexity, and increase in size. With respect to the way ’general evolution’ proceeds, I agree with the main contention advanced in Sahlins’ and Service’s study: evolution does not proceed in a gradual way, it is essentially discontinuous. Both the shifting of the centres of human civilization and the skipping of evolutionary phases are expressions of this basic discontinuity. In the Netherlands, this view of discontinuous human evolution has been advanced by the historian Jan Romein, who already in the thirties

3 A well-known example of the use of American ethno-centric values as a model for assessing modernization processes elsewhere is Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, 1958. 4 Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia, 1963. 5 I may refer to my paper quoted in note 1.

147 developed his hypothesis of the ’dialectics of progress’, defined by him as the ’Law of the Retarding Lead’.6 Sahlins and Service were, evidently unaware of Romein’s publication (which had never been translated into English) when they rediscovered the Law of the Retarding Lead (a striking case of ’parallel invention’!). My main reservation as to Romein’s and the latter authors’ ’law’ is due to the fact that they did not prove it; they only illustrated it. I prefer to call it a ’hypothesis’ instead of a law, as Romein in his article actually did: where he used the world ’law’, he put it between quotation marks. The extent of the validity of the phenomenon has still to be established, but its relevance in understanding the evolutionary process can no longer be denied.

2 EISENSTADT’S ANALYSIS

During the past few years sociologists and political scientists have been definitely refining the concept of ’modernization’, as compared with the publications of the fifties. In my opinion, however, they have not yet sufficiently tried to fit their analysis into a general evolutionary con­ cept. I shall try to point out some basic deficiencies in the approach as advanced even in the best available studies of this kind. As starting point for my observations I have chosen Eisenstadt’s study of Modernization: Protest and Change,7 in which the different prob­ lems are approached in the thorough, balanced and sophisticated manner of the author’s earlier comparative and historical macro­ sociological studies. Eisenstadt’s assessment of the basic characteristics of ’modernization’ is, to a large extent, in conformity with the different elements of social ’progress’ as defined in my foregoing definition of the concept of evolution. In the economic sphere, according to the author, ’modernity’ implies a very high level of technology. As a corollary of this technological development, Eisenstadt rightly mentions an extensive sector of second­ ary (industrial, commercial) and tertiary (service) occupations over­ shadowing the primary (extractive) ones in quantitative and qualitative significance.8 9 ’Modern societies are also highly differentiated and specialized with respect to individual activities and institutional structures’.® Recruit­ ment to activities and occupations is largely determined on the basis of achievement whereas in traditional societies ascriptive criteria pre­

6 Jan Romein, Het Onvoltooid Verleden: kultuur-historische studies, 1937. 7 S. N. Eisenstadt, Modernization: Protest and Change, 1966. 8 Ibid., p. 3. 9 Ibid., p. 2.

148 dominate. The separation of roles within society also implies that ’specificity’, not ’diffuseness’, is a dominant trait of modern society. In the political field modernization is ’characterized by the continual spread of potential power to wider groups in the society — ultimately to all adult citizens’.10 In the author’s view, ’modern societies are in some sense democratic’. ’These developments have been very closely related to the expansion of media of communication’.11 Modernity is also evidenced by ’a new cultural outlook’, which implies greater ability to adjust to the broadening societal horizons, widening spheres of interest and growing potential empathy with other people and situations. In the structural field Eisenstadt stresses the increasing size of organi­ zational units, both in the political and the economic field. At the same time, modernity implies increasing complexity and differentiation of all types of organizations.12 In the ecological field modernization is characterized by an advanced degree of urbanization.13 14 These are, in my opinion, the basic characteristics as viewed by Eisen­ stadt, though he elaborates the different aspects in much greater detail. To a large extent, I could endorse the criteria of modernity as described in the above survey as being in conformity with the criteria of general evolution as defined in my foregoing introductory paragraph. A few reservations or strictures which I would like to put forward will be brought up in due course. Thus far Eisenstadt stresses those aspects of the processes of change which are common to all societies that have undergone the transition from tradition to modernity. In his following chapters, however, he considers many differentials discernible within this general develop­ mental pattern. Fundamentally, Eisenstadt views the process as one of structural change, of ’system transformation’. ’The root of this basic tendency to change, to improvement, to continuous system transformation lies in the very nature of modernity, not only as a structural characteristic of a society, but also as a cultural ideal or value .. Beside this structural change, however, there is an additional quality which the author considers fun­ damental to the ’modernization process’: the ability of a society to devel­ op an institutional structure capable of adjusting to continually changing problems and demands. It is the emergence of such a flexibility which, in the author’s view, constitutes the central issue and challenge of mo­

10 Ibid., p. 4. 11 Ibid., p. 5. 12 Ibid., p. 6. 13 Ibid., p. 10. 14 Ibid., p. 42.

149 dernization. Only if this flexibility has emerged will there be any guarantee, says Eisenstadt, that the modernization process will evolve into one of sustained growth’. ’Here Eisenstadt introduces a term borrowed from Walt Rostow’s theory of successive stages in economic development. However, Eisenstadt deviates from Rostow insofar as he does not consider the transition into a stage of ’sustained growth’ to be a uni­ versal and inevitable process. His view, fashioned by many disillusions after the Second World War, is much less optimistic than Rostow’s. He observes that in many countries a process has occurred which should be defined as a ’breakdown of modernization’. As a matter of fact, this issue of ’breakdowns’ appears to be the central theme of Eisenstadt’s book.15 16 This possibility of breakdowns shows that Eisenstadt does not view the modernization process as an automatic one. His is not a unilinear evolutionary perspective. Moreover, he admits that despite the charac­ teristics common to any modernization processes, these may show a great structural diversity. To mention one example: the author without any reservation includes the Soviet Union and the Chinese People’s Republic among the countries undergoing a process of modernization,18 despite their totalitarian regimes, whereas he excepts Nazi-Germany, Fascist Italy and Japan during the ’thirties, asserting that the modernization process had broken down there.17 According to Eisenstadt, however, the most obvious cases of ’break­ down’ have recently occurred in many of the ’New States’ at an earlier ’stage’ of modernization. He selects Indonesia and Burma as examples for more detailed scrutiny. His study is focused mainly on analysing the ’conditions of breakdown and of sustained growth’. As indicated in the foregoing, Eisenstadt divides the modernization process into ’stages’. These stages seem a little bit contradictory if one considers his acceptance of structural diversity and of ’different tem­ poral sequences of modernization in the major institutional spheres’, and his conclusion that, consequently, ’there exists no single road to modernity’. Essentially, Eisenstadt’s ’stages of development’ are no true stages ’which each modernizing and modem society has to go through in order to attain the capacity to system transformation.’ 18 His ’stages’ or ’phases’ appear rather to be different periods in world history. The main differential would seem to be not so much a distinction between various stages which any modernization process

15 See also S. N. Eisenstadt, ’Breakdowns of Modernization’, Economic Develop­ ment and Cultural Change, Vol. 12 (1964), pp. 346 ff. 16 S. N. Eisenstadt, Modernization and Change, p. 106. 17 Ibid., p. 133. 18 Ibid., p. 45.

150 has to pass through, but the period of world history in which the modernization process was initiated. Where the process started later, the picture of two successive stages becomes blurred. The two ’stages’ — or ’phases’ — can be clearly demonstrated in the West-European context. In the first, ’limited’ phase, which developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the upper and middle classes were usually predominant in the active process of moderniza­ tion. The process was only gradually extended to wider groups and strata, owing to the slow pace of urbanization and industrialization. Various new organizations created during the first phase were on a relatively small scale. Strong, modem centralized political frameworks generally preceded the onset of industrialization. The second ’phase’ of modernization is primarily characterized by its mass aspect. During the first phase, political aspirations had not yet spread to wider groups and strata. Buit in the second ’phase’ the spread of participation in all the major spheres of society, to broader groups and strata, becomes a prominent phenomenon. Structurally, this phase of ’growing tempo of social mobilization’ is characterized by the emer­ gence of large-scale and multi-purpose specialized groups and asso­ ciations. It is accompanied by a continuous growth and expansion of urbanization and a continual spreading of mass media of communi­ cation. Eisenstadt does not view the process through two phases as sketched above as a smooth and harmonious one. At any stage there may be forms of protest and incidental eruptions. But the rate of social mobili­ zation and the growing demands and infringements made by broad, peripheral layers of the population on the central political institutions remain ’relatively gradual, although often uneven’.19 Eisenstadt admits that in West-European countries ’the establishment of a modern central framework was connected with some revolutionary phase or event.’ He argues, however, that ’this revolutionary phase neither caused a sharp break with the past nor gave rise to a sharp and continuous cleavage in the central symbols of the political communi­ ty’.20 The temporal sequence of modernization was characterized first by ’stronger development of modern organizations and symbols at the center of the society than in the periphery’.21 According to the author, ’the temporal lag between the tempo of modernization in the center and the periphery has minimized . . . the direct impact of various manifestations of social disorganization.’ 22 The result of the devel­

19 Ibid., p. 53. 99 Ibid., p. 56. 21 Ibid., p. 58. 22 Ibid., p. 59.

151 opment in two phases was a ’flexibility of the existing political struc­ ture’, ’the relative openness of the wider social strata to modernizing tendencies’, and, consequently, a strong absorptive and integrative capacity within society in order to meet all kinds of political demands. ’The innovating ability of the democratic elites’ was most conducive to the emergence of a process of sustained growth’. In a following chapter, Eisenstadt shifts his attention to what he calls ’the second stage’ — elsewhere he refers to ’the second phase’ — of modernization. But on closer investigation it appears that in this chapter he does not deal at all with a second stage or phase in an evolutionary process. What he is here concerned with, is the process of modernization in a new period of world history. The pertinent chapter typically deals with the ’new-comers’ in the process of modernization. In these countries, where the process started late, mostly in the course of the twentieth century, the clear-cut division between a first and a second phase hardly exists. Eisenstadt calls them ’societies or political regimes whose basic modern institutional features were shaped mostly at the second phase of modernization. Each one started, of course, from some initial point in the first phase of modernization, but in each the problems and processes of the second stage proved to be more pronounced in the crystallization of the broader social groups and strata’ (the italics are mine. W.).23 What distinguishes the modernization process from that in the ’old- timers’ societies is therefore, first and foremost, the temporal sequence. One of the most portentous aspects is the ’marked discrepancy . .. between the low level of mobilization and transformation in the eco­ nomic and cultural fields, on the one hand, and the high level of mobilization in the ecological and political fields, on the other’.24 In simpler terms, this means that broad layers of the society, including those in the periphery, put forward far-reaching political and social demands and aim at a say in the central institutional framework before the society has reached a certain maturity in the economic and educational field. It is this reversed temporal sequence which makes the relatively smooth transition into a paradisaic state of ’sustained growth’, known from West- and North-European societies, impossible. The large number of cases of ’breakdown’ of modernization among those new-comers should therefore, according to Eisenstadt, be im­ puted to the ’split-up’ modernization typical of the ’new states’. Even in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe ’split-up modern­ ization’ was discernible, though to a lesser degree. ’Economically these regimes were usually characterized by a relatively slow tempo of* 21

23 Ibid., p. 83. 21 Ibid., pp. 84— 85.

152 development from a rather traditional agrarian base, and by the attempts to overcome such retardation by special big spurts in railway construction and heavy industry’.25 Industrialization, in this specific group of ’old-timers’, ’was very heavily dependent on the activities and help of the central government. This process of industrialization usually lagged behind the development of political and ideological demands and aspirations of small, intensive closed groups of intellectuals, but it came before the broader strata started to become modernized in the cultural or political field’ (the italics