Comments and Questions About First Family Activity; Clarifying Marx, and Reminders

COMMENTS & QUESTIONS ON FIRST FAMILY ACTIVITY:

I appreciated all the family submissions presented in class yesterday. They serve as a reminder of how superficial in some respects my presentation of these various social theorists can be. Below I am going to summarize what each of the families turned in, drawing as much as possible on your wording. I accepted a question from each family (for which you will get an additional point), but I had to modify a couple of them substantially. Everyone should consider this material as part of what we covered in class, so you need to study this (and the questions, of course) for the midterm exam.

BLUE FAMILY: Sumner's theory of ANTAGONISTIC COOPERATION (p. 85)

Sumner's theory of antagonistic cooperation is a form of cooperation where people or groups combine to satisfy common interests while minor antagonisms of interest are suppressed. This is not to say that Sumner advocated state or government interference in individuals' lives, but only that he recognized the need for a minimum amount of cooperation to allow for competition. He saw any government interference against capitalism as producing "violence, bloodshed, poverty, and misery." Therefore, in his mind, there must be some "antagonistic" cooperation to serve the common good (although I would say, it is not clear how much or in what circumstances exactly), but not in the socialist sense because there will always be underlying conflict regarding scarce resources, which he regarded as a natural law. This is relevant to today because it balances the conservative ideology of survival of the fittest by saying that we have a need for government to ensure that underlying conflicts do not interfere with the common good.

Midterm Question: Although Sumner stressed survival of the fittest and conflict as essential to societal evolution and harmony, what theory (or concept) did he offer to explain people coming together to fight for a common cause such as in wartime? (1pt)

Answer: the theory of "antagonistic cooperation," or a form of cooperation which occurs when people or groups combine to "satisfy a great common interest while minor antagonisms of interest which exist between them are suppressed." (p. 85)

YELLOW FAMILY: Herbert Spencer's "Law of Adaptation" (pp. 65-66)

Spencer's "law of adaptation" is one of four social laws which Spencer believed were scientific. Presumably, Spencer believed these could be proven empirically, especially through observation. Spencer postulated the law of adaptation in order to express his ideas on social progress, thereby fusing science and ethics. He recognized that society is composed of individuals, and he believed that individual happiness was the ultimate end of life. The ultimate end of society, he believed, is to facilitate "the greatest happiness of all." (65) Spencer, therefore, argued that the state should limit its interference in the lives of its citizens. We may notice the vestiges of this today when we hear conservatives or libertarians arguing for an expansion of free enterprise and free markets (laissez faire).
In a nutshell, the law of adaptation is this: Human progress develops naturally when people are free. The evolutionary progress of society necessitates freedom....
Obviously, Spencer's law of adaptation is relevant because it offers a distinct contrast to the theories we've studied so far. It contrasts with the social realism of Comte and Saint Simon. Nonetheless, Spencer regarded it as a scientific social law just as Comte and Martineau assumed there were social laws.

Midterm Question: Spencer's "law of adaptation" is based on what view of the relationship between the individual and the state? (1 pt)

ANSWER: The individual must be naturally free, unconstrained by the state as much as possible, where the only duty of the state is to protect each citizen from the "trespasses of neighbors" and defend society against foreign aggression.

BLACK FAMILY: Herbert Spencer's Concept of "Social Types and Constitutions" (p. 71)

Herbert Spencer was concerned with the development and evolution of society. Spencer identified three functional systems that exist within society and suggested that as societies grow these systems become more complex through compounding and re-compounding. This growth leads to increasing specialization and eventually structural differentiation. We felt that Spencer's theories on functional social systems, and their relation to the evolution of society, are important because his theories show the way, and order, in which societies must grow and develop in order to become "great civilized nations." Additionally, by recognizing these three systems, Spencer shows that all societies needed to solve problems of control and coordination, production of goods, services, and ideas, and finally, find ways to distribute these resources....

The three functional social systems:
(1) Sustaining System: productive activities required by an organism or a society to maintain and develop itself.
(2) Regulating System: governing structures of the organism or society.
(3) Distributing System: means by which the sustaining and regulating systems are linked together. This system is critical to the maintenance of relationships between interdependent parts of both biological and social organisms. This involves communication channels, transporation means, and the circulation of goods and people.

Midterm Question: Name or describe TWO of Spencer's three types of functional systems within society? (2 pts)

ANSWER: See above.

Before we move on, let me stress that the above three questions will be on the midterm. Also, I would suggest you review the pages in the text from which these various concepts and theories came from. I may ask a couple more questions based on this material.

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Clarifying my opening lecture on Marx: I did not feel good at all about my lecture yesterday which I suspect may have been a bit confusing to some of you. When talking about Marx and Marxism I have a tendency to go off on tangents about political and historical events since I have also read extensively on revolutionary states and movements in the 20th century. So, let me backtrack a bit.

It is important to understand Marx's materialism, as well as the distinction between historical and dialectical materialism. The following passage (which I did not present in class yesterday) underscores his materialism in contrast to some other thinkers we've discussed:

"Like other nineteenth-century social scientists from Comte to Spencer, he (rightly) insisted that societies, like organisms, were systems, composed of parts (social institutions). Each part was influenced by its relationship to the rest, and the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. But this left open the question as to whether all institutions were of equal weight, and of how the different institutions fitted one another. The search was on for a master principle analogous to natural selection in biological evolution. For idealists, the dynamic of social development was humanity's intellectual capacity. For Marx, it had to be 'material' -- and he found it, eventually, in the concept of the mode of production."

The best statement of Marx's HISTORICAL MATERIALISM comes from his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), which the authors of our text do not cite, unfortunately:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond to definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life."

And remember that DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM encompasses a view of social change, and I believe is perhaps best captured in a phrase Marx uses in The Communist Manifesto: that each stage of society (as long as there is a class hierarchy) contains within itself THE SEEDS OF ITS OWN DESTRUCTION (until, of course, in theory, a classless society comes into being).

I hope this helps. We'll get back to Marx tomorrow.

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REMINDERS: Remember, I'll give the families some more time to brainstorm some midterm exam questions, which should be short-answer. Each family needs to come up with THREE such questions which you will e-mail me NO LATER THAN NOON FRIDAY, 14TH. These questions can come from any material we've covered since the beginning of the term. Also, finish reading Chapter 5 in the text, if you haven't already.