International Encyclopedia of the
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Associate Editors Heinz Eulau, Political Science Lloyd A. Fallers, ...
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International Encyclopedia of the
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Associate Editors Heinz Eulau, Political Science Lloyd A. Fallers, Anthropology William H. Kruskal, Statistics Gardner Lindzey, Psychology Albert Rees, Economics Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Sociology Edward Shils, Social Thought
Special Editors Elinor G. Barber, Biographies John G. Darley, Applied Psychology Bert F. Hoselitz, Economic Development Clifford T. Morgan, Experimental Psychology Robert H. Strotz, Econometrics
Editorial Staff Marjorie A. Bassett, Economics P. G. Bock, Political Science Robert M. Coen, Econometrics J. M. B. Edwards, Sociology David S. Gochman, Psychology George Lowy, Bibliographies Judith M. Tanur, Statistics Judith M. Treistman, Anthropology
Alvin Johnson HONORARY EDITOR
W. Allen Wallis CHAIRMAN, EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
International Encyclopedia of the
SOCIAL SCIENCES DAVID L. S I L L S EDITOR
VOLUME
The Macmilkn Company & The Free Press
10
COPYRIGHT © iges BY CROWELL COLLIER AND MACMILLAN, INC.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG NUMBER 68-10023
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
International Encyclopedia of the SOCIAL SCIENCES
[CONTINUED]
MARRIAGE i. FAMILY FORMATION ii. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS in. MARRIAGE ALLIANCE
Robert F. Winch Gloria A. Marshall Louis Dumont
FAMILY FORMATION
The beginning of family formation may be either marriage or parenthood. It should not be concluded from the fact that sexual intercourse is a prerequisite for pregnancy that all peoples regard marriage or the establishing of a man-woman relationship as the first step in family formation. Indeed, according to Bohannan (1963, p. 73) the matricentric family, consisting of a woman and her children, is "both more nearly universal and more elementary than is the nuclear family," consisting of a marital couple plus any children they may have. In some societies it is thought proper that marriage should precede pregnancy, while in others the reverse sequence is regarded with favor; in the extreme case marriage is viewed as irrelevant to family formation. However, it seems safe to assert that in most societies the nuclear family is thought to be well launched only when both conditions are met. Cultures also vary according to whether they emphasize marital solidarity over lineal solidarity or vice versa. Societies with strongly developed extended family systems emphasize lineal solidarity over marital solidarity. In such societies family formation is scarcely a meaningful concept: since the marriage of a man and woman and the coming of their progeny represent the carrying on of a continuous line, these events may signal the establishing of a new household but not the formation of a new family.
In this article the topic of family formation will be treated with reference to the nuclear family. Marriage will therefore be considered as the focus of the process of family formation, and mate selection as one of its most problematic features. Definitions. From the functional point of view, the family is the one social system that all societies look to for the replacement of their members. However, from the structural point of view, the word "family" is used to refer not only to the marital couple and their children but also to the larger kin group; accordingly, it will be necessary to draw some structural distinctions. The "extended family" includes a nuclear family plus lineal and collateral kinsmen; to the extent that a society emphasizes rights and obligations among kinsmen who are not in the same nuclear family, it is spoken of as having an "extended family system." On the other hand, a "nuclear family system" is said to exist in a society in which the rights and obligations among those in the larger kin group are given little emphasis relative to the claims among members of the same nuclear family. It should be emphasized that the term "family," whether it applies to a nuclear or an extended family, is not equivalent to the term "household" —the aggregate of persons occupying a common dwelling unit, whether or not those persons are kinsmen. In Western societies the nuclear family is frequently also a household while the parental couples are in their younger and middle years and before their children attain adulthood. However, many other arrangements are possible, and some are institutionalized. For example, in South Africa it has been the practice for decades for the husbandfather to be away from his nuclear family for years at a time. A common type of household among 1
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MARRIAGE: Family Formation
Negroes in the Caribbean and in the United States consists of a working woman, her children, and her mother. In traditional China the ideal household included the nuclear family of the head of the household plus his unmarried daughters, his sons with their nuclear families, his sons' unmarried daughters, his sons' sons with their nuclear families, and so on through all living generations; in practice, however, not many Chinese families could afford households of such size. Marriage may be denned as a culturally approved relationship of one man and one woman (monogamy), of one man and two or more women (polygyny), or of one woman and two or more men (polyandry), in which there is cultural endorsement of sexual intercourse between the marital partners of opposite sex and, generally, the expectation that children will be born of the relationship ("polygamy" is the term that subsumes both polygyny and polyandry). "Homogamy" refers to the marriage of persons of similar characteristics, which is also known as "assortative" or "assertive" mating; "heterogamy" is the marriage of persons of different characteristics; and "hypergamy" is a marriage in which the husband is of higher social status than the wife. The term "endogamy" refers to marriage between persons belonging to the same social group, whereas in "exogamy" the partners come from different groups. Marriage and legitimacy. By definition marriage is a relationship within which sexual intercourse is legitimate In general, a woman who cohabits with a man has a legitimate status in relation to that man only if she is known to be married to him. Common-law marriage (recognized in the United Kingdom and in the United States) and the consensual union (recognized in the Caribbean) are forms of man-woman relationship that carry less than full cultural approval and legitimacy. Points of interest to American, as well as to English, courts in establishing whether or not a common-law marriage exists include: mutual agreement of the man and woman to take each other as husband and wife; cohabitation and presentation of themselves as a married couple to friends, neighbors, and the general public; and reputation, that is, the recognition by the community that the two are husband and wife. The Caribbean pattern of the consensual union differs from the common-law marriage of AngloSaxon countries in that the former is not a legally recognized marriage. Various writers have held that except for this lack of legal sanction the consensual union carries no social stigma and therefore is quite as acceptable among the people prac-
ticing it as is legal marriage. More recent analyses by Blake (1961) and by Goode (1960), however, have concluded that there is general recognition among Caribbean societies that consensual unions are less legitimate and hence less desirable than legal marriages. Goode argues that whereas legal marriage is recognized throughout Caribbean societies as the legitimate form, there is variation among the social strata of these societies in the degree of norm commitment, with the consequence that persons in the lower strata tend to be generally less committed to familial norms than persons in the upper strata. The more frequent occurrence of consensual unions among the lower social strata than among the upper is seen as a reflection of the class-linked variation in the degree of commitment to familial norms. [See CARIBBEAN SOCIETY.] Legitimacy affects the offspring of the marriage as well as the spouses themselves. In asserting what he called the "principle of legitimacy," Malinowski (1929) stated that in all societies a socially recognized father has been regarded as indispensable to the child. A legal marriage, then, gives a woman a socially recognized husband and her children a socially recognized father. According to Zimmerman (1947), the penalties attached to illegitimacy vary directly with the power of the extended family; thus, the penalties are heavy in societies characterized by the extended-family system and light where the nuclear family prevails. From a sociological point of view, the significance of legitimacy is that it is a necessary condition for the family to carry out its function of positionconferring. In this sense, the critical meaning of bastardy is not that the child has low status but rather that he lacks any position and status in his society. [See ILLEGITIMACY.] Variations in familial organization. Cultural expectations pertaining to marriage are affected by variations in familial organization. In Western civilization it appears that the power of the family and the size of the effective kin group (i.e., of the familial structure) have varied inversely with the complexity of the society of which the effective kin group is a part. Zimmerman (1947), who extensively analyzed the civilizations of ancient Athens and Rome, reports that in the early stages of both of these civilizations (i.e., when both societies were relatively simple) there existed what he calls the "trustee" type of familial organization; whereas in their late (and, to Zimmerman, decadent) stages, Athens and Rome developed much more complex societies and simpler familial structures, which he describes as "atomistic." The kernel of Zimmer-
MARRIAGE: Family Formation man's distinction lies in the locus of power. Where the trustee type of family exists, much power is located in the extended family. The head of the family, as the responsible center of familial authority, influences the behavior of the family members, and the extended family feels responsible for the behavior of its members. Where the atomistic type of family prevails, much power is located outside the kin group in specialized institutions. As the family loses power, its structure shifts from the extended family system to the nuclear family system. In the process of making this shift, according to Zimmerman, the divorce rate goes up and the birth rate goes down. Arguing that there are other lines of development than those of the West noted by Zimmerman, Goode (1963) holds, as we shall see below, that whether the divorce rate goes up as a society becomes more complex depends on the nature of the familial structure at the start of the process. One way of formulating variation in the family's power and size is to speak of its functioning as a political unit. Moreover, the family may show variation in other kinds of functioning. In some settings the family is the basic economic unit that creates and distributes goods and services. In many settings it is the principal social unit responsible for socializing and educating the young. And in some settings, especially where ancestor worship is practiced, the family carries out the religious function. In general, as societies become more complex, specialized societal structures develop for the carrying out of these functions, with the result that the family loses some of its functions; indeed such a state of affairs is the meaning of societal complexity. Taking account of Asian and African as well as Western societies, Goode (1963) agrees that most family systems of the world are moving toward a small-family system based on the nuclear family. Because the traits of non-Western family systems are so varied, however, he believes there will be marked differences in the direction of this change as the predicted convergence takes place. Thus, in African tribal societies where matrilineal systems are strong and divorce is common, Goode reasons that urbanization will be accompanied by a reduction in the conditions that have made divorce easy. Mate selection The functional emphasis in modern sociology leads the observer to anticipate that criteria for the choice of a mate will be related to the roles the mate is expected to enact and, perhaps, that the mate will be chosen by the incumbent of that social position most influenced by the quality of the mate's
3
performance. There is some evidence to support such a set of functional expectations, but of course the empirical world is always less tidy than the social scientist's model. The extended family system. In the extended family system it is common for members of the nuclear family to work in teams of kinsmen. Under this condition the mate-selective process is frequently a means of recruiting workers, and hence the members of the extended family have a lively interest in the work-related qualifications of a kinsman's prospective mate. Thus it is not unusual for responsible senior members of the extended family to select a son's spouse and to employ such familially relevant criteria as the industry and prospective fecundity of a potential daughter-in-law. For families of higher status, the standing of a girl's family becomes more important than her manual skills. Irrespective of status, however, the extended family system makes the procuring of a mate a matter of moment to a wide circle of kinsmen. It is consistent with this kind of family organization that mate selection should be a task calling for experienced perception and shrewd bargaining. Moreover, in order that their plans should not be thwarted by the passions of the young, the older people institute devices such as early marriage and efficient chaperonage (Goode 1959). On the other hand, where the extended family is not highly functional and where the nuclear family system prevails, it is frequently thought to be inappropriate for members of the extended kin group to exhibit lively interest in the marital choices of family members, and even the influence of parents is reduced. Under these conditions the criteria for mate selection are more likely to include attributes having primary appeal to the nubile pair—physical beauty, sexual attractiveness, and congeniality. The response to one or more of these attributes comes to be subsumed under the rubric of love. The diminution of relatives' influence in mate selection is not, of course, a categorical matter but rather one of degree. By their own religion, ethnicity, and social status, as well as by their own choice of location of residence and of schools, parents continue to influence their youngsters' choice of spouses. Traditional China provides an example of mate selection carried on by the family for familial purposes. When a son married, the preferred arrangement was for him to bring his bride into his parental home. The parents expected the bride to perform two important functions: to bear children, preferably sons, and to assist her mother-in-law in the performance of domestic chores. As the boy
4
MARRIAGE: Family Formation
was growing up, he looked to his parents to provide him with a wife. The parents expected the son to accept whatever bride they chose, and they condemned vigorously any disposition on the son's part to make his own marital selection, especially if the son tried to do so on the basis of love. It was generally agreed that young people of marriageable age were too inexperienced to have sound judgment in such an important undertaking. Since most of the bride's time was to be spent assisting her husband's mother, functional considerations dictated that the latter was the most interested party in the marriage; appropriately, therefore, she was usually the most active person in selecting her son's wife. Thus, arranged marriages were customary, and it was not unusual for a young man to meet his bride for the first time at the wedding ceremony. Traditional China made extensive use of the "go-between," or marriage broker. This occupation served two useful functions: marriage brokers made it their business to have extensive and detailed information about marriageable young people; and they made it possible for families to enter into and break off negotiations without loss of face (Hsu 1948; Lang 1946; Levy 1949). With industrialization came pressure for changes in Chinese family law. This was evident as early as the Boxer Rebellion at the beginning of the twentieth century, and new codes were promulgated in 1930 and 1931 (well before the communist revolution in China) that reflected Western standards —more emphasis on the nuclear family and less on the extended family, a reduction in male authority, and a closer approximation to legal equality of the sexes. However, the law retained a feature of Chinese filial piety: the obligations to one's parents superseded the obligations to one's children. In these matters the communist revolution has represented not so much a break with the past as a continuation of trends already under way (Yang 1959). Although reliable information on postrevolutionary China is still scanty, it appears that whereas the communist regime officially deplores both Western and traditional Chinese ways, love marriages are common, and the influence of the extended family is continuing to wane. The nuclear family system. As specialized social structures spring up, take over functions from the family, and become societally important and individually rewarding, the resulting reduction in the functional importance of the extended family removes incentives for maintaining an extended family system. At the same time there are four functions inherent in the nuclear family that come to the fore as being relevant in mate selection.
These functions are: providing emotional gratification in the marital and parental relationships; providing identity and a social status in the societal system to individuals who enter the family by birth, adoption, or marriage—a function to be known here as position-conferring; performing such tasks as cleaning, bringing in supplies, and disposing of waste products, which may be subsumed under maintenance of the household; and child rearing, especially with respect to the parental functions of nurturance and control. Of these four functions emotional gratification is most explicitly recognized in American culture as relevant to mate selection, and apparently this is so, to an increasing degree, in the middle-class subcultures of western Europe. There can be little doubt that convictions are widespread in the United States and western Europe that a couple should be "in love" before considering marriage and that legal codes are obsolete if they fail to provide for divorce on the ground of chronic marital conflict. Love as a mate-selective criterion invites idiosyncratic interpretation in the sense that, for instance, one man may be attracted to a demurely diffident girl whereas another finds the vivaciously extroverted girl irresistible. As a mate-selective criterion, position-conferring (especially when phrased as status-conferring) evokes ambivalent responses. In many middle-class settings a girl who is thought to have married for money rather than for love risks social condemnation (Indian culture, by contrast, has had the tradition that it is good for a girl to marry into a subcaste of higher standing than her own). If a girl marries for love plus status improvement, however, she is said to have married "well," and the durability of the Cinderella legend suggests that there is little novelty in this theme. The woman's social status depends so largely on her husband's occupational performance that, for her, mate selection is sometimes spoken of as a "mobility bet." Such evidence as exists on this matter for the United States indicates that most marriages are between persons of roughly equal social status. Although all four of the functions mentioned above are relevant to mate selection, a young couple considering marriage can usually check the suitability of each other only with respect to emotional gratification. This may have something to do with the emphasis given love as a criterion. In the premarital setting of early adulthood the other three functions can usually be no more than the focuses of guesswork. It is difficult for a young woman to foresee how a particular man will fare in the occupational sweepstakes and in being a
MARRIAGE: Family Formation model for their sons. Predictions are similarly difficult for the young man with respect to how a woman will manage their house and mother their children. Where marriages are voluntary rather than arranged, there is need of some means for marriageable young men and women to meet and to select each other. The practice of dating is societally rational in the sense that it affords this opportunity. On the other hand, dating as a prelude to mate selection has been criticized on the ground that the leisure-time activities of dating fail to provide an adequate setting in which to test prospective spouses with respect to maritally relevant criteria, especially with respect to the functions of household maintenance and child rearing. In sum, a reduction of functions in the extended family is accompanied by a reduction in the rights and obligations among extended kin that constitute the extended family system. This reduction in the significance of blood relationships shifts the emphasis from the extended family to the nuclear family. Marital solidarity replaces cognatic (both lineal and collateral) solidarity, and love becomes a criterion of mate selection. Principles of preferential mating Let us designate as "ego" a person of reference, that is, a person from whose point of view we shall consider certain relationships. All societies designate categories of persons whom ego may not marry, and frequently there are additional categories of persons whom it would be regrettable, but not totally forbidden, for ego to marry. Usually there are implicit, if not explicit, categories of persons whom it would be desirable for ego to marry. These negative and positive expectations can be subsumed under the "principle of incest avoidance" and the "principle of ethnocentrism." We shall speak of the set of persons whom ego is permitted to marry in any given sociocultural setting as ego's field of eligible spouse candidates or, in shorter form, as ego's "field of eligibles." European social scientists use the term "isolate" to refer to the field of eligibles. The principle of incest avoidance. Every society has a prohibition against incest, that is, against sexual relations between persons who are closely related. Although the precise relationships that are viewed as incestuous vary from one society to another, they regularly include the mother-son, the father-daughter, and the brother-sister relationships, that is, all heterosexual relationships within the nuclear family except, of course, the marital relationship. The principle of incest avoidance re-
5
fers to the set of prohibitions existing in every culture to prevent ego from marrying someone too close to him in the kinship system. Just how the principle of incest avoidance works out varies from one setting to another. In traditional China it was prohibited for ego to marry anyone with the same surname, and in that populous land with few surnames this rule proscribed hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible spouse candidates. In northern India there was a tradition that marriage was not possible with someone removed from ego by less than seven degrees on the father's side or less than five degrees on the mother's; a more common rule in India prohibits marriage between relatives linked to a common ancestor within five degrees on the father's side and three on the mother's (Goode 1963, p. 210). In some societies ego is encouraged to marry a cross-cousin (e.g., mother's brother's daughter) but prohibited from marrying a parallel cousin (e.g., mother's sister's daughter). Prior to 1793 it was illegal in Connecticut for ego to marry the sister of his deceased wife; but among the ancient Hebrews there was the custom of the levirate, by which a man was enjoined to marry the widow of his deceased brother if the brother had died without a son. The record shows a very few isolated cases where persons of opposite sex from the same nuclear family were permitted to marry. An example is the brother-sister marriage among the Ptolemies of ancient Egypt. Apparently the practice in these few exceptions functioned to keep power within ruling families. [See INCEST.] Ethnocentrism and homogamy. Whereas the principle of incest avoidance prevents ego from marrying someone too close to him in the kinship system, the principle of ethnocentrism prevents his marrying someone too different from him with respect to a number of social characteristics. In other words, ethnocentrism is a force tending toward endogamous and homogamous marriages. Sumner ([1906] 1959, chapter 1) used the term ethnocentrism to refer to the set of attitudes shared by members of a tribe or other social group to the effect that the members of that group and any others like them were seen as the center of the civilized world and had, therefore, the correct and desirable set of social characteristics. Thus, ethnocentric attitudes lead to the condemnation of outsiders to the degree that they are recognized as differing from one's group. The minimum degree of social distance on the Bogardus scale is indicated by an affirmative response to the query as to whether or not the respondent would be willing to accept a person with a specified characteristic to
6
MARRIAGE: Family Formation
close kinship by marriage. Traditionally, the castes of India have been endogamous, as have the subaltern categories of subcaste, section, and subsection. According to Kapadia ([1955] 1958, p. 118), these endogamous restrictions limited a Hindu's field of eligibles to 50 to 300 families. In 1949, however, the Hindu Marriages Validity Act stipulated that no marriage of Hindus could be invalidated because of caste or sect differences between the parties concerned. Expert opinion is divided as to the likelihood that caste endogamy will break down. In accordance with the principle of ethnocentrism there is evidence that in American society ego tends to select a spouse similar to himself with respect to race, religio-ethnic identification, socioeconomic status, and other social characteristics. In the United States the most conspicuously homogamous dimension of mate selection is race. Interracial marriages are still prohibited by law in a number of the Southern states; moreover, even where such laws do not exist, or where they have been repealed, there is little evidence of enthusiasm for such marriages. Various studies have shown the proportion of racially heterogamous marriages to be under one per cent. [See ASSIMILATION.] The second dimension of ethnocentric preference and prohibition is that of religio-ethnic identification, which includes cultural as well as religious elements. Classifying the 1957 population of the United States into the three major religious categories (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish), the U.S. Bureau of the Census found that approximately 94 per cent of the married persons had spouses in the same religious categories as themselves. If religious endogamy had not been practiced, and if, therefore, matings had been entirely random with respect to religious affiliation, the proportion having spouses in the same religious category as themselves would have been about 56 per cent (Winch [1952] 1963, p. 331). There is evidence that in heterogeneous communities the probability that ego will marry outside his religious category is greater when his category constitutes a small proportion of the community rather than a large proportion. If the religious category has a highly distinctive ethnic identity (e.g., Catholics who are Spanish-speaking in an English-speaking community), the probability of ego's marrying endogamously is increased. A third dimension of ethnocentric preference is that of socioeconomic status. Commonly used indexes of socioeconomic status are occupation, income, and number of years of schooling. Numerous studies have shown that people tend to select their spouses from their own socioeconomic strata
with respect to all three of these indexes (several are cited in Winch [1952] 1963, pp. 336-338). Other characteristics with respect to which people tend to mate homogamously are age, previous marital status, and location of residence. Systematic research supports the common observation that young people tend to select young mates and older people choose older spouses. No doubt it is partially because of this fact that there is a tendency for people to marry others who are like themselves with respect to previous marital status: divorced men tend to marry divorcees; single persons tend to marry those who have not previously been married; and widows and widowers tend to marry each other. Another common-sense observation that has been supported by research concerns residential propinquity: ego is more likely to marry someone living nearby than someone living far away (Winch [1952] 1963, pp. 322-324, 339-345). Since people are not randomly distributed through communities but rather tend to live near and to work with others of similar social characteristics, one would expect mate selection to be somewhat homogamous, whether or not there are any sanctions enforcing endogamy. Of course there are sanctions of varying degrees of intensity: for example, in American culture sanctions are quite intense with respect to race, less so with respect to religion and socioeconomic status, and virtually nonexistent with respect to residential propinquity. Homogamy may also be considered on a more psychological level. For example, there is evidence that spouses tend to resemble each other in level of intelligence, in values (e.g., religious and aesthetic), and in attitudes (e.g., toward birth control and toward communism). When spouses are tested by paper-and-pencil methods, they appear to resemble each other somewhat, but not greatly, with respect to traits of temperament and personality. However, data gathered by other methods, such as interviews and projective methods, lead to the contrary conclusion that, at least in such traits as dominance and dependence, spouses tend to be complementary rather than similar. At present this seeming paradox is unresolved, although the answer may be that the homogamy apparent in paperand-pencil tests is an artifact resulting from the effort of people to represent themselves to be as attractive as possible—what is called the "social desirability" effect (Winch 1958; [1952] 1963, chapter 18). Differentiation of sex roles The simple fact that only women can bear children causes every society to recognize some differentiation between the behavior of men and of
MARRIAGE: Family Formation women. Beyond the behavioral differences that are directly attributable to anatomy and physiology, however, cultures vary greatly in the degree to which they view human behavior as being properly sex differentiated. From a study of 224 societies, Murdock (1937) has found that men tend to engage in such active and mobile tasks as hunting, fishing, trapping, and lumbering, whereas women tend to specialize in more sedentary but equally important tasks, such as gathering fuel and fruits and cooking and preserving meat and fish. More generally, it is possible to conceptualize two criteria that distinguish masculine from feminine tasks. Tasks assigned to men usually require physical exertion and strength, or spatial mobility and absence from home for considerable periods of time, or both. By contrast, feminine activities are typically less demanding of great strength, although perhaps requiring a considerable output of energy, and will involve only a few hours at a time away from home. Analysis of these differences leads to the conclusion that the sharpness with which a culture distinguishes between masculine and feminine sex roles will be related to the importance it attaches to tasks requiring one or both of the two masculine task characteristics. Military activity is one obvious example that involves both of the masculine criteria; thus it is argued that a highly militaryoriented culture will be one that draws a sharp distinction between properly masculine activities and those that are properly feminine. The converse inference is that to the degree that a society's important tasks do not call for either of the criteria distinguishing masculine activities, there will be no basis for developing highly differentiated sex roles. As nonhuman power has taken over most of the heavy tasks in the industrial societies, the proportion of the total labor force that is classified as "white collar" has greatly increased. And whitecollar occupations, especially those not requiring travel, can be carried on as well by women as by men. Thus, if Western cultures have been "feminized" over the past century or so, as some writers have claimed, the present analysis would interpret such a trend as a consequence of the increased use of nonhuman power. Sex dominance in the marital dyad. What are the conditions that result in the dominance of one spouse over the other? The opportunity for dominance exists in a dyad when resources desired by one member are controlled by the other, that is, when one is dependent upon the other. Resources may be viewed broadly to include both material goods, such as food, and intangibles, such as a compliment.
7
Where no organizational feature exists to determine otherwise, it appears that men have usually dominated women. The reasons for this originate in the two criteria differentiating masculine from feminine pursuits and in their anatomical and physiological bases. A woman with small children has greater need of a man to take care of her than the man has need of her. His care may be viewed as a resource, and by granting or withholding that resource, the man can dominate the woman. This is a state of affairs that has been remarked by social scientists from Aristotle through E. A. Ross and Willard Waller and is perhaps best known to contemporary readers under the rubric of the "principle of least interest": that is, the person in a relationship who has the least to lose through the termination of the relationship is in a position to demand more from others and thus to dominate them in exchange for his continued participation. Aside from this situation of unilateral dependence, other possibilities are mutual interdependence, where the resources are not available to either one unless they cooperate, and mutual independence, where each has control over his own resources. With respect to organizational features, W. G. Sumner and A. G. Keller have remarked that where the bridal couple lives has bearing on which is the dominant sex and therefore that matrilocal marriage is a condition favorable to the relative standing of women. In traditional China, the favored pattern was patrilocal, and a wife was expected to obey her husband; masculine dominance was mitigated, however, in the case of adoptive marriage. According to this pattern, a man having no son might seek a young man (who was usually of somewhat lower social rank) to take the older man's family name, marry the older man's daughter, and live matrilocally. Studies of marriage During the second quarter of the twentieth century there was a good deal of concern about the state of the family in the Western world. There was evidence that divorce rates had risen, that the family had lost functions to other social structures, that the birth rate had fallen, that certain totalitarian regimes were trying to bring about the disintegration of the family, and that broken families were spawning delinquent children. Family disorganization was widely viewed as a social problem; probably for this reason, numerous studies were undertaken to discover the determinants, or at least some correlates, of what was variously called marital "adjustment," marital "happiness," and marital "success." Although these studies did not undertake to dis-
8
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis
tmguish very sharply among the three terms just noted, it does seem useful to differentiate them as follows. There are two kinds of marital adjustment, one pertaining to the role and the other to the psyche of the performer. An actor is adjusted to a marital or any other kind of role to the degree that he knows the expectations that define the role and, under the appropriate conditions, can produce the behaviors expected. On the other hand, he is adjusted psychically to the degree that the energy he invests in the role performance is commensurate with the gratification derived from it. Marital "happiness" refers to the subjective response of the actor to marriage and thus is related to psychic adjustment; however, one can be psychically adjusted when both output of energy and input of gratification are low, whereas presumably happiness requires at least a moderately high level of gratification. The term marital "success" implies the existence of a goal of marriage, and whatever goals there may be—avoidance of divorce, procreation, personality development of the spouses— seem to be more clearly conceived by those who write about marriage than by the participants whose behavior the writers describe. Much of the research on marriage has been concerned with marital adjustment—that is, both with the aptitude to carry out the marital role and with the capacity to derive commensurate gratification from the performance. Kirkpatrick has surveyed a large number of studies and has reported the variables he finds that have correlated most consistently with what is here called marital adjustment. He has divided these variables into two sets: those that were clearly operating before the marriage and those that may or may not have been. Presumably the determinants of marital adjustment are more likely to come from the former set. Kirkpatrick ([1955] 1963, p. 389) presents the following premarital factors as having shown the strongest and most consistent association with high marital adjustment: happiness of parents' marriage; adequate length of acquaintance, courtship, and engagement; adequate sex information in childhood; personal happiness in childhood; approval of the marriage by parents and others; adjustment in engagement and normal motivation toward marriage; ethnic and religious similarity of the spouses; high social and educational status; maturity (marriage in the late twenties rather than in the teens or early twenties); similar chronological age of the spouses; and harmonious affection with parents during childhood. Factors that may have become operative during marriage, rather than before, and therefore are regarded as part of the complex of marital adjust-
ment rather than among its determinants are early and adequate orgasm capacity, especially of the wife; confidence in the spouse's affection and satisfaction with degree of affection shown; equalitarian rather than patriarchal marital relations, with special reference to the role of husband; mental and physical health; and harmonious companionship based on common interests and accompanied by a favorable attitude toward the marriage and the spouse (Kirkpatrick [1955] 1963, p. 394). ROBERT F. WINCH [See also FAMILY; NUPTIALITY; and the biographies of BURGESS; MALINOWSKI; SUMNER; WALLER; WESTERMARCK.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BLAKE, JUDITH 1961 Family Structure in Jamaica: The Social Context of Reproduction. New York: Free Press. BOHANNAN, PAUL 1963 Social Anthropology. New York: Holt. GOODE, WILLIAM J. 1959 The Theoretical Importance of Love. American Sociological Review 24:38-47. GOODE, WILLIAM J. 1960 Illegitimacy in the Caribbean Social Structure. American Sociological Review 25: 21-30. GOODE, WILLIAM J. 1963 World Revolution and Family Patterns. New York: Free Press. Hsu, FRANCIS L. K. 1948 Under the Ancestors' Shadow: Chinese Culture and Personality. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. KAPADIA, KANAILAL M. (1955)1958 Marriage and Family in India. 2d ed. Bombay: Oxford Univ. Press. KIRKPATRICK, CLIFFORD (1955) 1963 The Family as Process and Institution. 2d ed. New York: Ronald Press. LANG, OLGA 1946 Chinese Family and Society. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. LEVY, MARION J. 1949 The Family Revolution in Modern China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1929) 1962 Marriage. Pages 1-35 in Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth. New York: Harcourt. MURDOCK, GEORGE P. 1937 Comparative Data on the Division of Labor by Sex. Social Forces 15:551—553. SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM (1906) 1959 Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals. New York: Dover. -* A paperback edition was published in 1960 by New American Library. WINCH, ROBERT F. (1952) 1963 The Modern Family. Rev. ed. New York: Holt. WINCH, ROBERT F. 1958 Mate-selection: A Study of Complementary Needs. New York: Harper. YANG, CH'ING-K'UN 1959 The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. ZIMMERMAN, CARLE C. 1947 Family and Civilization. New York: Harper. II COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Every society has rules governing the assumption of the conjugal roles of husband and wife; there are also discernible rights accruing to and obligations incumbent upon the individuals who assume
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis these roles. Marriage in all societies thus brings about a change in the jural status of the parties to the contract. Where marriage is defined by the state, it is possible to describe most of its jural entailments by reference to one or more legal codes adopted by that state. However, among many of the peoples studied by anthropologists, the jural tenets governing marriage cannot be ascertained by reference to codes laid down by a state and hence must be derived from the study of the recurrent patterns of behavior and of folk models that prescribe ideal behavior. Marriage entails not only a change in the jural status of the individuals who enter the roles of husband and wife but also a change in the lawful status of specifiable consanguineal kinsmen of the individual partners. In fact, it is the linkage of groups as well as of individuals that is crucial to the formulation of the difference between marriage and its social analogues. Only marriage creates (or maintains) affinal relationships between the kinsmen of individuals who claim the roles of husband and wife (see Fortes 1959, p. 209). Even where it is socially admissible for individuals to presume conjugal status—that is, where they may assume the husband-wife roles without their actions being legitimated according to prevailing jural rules— this presumption of status does not generate lawful relations of affinity between kinsmen of the "spouses" concerned. The importance of affinity to an understanding of marriage is made clear through a consideration of the nature of kinship. The social relations subsumed under the concept of kinship are of two fundamental types which, though referable to the biological processes of heterosexual mating and procreation, cannot be reduced to biology. Those social relationships based on parenthood and descent or, more precisely, on parenthood and filiation, are generally termed consanguineal relationships. All persons related by socially defined direct or shared descent are consanguineal kinsmen (P. Bohannan 1963, chapter 4). These "blood relatives" are distinguished in all societies from affinal relatives, i.e., those whose kinship status is fundamentally grounded "in law." Human mating is everywhere socially regulated, and adult mating for the purpose of procreation is normally preceded by the creation of jurally derived kinship ties between the mating pair and between certain of their respective consanguineal relatives. The continuance of publicly acknowledged affinal kinship depends on adherence to prescriptions and proscriptions delimited by the particular society under consideration. Whereas many societies make no provision for the legal severance of consanguineal
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kinship bonds, they all provide for the severance —"by law"—of those which are based "in law." Societies differ considerably with respect to the rules governing the way in which the roles of husband and wife should be assumed, with respect to the specific rights and obligations which accrue to persons in these roles, and with regard to the behavioral and jural attributes of the other affinal roles created by marriage. Nonetheless, most anthropologists have regarded the institution of marriage as a universal in human societies, and many have attempted to provide definitions of marriage sufficiently general to encompass its various manifestations. The fact that marriage is closely linked to parenthood has led many scholars, including Westermarck, Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown, to propose definitions of marriage which center on what Malinowski termed "the principle of legitimacy." Thus, Radcliffe-Brown writes: "Marriage is a social arrangement by which a child is given a legitimate position in the society, determined by parenthood in the social sense" (1950, p. 5). The general, though by no means universal, acceptance of this formulation is indicated by the fact that Notes and Queries on Anthropology defines marriage in an essentially similar, but by implication more limited, manner: "Marriage is a union between a man and a woman such that children born to the woman are the recognized legitimate offspring of both partners" (British Association for the Advancement of Science 1951, p. 110). Edmund R. Leach was among the first to argue that a definition of marriage in terms of legitimacy is too limited. In his opinion, any attempt at a universal definition of marriage is inevitably "vain," since the "institutions commonly classed as marriage are concerned with the allocation of a number of distinguishable classes of rights" (1961a, p. 107). Leach suggests that in most cases the institution of marriage serves to allocate rights to either or both spouses; in some cases it serves primarily to allocate rights to the husband and his wife's brothers. Despite Leach's arguments against a universal definition of marriage, his formulations stimulated two fresh attempts at universal definitions. Prince Peter of Denmark suggested that in light of Leach's propositions, marriage should be defined as "the socially recognized assumption by man and woman of the kinship status of husband and wife" (Peter, Prince of Denmark 1956). The task of the anthropologist would then be to ascertain and delineate the particular rights and obligations associated with these kinship roles in the particular societies being studied.
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MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis
H. Fischer (1956) called this definition tautological, on the grounds that the Oxford and Webster dictionaries defined "husband" and "wife" respectively by phrases such as "a married man" and "a married woman." In a discussion of Nayar marriage, Gough agrees and reaffirms the heuristic value of a definition of marriage based on "the principle of legitimacy." In an attempt to overcome the difficulties inherent in any formulation which defines marriage as a union of "a man and a woman" and in an attempt to provide a substantive definition for the concept of legitimacy, Gough suggests that marriage be defined as "a relationship established between a woman and one or more other persons, which provides that a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of the relationship is accorded full birthstatus rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum" (1959, p. 32). Her effort to refine the older, more general "principle of legitimacy" definition has yielded one which, on close examination, is equally inadequate. Operating with such a definition, no investigator could classify as married any particular woman who had assumed the jurally recognized kinship role of wife but who had not borne children. Of course, the conditions under which a child would be accorded "full birth-status rights" could be elicited by the investigator. However, for any given case, the researcher would have to await the birth—or perhaps the conception—of a child before he could ascertain whether conditions entailed in the husband-wife relationship had been violated. Furthermore, Cough's definition implies that in any society each person having "full birth-status rights" is the child of a relationship which can be termed marriage. Among various peoples of the world, "full birth-status rights" accrue to persons born of relationships which are not recognized as marriage according to prevailing jural rules. If a universal definition of marriage is to be formulated, it would seem that the one proposed by Prince Peter should serve as a model, Fischer's criticism of Prince Peter's definition may be disregarded, since dictionary definitions are usually unsatisfactory bases for discussions of roles. The roles of husband and wife must be defined in terms of the essential rights and obligations and the behavioral attributes entailed in them in any particular society. Gough and Fischer are justified in their concern that confronted with different forms of mating, the anthropologist employing Prince Peter's definition would be unable to decide which institutions should be referred to as "marriage," as "concubinage," etc. However, if the statement were
modified so as to define marriage as the jurally valid and socially (or publicly} recognized assumption of the kinship roles of husband and wife, there would be few or no problems concerning the distinction between marriage and its socially recognized alternatives. Such a proviso emphasizes that the publicly acknowledged kinship roles created by marriage—as opposed to its alternatives—derive support from the juridico-political domain of the society. Of course, there may be more than one jurally valid way of assuming the roles of husband and wife—as is the case in some present-day African states which recognize marriages contracted according to one or more sets of "customary laws" as well as marriages contracted in accordance with legal codes based on European models. It would appear that the cross-cultural study of marriage must rest on the premise that all societies recognize kinship roles which are founded "in law" as well as those which are based ultimately on actual, assumed, or presumed genetic relationships. Fundamental to the understanding of the concept of "lawfully based" kinship is the fact that human mating is everywhere subject to socially derived regulations. While it is normally expected that marriage will lead to parenthood, the roles of husband and wife need not be defined by reference to children who will come to be regarded as legitimate offspring of individuals in these roles. The roles of husband and wife should be defined in terms of the rights and obligations which attach to them, and marriage must be defined as the lawfully or jurally recognized assumption of these roles. Choice of spouses In all societies, socially derived limitations are placed on the range of persons from among whom spouses may be chosen. Regulations which prescribe marriage outside a stipulated group are referred to as rules of exogamy. Kin groups such as lineages, or territorial groups such as bands or villages, may constitute exogamous units. Societies possessing corporate unilineal descent groups usually prescribe that a person select as spouse someone from a descent group other than his own. In some cases the selection may be made from among persons within the descent group but outside specified degrees of relationship. Among the Gisu of east Africa, for example, it is the minimal patrilmeage, comprising persons who trace their descent from an ancestor three to five generations removed from the oldest living generation, which constitutes the exogamous unit. Every society prohibits heterosexual mating between certain "close" consanguineal relatives. This
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis prohibition is referred to as the incest taboo, and ordinarily it proscribes mating between relatives who stand to each other in the relationships of mother and son, father and daughter, and brother and sister. In many societies the incest taboo is extended to various other kinsmen in the parental and filial generations. Among some royal or ruling groups, as in dynastic Egypt and in Polynesia, relatives ordinarily prohibited from mating may be preferred as marriage partners. The mating of close relatives is also permitted in some societies on specified ritual occasions. A rule of endogamy exists where the field of possible spouses is limited to persons within an individual's territorial and/or social group. The castes of traditional India are the most often cited example of endogamous groups. Other societies also prescribe marriage among persons of the same social stratum. Among the Swazi of south Africa, where lineage exogamy prevails and where royalty marries royalty, there are frequent subdivisions of the royal lineage so as to make possible otherwise prohibited marriages. A number of studies indicate that in the absence of explicit prescriptions, it is posssible to discover endogamous tendencies within social or territorial groups of various size and scale. In addition to proscriptions associated with incest and exogamy, societies usually prohibit marriage between certain other categories of persons. In some instances slaves cannot marry freemen. Where age sets are a feature of social organization, as among the Nuer, a man may be prohibited from marrying the daughter of another man in his age set. Societies which prescribe that a spouse be chosen from among one or more designated categories of persons have been said to possess closed marriage systems. Those in which such prescriptions do not exist have been characterized as having open marriage systems. The designation of a marriage system as "closed" is not meant to suggest total absence of choice in the process of mate selection. This point is illustrated by Klass (1966), who shows that in Bengal (and in other parts of India), while caste affiliation delimits the broad category of persons from which a spouse is chosen, a man who must choose husbands for his daughters or "wards" does so from within a relatively narrow selection of eligible males known to certain of his kinsmen. The most frequently cited closed marriage systems are found among the indigenous societies of Australia. Some of these societies, for example the Kariera, practice what anthropologists term "symmetrical cross-cousin marriage," wherein pairs of
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local groups engage in the "simultaneous or nearly simultaneous exchange of women" (Leach 196la, p. 59). The male members of the two groups concerned exchange their "sisters" for "wives." Ideally, a male ego marries his mother's brother's daughter, who may at the same time be his father's sister's daughter and the sister of his own sister's husband. Among the Murngin of Australia is found a type of asymmetrical cross-cousin marriage wherein marriage with the mother's brother's daughter is preferred and marriage with the father's sister's daughter is proscribed. In this society and others practicing matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, a localized descent group gives wives to one or more other such groups and receives wives from a different set of such groups. In Murngin society there are descent groups which are allied through ties of kinship and ritual. Moreover, each pair of such allied groups stands in balanced opposition to another similar pair with which it exchanges women on a nonexclusive basis. Since men do not marry within their own moiety, any male ego and his mother's brother are in opposite moieties. Ego's group receives wives from and gives prestations to his mother's brother's group. Ego's mother's brother's group receives wives from and gives prestations to the group with which ego's group is allied. This latter group is the one containing ego's mother's mother's brother, who, of course, stands in the relationship of mother's brother to ego's own mother's brother. It can be said, therefore, that in Murngin society the "mothers' brothers" stand in the relation of "wife givers" to their sisters' sons (see Leach 196la, pp. 68-72). Claude Levi-Strauss, Edmund R. Leach, Louis Dumont, and others have discussed the economic and political implications of this and other forms of "cousin marriage." Leach (1961a, pp. 54-104) has shown that where matrilateral cross-cousin marriage prevails, there exist permanent status differences between wife-giving and wife-receiving groups and has demonstrated that the marriage system is not insulated from other domains in the society. In fact, he argues that marriage alliance in such situations is but one of "many continuing relationships between paired local descent groups." Political and economic relationships are reflected in and sustained by the system of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. In open marriage systems, the only group of persons unequivocally proscribed as marriage partners are those to whom the incest taboo is extended. There are no normative prescriptions relating to groups from which spouses should be chosen. Nonetheless, many studies indicate that demo-
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MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis
graphic, ecological, and sociological factors enter into the choice of spouse. Age, residential propinquity, class, religion, ethnicity, education, and occupation have been isolated as important determinants in the choice of marital partners. Likewise, parents and peer groups are often instrumental in delimiting for each individual the field from which a spouse will be chosen. The transfer of rights at marriage Marriage involves the allocation of rights and obligations among the parties to the agreement. A number of anthropologists have attempted to classify the various rights which are known to be allocated at marriage in different societies. In discussing the jural element in marital and other kinship relations, RadclifFe-Brown (1950, p. 12) distinguishes personal rights (jus in personam') from possessive rights (jus in rent}. A right in personam confers on an individual or a group the power to order the performance of certain duties by another individual or group. Rights in rent constitute claims on an object or person such that any encroachment on the object or person constitutes a violation of the "possessor's" rights. In most societies husbands and wives have personal rights in each other: either spouse may claim certain duties of the other. It is also common to find that a husband has "possessive" rights in relation to his wife. Her seduction, her abduction, or her murder would constitute a serious infringement of her husband's rights. In an important contribution to the literature on marriage, Laura Bohannan (1949) distinguishes two classes of rights in females which may be allocated at marriage. Rights in uxorem (rights in a woman as wife) are distinguished from rights in genetricem (rights in a woman as mother). In her discussion of Dahomean marriage, Bohannan shows that rights over a woman's sexual powers and certain of her domestic services were transferred from a woman's patrilineage to the man or woman who made the appropriate bridewealth payments. In most of the "types" of Dahomean marriage, rights to any children a woman might bear during the course of her marriage were also transferred from a woman's patrilineage to that of her husband. Distinct classes of marriage payments were necessary to the transfer of each of these two classes of rights. However, in certain "types" of marriage, rights in genetricem were retained by the woman's natal patrilineage; this might occur in cases where a lineage was faced with a shortage of male heirs and one of the daughters of the lineage was given in marriage to
a man who agreed to make all the bride-wealth payments except those which would have given him jural authority over children of the marriage. Moreover, the marriage of a woman of the royal lineage never involved the transfer of rights in genetricem to the lineage of her hub and (L. Bohannan 1949). Even though it is usually rights in women which are in the forefront of marital negotiations, Leach has pointed out that marriages also serve to allocate rights in and over men (196la, pp. 107-108). He suggests that a marriage may serve to do the following: (1) To establish the legal father of a woman's children. (2) To establish the legal mother of a man's children. (3) To give the husband a monopoly of the wife's sexuality. (4) To give the wife a monopoly of the husband's sexuality. (5) To give the husband partial or monopolistic rights to the wife's domestic and other labor services. (6) To give the wife partial or monopolistic rights to the husband's labor services. (7) To give the husband partial or total rights over property belonging or potentially accruing to the wife. (8) To give the wife partial or total rights over property belonging or potentially accruing to the husband. (9) To establish a joint fund of property—a partnership—for the benefit of the children of the marriage. (10) To establish a socially significant "relationship of affinity" between the husband and his wife's brothers. Leach thus focuses attention on rights in and regarding children, sexuality, domestic and economic services, and property. In the last instance, he suggests that marriages may establish between groups of men mutual interdependencies which could entail any of the above rights as well as others of a political nature. Where there are corporate kin groups, the allocation of rights at marriage is usually effected by and between at least two such groups. In the case of first marriages, it is usual that the groups into which the husband and wife were born are parties in this rearrangement of social relations. Where recruitment to the corporate kin groups is based on patrilineal descent, normally the rights over a woman's sexuality and procreative capacities that are held by her natal group are transferred
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis at marriage to the groom and his natal group. Thus, whereas prior to marriage any sexual offense against a woman constitutes a violation of rights held by her kin group, after marriage such an offense is an infringement of the groom's rights. Similarly, whereas children born to a woman outside marriage would fall under the jural authority of her natal kin group, those born after marriage are subject to the authority of, and have rights in, the groom's kin group. Total rights over the bride's domestic and economic services are seldom transferred from her natal group to her husband or his kin group. The woman herself, as an adult member of the society, may retain some control over the dispensing of these services. Often her kin group retains the right to call upon these services. Among the Yoruba of Nigeria, for example, rights in the bride's sexuality, rights over her procreative powers, and partial rights over her domestic services are acquired at marriage by the groom and his patrilineage. However, a woman maintains control over her economic powers and resources, and her natal lineage retains the right to call upon her domestic services in certain circumstances. She is called upon to buy and prepare food at times when deities associated with her lineage must be propitiated, and on the death of a member of her lineage, she is expected to be of service in various ways. This raises another point: in most societies possessing corporate patrilineages, a married woman does not usually relinquish all her rights in her natal lineage. She may retain some proprietary rights therein, and she usually remains under the religious protection of her lineage ancestors. Moreover, a woman's lineage may have the right to reclaim control over her sexual and procreative powers should there be a breach of the marital agreement on the part of her husband. While these statements are generally true, there are some patrilineal societies in which a married woman becomes virtually "absorbed" into her husband's lineage. According to Gluckman (1950), a married woman among the Zulu of south Africa had virtually no rights outside her husband's lineage; once a woman was married, her natal lineage forfeited virtually all authority over her. Whatever rights are transferred to the husband or his lineage may be temporarily or permanently reallocated by him or his lineage. The most common example of this is the practice of "wife-lending" found among the Kipsigis and others. The fact that a man may permit another to have access to his wife's sexuality is proof of his monopoly over her sexual capacities. In some societies, a man
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who is impotent may choose a sexual partner for his wife in order that she may bear children. Where this is so, the husband is the lawful father of the children, even though he is not the genitor. Where a female is permitted to assume the role of husband, she bestows her rights of sexual access to her wife on a man of her own or of her wife's choice. In matrilineal societies, rights over the procreative capacities of women are held in perpetuity by their kin groups while partial or total rights in their sexuality are transferred at marriage to their husbands. Customarily, the husbands also attain rights to the domestic services of their wives. Among the Bemba of east central Africa, for example, a husband has monopoly over his wife's sexuality, but the children of any marriage belong to their mother's matrilineage and are therefore under the jural authority of the adult males of that group. A wife keeps her husband's house and contributes her labor to his agricultural pursuits. Marriages and the exchanges of goods and/or services occasioned thereby are sometimes processual events extending over considerable periods of time. The rights and obligations entailed in the marriage may be allocated in serial fashion, the timing of their transfer being dependent on the transfer of the appropriate goods and services. In such cases, the exchange of goods and services may commence during the period of betrothal and continue even after the formal transfer of certain rights has taken place. Where goods and services are exchanged as part of the marriage procedure, certain of these may be regarded as necessary prestations without whose exchange a transfer of rights will not take place. Others are contingent prestations which, although part of the contract, are not essential to the exchange of jural authority and the assumption of marital rights and obligations. As Fortes says, they constitute the "means of winning and preserving the goodwill of those with the power to transfer marital rights" (1962, p. 10). The most general terms used to describe prestations entailed in the marital contract are those of bridewealth (or bride-price) and dowry. The former refers to gifts presented by the groom's kin group to that of the bride, and the latter describes gifts made by the bride's kin group to that of the groom. The dowry is the more familiar to Westerners, since for centuries it has been a part of the marriage contract in Europe. However, both bridewealth and dowry have been reported for various parts of the world. Throughout history, the transfer of rights at
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MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis
marriage has been enshrined in ritual and ceremony. This is a correlate of the fact that marriage transactions are always "publicly" acknowledged. The ceremonies which take place in effect call forth "the public" to bear witness to the lawfulness of the transactions. The sanctions which emanate from the jural domain of the society are strengthened by the incorporation of rituals associated with the religious realm of the society. Concurrent marriages. The transfer of rights at marriage and the rituals associated with this transfer signify the assumption of new roles by the parties involved. In societies which permit polygyny or polyandry—marriages entailing a plurality of wives or of husbands, respectively—one of the partners to a marriage assumes the role of co-wife or co-husband along with the role of husband or wife. In polygynous marriages, the husband usually acquires the same categories of rights in each of his wives. In patrilineal societies, a man is the legitimate father of all his wives' children, even though his rights over the wives' sexuality may be assigned to or "usurped by" other men. The children of polygynous marriages may or may not have equal claims on their father's property. In any case, each wife considers herself the guardian of her children's rights within the family created by the polygynous marriage. Where polyandry is practiced, by definition a man does not have exclusive rights in his wife's sexuality. He may or may not have claims over the children which she bears him. Among the Sinhalese, rights over the wife's sexuality are partially vested in the first husband. The sexual rights of the other husbands are exercised with the consent of the first husband and the wife. A husband has claims over those of the wife's children whom he has fathered, and the children have legitimate claims over the property of their respective fathers. All the children have equal claims to the properties owned by their mother. Among the Nayar of south India, a ritual marriage ceremony, called the tali rite, bestowed upon a group of men of appropriate caste the right of access to a woman's sexuality. The completion of the tali rite marked a girl's transition to womanhood. Thereafter, when she attained appropriate age, she could begin to enter into relationships, termed sambandham unions, with a number of men, for whom she might bear children. Rights over a Nayar woman's procreative powers were retained by her matrilineage, which had jural authority over her children. Nonetheless, in order for a child to have "full birth-status rights" in his
mother's lineage, he had to have an acknowledged father. A man acknowledged the paternity of a child by bearing certain expenses associated with its delivery. This man could be any one of those with whom the mother had entered into a sambandham union. In cases of doubtful paternity, a woman's current "visiting husband" could be forced by an assembly of persons in the neighborhood to make the birth payments. "But if no man of appropriate rank could be cited as potential father, woman and child were expelled from their lineage and caste" (Gough 1959, p. 30). The levirate and the sororate. In many societies, an individual may assume the role of husband or wife in order to secure rights for a kinsman. Where the "true" levirate prevails, upon the death of a husband, it is the duty of one of his brothers to marry the widow, and any children born to the union are counted as the progeny of the deceased man. Certain of the "ghost marriages" found among the Nuer resemble the levirate. A man could marry a woman "to the name of" a brother who died childless, and the offspring of the union would be designated as children of the deceased. These practices differ from the custom of adelphic widow inheritance, wherein a man marries his deceased brother's widow and bears children who are counted as his own. Where the "true" sororate prevails, the husband of a barren woman marries her sister, and at least some of the children born to the union are counted as those of the childless wife. The term "sororate" is also used in reference to the custom whereby, upon the death of a wife, her kin supply a sister as wife for the widower. In the latter case, however, any children born to the woman are recognized as her own. Affinal relationships. The transfer of rights at marriage not only signals the couple's assumption of new conjugal roles but also serves to establish or perpetuate affinal relationships between consanguineal kinsmen of the spouses. Often associated with affinal roles are behavioral attributes commonly subsumed under the categories of "joking relationships" and "avoidance relationships." Radcliffe-Brown (1952, pp. 90-116) has argued that the respect implied in avoidance practices and the formalized disrespect demonstrated by joking relationships are expressions of alliance or consociation. The actors in roles characterized by joking or by avoidance have divergent interests which could generate conflict between them and thereby undermine the bases of their common interests. The institutionalization of avoidance and joking serves to minimize the chance of the development of openly hostile relations between the parties.
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis The most widespread of the avoidance practices are those which restrict contact between a husband or wife and the mother-in-law and/or father-in-law. Such restrictions on contact may also extend to actual or classificatory brothers or sisters of the father-in-law or mother-in-law. Among the patrilineal Swazi of south Africa, a wife is prohibited from coming into face-to-face contact with her husband's father and those of his male relatives of the same generation resident in the compound. A man behaves in similar fashion toward his motherin-law, but the likelihood of such contact is minimized by their residence in different compounds and often in different villages. Joking relationships most commonly exist between a man or woman and affinal relatives of opposite sex in the spouse's generation. These relationships are characterized by the use of intimate names, the use of language otherwise considered lewd or abusive, and, in some cases, by indulgence in sexual play. Affinal relatives are often expected to give assistance to one another in times of exigency. In many societies where political functions are vested in roles defined primarily by kinship criteria, affinal relatives serve to minimize open conflict between their respective consanguineal kin groups. They might serve, as among the Tiv of Nigeria, as emissaries of peace in cases of latent or open conflict between two lineages. The linkage of individuals through marriage leads to the creation of new groups or, in Nadel's terminology, to the creation of new sets of bounded social relationships and thereby constitutes a phase in the developmental cycle of kin groups. As Radcliffe-Brown has pointed out, the eventual result of most marriages is that new sets of individuals are linked through common descendants. Ultimately, the fission of kin groups can often be traced to relations generated by marriage. This process is evident in many societies where lineages (or, for that matter, ramages) are a feature of social organization. When adult members of a lineage segment occupy a common residence along with their spouses and children, the process of incorporation of additional coresidents through marriage often eventually leads to the founding of households in other locations. In the course of time, the founders of such households and their descendants may come to form new lineage segments. Postmarital residence In some societies, spouses are expected to live together throughout the period of their marriage; in
15
others, they may be members of separate domestic groups and only visit each other's residences. The "residence rules" outlined by anthropologists refer to situations in which husbands and wives are members of the same domestic unit. Neolocal residence predominates when couples establish independent domestic units after marriage. Residence is characterized as virilocal when most couples in a society join a domestic group in which the husband resided prior to marriage or in which he rather than the wife has proprietary or other claims. Residence is called uxorilocal when couples join the domestic group to which the wife was attached prior to the marriage or in which the wife rather than the husband has claims. The above terms may be compounded with others to describe more precisely the nature of the domestic group joined by the couple. Thus, viripatrilocal residence refers to domicile in a domestic group whose core includes the groom's father. Uxorimatrilocal residence refers to domicile in a group whose core includes the bride's mother. The term avunculocal is used to describe residence in a group whose core includes the groom's mother's brother. Data collected by Goodenough (1956) and J. L. Fischer (1958) among the Nakanai of New Britain show that the classification of postmarital residence patterns is not as straightforward as some might assume. Their data also illustrate that there is no simple correlation between particular residence rules and particular rules for recruitment to descent groups. Goodenough shows that in this matrilineal society, a man takes his bride to live in the village in which his father resides. The couple lives there so long as the groom's father is alive, and they may remain after the father's death, particularly if the father is without sisters' sons who would be his jural heirs. More often, however, after the father's death, the couple moves to the residence of the husband's matrilineage, in which he has hereditary land rights. A man whose father is deceased takes his bride to live with the group which includes the man who acted as father-surrogate at the time of the marriage. Goodenough shows that even where ideal residence patterns suggest one or more prevailing modes of residence, the actual choices which couples make may depend on economic and other factors. Fischer, who also worked on the island of Truk and who arrived at a classification of residences significantly different from Goodenough's, has suggested that residence be elicited for individuals than rather for married couples. He suggests that every person in a household has a "kin sponsor"
16
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis
and that his relationship to this sponsor most appropriately describes the residence pattern for that individual. While Fischer's suggestion has some merit for the classification of residence patterns for entire populations, attention cannot be shifted from the fact that in most societies the major spatial arrangements of individuals are associated with marriage. Moreover, the kinds of rearrangements which do occur have important implications for many kinds of social relations. It has been shown, for example, that the study of the developmental cycle of domestic groups touches on virtually all aspects of social structure and that postmarital residence patterns are crucial to the understanding of the development of domestic groups (Goody 1958). Alternatives to marriage Marriage is a process or event signifying the assumption of the roles of husband and wife in accordance with jural tenets prevalent in the society or stratum of society to which the parties belong. In contemporary societies, marriages are contracts which must be formally legitimized by the state. A state may provide that for purposes of inheritance, or for other specified purposes, persons who are not legally married to each other but who share a common domicile and who otherwise demonstrate a claim to conjugal status may be accorded some or all rights associated with legal marriage. Similarly, a state may choose to recognize marriages contracted according to rules formulated prior to its existence by some or all of the groups which constitute it. Such is the case in various parts of the world where formerly autonomous or semiautonomous political entities have come together to form modern nation-states. Unions other than lawful marriage are known to have existed in stateless societies as well as in states which did not make the legitimization of marriages their official concern. Yet it seems particularly characteristic of modern societies that there are individuals who, for various reasons, assume some or all of the obligations and rights associated with the roles of husband and wife without entering into legal marriage. Reference has already been made to the fact that one of the crucial ways in which such unions differ from marriage is that they do not create lawful kinship ties between consanguineal relatives of the couple. These "consensual unions" occur in different frequencies in different modern societies. In the United States, in the Caribbean, and in other areas where such unions occur with relatively high fre-
quency among certain socioeconomic classes and/ or ethnic groups, research has centered primarily on family organization, and consensual unions are often regarded as but one aspect of over-all "family instability." The result is that while many hypotheses have been offered to account for the matrifocal or matricentric family which, in some areas, is one structural correlate of consensual unions, few students have offered hypotheses which explicitly attempt to account for the origin and/or persistence of such unions. M. G. Smith (1962) has presented a wealth of statistical data in support of his hypothesis that specific mating patterns underlie the various forms of family organization in the Caribbean. He has demonstrated that the pattern of consensual mating underlies the matrifocal family in that area. However, he does not deal with the origin and persistence of the mating patterns themselves. Nevertheless, the data suggest that demographic and economic factors are important determinants of these patterns. For example, where the sex ratio is altered by the necessity that males migrate to find work, women often enter into extramarital unions with single or married men who remain behind. Such alliances may or may not entail coresidence. Consensual unions may constitute a stage in the development of domestic groups and as such are not so much alternatives as preludes to marriage. In parts of the Caribbean where great prestige is attached to church marriages followed by festivities requiring the outlay of large sums of money, couples often assume the roles of husband and wife by mutual consent until such time as they can afford a religious marriage ceremony. Thus, many couples establish a common domicile and bear children before they enter into matrimony "before the eyes of man and of God." This raises an important point. Even though, in most parts of the modern world, marriages may be contracted without religious ceremonies, historically marriage was the concern of religious institutions before it became the official concern of the state, and most religious doctrines still include prescriptions and proscriptions regarding marriage. Where the influence of religious tradition is particularly strong, civil marriages may be regarded as little more than alternatives to or complements of "true marriage." One of the consequences of this, as evidenced in parts of the Caribbean, is that couples enter into extramarital relationships until such time as they can finance the religious and convivial ceremonies as well as fulfill the legal requirements for marriage.
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis Marital stability and divorce The ambiguities entailed in the concept of marital stability have been succinctly stated by David Schneider: Stability may be defined in terms of the change of rules or expectations over time or in terms of the degree to which the rules or expectations are conformed to. Stable marriage may be defined as stable jural relations irrespective of conjugal relations, as stable conjugal and jural relations, or simply as stable conjugal relations. (1953, p. 56) Thus, divorce, defined as the lawful dissolution of jural ties established at marriage, may occur relatively infrequently even though separation and other breaches in conjugal relations occur relatively frequently. In traditional Nuer society, the jural bonds established by marriage were stable; divorce, signified by the return of bridewealth, was rare. On the other hand, conjugal separation was relatively frequent. Max Gluckman (1950) was one of the first anthropologists to deal with the factors which contribute to the jural stability of marriage in preindustrial societies. His data on the Lozi and the Zulu led him to the hypothesis that the stability of jural relations established by marriage is correlated with the presence of patrilineages. He argued that where the "principle of father-right" prevailed, as among the Zulu, there was a complete and final transfer of women into their husbands' lineages (from which their children obtained their legal rights), and he suggested that this fact accounted for the virtual absence of divorce in such societies. In a reconsideration of the Gluckman hypothesis, Fallers pointed out that not all patrilineal societies provide for the absorption of women into their husbands' lineages. He suggests that where women retain rights in their natal patrilineages, patriliny contributes to the jural instability of marriage by dividing the loyalties of spouses. Fallers (1957) found among the Busoga a relatively high incidence of divorce, which he attributed in part to the fact that loyalties to natal lineages undermined the bonds established at marriage. Leach (1961a, pp. 114-123), Cohen (1961), and others have contributed to the discussions of marital stability begun by Gluckman, Schneider, and Fallers. However, there is yet to be undertaken the quantitative and comparative analyses required for a definitive statement on the determinants of stability in the jural aspects of marriage. Whether the aim is to isolate the determinants of differential rates of divorce within a single society or to account for the differences in the divorce rates
17
reported for various societies, care must be taken to insure that the data utilized are in fact representative of the populations discussed. Moreover, more attention must be given than has been in the past to the limits of the utility of numerical data, which, at best, can be considered reliable for relatively short time spans. The separation of spouses is usually taken as an index of instability in conjugal relations. However, it should be obvious that separation can only be taken as indicative of the disintegration of conjugal bonds when the coresidence of spouses is a societal norm. Even in these cases, separation does not always signal instability in conjugal relations. Among the Yoruba, it is common to find women living and working in one place while their husbands live and work in another. So long as these women are not known to have committed adultery, and so long as they fulfill certain responsibilities to their husbands and their husbands' lineages, their conjugal relations are not necessarily impaired. The distinction drawn by Schneider between stability in conjugal relations and stability in the jural aspects of marriage relations is useful in the analysis of marriage in contemporary societies. For example, it would be useful to make such a distinction in discussions of marriage patterns in the Caribbean and in the United States. As has been pointed out, among some of the lower-class populations in these areas, consensual mating is common. Not all the parties to consensual unions are persons who have never been legally married. In fact, where the economics of divorce are a deterrent to the lawful dissolution of marriage, consensual unions are often an alternative to divorce and remarriage. Hence, the jural relations established at marriage are often maintained even though conjugal relations are completely or partially severed. Most of the societies whose marriage systems are described in the anthropological literature are now incorporated into independent states. The very existence of these states signals changes in the rules regarding the establishment of marital contracts, since all contemporary states reserve the right to define what types of union constitute legal marriage. There is general agreement that the economic and demographic changes taking place in the "developing areas" are also effecting changes in traditional marriage systems. However, Goode (1963) has pointed out the difficulties involved in isolating cause—effect relationships between changes in a society's family patterns, including marriage, and
18
MARRIAGE: Comparative Analysis
changes in its economic organization. Considerable refinement in research strategies is necessary before it will be possible to state with confidence the extent to which, the precise ways in which, and the specific points at which the spread of industrial technologies and the growth of cities impinge upon or serve to undermine traditional family structures and marriage patterns. Some of the studies of marriage found in the anthropological literature provide convenient points of departure for investigations of changes in the rules and behavior associated with marriage in different parts of the world. However, it is obvious that analyses of changing patterns of marriage require the collection of a larger body of quantifiable data than is available in most existent anthropological studies of marriage. Whereas most of the marriage systems described in the anthropological literature lent themselves to representation in terms of mechanical models, such models are becoming increasingly inadequate as representations of particular systems and as bases for comparative studies. The rules governing the establishment of marriage contracts, the factors influencing the choice of spouses, the rights and obligations entailed in conjugal roles, and the behavior of persons in these roles are sufficiently variable in any one system to require partial or total representation by means of statistical models. With the construction of such models, we can begin the assessment of the directions and rates of change in marriage systems and the isolation of the specific variables which account for these changes. GLORIA A. MARSHALL BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOHANNAN, LAURA 1949 Dahomean Marriage: A Revaluation. Africa 19:273-287. BOHANNAN, PAUL 1963 Social Anthropology. New York: Holt. BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 1951 Notes and Queries on Anthropology. 6th ed. London: Routledge. -» The first edition was published in 1874. The sixth edition was revised and rewritten by a committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. CHRISTENSEN, HAROLD T. (editor) 1964 Handbook of Marriage and the Family. Chicago: Rand McNally. CLARKE, EDITH 1957 My Mother Who Fathered Me: A Study of the Family in Three Selected Communities in Jamaica. London: Allen & Unwin. COHEN, RONALD 1961 Marriage Instability Among the Kanuri of Northern Nigeria. American Anthropologist New Series 63:1231-1249. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1951 Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer. Oxford Univ. Press.
FALLERS, L. A. 1957 Some Determinants of Marriage Stability in Busoga: A Reformulation of Gluckman's Thesis. Africa 27:106-123, FISCHER, H. T. 1956 For a New Definition of Marriage. Man 56:87 only. FISCHER, JOHN L. 1958 The Classification of Residence in Censuses. American Anthropologist New Series 60: 508-517. FORTES, MEYER 1959 Descent, Filiation and Affinity: A Rejoinder to Dr. Leach. Man 59:193-197, 206-212. FORTES, MEYER (editor) 1962 Marriage in Tribal Societies. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 3. Cambridge Univ. Press. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1950 Kinship and Marriage Among the Lozi of Northern Rhodesia and the Zulu of Natal. Pages 166-206 in A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde (editors), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. Oxford Univ. Press. GOODE, WILLIAM J. 1963 World Revolution and Family Patterns. New York: Free Press. GOODE, WILLIAM J. (editor) 1964 Readings on the Family and Society. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. GOODENOUGH, WARD H. 1956 Residence Rules. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 12:22-37. GOODY, JACK R. 1956 A Comparative Approach to Incest and Adultery. British Journal of Sociology 7:286-305. GOODY, JACK R. (editor) 1958 The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 1. Cambridge Univ. Press. GOUGH, E. KATHLEEN 1959 The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 89:23-34. KLASS, MORTON 1966 Marriage Rules in Bengal. American Anthropologist New Series 68:951-970. LAWRENCE, WILLIAM; and MURDOCK, GEORGE P. 1949 Murngin Social Organization. American Anthropologist New Series 51:58-66. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1961a Rethinking Anthropology. London School of Economics and Political Science, Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 22. London: Athlone. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1961i» Asymmetric Marriage Rules, Status Difference, and Direct Reciprocity: Comments on an Alleged Fallacy. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17:343-351. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1949 Les structures elementaires de la parente. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. LOWIE, ROBERT 1933 Marriage. Volume 10, pages 146154 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1929) 1962 Marriage. Pages 1—35 in Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth. New York: Harcourt. MOGEY, JOHN (editor) (1962) 1963 Family and Marriage. Leiden (Netherlands): Brill. -> First published in Volume 3 of the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. PETER, PRINCE OF DENMARK 1956 For a New Definition of Marriage. Man 56:48 only. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1950 Introduction. Pages 185 in A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde (editors), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. Oxford Univ. Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1951 Murngin Social Organization. American Anthropologist New Series 53:37-55.
MARRIAGE: Marriage Alliance RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. (1952) 1961 Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. London: Cohen & West; New York: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R.; and FORDE, DARYLL (editors) 1950 African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. SCHNEIDER, DAVID M. 1953 A Note on Bridewealth and the Stability of Marriage. Man 53:55-57. -> For the ensuing discussion on this topic, see the articles numbered 122, 223, and 279 in Volume 53 of Man, by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Max Gluckman, and E. R. Leach, respectively; see also the articles numbered 96, 97, and 153 in Volume 54 of Man, by Max Gluckman, William Watson, and E. R. Leach, respectively. SCHNEIDER, DAVID M. 1965 Some Muddles in the Models: Or, How the System Really Works. Pages 25-85 in Conference on New Approaches in Social Anthropology, 1963, Cambridge, The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology. Edited by Michael Banton. Association of Social Anthropologists, Monograph No. 1. London: Tavistock. SMITH, M. G. 1953 Secondary Marriage in Northern Nigeria. Africa 23:298-323. SMITH, M. G. 1962 West Indian Family Structure. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press. WINCH, ROBERT; McGiNNis, ROBERT; and BARRINGER, HERBERT (editors) (1953) 1962 Selected Studies in Marriage and the Family. Rev. ed. New York: Holt. Ill MARRIAGE ALLIANCE
All societies prohibit marriage with certain relatives, but some societies complement this prohibition by prescribing, or preferring, marriage with other relatives. In this way two kinds of cousins are sometimes distinguished, marriage being prohibited between those who are children of siblings of the same sex ("parallel cousins"), while it is prescribed between children of siblings of opposite sex ("cross-cousins"). This disposition is generally accompanied by exogamy. This article attempts to sum up recent developments in the theory of crosscousin marriage. Descent and alliance The expression "marriage alliance," in which "alliance" refers to the repetition of intermarriage between larger or smaller groups, denotes what amounts to a special theory of kinship, a theory developed to deal with those types of kinship systems that embody positive marriage rules, though it also affords certain general theoretical insights regarding kinship. Two points may be noted at the outset: (1) The combination of the positive marriage rule with exogamy, or at the very least with a prohibition against marriage between parallel cousins, is essential to the type of system under description here; a preference for marriage with
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the father's brother's daughter, as found among some Islamic peoples, is a quite different phenomenon. (2) The approach here presented is essentially common to several writers, though an element of personal interpretation is inevitable. In the initial stages of kinship studies, the reconstruction of fanciful marriage rules (or mating arrangements) as having supposedly existed in the past was widely used in order to explain seemingly strange ways of classifying relatives (kinship terminologies). This practice has brought discredit, in the eyes of some, to the study of both marriage rules and terminologies. In 1871 Lewis Henry Morgan made two assumptions: (1) terminology reflects behavior, and hence, (2) if a terminology cannot be understood from present behavior, it must be because the behavior it reflects belongs to the past. [See the biography of MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY.] Quite apart from the difficulty of reconstructing past behavior, anthropological thought in this matter is still ethnocentric. The underlying assumption is that all peoples entertain the same ideas about kinship; their classifying of relatives in different ways is, therefore, due to differences in behavior. Fully excusable in Morgan, such an assumption is less so today. W. H. R. Rivers recognized the link between an actual marriage rule (symmetrical cross-cousin marriage) and a certain type of terminology (often called "bifurcate merging"). For Rivers, the marriage rule was the cause, the terminology the effect, and he saw his task as explaining the marriage rule itself. [See the biography of RIVERS.] Once again, terminology reflects behavior, and again historical speculation is called in, this time to discover the "origin" of one item, which is in fact essentially a normative trait. In our time the different features of a kinship system are, in practice, often considered in isolation or are hierarchized according to what is assumed to be their degree of reality or determinativeness. This tendency, if not found in such crudity as in the past, still exerts considerable pressure even on the best minds, and that it constitutes a major obstacle to the understanding of certain kinship systems can be shown by the example of Australian kinship, a classical subject for kinship theory. In Australian section systems, descent is overstressed; the reasons that may elsewhere justify this emphasis are here misplaced, for it prejudices the consideration of other elements in the system. In writing about Australian kinship systems, authors vie with each other in stressing that in
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MARRIAGE: Marriage Alliance
A,
K
r
n
-A L—J
di
Ac,
A8' C,
D, KARIERA
ARANDA (North)
AMBRYM (Balap)
Figure 1
symmetrical cross-cousin marriage arrangements, double descent is always present or implied. This is unobjectionable in itself, but in the literature it is accompanied by a bias which makes itself obvious by repetition, whether it be in B. Z. Seligman's attempt to reduce the "type of marriage" to "forms of descent" (1928, p. 534), however strange the latter forms may appear, or in Radcliffe-Brown's overemphasis upon descent, or in Murdock's outbidding of Radcliffe-Brown in this respect. Radcliffe-Brown was not content with finding an underlying matrilineal exogamy in his classic Australian patrilineal systems and with seeing in what is now called "double descent" a widespread principle of Australian kinship. He claimed that his second kind of exogamous group actually "existed," whereas he had only inferred it (1931, pp. 39, 439); the point is insisted upon by Goody (1961, pp. 6 ff). It is perplexing later on to find Murdock opposing Radcliffe-Brown, while praising the same discovery in others; but the crux of the matter is that in Murdock's opinion Radcliffe-Brown had not gone far enough in stressing descent and descent groups, for Radcliffe-Brown had maintained, at another level, the primacy of individual relationships and marriage rules over the arrangement of groups (Murdock 1949, pp. 51 ff.). Actually, the hypothesis of underlying matrilineal exogamy among the Kariera and Aranda accounts for the allocation of alternate generations to different groups. Among them, the patrilineal group is conceived not as a unity over a continuous series of generations but as a duality made up of two alternate generation-sections, called by different names and following different marriage rules (the grandson falling back, so to speak, into the grand-
father's section). This is the simple, concrete sociological fact, widespread in Australia. If we take this for granted, together with intermarriage between the named sections, we can in each case draw a simple diagram of the whole tribe. In Figure 1 the sign [=] denotes intermarriage in both directions, the letters A, B, etc., represent patrilineal groups, and the numbers 1 and 2 are used for the two alternating generation-sections in each patrilineal group. The system of Ambrym (Balap) is easily represented in the same fashion (Deacon 1927). All three systems represent variations on the same theme, the number of patrilineal groups being respectively two, four, and three, the number of sections four, eight, and six. Each of the three systems may be conceptualized as forming a single whole through a regular chain of intermarriage and patrilineal descent. The differences in the arrangement follow necessarily from the numbers of groups (for details, see Dumont 1966). I do not pretend that a second unilineal principle cannot be said to underlie these systems, but only that the above is a simpler view of them. Let us now turn to the general theory that, like the above analysis, recognizes intermarriage as a basic element in those systems which possess a preferential or prescriptive marriage rule. Levi-Strauss We must neglect the scholars who had previously advanced the distinction and description of the types of cross-cousin marriage (e.g. Fortune 1933; Wouden 1935) and start with the general theory of Levi-Strauss. His monumental book Les structures elementaires de la parente (1949) goes far beyond our limits. Josselin de Jong (1952) has
MARRIAGE: Marriage Alliance provided an able summary of the book, while Leach (1961) and Needham (1960) have sympathetically, but sharply, criticized its detail. Our concern here is only with its leading ideas. From the present point of view, the work is first of all a comparative study of positive marriage rules, informed by a general theory of kinship. Preferential marriage rules and marriage prohibitions are accounted for within an integrated body of theory. The prohibition of incest is recognized as universal; it is seen as a basic condition of social life. A man cannot take in marriage the women who are his immediate kin; on the contrary, he has to abandon them as wives to others and to receive from others his wife or wives. Levi-Strauss considers this situation as a universal principle which lies beyond sociological explanation—and which implies an opposition between consanguinity and affinity as the cornerstone of kinship systems. He views marriage as predominantly a process of exchange (between one man and other men or between one domestic group and others), and he sees in positive marriage rules devices through which this exchange is directly regulated, giving rise to what he has called "elementary" structures. Let us note that a kinship system is viewed here, starting from its basis in the incest prohibition, as an entirety resting on an opposition and not as a mere collection of features in which one feature might, for a priori reasons, be considered to determine the others. Abstractly, a kinship system is taken as combining a number of features (descent, inheritance, residence, affinity), and an effort is made to characterize the whole by the relations that prevail between the different features. Thus, a system is called harmonic if all transmission between generations takes place in one and the same line, dysharmonic if some features are transmitted patrilineally, others matrilineally. The rule of crosscousin marriage, where it exists, correlates with this. Theoretically three types may be distinguished: bilateral, matrilateral, and patrilateral. In bilateral cross-cousin marriage, the spouse is at the same time mother's brother's child and father's sister's child. Two intermarrying groups exchange women as wives and thus constitute a self-sufficient unit. Levi-Strauss has called this form "closed" or "restricted" exchange (echange restreint} and correlated it with dysharmonic transmission. In opposition to this type, he has stressed the quite different properties and implications of matrilateral crosscousin marriage. This type had been less clearly recognized by previous writers, though he does not consider the Dutch literature on Indonesia in which the type had been characterized (e.g. Fischer 1935;
21
1936; Wouden 1935). In this type, a man marries his mother's brother's daughter; a given line B takes wives from a line A and gives wives to a line C, generation after generation. Intermarriage is thus asymmetrical, and if the society is conceived as a number of discrete groups giving and receiving women in marriage, the simplest system is that of a circle: at the end of the series, Z receives from Y and gives to A (called the "circulating connubium" by the Dutch scholars). This is what LeviStrauss calls "generalized exchange." In opposition to the closed type, it requires at least three groups and may accommodate any number of groups. This type correlates with harmonic transmission, which may be either matrilineal or patrilineal. Here the identity of the intermarrying group emerges from the network of relationships, for one group is not closely dependent on any other single group, nor are two successive generations distinguished. Relatives belonging to different generations within the same group of affines are terminologically equated. Since intermarriage is directionally oriented—a group does not receive wives from the group to which it gives its daughters—there is a probability of difference of status between wife-givers and wife-takers. For a discussion of the further consequences, see Leach (1961, chapter 3; cf. Fischer 1935). The third type, the patrilateral, is only cursorily treated in Levi-Strauss's treatise; it appears there as a kind of abortive crossbreed between the first two types and is omitted here because it is somewhat controversial (Needham 1958Z?; Lane 1962). Some of the objections that have been leveled at Levi-Strauss's theory can be briefly mentioned. One, forestalled by Levi-Strauss, is that he argues exclusively about viripotestal societies; another is that his idea of marriage is naive, although this is beside the point, since he was actually concerned solely with the forms and implications of intergroup marriage. A more radical criticism can be directed at the fundamental character and explanatory value of "exchange" in Levi-Strauss's scheme (discussed in Wolfram 1956). To view the prohibition of incest as the basis for the opposition between consanguinity and affinity appears tautological to those who think of consanguinity itself as fundamental and self-explanatory or appears insufficient to those who would like a psychological explanation. Viewing marriage as an exchange may be questioned on two counts. First, it introduces an arbitrary analogy between women and chattels, women being supposed, for instance, to be universally the most prized of "valuables." Second, "exchange" here tends to be given so wide and inde-
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MARRIAGE: Marriage Alliance
terminate a meaning as to be practically devoid of content. While this is true of "indirect exchange" and even more so of "reciprocity," the notion of exchange is certainly useful within limits. In still another critique of Levi-Strauss, Homans and Schneider (1955) argue, in the last analysis, that to look at kinship systems as wholes having explanatory value in relation to their parts is to resort to "final causes." This critique has itself been carefully refuted by Needham (1962). Developments Since 1949 the Levi-Straussian theory has been tested and has undergone partial modifications and developments. To mention only the major themes, we have first the clear-cut distinction, advocated by Needham, between prescription and preference in marriage rules. He claims that prescription alone has "structural entailments" in the total social system, and that Levi-Strauss has dealt only with prescription or at any rate should have done so (Needham 1962). "Prescription" is here defined more as the characteristic of a system than as simply a marriage rule: it involves the combination of a rule prescribing some relatives and prohibiting others, a corresponding terminological distinction, and a sufficient degree of observation of the rule in practice (Needham 1958a, p. 75; 1958£>, p. 212). The advisability of the distinction has been challenged by R. B. Lane (1962, p. 497). At first sight the distinction seems justified, and there is no objection to isolating a clear-cut type of "prescriptive alliance." That there is a danger of underestimating the importance of other types is apparent from the exacting criteria by which the author excludes the recognition of forms of patrilateral intermarriage as "prescriptive" in his sense (Needham 1958£>), These latter forms, like preferential marriage in general, do have "structural entailments" of a kind, as we shall see. Moreover, the two forms are not easily distinguishable; the distinction, so presented, is more one of levels than of systems (for a recent clarification of this question, see Maybury-Lewis 1965). The main development has probably been a refinement of the concept of alliance and the substitution of a more structural for a more empirical notion. At the start the theory, although anchored in the notion of complementarity, was in large part concerned with the exchange or circulation of women between the major exogamous components of the society. To begin with, three authors have asserted that the units which may be said to exchange women are, in concrete cases, smaller than
the exogarnous units. In 1951 Leach sternly insisted—with empirical, if somewhat dogmatic, good sense—that the agents arranging marriages are as a rule the males of the local descent groups, as distinct from the wider exogamous units and from the "descent lines" used in terminological diagrams and often unwittingly reified by the analyst into actual groups (see Leach 1961, p. 56; cf. Needham 1958a). Quite logically, Leach went on to criticize the assumption that a matrilateral marriage rule should necessarily result in the groups intermarrying "in a circle," an idea which Needham, on the other hand, tried to refine (1958a; 1962). A criticism from Berting and Philipsen may also be noted: to be meaningful, they suggest, the "marriage cycles" must be limited in number, and the people themselves must be aware of them (Needham 1961, p. 98). While such "alliance cycles" (Needham) do meaningfully exist in some cases, their existence does not exhaust the function or meaning of marriage alliance. On this all our authors agree, for Levi-Strauss (1962, p. 333) himself recently recognized—if my interpretation is correct—that "conscious rules" have emerged from recent research as more important than their results in terms of "exchange." Leach had pointed out that, in the absence of cycles, the basic relationship is "one of the many possible types of continuing relationship between paired local descent groups" (1961, p. 101). Elsewhere, while marriage alliance does not result in a system of exchange at the level of the group as a whole, it is an integral part of the system of categories and roles as conceived by the people studied (Dumont 1957, pp. 22, 34). Needham has gone furthest in submitting LeviStraussian structuralism to criticism from the inside and in referring the "mediating" concepts of exchange and reciprocity back to that of (distinctive) opposition (1960, p. 103). The more fundamental "integration" is not that of groups but rather that of the categories as it occurs within the social mind: the marriage rule is part and parcel of this system of ideas. Like everything else, social relationships are defined by classification. Studying the "symbolic order" of the Purum and others, Needham (1958a) found that asymmetrical intermarriage, although it could not function with less than three intermarrying or "alliance groups," can be dualistically conceptualized (wife-givers and wife-takers) in accordance with an over-all dualist scheme. Here are found "structural entailments" different from the group arrangements on which attention had first focused. The expression "mar-
MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS riage alliance" thus covers both the general phenomenon of mental integration and the particular phenomenon of group integration. In its restricted field this truly structural theory alone transcends the bias inherent in our own culture. Such expressions as "cross-cousin marriage" are technically useful but basically misleading. Real understanding is reached when the marriage rule understood as marriage alliance is seen as giving affinity the diachronic dimension that we tend to associate only with descent and/or consanguinity. By this means we are able to transcend the limitations of thinking based upon our own society and make comparisons in terms of the basic concepts involved (consanguinity and affinity). Much remains to be done. Certainly the implications of marriage alliance for status, economy, and political organization (i.e., the physiology of the system) should be worked out (Leach 1961, chapter 3). But even regarding the morphology, our analyses are as yet imperfectly structural; we still take too much for granted in the study of terminologies. Before attempting ambitious (^constructions, the basis in comparative data must be strengthened and extended, and we must obtain a clearer view of the limits of the logical integration of features, or conversely, of the plasticity and tolerance of systems, which can in some cases go so far as to deny in effect the ideological primacy postulated above in principle. Louis DUMONT BIBLIOGRAPHY
DEACON, A. BERNARD 1927 The Regulation of Marriage in Ambrym. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 57:325-342. DUMONT, Louis 1957 Hierarchy and Marriage Alliance in South Indian Kinship. London: Royal Anthropological Institute. DUMONT, Louis 1966 Descent or Intermarriage? A Relational View of Australian Section Systems. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 22:231-250. FISCHER, H. T. 1935 De aanverwantschap bij enige volken van de Nederlands-Indische Archipel. Mensch en maatschappij (Amsterdam) 11:285-297, 365-378. FISCHER, H. T. 1936 Het asymmetrisch cross-cousinnuwelijk in Nederlandsch Indie. Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-, land- en volkenhunde 76:359-372. FORTUNE, R. F. 1933 A Note on Some Forms of Kinship Structure. Oceania 4:1-9. GOODY, JACK R. 1961 The Classification of Double Descent Systems. Current Anthropology 2:3-26. -> Includes comments by 13 scholars on pages 13-21; see especially R. B. Lane's comments on page 16. HOMANS, GEORGE C.; and SCHNEIDER, DAVID M. 1955 Marriage, Authority, and Final Causes: A Study of Unilateral Cross-cousin Marriage. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.
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JOSSELIN DE JONG, JAN P. B. DE 1952 Levi-Strauss's Theory on Kinship and Marriage. Mededelingen van het Rijkmuseum voor Volkenkunde, No. 10. Leiden (Netherlands): Brill. LANE, ROBERT B. 1962 Patrilateral Cross-cousin Marriage. Ethnology 1:467-499. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1961 Rethinking Anthropology. London School of Economics and Political Science, Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 22. London: Athlone. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1949 Les structures elementaires de la parente. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE (1962) 1966 The Savage Mind. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» First published in French. MAYBURY-LEWIS, DAVID H. P. 1965 Prescriptive Marriage Systems. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21:207-230. MURDOCH, GEORGE P. 1949 Social Structure. New York: Macmillan. -> A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press. NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1958a A Structural Analysis of Purum Society. American Anthropologist New Series 60:75-101. NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1958b The Formal Analysis of Prescriptive Patrilateral Cross-cousin Marriage. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 14:199-219. NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1960 A Structural Analysis of Aimol Society. Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde (The Hague) 116:81-108. H> Text is in Dutch and English. NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1961 Notes on the Analysis of Asymmetric Alliance. Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde (The Hague) 117:93-117. NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1962 Structure and Sentiment: A Test Case in Social Anthropology. Univ. of Chicago Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1931 The Social Organization of Australian Tribes. Oceania 1:34-63, 206-246, 322341, 426-456. SELIGMAN, BRENDA Z. 1928 Asymmetry in Descent, With Special Reference to Pentecost. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 58:533-558. WOLFRAM, E. M. S. 1956 The Explanation of Prohibitions and Preferences of Marriage Between Kin. Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford Univ. -> See especially Chapter 8, "The Explanation of Incest and Marriage Regulations." WOUDEN, F. A. E. VAN 1935 Sociale structuurtypen in de Groote Oost. Leiden (Netherlands): Ginsberg.
MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), an American geographer, is known today primarily as the founding father of the conservation movement. His contemporaries regarded him as the most comprehensive American scholar of the time. His enduring contributions to knowledge stemmed from an unusual combination of historical and ecological insights. As a social historian, Marsh broke new ground in treating the story of mankind as the history of the use and misuse of resources.
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MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS
As an ecologist, he saw the history of nature commingled with that of man and traced the motives, the techniques, and the consequences of man's impact on the earth. Although he was not a trained naturalist, Marsh manifested an extraordinary awareness of the fragile interdependence of all aspects of nature, physical and biological, and of their multiform significance for mankind. The scion of a patrician family in frontier Vermont, Marsh graduated from Dartmouth College and practiced law in Burlington, meanwhile engaging in business—farming, lumbering, woolen manufacturing, railroad development, marble quarrying—and in politics. He served in the state legislature and for six years in Congress. As a reward for services to the Whig and Republican parties, he was appointed United States minister to Turkey from 1849 to 1853 and to Italy from 1861 to 1882, the latter an unequaled tenure of office. This diplomatic career gave him an opportunity to travel widely and made possible the leisure essential for his scholarly work. Marsh's first contributions were in linguistics. Attracted by new developments in the study of Teutonic languages, folklore, and cultural origins, he edited the first Icelandic grammar in English, delved into the history and literature of Old Norse and related tongues, and became the American promoter for C. C. Rafn's monumental Antiquitates americanae, a collection of Icelandic sagas bearing on the Iceland-Greenland-Vinland settlements. Marsh's historical studies of the English language were the standard texts during the 1860s, and he was in continual demand as editor, adviser, and critic of dictionaries, including the New English Dictionary. Familiarity with an extraordinary range of source materials in twenty languages made Marsh a first-rate, if not profoundly original, etymologist. His work as a scientific middleman was of more lasting significance. In the House of Representatives, Marsh helped to create, to staff, and to shape the Smithsonian Institution, guiding its early ventures in archeology and in natural science and guarding its research endowment against congressional incursions. He himself added animal specimens from Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine to the Smithsonian collections. On his return from Turkey he strongly urged the introduction of camels as beasts of burden in the American West—an enterprise initially successful but aborted by the Civil War. A utilitarian zeal directed and inspired Marsh's best work. As early as the 1840s he publicly advocated measures of physical improvement and
conservation: the establishment of nurseries for forestry research and the regulation of logging to prevent excessive and flashy runoff and consequent flooding and desiccation. Not until he returned to Italy in 1861, however, did Marsh bring together the materials he had long been collecting into a systematic analysis of man's manipulation of the natural environment. Published in 1864, Man and Nature showed how man differs from nature, how nature operates within itself, and what happens to woods and waters, mountains and deserts, when men clear, farm, dam, and build. In surveying man's impact, conscious and unconscious, Marsh did not overlook the improvements but stressed the accompanying and resulting damage. Technology had enabled man to derange natural balances and might ultimately, Marsh feared, reduce the surface of the earth "to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species" ([1864] 1965, p. 44). Man and Nature was the first book to controvert the American myth of an inexhaustible earth. Its immediate impact was more moral than practical, but by 1907, when it had gone through three editions, the basic principles of Man and Nature were embodied in the national conservation program. In geography, Marsh is also important as an early and effective critic of environmental determinism, then popularized in the works of Arnold Guyot. How could man be viewed as the product of environment, when man himself had the power to alter that environment—and had in fact done so over most of the earth's surface? The mistakes man had made through ignorance or greed could, Marsh thought, in most cases be rectified by applying scientific principles of land management, by avoiding waste, and by public control of resources. DAVID LOWENTHAL [For discussion of the subsequent development of Marsh's ideas, see CONSERVATION.] WORKS BY MARSH
1856
The Camel: His Organization, Habits, and Uses, Considered With Reference to His Introduction Into the United States. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. (1860a) 1885 Lectures on the English Language. Rev. ed. New York: Scribner. 1860& The Study of Nature. Christian Examiner 68: 33-62. H» An unsigned article. (1862) 1898 The Origin and History of the English Language, and of the Early Literature It Embodies. Rev. ed. New York: Scribner. (1864) 1965 Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. Edited by David Lowenthal. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -> See
MARSHALL, ALFRED the introduction to the 1965 edition by David Lowenthal. Revised editions were published between 1874 and 1907 as The Earth as Modified by Human Action. WORKS ABOUT MARSH
KOOPMAN, HARRY L. 1892 Bibliography of George Perkins Marsh. Burlington, Vt.: Free Press Association. LOWENTHAL, DAVID 1958 George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. MARSH, CAROLINE C. 1888 Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner.
MARSHALL, ALFRED Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) is one of the great names in the development of contemporary economic thought, and the book by which he is most widely known—Principles of Economics—is one of the high points in the literature of social science. His influence was enormous; so much so that the first 25 years of twentieth-century economics may be described as the "age of Marshall" and subsequent developments as extensions of and countermovements to his influence. Moreover, even when due allowance is made for the natural progress of economic science since Marshall's time, it is remarkable how much of the Marshallian framework remains. These well-known points require restatement because the positive effects of the Marshallian influence are questioned today as perhaps never before. One could agree with criticisms if they were merely objections to the view sometimes expressed that "it's all in Marshall," meaning that little or no progress has been made in economics since he wrote. It would indeed be deplorable if scientific ideas worked out almost one hundred years ago were still the last word. (An analogy with the positions of Marx and Freud is appropriate here.) However, much of the contemporary criticism goes deeper than this; it argues that the Marshallian tradition checked the development of economics by diverting attention from real issues (by which is primarily meant macrotheory) much as Ricardo was alleged to have done in an earlier generation. The merit of these criticisms will be examined carefully later in this article. Alfred Marshall was born in Clapham—then a leafy London suburb—in 1842. His father, John Marshall, held the respectable middle-class position of cashier in the Bank of England, and the family lived in modest comfort. Marshall's father was of a rather severe, evangelical frame of mind, almost a textbook example of what is loosely called Victorianism, and closely supervised his son's education. This paternal control and repression had a marked and lasting effect on Marshall; his
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pronounced tendency toward hypochondria, his unwillingness to commit himself unequivocally in print without massive documented qualification, his fear of indolence and idleness, and his ultimate rejection of "pure pleasure" activities (such as mathematics) have their roots in the experiences of his early years. His education was planned as basically a preparation for ordination in the Anglican church. He was expected to go up to Oxford with a classics scholarship, which would lead to a fellowship and a church living. However, he rejected this plan—rebelling not against orthodox theology but against further study of the classics— and with funds borrowed from an uncle proceeded to St. John's, Cambridge, where he read mathematics. Marshall was one of the best mathematics students of his generation in England (in 1865 he was second wrangler in the tripos examination). This is an important point to bear in mind in evaluating his ambivalent attitude toward the use of mathematical methods in economics—in any event, his criticisms were not based on ignorance. Marshall came into economics with much more mathematics training than did Jevons or Walras. After graduation Marshall was elected to a fellowship in mathematics and gradually came under the influence of a group of philosopher-dons who were increasingly concerned with the social problems of industrial England. Marshall's interests centered initially on philosophy and ethics, which were then still at the frontier of social science, but worry about social conditions and the realization that poverty was at the root of many social evils led him into economics. Indeed, to Marshall the problem of poverty was not only central to the study of economics but its ultimate rationale. As he later wrote in the Principles, "the study of the causes of poverty is the study of the causes of the degradation of a large part of mankind" ([1890] 1961, vol. l,p. 3). In 1877 he married Mary Paley, a former student of his and one of the first women to be educated at Cambridge. Upon his marriage he was forced to resign his fellowship. He was for a short while principal and professor of political economy at the then University College of Bristol, became a fellow at Balliol in 1883 (after the requirement of celibacy had been eliminated), and the following year returned to Cambridge, to the chair of political economy vacated by Henry Fawcett; there he reigned until his retirement in 1908, when he was succeeded by his star pupil, A. C. Pigou. Marshall's published output was not large, especially considering that he was active almost until the time of his death. Several books—The Pure
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MARSHALL, ALFRED
Theory of Foreign Trade and The Pure Theory of Domestic Values (1879a), Principles of Economics (1890), Industry and Trade (1919), Money, Credit & Commerce (1923), and The Economics of Industry (1879b), written jointly with Mary Marshall (which he tried to have withdrawn for complex personal reasons not bearing on its merit), a handful of articles, mainly reprinted in the Memorials of Alfred Marshall (1925), edited by Pigou; and a series of official memoranda and evidence before royal commissions (contained in Official Papers, a volume published in 1926) make up his total written contribution. Marshall's reluctance to commit himself to print —the Principles did not appear until he was 48— makes it difficult to assess his originality. Ideas first published in the 1890s, such as Marshall's statement of the theory of marginal utility, had been worked out and presented orally by him in the late 1860s, i.e., before the publication of the theory in the works of Jevons, Walras, and Menger. As J. M. Keynes put it in his famous obituary of Marshall, "The task of expounding the development of Marshall's economics is rendered difficult by the long intervals of time which generally separated the initial discovery and its oral communication to pupils from the final publication in a book to the world outside" (1924, p. 322). Intellectual background. Efforts to disentangle the various influences on Marshall's thinking as an economist are made difficult by his modesty—his desire to emphasize the continuity of thought—and also by his rather confused accounts of these influences. Marshall's first reading in economics was Ricardo and Mill; he described his early efforts as attempts to translate the ideas of these writers into differential equations. The most important single influence was surely Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848), and a good way to get perspective on Marshall's contribution is to compare the two Principles. Also, what little mathematical economics then existed was open to Marshall, although it was not to most of his contemporaries. He clearly learned a lot from Cournot —especially about the use of continuous functions in economics. Thiinen's Der isolierte Staat (18261863), with its hints of marginal productivity analysis, was also influential. German (Hegelian) philosophy and the historical school of economists are commonly mentioned as influencing him (Marshall studied in Germany for a year). However, it is difficult to see concrete evidence of these systems of thought in his work. There is no dialectic and no historicism, although in his concern with empirical investigation he was closer to the histor-
ical school than to the English classical school. His emphasis on the continuity of growth and his perpetual references to biology suggest the influence of social Darwinism—acquired through Herbert Spencer. Methods Much of the discussion of Marshallian economics deals with his methods of analysis. These methods are not particular hypotheses or models proposed by Marshall but, rather, represent ways of setting up a problem or partitioning it so that it can be solved. The central Marshallian method is usually termed "partial analysis" or "partial equilibrium analysis" and is often loosely referred to as the ceteris paribus approach. The Marshallian partial equilibrium approach is frequently contrasted with the method of general equilibrium associated with Leon Walras, and the contrast is usually considered unfavorable to Marshall. Indeed, this approach is sometimes regarded as one of the major weaknesses Marshall bequeathed to economic science. Since the question of partial versus general equilibrium has loomed so large in the literature, some discussion of the central issues is imperative. As Marshall realized, the general equilibrium approach is not de facto a fruitful approach to such practical problems as measuring the effect of an import duty on the price of a commodity or the effect of a fall in the final product price on the demand for a particular grade of labor. It is not very helpful to be told that "everything depends on everything else" and that a change in one parameter will have effects throughout an economic system. Partial analysis is a method by which an economy is partitioned so that the main effects of a parameter shift in a particular micromarket can be highlighted without considering the spillover into other markets; hence, this method also ignores the feedback effects from the spillover. There are, of course, obvious dangers inherent in this method, but the answer lies, not in the general equilibrium approach, but in better specification of the partial model. [See ECONOMIC EQUILIBRIUM and the biography of WALRAS.] Let us take a specific example to illustrate the use of the ceteris paribus approach of partial equilibrium analysis and the related concept of comparative statics. We can draw up a demand schedule for a commodity and show the amount demanded per unit of time as a decreasing function of the price of the good. The relationship is ceteris paribus, i.e., it assumes that other factors influencing demand—such as the price of substitutes—are given, as are factors such as incomes, tastes, and expec-
MARSHALL, ALFRED tations. In a free market, if an equilibrium exists it will be where supply equals demand. If one of the ceteris paribus conditions is relaxed, the demand curve shifts, and the new partial equilibrium solution is then considered. This leads to the comparison of the two sets of equilibrium values of the variables under discussion. The method of comparing equilibrium solutions is called comparative statics because it does not permit the tracing of the time paths (between the two points of equilibrium) of the variables involved. [See STATICS AND DYNAMICS IN ECONOMICS.]
Marshall's ultimate objective was to develop a full-fledged theory of dynamic change and growth. In the preface to his Principles he wrote, "The main concern of economics is ... with human beings who are impelled, for good and evil, to change and progress. Fragmentary statical hypotheses are used as temporary auxiliaries to dynamical—or rather biological—conceptions: but the central idea of economics, even when its Foundations alone are under discussion, must be that of living force and movement" ([1890] 1961, vol. 1, p. xv). The immediate objective of Marshall's formal analysis was more limited: namely, the comparison of static equilibrium positions. Yet, even within this restrictive framework he was able, by his use of the timeperiod concept, to approximate dynamic analysis. His approach was to divide the adjustment, say, of price to changing demand or supply conditions into a series of adjustment periods. These periods should be regarded as measured by operational, not clock, time—the market period for one sector or industry may be (in terms of clock time) a longer one than the market period for another industry. The important consideration is which ceteris paribus assumptions are relaxed in successive periods. Marshall's time division is as follows: the market period, the short period, and the long period. The market period takes the production of the commodity in question as fixed, so that supply can vary only if sellers have a reserve price for their own product. The condition for equilibrium (for all time periods) is that the market be cleared, i.e., that demand equal supply. Short-run equilibrium considers supply to be partially adaptable, in the sense that increased production can occur but capital equipment and certain other overhead items are held constant. In modern economics, analysis of this short period with partial adaptation is equivalent to an analysis of the law of variable proportions, although it is not certain that Marshall himself was precisely clear about the distinction between variable proportions and returns to scale. The Marshallian long period allows for optimal capital stock adjustment. The
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market is cleared within a framework in which supply can be considered to be fully adaptable because all factors (excluding entrcpreneurship) have adjusted to the situation. It was by means of this differential adjustment of supply that Marshall restated, within the supply and demand framework, his theory of value. The classical emphasis on costs is now seen as a particular hypothesis: that in longrun adjustment there are constant returns to scale. Figure 1 illustrates this. SS is the fixed-stock supply curve (on the assumption of zero reserve price); S'S' the short-run supply curve and S"P the long-run supply curve. With demand at DD, the long-run price is OP. Now let demand rise to D'D'. Then long-run equilibrium price will again be OP, but price will pass through the stages OP" and OP', and quantity will increase. [See DEMAND AND SUPPLY.] PRICE
QUANTITY
Figure 1
Marshall also hinted at the analysis of a fourth time period, in which factor supplies are allowed to adjust to changes in their underlying determinants. In the absence of innovation, in this period the economy reaches the full equilibrium solution for a stationary state. Marshall was cautious and basically skeptical about the use of mathematics and theoretical statistics in economics; for better or worse, he did not foresee the mushrooming of mathematical economics and econometrics. The Marshallian attitude— which became embodied in the Cambridge tradition and especially in the work of Pigou and Keynes— is seen in the Principles, where the mathematical statements are in footnotes and in a mathematical appendix. The grounds for minimizing the formal use of mathematics in the final presentation (although not in preparation) were twofold: first, the need to communicate; and second—and much more important—the fear that sets of equations necessarily omit or distort many relevant influences
28
MARSHALL, ALFRED
and considerations. Marshall set out the matter squarely in a letter to A. L. Bowley dated February 27, 1906: [A] good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules— (1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4 burn 3. This last I did often. ([1925] 1956, p. 427) Marshall had grave doubts as to the reasonableness of the assumptions underpinning the then existing techniques of theoretical statistics (which meant, basically, regression analysis) when applied to social science data. He had no doubts, however, about the need to be steeped in the empirical facts of any situation under analysis. He always emphasized deep statistical and historical knowledge of the area being investigated and referred again and again to the complexity of economic problems and the naivete of simple hypotheses. Like Adam Smith, Marshall had a profound knowledge of the workings of economic systems. When asked, for example, by the Gold and Silver Commission of 1887/1888, "Do you speak with knowledge . . . of the working classes?" he replied (somewhat pompously but with all honesty), "I speak from personal observation ranging over many years, and a study of almost everything of importance that has been written on the subject" (Official Papers, p. 99). Marshall's oft-quoted definition of economics— "the study of man in the ordinary business of life" —was not an attempt to demarcate the discipline precisely from other social sciences. Marshall's basic view on the scope of economics is best expressed in the sentence "The less we trouble ourselves with scholastic inquiries as to whether a certain observation comes within the scope of economics, the better" ([1890] 1961, vol. 1, p. 27). He used the term "ordinary business of life" to emphasize the point that economics is not the study of the workings of a fictional economy populated by abstract economic men: it is concerned with the real world around us. Contributions to theory Marshall's central theoretical contribution was the working out of the rigorous economics of the stationary state. For Marshall this was not, of course, the ultimate end of economics—it was indeed but the preface. To point the way to the conclusion—the working out of a full-fledged growth
model — Marshall interlarded his stationary-state framework with bits and pieces of the dynamic process-. It is this mixture that makes Marshall's Principles such difficult reading for some. Theory of demand. Marshall developed utility theory for two reasons: first, to place restrictions on demand functions; and second, to create what he hoped would be powerful tools of welfare economics. The Marshallian demand curve relates the demand for a commodity per unit of time to its own price. The relationship is ceteris paribus; in particular, other prices and incomes are assumed constant. There are certain ambiguities in this statement of inclusions within ceteris paribus, but for the moment these are set aside. Marshall's generalized "law of demand" states that the price of a good and the quantity demanded are inversely related. This restriction on demand functions is derived a priori from the form of the utility function that he postulated, which is laid out most clearly in the mathematical appendix to the Principles. He used an additive, cardinal utility function; this means that one may think of utility as being a measurable quantity (although in practice Marshall spoke of it as being only indirectly measurable, at the margin, by price) and also that the total utility that a consumer derives from his consumption of goods and services is the sum of the individual utilities derived from the consumption of each item in his budget. Symbolically, we have
where Ui is the utility derived from the consumption of the ith commodity and 17 is total utility. The basic restriction given by the additive nature of the function is that interrelationships between goods are excluded (all cross-partial derivatives are zero). Further, the law of diminishing marginal utility operates with respect to each good; this means that extra units consumed of a given commodity will increase total utility at a decreasing rate. Thus, the addition to total utility induced by the nth unit of a commodity will be less than the increase in utility induced by the (n — l)st unit. In terms of the function above,
dU
d?U
dX;
It is assumed that the consumer seeks to maximize utility, given incomes and prices. The principle of substitution comes into full play here. By substituting at the margin, a consumer reaches his maximum utility point. Maximizing the utility function, subject to the budget constraint (i.e., that the quan-
MARSHALL, ALFRED titles of all goods and services purchased multiplied by their respective prices equals total income), yields the well-known Marshallian first-order conditions for a maximum. These can be stated in the following equivalent terms: for all i and j ,
w
— • • • — X,
(3) Mt/i = Pi A, for all z. Here Pi represents the price of commodity i, and the constant term X represents the marginal utility of income. A fall in the price of commodity i must lead to more of the commodity's being bought; this must be so to keep the equalities listed in eqs. (1) to (3). That formulation (as Marshall realized) avoids the implications of the income effects of a price change—this is the purpose of assuming constant marginal utility of income. [See UTILITY.] Rigorously applied, the Marshallian assumptions appear to restrict elasticities of demand to unity, but it is clear from the body of the Principles that Marshall did not contemplate this restriction. Strictly speaking, a ceteris paribus demand curve requires that real income be held constant as price changes, so as to eliminate from the analysis the income effect of the price change. Holding money income constant is insufficient, since the real value of money income is its command over commodities and if commodity prices change, this changes also. Marshall solved this problem intuitively, by talking in terms of money income but postulating small changes in the prices of commodities that make up a small portion of the consumer's budget, so that the error involved in using money income is "of the second order of small quantities" ([1890] 1961, vol. 1, p. 132). Milton Friedman has since put the demand curve on a more satisfactory analytic footing. But for Marshall the object of demand theory was not just to place testable restrictions on demand functions; he also regarded the demand curve and the allied concept of consumer surplus as powerful tools of welfare economics. We shall consider this aspect after we have looked at Marshall's contribution to production theory and the theory of the firm. Theory of production. Marshall spoke in terms of "real costs" when considering costs of production. By "real" he meant ultimately the disutility of both the labor and the waiting involved in producing and bringing a commodity to market. The emphasis on real cost seems to contrast with the Austrian notion of opportunity cost, but in fact it
29
is easy to reconcile the two concepts. In any case, in spite of Marshall's emphasis, he rather too easily assumed the equality of real and money costs and proceeded with his analysis in terms of the latter. Central to his theory of cost and production is the principle of substitution, which works here the same way it does in his consumer theory. The entrepreneur substitutes at the margin until the total cost of a given output is at a minimum or, what is the same thing, until the output from a given set of inputs is maximized. [See COST.] Marshall was confused about the so-called laws of production and especially about the distinction between what has come to be called "variable proportions" and returns to scale; so, of course, was the whole profession until Viner's classic article of 1931. Marshall tended to compare decreasing returns with increasing returns, as though they were similar. Although he postulated that diminishing returns were historically connected with agriculture and with a situation in which the labor-capital input had grown relative to (fixed) land, he did not see the logical connection between the principle of substitution and the law of variable proportions. Increasing returns, looked at in an analytic manner, occur where increase in output is proportionately greater than the simultaneous increase of all inputs. In the course of his discussion of increasing returns, Marshall made the crucial distinction between internal and external economies, from which the whole notion of externality started. Internal economies are "those dependent on the resources of the individual houses of business" in an industry, while external economies are "dependent on the general development of the industry." Internal economies, where present, produce a falling long-run marginal cost curve for a firm, and hence threaten the stability of competition. Marshall realized this, and his "life cycle" theory of entrepreneurship was meant as a partial explanation of the survival of competition. External economies, on the other hand, are compatible with competition but raise serious welfare problems. [See EXTERNAL ECONOMIES AND DISECONOMIES.] Central to Marshall's discussion of the theory of the firm is the concept of the representative firm —a notion which is not only tenuous and vague but apparently unnecessary for Marshall's own purposes, as critics like Lionel Robbins were quick to point out. Marshall's definition of the representative firm gets us nowhere; it is only by specifying the problem with which he was trying to cope that we see the purpose of the concept. Two questions in particular worried Marshall. First, in the real world, firms clearly are capable of
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expanding at falling marginal cost, yet industries do not become monopolized. Marshall's answer lies partially in the representative firm. The second, a closely related problem, concerns the estimate of the supply price of a product where industry output is taken as a given but the group of firms making up the industry are in a life cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death. According to Marshall's theory, the entrepreneurial life cycle prevents the continuing expansion of any one firm— an idea more appropriate to the days of small business than to those of the large corporation, where management is not dynastic. But apart from Marshall's exercise in social evolution, we still have the interesting problem, with disequilibrium at the firm level, of estimating supply price and, more generally, the industry supply curve. In contemporary economics the static solution to these problems, under perfect competition, is to sum the firms' marginal cost curves to obtain the industry supply curve. This supply price is equal to any firm's marginal cost; for Marshall, however, with his continual search for the dynamic solution, this answer was inadequate. A firm picked at random would not necessarily be typical in the sense that its costs would correctly reflect the sustainable degree of efficiency and level of economies for its aggregate output. It might be a firm about to disappear or one in the very early stages of growth. The answer, Marshall believed, was to identify a "typical" or representative firm. [See FIRM, THEORY OF THE.] What is the typical market structure in Marshall's world? Nowhere in his work do we find the perfectly elastic demand curve of the current textbook version of perfect competition. It is clearly not monopoly (for Marshall reserves this case for special treatment), but it is doubtful whether, as has recently been suggested, the typical Marshallian market can be interpreted as monopolistically competitive in Chamberlin's sense. In spite of Marshall's remark that in the short run firms may have to lower price to increase sales, his basic view is that price is a parameter in the typical firm's plans. Theory of distribution. Marshall's theory of distribution is outlined on two levels. On the assumption of fixed coefficients (such as Walras assumed in the first edition of the Elements), Marshall worked out his theory of joint demand. In this case there is no substitution within a given productive process; the principle of substitution is inoperative, and hence the marginal productivity theory is not applicable. To divide up the total product among the cooperating factors in the case of fixed proportions, Marshall used the law of derived demand: "The demand schedule for any factor of production
of a commodity can be derived from that of the commodity by subtracting from the demand price of each separative amount of the commodity the sum of the supply prices for corresponding amounts of the other factors" ([1890] 1961, vol. 1, p. 383). But at best this is a clumsy approach, and it did not represent Marshall's basic position. More generally he worked out a complete marginal productivity theory, and although he expressly denied that it was a theory of distribution, we must take this as typical Marshallian caution. His objections to regarding marginal productivity as a theory of wages were twofold: first, supply conditions must be included in the analysis; and second, to the extent to which labor and capital are in fixed proportions, it is not possible to identify the marginal product. The concept of quasi rent, which filled an important gap in classical analysis, is also important for Marshallian distribution theory. Rent theory explained the return to fixed land, but there was nothing in classical analysis to explain the return to capital equipment already in existence. Marshall used the term "quasi rent" to explain rewards to any factors in inelastic supply and specifically applied the analysis to capital equipment in the short run. [See RENT.] Equilibrium conditions. We have already discussed Marshall's division of the problem of price determination into a series of different time-period equilibrium positions. The general rule is that the longer the period of adaptation allowed, the more responsive is supply to price changes. To the extent to which long-run supply is perfectly elastic, Marshall saw a correlation with the classical cost-ofproduction theory of value. We have still to consider Marshall's conditions for market stability; PRICE
O
QUANTITY
MARSHALL, ALFRED PRICE
-QUANTITY
Figure 3
these appear to differ significantly from those laid down by Walras and Hicks, which are commonly studied in elementary dynamics. Marshall's conditions for a micromarket to be stable are as follows: (a) for quantity smaller than equilibrium quantity, demand price must be greater than supply price; (£>) for quantity larger than equilibrium quantity, demand price must be less than supply price. If a market that has "normal" demand and supply relationships, i.e., a downward-sloping demand curve and an upward-sloping supply curve, is stable in the Walras-Hicks sense, it is also stable in Marshall's sense. Divergences of interpretation occur, however, in other cases. Figure 2 shows a market where both stability conditions are satisfied. At price P l5 which is above equilibrium, excess demand is negative (the Hicksian condition) and quantity bought is less than equilibrium, with demand price, OPi, greater than supply price, OP 2 . The market shown in Figure 3 is stable in terms of Marshall's conditions but unstable in terms of the Walras-Hicks conditions (e.g., for price above equilibrium it has excess demand). Which specification is correct cannot be determined a priori but is a matter for empirical investigation. It is clear that the two solutions assume different behavioral reactions of buyers and sellers. More important, perhaps, the notion of a supply curve has to be specified much more carefully. [See DEMAND AND SUPPLY and ECONOMIC EQUILIBRIUM.] Marshall also attempted to formalize and explain Mill's work on the conditions for equilibrium—and the suitability of equilibrium—in foreign trade. He did this by using the techniques of offer curves. His work in this field was not formally published until 1923, when parts of it were appended to his Money, Credit & Commerce. However, it was circulated Privately, through the efforts of Henry Sidgwick.
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Welfare economics. Marshall's contributions to welfare economics, while suggestive in terms of contemporary thought, contain some of his most doubtful analysis. Here Marshall relaxed his customary caution in the face of complex situations, in an effort to promote certain policy measures. In general his welfare economics supported the classical view that a regime of free markets maximizes welfare (utility). Marshall called this the doctrine of maximum satisfaction; his demonstration consisted of showing that for each micromarket the sum of surpluses is maximized. A monopolized market involves a suboptimal position because the sum of surpluses is lessened. The surpluses summed include both consumer and producer surpluses, or rents. In Figure 4 the free market price is P0 with quantity Q 0 . The sum of consumer surplus and producer surplus is CAB. Let the market be monopolized and price and output be PI , Qi; total surplus is then reduced to BCDE. [See CONSUMER'S SURPLUS.] However, Marshall stated two important exceptions to the doctrine of maximum satisfaction and free competition. First, he considered it to be an empirical fact that although utility is an increasing function of a person's real income, the rate of increase diminishes. As Marshall put it bluntly in the mathematical appendix to the Principles, "Every increase in his means diminishes the marginal degree of utility of money to him" ([1890] 196J, vol. 1, p. 838). Thus, it followed that, all other circumstances being the same, a redistribution of income from rich to poor would increase total satisfaction. Much more important, perhaps, is Marshall's second ground for modifying the doctrine of maxPRICE
O
QUANTITY
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MARSHALL, ALFRED
imum satisfaction. This is that satisfaction can be increased by taxing increasing-cost industries and subsidizing decreasing-cost industries. His analysis runs entirely in terms of consumer surplus, with all its weaknesses, and can easily be seen to depend on the slopes of the supply curves. However, the whole theory of externality and divergences between private and social benefits developed from Marshall's discussion, especially his exposition of the decreasing-cost case. Monetary theory. Marshall is sometimes alleged to have neglected the monetary and, more generally, the aggregative framework within which his theory of value worked. This is a mistaken view. In his Principles Marshall is at pains to make clear that the core of that book presupposes a monetary framework, and he deals explicitly with this framework in other contributions. The two important sources for his views on money are Money, Credit & Commerce, written toward the end of his life, and, much more important, his Official Papers. This latter consists of a series of memoranda and evidence presented before royal commissions. Official Papers contains the core of Marshall's monetary theory. The most important elements of his contributions in this area are the following: the so-called Cambridge equation and his development of a credit cycle through disequilibrium between real and monetary interest rates. Marshall is often regarded as the founder of the Cambridge approach to monetary theory. In essence, this theory postulates a stable demand function for money, with real income (or wealth) as the prime argument in the function. Ceteris paribus, such an approach will give a proportionate relationship between changes in the supply of money and changes in the general level of prices. [See MONEY, article on QUANTITY THEORY.] This approach was formalized by Pigou (1917) in a famous article [see the biography of PIGOU] and elaborated by Keynes in his Tract on Monetary Reform (1923). Marshall made it absolutely clear, however, that changes in the other factors—in the volume of activity and the demand for money—may well dominate the relationship, especially in periods of economic crisis. His other contribution to the field is the spelling out of a mechanism connecting real and money rates of interest, through which divergences between the two generate a credit cycle. The view, mentioned at the beginning of this article, that Marshall diverted economics from a proper consideration of macroeconomics is largely a result of Keynes's treatment of Marshall in The General Theory (1936). His treatment there con-
trasts widely with his assessment of Marshall's monetary economics in his famous obituary of Marshall. The reasons for this dramatic volte-face are complex and cannot be discussed here; all that can be said is that in retrospect the "Keynesian revolution" appears to be more an extension of the Marshallian tradition than an attempt to reverse it. BERNARD CORRY [For the historical context of Marshall's work, see the biographies of COURNOT; JEVONS; MENGER; MILL; RicARDO; THUNEN; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see the biographies of KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD; PIGOU; ROBERTSON.] WORKS BY MARSHALL (1879a) 1930 The Pure Theory of Foreign Trade and The Pure Theory of Domestic Values. Series of Reprints of Scarce Tracts in Economic and Political Science, No. 1. London School of Economics and Politcal Science. -» Privately printed in 1879. (1879&) 1889 MARSHALL, ALFRED; and MARSHALL, MARY P. Economics of Industry. London: Macmillan. (1890) 1961 Principles of Economics. 9th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Macmillan. -» A variorum edition. The eighth edition is preferable for normal use. 1919 Industry and Trade: A Study of Industrial Technique and Business Organization, and of Their Influences on the Conditions of Various Classes and Nations. London: Macmillan. (1923) 1960 Money, Credit & Commerce. New York: Kelley. (1925) 1956 Memorials of Alfred Marshall. New York: Kelley. -» Contains essays on Marshall by J. M. Keynes, F. Y. Edgeworth, C. R. Fay, E. A. Benians, and A. C. Pigou; selections from Marshall's writings; and a bibliography of his works prepared by J. M. Keynes. Official Papers. London: Macmillan. 1926. -» Papers dated 1886-1903. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD 1923 A Tract on Monetary Reform. London: Macmillan. KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD (1924) 1951 Alfred Marshall: 1842-1924. Pages 125-217 in John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Biography. New ed. -> First published in Volume 34 of the Economic Journal. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Norton. KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD 1936 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan. -» A paperback edition was published in 1965 by Harcourt. MILL, JOHN STUART (1848) 1961 Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. 7th ed. Edited by W. J. Ashley. New York: Kelley. PIGOU, A. C. (1917) 1951 The Value of Money. Pages 162-183 in American Economic Association, Readings in Monetary Theory. Philadelphia: Blakiston. PIGOU, A. C. 1953 Alfred Marshall and Current Thought. London: Macmillan. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A, (1941) 1965 Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924. Pages 91-109 in Joseph A. Schumpeter,
MARSILIUS OF PADUA Ten Great Economists From Marx to Keynes. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. SCOTT, WILLIAM R. 1925 Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924. British Academy, London, Proceedings 11:446-457. STIGLER, GEORGE J. 1941 Production and Distribution Theories: 1870 to 1895. New York: Macmillan. -> See especially Chapter 4. THUNEN, JOHANN H. VON (1826-1863) 1930 Der isolierte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und Nationalokonomie. 3 vols. Jena (Germany): Fischer. VINER, JACOB (1931) 1952 Cost Curves and Supply Curves. Pages 198-232 in American Economic Association, Readings in Price Theory. Chicago: Irwin. -» First published in Volume 3 of the Zeitschrift fur Nationalokonomie.
MARSILIUS OF PADUA Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-c. 1343) is known primarily as the author of the Defensor pads, a bold antipapal tract dedicated to Emperor Louis iv of Bavaria in 1324 during his controversy with Pope John xxn. Although contemporary condemnations name John of Jandun as coauthor, internal evidence and incongruence with John's known political statements (Gewirth 1948) argue for its ascription to Marsilius alone. The Defensor is revolutionary in denying the clergy jurisdiction of any kind and in subordinating them completely to the state. The political concepts it brings to the support of these contentions are neither so "modern" nor so original as has sometimes been claimed. All are anticipated in some fashion somewhere in the long and complex medieval tradition. Yet, because Marsilius' argument leads him to special emphases, and because he richly develops, with ingenious use of Aristotle, ideas briefly enunciated by canonists and by other publicists, he is the first to present in elaborated theoretical form views that were to be fundamental to much of modern political thought. Even though the teaching of the Defensor is not free of ambiguity, no other medieval writing offers so vigorous or so complete a theory of popular sovereignty. Jurisdiction in state and church. Marsilius argued that clerical pretensions to rule destroy the state (civitas or regnum), which, with its specialization of economic, military, governmental, and priestly "parts," is indispensable to "living and to living well." The survival of the state depends on effective government by a single unified "ruling part1' (pars principans^), and since the proper function of the clergy is not government but teaching (Christ having forbidden them all coercion), clerical rule of any sort, over anyone, destroys the unity of the government and deprives men of "the sufficient life." In this world divine law is without
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direct sanction. It is only by authority of the human legislator that infractions can be brought to judgment. All that is "truly law" on earth is the expression of the will of the legislator—the citizens of each community as a whole or their "weightier part" (valentior pars'), the citizen body including all free adult males. The "weightier part" is weightier through "quality" as well as quantity of persons, but Marsilius argued that the more people who participate in legislation, the better the laws will be. Legislation by the multitude normally results in justice, because all but the singularly malicious or ignorant naturally wish to preserve the state and are able to discern the common benefit and to judge proposals. The legislator also establishes or selects the government or ruler. This may be one man or several but should in almost every instance be elective rather than hereditary. The legislator has the power to correct and even to depose the ruler. Although at times Marsilius seems to imply that the delegation of power to the ruler is all but absolute, his statements on correction and deposition are unequivocal. Denying the divine institution of the papacy and of the episcopacy, Marsilius provides that in a Christian community the legislator select from candidates those to be priests and bishops, appoint them to pastorates, and control their exercise of office. A general council, elected by the several legislators of the Christian world and composed of both clerics and learned laymen (the laymen voting if the clerics are not unanimous), determines the articles of faith. Only by decree of the human legislator do conciliar decisions become binding. For convenience the council or "the faithful human legislator without a superior" appoints a "head bishop" to act as president and executive secretary of the council. Custom alone argues the choice of the bishop of Rome. Although early in the Defensor Marsilius expressed a preference for a plurality of sovereign states, the idea of a "primary" or "universal" "faithful human legislator" and "a ruler by its authority" suggests the empire, and in the Defensor minor of 1342, written at the court of Louis, the "human legislator" becomes the "Roman prince." Formation of Marsilius' views. In the molding of Marsilius' concepts the fifth book of Aristotle's Politics played a significant part. Also of importance in the genesis of his attitudes was his youth in Padua, a city sovereign de facto, republican in constitution, and often in conflict with the clergy. His being a physician and not a lawyer or theologian no doubt had much to do with the freshness
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of his attack. Acquaintance with the work of French publicists seems probable from his years at the University of Paris, and familiarity with corporation law, from his position as rector of the university in 1313 (Lewis 1963, p. 564). Although he associated with Averroists, their influence on his ideas of church and state is impossible to ascertain. Influence. Papal condemnations, including the excommunication of Marsilius (and John of Jandun) in 1327, established the reputation of the Defensor for the next three centuries. A principal charge in papal attacks on Wycliffe, and later on Luther, was that they borrowed Marsilius' doctrine. In the circumstances, conciliarist writers used the Defensor with caution. It was first printed (in Basel in 1522) to serve the Protestant cause, and in 1535 Thomas Cromwell paid most of the cost of printing an English translation. Through Richard Hooker, who cited it and shared some of its doctrines, it probably had an influence on John Locke, and so, indirectly, played an important part in carrying ideas of popular sovereignty from the medieval to the modern world. JANE E. RUBY [For the historical context of Marsilius' work, see the biographies of AQUINAS; ARISTOTLE; GERSON.] WORKS BY MARSILIUS (1324) 1951-1956 Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of Peace. Translated and introduced by Alan Gewirth. 2 vols. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -» Volume 1: Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy. Volume 2: The Defensor pads. Volume 2 was written in 1324, and first printed in 1522 as Defensor pads. (1342) 1922 The "Defensor minor" of Marsilius of Padua. Edited by C. Kenneth Brampton. Birmingham (England): Cornish. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY GEWIRTH, ALAN 1948 John of Jandun and the Defensor pads. Speculum 23:267-272. LAGARDE, GEORGES DE (1934) 1948 Marsile de Padoue, ou le premier theoriden de I'etat laique. 2d ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. LEWIS, EWART 1963 The "Positivism" of Marsiglio of Padua. Speculum 38: 541-582. PREVITE-ORTON, CHARLES W. (1935) 1937 Marsilius of Padua. British Academy, London, Proceedings 21: 137-183. SCHOLZ, RICHARD 1937 Marsilius von Padua und die Genesis des modernen Staatsbewusstseins. Historische Zeitschrift 156:88-103. .
MARX, KARL Karl Marx the Prussian family when foreshadowed
(1818-1883) was born in Trier in Rhineland. His alienation from his he had scarcely passed adolescence the social isolation of his later years.
His father, a lawyer, was as concerned as he was impressed with his son's "demonic genius," as he called it, and feared that young Marx's passion for poetry and philosophy would consume him both physically and morally. The elder Marx and his wife were Jewish, but for social reasons they were converted to Christianity. The younger Marx's awareness of his ethnic background aroused in him a certain self-consciousness; this may have been one source of his sense of marginality, his ambivalence toward society, and eventually of his conflicting qualities—thinker and prophet, scientist and moralist. Although Marx received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena at the age of 23, his association with the Young Hegelians, and with Bruno Bauer in particular, precluded his appointment to a university position in Germany; indeed, Bauer lost his own post at the university in Bonn as a result of questioning the historicity of the New Testament. Marx thus became a "degraded bourgeois," deprived of a stable source of income and dependent for his livelihood and that of his wife and children on the generosity of his lifelong friend, Friedrich Engels, the son of a wealthy cotton manufacturer. (Marx's wife, Jenny von Westphalen, was of noble parentage but had no dowry.) At the age of 25, Marx left Germany and, except for a brief stay in Cologne in 1848-1849, lived the rest of his life in exile: in Paris from 1843 to 1845, in Brussels from 1845 to 1848, and finally in London. As early as 1845 he renounced his Prussian citizenship, and since he failed to acquire British citizenship by naturalization, for the greater part of his life he was something of a pariah. Intellectual background. Marx's childhood and youth fall in that period of European history when the reactionary powers of the Holy Alliance were attempting to eradicate from post-Napoleonic Europe all traces of the French Revolution. There was, at the same time, a liberal movement in Germany that was making itself felt. The movement was given impetus by the July Revolution in France, and its chief representatives were the poets of the Junge Deutschland, among them Ludwig Borne and Heinrich Heine. In the late 1830s a further step toward radical criticism was made by the Young Hegelians, that group with which Marx became formally associated when he was studying law and philosophy at the University of Berlin. Although he was the youngest member of the Young Hegelians—who included, in addition to Bauer, such thinkers as Ludwig Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge, and Moses Hess—Marx inspired their confidence, respect, and even admiration. They saw in him a "new Hegel," or rather a powerful anti-
MARX, KARL Hegelian, who might successfully turn the dialectics of the master against his own conservative teachings in the fields of religion, politics, and law. Marx had already showed his determination to do so in his doctoral dissertation (1841), which dealt with the philosophical positions of Democritus and Epicurus; especially in the supplementary notes, he made his earliest attempt at a radical, albeit muted, criticism of Hegel, asserting, as Epicurus had argued against Democritus, that what is needed is a morally clear way of life rather than ideology or empty hypotheses. The intensive study of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume provided Marx with a spiritual armory for the elaboration of a positive conception of democracy that went far beyond the notions held at that time by radicals in Germany. It was from Spinoza rather than from Hegel that Marx learned to reconcile necessity and freedom. Therefore, when he undertook to destroy Hegel's metaphysics of "the State," Marx was well prepared to integrate a rational ethics with his own sociological and revolutionary doctrine. His early rejection of Hegel's political philosophy was unconditional and permanent; yet stripped of its "idealistic" content, Hegel's dialectic continued to influence Marx as a way of analyzing his subject matter, namely society. Marx's adherence to a radical view of democracy was also based on the study of such historical events as the revolutions in England, France, and America. From these historical studies he concluded that democracy must normally and inevitably culminate in communism, following a transitory stage of proletarian democracy (the "dictatorship of the proletariat"). After his conversion to communism Marx began his prolonged studies of economics; but while he was still developing from a liberal into a communist, he learned more from Spinoza and Feuerbach, Saint-Simon and Babeuf, Thomas Hamilton and Tocqueville, Weitling and Proudhon, Owen and Fourier, than from Smith or Ricardo. Contributions to socialist thought. Although the epoch to which Marx belonged has its beginnings in the French Revolution, its historical dimensions coincide with those of the whole era of industrial and social revolutions and extend into our own time; hence the lasting appeal of a body of teachings that is by no means free from theoretical ambiguities. The originality of Marx's thought lies in his immense efforts to synthesize, in a critical way, the entire legacy of social knowledge since Aristotle. His purpose was to achieve a better understanding of the conditions of human development and with this understanding to accelerate the actual process by which mankind was moving toward an "associa-
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tion, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (1848). The desired system would be a communist society based on rational planning, cooperative production, and equality of distribution and, most important, liberated from all forms of political and bureaucratic hierarchy. This dual commitment—to scholarly understanding and to political action—-created constant difficulty for Marx. He was often aware that his intense passion for reading and studying interfered with his activity on behalf of the political movement with which he identified himself. In his scholarly work the exposition and analysis are frequently interrupted by partisan outbursts of irony and sarcasm, by bitter indictments of the capitalist class and the social system based upon its dominance. Political economy was only one of the socialscientific disciplines that Marx intended to explore and then subject to criticism; the others were law, morals, and politics. He intended to treat each of these disciplines (and perhaps others also) in "separate pamphlets." But the thoroughness with which he undertook his studies of the great economists and the delays in his scholarly work that arose from the need to make a living as a penny-a-liner prevented him from elaborating even one of these projects. Capital, subtitled "A Critique of Political Economy," although a work of enormous dimensions, is the fruit of only partially completed research. However, before the age of thirty, Marx produced a number of works which together provide a relatively adequate outline of his "materialist conception of history." Among these, the most important are The Holy Family (1845a), The German Ideology (in collaboration with Engels, 18451846), The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), and The Communist Manifesto (1848). To these must be added an unfinished work, first published in 1932 with the title Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (see 1844a), which shows with particular clarity the connections between the various ideas Marx was later to elaborate in Capital. In these works, Marx sketched out his theory of society and history. He repudiated Hegelian and post-Hegelian speculative philosophy, and building on Feuerbach's anthropological naturalism, he developed instead a humanist ethics based on a strictly sociological approach to historical phenomena. Drawing also on French materialism and on British empiricism and classical economics, Marx's theory sought to explain all social phenomena in terms of their place and function in the complex systems of society and nature, without recourse to what he considered metaphysical explanations ("primary causes"). Clearly outlined in these early
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writings, this eventually became a mature sociological conception of the making and development of human societies. At the beginning of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx summed up in a dozen aphorisms the general results of the investigation he had undertaken in the 1840s and asserted that these results were the "guiding thread" of his further studies. Here are the beginning and the end of this justifiably celebrated and controversial passage: In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. . . . In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production . . . ; at the same time the production forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society. ([1859] 1913, pp. 11-13) Marx's "materialistic method" is well exemplified by his treatment of the concept of "alienation"—a spiritual concept in Hegel's philosophy that had already been modified in Feuerbach's anthropology. In the "Paris Manuscripts of 1844" (1844a), Marx conceived of alienation as a phenomenon related to the structure of those societies in which the producer is divorced from the means of production and in which "dead labor" (capital) dominates "living labor" (the worker). A systematic elaboration of the concept appears in Capital under the heading "fetishism of commodities and money." But the ethical germ of this conception can be found as early as 1844 in the two essays Marx published in the Deutsch—franzosische Jahrbucher: "On the Jewish Question" (1844b) and "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" (1844c). There Marx unequivocally rejected and condemned "the state" and "money," and he invested the proletariat with the "historical mission" of emancipating society as a whole. The identity of Marx's early
political views with the theoretical analysis in Capital is evident in the manner in which the argument of Capital is brought to a close. Describing the "historical tendency of capital accumulation," Marx quoted the prophetic statement in the Communist Manifesto: "What the bourgeoisie . . . produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." Similarly, in ending the preamble of his inaugural address to the International Working Men's Association (1864), Marx launched the same summons that ends the Manifesto: "Workingmen of all countries, unite!" Although this summons seems to contradict his assertion of the "historical necessity" of communism, in the very real unity of sociology and ethics the contradiction vanishes. The proletariat is enjoined to unite in order to transform society, and its recognition of the consequences of such unity for the achievement of its historical mission becomes part of the "historical necessity" of the process; by this recognition, the proletariat confirms the process. In accordance with the maxim, formulated in his "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845b), that man must prove the truth of his thinking in practice, Marx neglected his scientific work for long periods in order to participate in the class struggles of his time. He did so not without regret, for he considered his scholarly studies the most valuable form of participation in the social struggle. His more direct intervention was, of course, mainly literary in character—his several hundred articles in German, British, and American newspapers and journals; and the various addresses and manifestoes he wrote for the Working Men's International. Among his writings on the political events of his time are some unquestionable masterpieces of this genre: The Class Struggles in France (1850); The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852); Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century (1856); Herr Vogt (I860); "Address" to the First International (1864); The Civil War in France (1871); the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). In every line he wrote, whether intended for publication or not, his ultimate singleness of purpose is clearly evident. This is particularly true of his magnum opus, Capital, whose scope transcends its outline of political economy as well as its critique of economics. At the same time that Marx defined the ultimate aim of the work as "[laying] bare the economic law of motion of modern society," he had in mind a thorough and systematic criticism of a type of society, namely capitalism. In spite of its truncated
MARX, KARL character, Capital is monumental in its construction and grandiose in its purpose. It is in Capital (even more than in Marx's philosophical writings) and particularly in the posthumously published Grundrisse (1857-1858), that the serious student will find the key to Marx's dialectical method as it contrasts with the method of Hegel. Moreover, Capital, to a greater extent than Marx's political writings, reveals the reason for the celebrated "failure" of Marxian predictions: the reason lies not so much in the inadequacy of Marx's social and economic theory as in the expectations he based on it. However, in the last analysis these expectations rest on the individual search for perfection and liberty. Marx's influence. Marx's teachings have been expanded and diffused in two ways that are, in effect, opposed to each other. The first is "Marxism" as an ideology, i.e., a dogmatic systematization of Marx's ideas for political purposes, expressed as party doctrine or state religion, and disseminated by its supporters; the second form is a growing body of research and scholarly activity in various branches of the social sciences that has been illuminated by Marx's theoretical discoveries. When Marx himself noticed that his admirers were showing the first signs of "Marxism," he rebuked them unequivocally and asserted, as Engels reported in several letters (e.g., to Bernstein and Conrad Schmidt): "I am not a Marxist." However, he tolerated and even supported Engels' efforts to win acceptance for Capital in academic circles. Inadvertently, Engels thus became the first "Marxist" and the cofounder of the Marxist ideology, whose manifesto was Engels' Anti-Diihring (1878). Marx was thereafter acclaimed as the founder of the new science of socialism and was credited by Engels with two scientific discoveries—the materialistic concept of history and the theory of surplus value. Engels' efforts to popularize Marx's ideas led to the schematization of some of Marx's basic propositions; he claimed to have extended Marx's methodological and critical approach, so that it embraced nature as well as history. With their followers, the distortion of Marx's thought went further still. While Marx considered his general theory to be a scientific method of investigating the transient nature of every economic system and placed his confidence in proletarian class consciousness as an agency of change, "Marxism," Particularly in its Leninist version, has become a Party ideology. This transformation is reflected in the substitution of the coercive direction of political elites for the spontaneous activity and con-
37
sciousness of the producing class; paradoxically, these "Marxist" elites have transformed Marx's theoretical propositions into norms of political action. The relevance of Marx's theories for the social sciences has been the subject of much fruitful debate. In a kind of osmotic process, Marx's theories have been incorporated into the social sciences at the same time that they have stimulated important countertheories. A significant event in this process was Sorel's critique of Durkheim (Sorel 1895), in which he praised the "materialist theory of sociology" according to which the various social systems—political, philosophical, religious— must be considered as interdependent and as having a common base; Sorel believed that what Marx assigned to sociology as its major subject for investigation was the underlying system of production and exchange and the conflict of classes. Marxist social science developed in Germany, stimulated by the work of Rudolf Stammler (1896), and it was in response to Stammler that Max Weber began his influential studies of the Marxian thesis concerning the relationship between the economy and other social institutions. In Italy Marxist theories were discussed in several universities under the leadership of Antonio Labriola, Giovanni Gentile, and Benedetto Croce, and in France such discussions were stimulated by Francois Simiand. Thomas G. Masaryk, while he was a university professor in Prague, produced a large work of analysis and criticism of Marx's sociological method and hypotheses (1898). The international character of the "debate with the ghost of Marx" may be further illustrated by the fact that in tsarist Russia numerous books and periodicals paid increasing attention to "scientific socialism" even before Plekhanov and Lenin appeared on the scene. In the United States the influence of Marx's ideas is evident in the writings of Albion W. Small, George H. Mead, Thorstein Veblen, and Joseph Schumpeter, among others. Since World War i, Marx's theories have not only stimulated sociological work in general but have also given impetus to a new field of sociological inquiry, the sociology of knowledge, exemplified by the works of Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim. The process of incorporating Marx's ideas into the social sciences in Western countries contrasts vividly with the unsure attempts by "Marxist" regimes to invent and decree a "Marxist" sociology. The efforts of these regimes unwittingly confirm one of Marx's major hypotheses—that the dominant ideas of a society are those of its ruling class. MAXIMILIEN RUBEL
38 [See
MARX, KARL also COMMUNISM; ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article
On SOCIALIST THOUGHT; MARXISM; MARXIST SOCIOLOGY; SOCIALISM; and the biographies BERNSTEIN; DURKHEIM; ENGELS; HEGEL; HUME; LENIN; LUKACS; MANNHEIM; MASARYK; MEAD; PROUDHON; SAINTSIMON; SCHELER; SCHUMPETER; SlMIAND; SMALL;
SOREL; SPINOZA; ToCQUEVILLE; VEBLEN; WEBER, MAX.] MARX'S WRITINGS WORKS BY MARX (1841) 1927-1929 Uber die Differenz der demokratischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie. Pages 3—144 in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, Schriften, Briefe. Section 1, Volume 1, part 1: Werke und Schriften bis 1844. Frankfurt am Main (Germany): Marx-Engels Verlag. -» Written in 1841, the text with some notes was first published posthumously in 1902. (1843) 1953 Kritik des hegelschen Staatsrechts. Pages 20-149 in Karl Marx, Die Friihschriften. Stuttgart (Germany) : Kroner. (1844&) 1964 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York: International Publishers; London: Lawrence & Wishart. -> Written in 1844 but first published posthumously in German in 1932. Sometimes referred to as the "Paris Manuscripts of 1844." (1844&) 1963 On the Jewish Question. Pages 1-40 in Karl Marx, Early Writings. London: Watts. -> First published in Volume 1/2 of the Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbiicher. (1844c) 1963 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction. Pages 41-59 in Karl Marx, Early Writings. London: Watts. -> First published in Volume 1/2 of the Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbiicher. (1844d) 1963 Early Writings. Translated and edited by T. B. Bottomore. London: Watts. -> First published in German. Contains "On the Jewish Question"; "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right"; and "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts." (1845a) 1956 The Holy Family. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -> First published as Die heilige Familie. (1845k) 1935 Theses on Feuerbach. Pages 73-75 in Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy. New York: International Publishers. -> First published in German. (1845-1846) 1939 MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH The German Ideology. Parts 1 and 3. With an introduction by R. Pascal. New York: International Publishers. -> Written in 1845-1846, the full text was first published in 1932 as Die deutsche Ideologic and republished by Diet/ Verlag in 1953. (1847) 1963 The Poverty of Philosophy. With an introduction by Friedrich Engels. New York: International Publishers. -> First published as Misere de la philosophic. (1848) 1964 MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH The Communist Manifesto. New York: Washington Square Press. -> First published in German. (1849) 1962 Wage Labour and Capital. Volume 1, pages 74-97 in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» First published as "Lohnarbeit und Kapital" in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. (1850) 1964 The Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850. New York: International Publishers. -» A series of
articles first published as "Die Klassenkampfe in Frankreich 1848 bis 1850" in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: Politisch-okonomische Revue. (1852) 1964 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers. -> First published in German. (1856) 1899 Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Eleanor Marx Aveling. London: Sonnenschein. -> First published as "Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century" in the Sheffield Free Press. (1857-1858) 1953 Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie. Berlin: Dietz. -» Written in 1857-1858; first published posthumously by the Marx-EngelsLenin Institute, Moscow, in 1939-1941. A partial English translation was published in 1965 as Pre-capitalist Economic Formations by International Publishers. (1857-1859) 1959 MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH The First Indian War of Independence: 1857-1859. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -> A collection of articles written for the New York Daily Tribune. Also includes articles dated 1853 and notes from a manuscript of the 1870s. (1859) 1913 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr. -> First published as Zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie. (1860) 1953 Herr Vogt. Berlin: Dietz. (1861-1863) 1952 Theories of Surplus Value: Selections. New York: International Publishers. -> A selection from the volumes first published between 1905 and 1910 as Theorien iiber den Mehrwert, edited by Karl Kautsky, taken from Karl Marx's preliminary manuscript written between 1861-1863 for a projected fourth volume of Capital. (1861-1866) 1961 MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH The Civil War in the United States. 3d (Centennial) ed. New York: International Publishers. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964 by Citadel Press. (1864) 1937 Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men's International Association. Pages 27-44 in Founding of the First International: A Documentary Record. New York: International Publishers. (1867-1879) 1925-1926 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. 3 vols. Chicago: Kerr. ->• Volume 1: The Process of Capitalist Production. Volume 2: The Process of Circulation of Capital. Volume 3: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. The first volume was published in 1867. The manuscripts of Volumes 2 and 3 were written between 1867 and 1879. They were first published posthumously in German in 1885 and 1894. (1871) 1963 The Civil War in France. With an introduction by Friedrich Engels. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -> First published in English. A paperback edition was published in 1964 by International Publishers. (1875) 1959 MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Critique of the Gotha Programme. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» Written by Marx in 1875 as "Randglossen zum Programm der deutschen Arbeiterpartei." First published with notes by Engels in 1891. SELECTIONS FROM MARX'S WORKS
Die Friihschriften. Stuttgart (Germany): Kroner, 1953. Marx on China, 1853-1860: Articles From the New York Daily Tribune. With an introduction and notes by Dona Torr. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Revolution in Spain. New York: International Publishers, 1939. -> A collec-
MARX, KARL tion of articles first published in the New York Daily Tribune, Putnam's Magazine, the New American Encyclopedia, and Der Volkesstaat. MARX, KABL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH The Russian Menace to Europe: A Collection of Articles, Speeches, Letters and News Dispatches. Edited by Paul W. Blackstock and Bert F. Hoselitz. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952. -* Contains materials written between 1848-1894. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Karl Marx and Frederick Engels on Britain. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953. -» Contains a collection of the most important writings of Marx and Engels, written between 1844-1895, dealing with England. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Karl Marx and Frederick Engels; Letters to Americans 1848-1895: A Selection. New York: International Publishers, 1953. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Correspondence. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956. Contains material dated 1843-1895. MARX, KARL, and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH On Colonialism. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960. -» Contains a collection of works by Marx and Engels written between 1850-1894. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Selected Works. 2 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962. Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. 2d ed. Edited by T. B. Bottomore and M. Rubel, with a foreword by Erich Fromm. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. -» Contains works written by Marx between 1844-1875. COLLECTED
WORKS
MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, Schriften, Briefe. 12 vols. Edited by David Rjazanov and V. Adoratskij, commissioned by the Marx-Engels Institute, Moscow. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, and Moscow: Marx-Engels Verlag, 1927-1935. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Werke. Vols. 1-. Berlin: Dietz, 1956-.-* Volumes 1-19, 22-31 of a contemplated 36-volume edition. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADLER, MAX 1922 Die Staatsauffassung des Marxismus: Ein Beitrag zur Unterscheidung von soziologischen und juristischen Methoden. Marx-Studien, Vol. 4, part 2. Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung. ADLER, MAX (1930-1932) 1964 Soziologie des Marxismus. 3 vols. Vienna: Europa. -» First published as Lehrbuch der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung. Volume 1: Grundlegung der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung. Volume 2: Natur und Gesellschaft. Volume 3: Die solidarische Gesellschaft. Archiv fur die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung. -> Published between 1910-1930. BERLIN, ISAIAH (1939) 1963 Karl Marx: His Life and Environment. 3d ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1899) 1909 Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie. Stuttgart (Germany): Dietz. [BLECH, WILLIAM J.] 1939 Elements of Marxian Economic Theory and Its Criticism, by William J. Blake [pseud.]. New York: Cordon. BUKHARIN, NIKOLAI I. (1921) 1965 Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. Translated from the 3d Russian edition. New York: Russell. -> First published as Teoriia istoricheskogo materializma.
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DRAPER, HAL 1962 Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Institut de Science Economique Appliquee, Cahiers Fifth Series: Etudes de Marxologie 6:5—73. DUNAYEVSKAYA, RAYA 1958 Marxism and Freedom From 1776 Until Today. New York: Bookman. ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1878) 1959 Anti-Diihring: Herr Eugen Diihring's Revolution in Science. 2d ed. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» First published as "Herrn Eugen Diihrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft" in a series of articles in Vorwdrts (Leipzig). Translated from the 3d German edition of 1894. ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1892) 1925 Marx, Heinrich Karl. Volume 6, pages 496-500 in Handwdrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. 4th ed. Jena (Germany): Fischer. FROMM, ERICH (editor) 1961 Marx's Concept of Man. New York: Ungar. GURVITCH, GEORGES (1950)1963- La sociologie de Karl Marx. Volume 2, pages 220-322 in La vocation actuelle de la sociologie. 2d ed., rev. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. HILFERDING, RUDOLF (1904) 1949 Bohm-Bawerk's Criticism of Marx. Pages 119-196 in Eugen BohmBawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System. NeW York: Kelley. -» First published in German. HIRSCH, HELMUT 1963 Marxiana judaica. Institut de Science Economique Appliquee, Cahiers Fifth Series: Etudes de Marxologie 7:5-22. HODGES, DONALD C. 1965 Engels' Contribution to Marxism. Socialist Register 2:297-310. HOOK, SIDNEY (1936) 1958 From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx. New York: Humanities. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962 by the University of Michigan Press. KAMENKA, EUGENE 1962 The Ethical Foundations of Marxism. London: Routledge; New York: Praeger. KAUTSKY, KARL (1906) 1918 Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History. Chicago: Kerr. -* First published in German. KELSEN, HANS (1920) 1923 Sozialismus und Staat: Eine Untersuchung der politischen Theorie des Marxismus. 2d ed., enl. Leipzig: Hirschfeld. KORSCH, KARL (1923) 1930 Marxismus und Philosophic. 2d ed. Leipzig: Hirschfeld. KORSCH, KARL (1938) 1963 Karl Marx. New York: Russell. LICHTHEIM, GEORGE (1961) 1964 Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study. 2d rev. ed. London: Routledge. LUKACS, GYORGY (1919-1922) 1923 Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein: Studien iiber marxistische Dialektik. Berlin: Malik. MARCUSE, HERBERT (1941) 1955 Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. 2d ed. New York: Humanities; London: Routledge. -» A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Beacon. Marxismusstudien. 4 vols. Evangelische Studiengemeinschaft, Schriften. 1954-1962 Tubingen (Germany): Mohr. MASARYK, THOMAS G. (1898)1964 Die philosophischen und soziologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus: Studien zur socialen Frage. Osnabriick (Germany): Zeller. MATTICK, PAUL 1962 Marx and Keynes. Institut de Science Economique Appliquee, Cahiers Fifth Series: Etudes de Marxologie 5:113-212. MAYER, HENRY 1960 Marx, Engels and the Politics of the Peasantry. Institut de Science Economique Appliquee, Cahiers Fifth Series: Etudes de Marxologie 3:91-152.
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MARXISM
MEHRING, FRANZ (1918) 1948 Karl Marx: The Story of His Life. London: Allen & Unwin. -> First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1962 by the University of Michigan Press. NAVILLE, PIERRE 1957 De Valienation a la jouissance: La genese de la sociologie du travail chez Marx et Engels. Paris: Riviere. NIKOLAEVSKII, BORIS I.; and MAENCHEN-HELFEN, OTTO 1936 Karl Marx: Man and Fighter. Philadelphia: Lippincott. OLLMAN, BERTELL 1967 Marx's Conception of Human Nature. Unpublished manuscript. PAGE, CHARLES (1940) 1964 Class and American Sociology: From Ward to Ross. New York: Octagon Books. PLAMENATZ, JOHN P. (1954) 1961 German Marxism and Russian Communism. 3d ed. London: Longmans. PLEKHANOV, GEORGII V. (1895) 1947 In Defense of Materialism: The Development of the Monist View of History. London: Lawrence & Wishart. -> First published in Russian. POPPER, KARL R. (1945) 1963 The Open Society and Its Enemies. 4th rev. ed. 2 vols. Princeton Univ. Press. -» Volume 1: The Spell of Plato. Volume 2: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath. RUBEL, MAXIMILIEN 1956 Bibliographic des oeuvres de Karl Marx: Avec en appendice un repertoire des oeuvres de Friedrich Engels. Paris: Riviere. -» A Supplement was published in 1960. RUBEL, MAXIMILIEN 1957 Karl Marx: Essai de biographie intellectuelle. Paris: Riviere. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1942) 1950 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. 3d ed. New York: Harper; London: Allen & Unwin. -> A paperback edition was published by Harper in 1962. SOREL, GEORGES 1895 Les theories de M. Durkheim. Devenir social 1:1-26, 148-180. STAMMLER, RUDOLF (1896)1924 Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistichen Geschichtsauffassung: Eine sozialphilosophische Untersuchung. 5th ed. Berlin: de Gruyter. WEBER, MAX (1907) 1922 R. Stammlers "Uberwindung" der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung. Pages 291-359 in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr. ZEITLIN, IRVING MORDECAI 1967 Marxism: A Re-examination. Princeton: Van Nostrand. Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung. -> Published between 1932 and 1941. Title changed to Studies in Philosophy and Social Science with Volume 8, No. 3. It represented (until 1938) a serious attempt to develop a Marxian sociology in nondogmatic terms.
MARXISM This article deals with the origins and development of the political doctrine of Karl Marx. Marxism is also discussed in ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article On SOCIALIST THOUGHT; MARXIST SOCIOLOGY; SOCIALISM; and in the biography of MARX. Contemporary political and economic aspects are discussed in COMMUNISM; COMMUNISM, ECONOMIC ORGANI-
ZATION OF. Also related are PLANNING, ECONOMIC, article on EASTERN EUROPE; WORKERS. The biographies of BERNSTEIN; ENGELS; FANON; KAUTSKY; LANGE; LENIN; LUKACS; LUXEMBURG; MAN; MILLS; OssowsKi; and TROTSKY describe different intellectual developments after Marx. For the biographies of other socialist thinkers, see under SOCIALISM. Like other schools of socialism that arose in the early nineteenth century, Marxism was a response to the economic and social hardships accompanying the growth of Western industrial capitalism. If in recent decades it has attracted most of its adherents in countries hardly touched by industrial capitalism, this is the result of a tortuous ideological history. The intellectual heritage from which Marxism drew its insights, attitudes, and concepts is a synthesis of many ideological currents of the early and middle nineteenth century. They include the basic assumptions of the democratic faith and the slogans of the French Revolution; indeed, Marxism asserts that this revolution was betrayed by the very class which made it and will only be fulfilled by the proletariat through socialism. Hence, Marxism also embraces the syndrome of attitudes associated with workers' protest movements and socialism. Further, Marxism embodies the empiricism or "materialism" of Bacon, Hobbes, and Helvetius. From Rousseau and the romantics it has taken a strongly ambivalent attitude toward past and present institutions, together with a strong commitment to historicism and its Hegelian form —dialectics. Finally, this mixture is seasoned with the anthropocentrism of Feuerbach, the economic doctrines of Smith and Ricardo, and the class-war theories of Michelet and other historians of the French Revolution. As a syndrome of attitudes, Marxism might be described as a synthesis of radicalism, optimism, and a commitment to science: it is radical in criticizing contemporary social institutions and practices as stupid and inhuman; it is optimistic in expecting, eventually, the creation of a "good society" worthy of man's highest potentials; it is committed to science not only because it wishes to analyze society but also because it is convinced that the scientific investigation of the social forces active in the contemporary world will confirm both its radicalism and its optimism. Doctrine Marxism is a dialectical theory of human progress. It regards history as the development of man's effort to master the forces of nature and, hence, of
MARXISM production ("economic interpretation of history"). Since all production is carried out within social organization, history is the succession of changes in social systems, the development of human relations geared to productive activity ("modes of production"), in which the economic system forms the "base" and all other relationships, institutions, activities, and idea systems are "superstructural." History is progress because man's ability to produce, his "forces of production," continually increase. It is regression because in perfecting the forces of production man creates a more and more complex and oppressive social organization, seemingly beyond human control (the "production relations"), the central feature of which is the division of society into classes. Classes are defined by their relations to the essential means of production: the ruling class is that group of men who own the means of production; those who are propertyless are forced to function as the laboring class. Like Rousseau, Marx was profoundly interested in exploring the inequalities of men because he shared his belief that there can be no democracy as long as there are inequality and special interests. Progress, thus, is a mixed blessing. Nor is it unilinear, for in the history of man different elements of the complicated social system continually become dysfunctional to each other. In particular, the production relations, originally in tune with a given state of the forces of production, lag behind the latter and come to retard their further development. From a promoter of progress the ruling class turns into a useless parasite. But when the old production relations have turned into a dead shell, mankind assures the march of progress by remaking the social system in revolutionary violence, giving leadership to the class wielding the most advanced means of production. According to the Marxist scheme of history, mankind has gone through three or four major modes of production since an initial golden age of primitive communism: ancient slave society, feudalism, and capitalism (to which Marx added, in some of his works, Asiatic society as a distinct mode of production). Capitalism, the last form of society torn by a class struggle, represents the peak of human development so far. On the one hand, it has created and amassed unprecedented wealth, which, if used rationally, could assure the material wellbeing of all mankind. Yet, by virtue of its own laws of operation, capitalism cannot utilize its means of production rationally but must match the accumulation of capital with the accumulation of misery and chaos. Again, while it has promoted constitutional government and the rights of man, the
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formal rights and equalities of liberal regimes are vitiated by actual inequalities and ultimate dehumanization: formally free, man has been converted into a commodity, whose labor power, talents, and personality are for sale on the free market. The resolution of these contradictions will be produced by capitalism itself. Its own economic laws not only produce chaos and crisis but also narrow the social basis of capitalism by casting the mass of the population into the proletariat. At a crisis point the exploited will rise in revolution, expropriate the ruling class, replace commodity production with an economy based on national planning, and abolish all class divisions in society. Supporting the optimistic prognosis of revolutionary Marxism is the image of the proletariat as the "chosen people," who, because of their place in society, their state of organization, and their spontaneous grasp of reality ("class consciousness") can be expected to rise above all narrow interests, loyalties, and ideologies and liberate mankind forever from the curse of property and class. Development Marxist doctrine was spelled out concisely in the Communist Manifesto. This pamphlet was written shortly before the outbreak of the 1848 revolution, which Marx and Engels were confident would lead to the socialist revolution of the proletariat. The failure of 1848 forced them to explain what had prevented this act of deliverance. In subsequent political commentaries, they emphasized complicating factors left out of the more abstract analysis of capitalism: the role of precapitalist classes in European politics, especially the petty bourgeoisie; the baneful role of demoralized workers (Lumpenproletariaf); the role of the state as an independent political force; and the role of nations. Many ideas contained in these political writings were never fully integrated with general Marxist theory. Indeed, Marx's major work on the capitalist system remained a fragment; and he died before he had time to give a systematic presentation of such a central concept as social class. Another task made necessary by the failure of 1848 was to elaborate a political strategy for the proletarian movement. Here Marxism came to emphasize the differences between long-range and short-range objectives. Socialism was defined as the maximal goal, while the minimal goal was the liberation of capitalism from feudal and absolutist residues of a political, economic, or social nature. A more intermediate goal—the dictatorship of the proletariat—received scant mention in Marx's writings.
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Problems of political strategy became more important because, after inauspicious beginnings, Marxist doctrine was in time accepted as the party ideology of the European labor movement. There is irony in this merger because the workers' movement which finally accepted Marxist ideology was in many ways different from the proletariat as Marx and Engels had described and idealized it in 1847-1848. It tended toward reformism, had faith in constitutional democracy, and, as the first mass party of modern history, became thoroughly bureaucratized. Ulam (1960) cogently argues that Marxism at that time was no longer a suitable ideology for the European labor movement. Hence, its adoption raises puzzling questions which cannot be pursued here. Suitable or not, the merger of the ideology with the movement was a turning point because, with it, Marxism became a formal ideology, a guide to thought and action, a holy writ and catechism. Henceforth, it tended toward doctrinal rigidity. The growing discrepancy between revolutionary theories and actual party policies lent Marxism a note of hypocrisy, while a widening gap between assumptions and reality had the effect of ideological blinders on those who wanted to use Marxism as a tool for comprehension. Moreover, once Marxism was accepted as party doctrine, its adherents, beginning with Engels, extended the doctrine into areas of inquiry to which Marx himself had not applied it. Marx had thought to encompass with his theory contemporary society and all of human history. Engels sought to integrate Darwinian theory and all natural science with Marxism and to raise Marxist theories to the level of a universal philosophy. For Marx the ultimate determinant of the course of history was man and his needs, but for Engels it came to be matter and its motion. Yet, it was the ideas of Engels which set the tone for orthodox Marxism of both the social democratic and communist persuasions. The sociopsychological dynamics behind both this extension of the doctrine and its transformation into a holy writ still need to be explored. Conflicting interpretations As soon as Marxism was accepted as the doctrine of the European labor movement, it became a matter of controversy among its followers, partly because the work of Marx and Engels had remained unfinished in many details, but even more because of social changes that had occurred. The ensuing debates dealt with issues of strategy, focusing on the problem of maturity, i.e., the task of defining the point at which a society might be
ripe for the proletarian revolution. Engels alluded to the problem by wondering about the paradox that the proletarian revolution might be impossible as long as it was necessary and unnecessary once it became feasible. Problems of organization and tactics also provided material for controversies. Discussions of these and many related issues are still going on within Marxism, even though the same questions are asked in changing circumstances. Of the controversies raging before World War I, the bitterest was unrelated to strategy or organization. It arose instead out of the growing unrealism of Marxist doctrine. The spread of economic prosperity and constitutional government belied Marxist prognoses about the intensification of crises and misery; and the revolutionary slogans of the Communist Manifesto sounded incongruous when uttered by the moderate leaders of the Second International. To resolve the discrepancy, the "revisionists" proposed a thoroughgoing change of Marxist doctrines so as to make them reflect current conditions, modern scientific insights, and social democratic aims and policies. Revisionism came close to being a repudiation of Marxist ideas; and it can be regarded as the first in a long series of steps away from Marx made by democratic socialists since the turn of the century. Their antagonists in the Second International insistently upheld the letter of Marxist doctrines, identifying loyalty to the writ of Marx with loyalty to the workers' movement. The method of bridging the gap between theory and reality was by denying its existence, meanwhile reinterpreting Marx's revolutionary theories so as to make them yield reformist counsel. For most Marxists committed to democratic socialism, this was an ideological rear-guard action, because the predominant trend in the socialist movement has been to follow the revisionists in their repudiation of Marx. While the revisionists sought to change theories in order to align them with reality and the orthodox denied the need for such realignment, a radical wing of the Marxist movement, which arose after the turn of the century, attempted to bridge the gap between theory and practice by leading the workers' movement back to the revolutionary orientation of the Communist Manifesto. This wing became the nucleus of communism; most of its leaders joined communist parties, if only for short periods. The radical Marxists asserted that despite profound changes in the capitalist world since the days of Marx—especially "imperialism" (the export of
MARXISM capital and of capitalism to dependent countries overseas)—the basic contradictions of capitalism had remained; hence also the inevitability and necessity of the revolution Marx had predicted. Disagreements among the radicals arose over many issues, the most divisive one being the question of organization. One faction, of which Rosa Luxemburg was the outstanding spokesman, saw the roots of "reformism," i.e., democratic socialism, in the bureaucratization of the workers' movement, which they thought stifled revolutionary initiative and proletarian class consciousness. Against them, Lenin and his Bolsheviks believed that revolution making should be subject to rational management (bureaucracy), and they held, moreover, that by itself, spontaneously, the proletariat would not be able to attain class consciousness; hence their emphasis on leadership by an enlightened elite organized in bureaucratic fashion in the party, which should function as the general staff of the proletarian revolution. Leninist Marxism thus focuses on the task of manipulating the masses through leaders who have acquired insight into the politically necessary and possible by applying Marxist categories to the analysis of their society. New ideological problems were bound to arise when a Marxist party was founded in Russia toward the end of the nineteenth century, because most of the conditions to which Marxism originally had been a response were absent in that country. The very fact that Marxism could find acceptance among Russian revolutionaries is an interesting ideological development, which deserves explanation in another context. Russia's economic backwardness and repressive political system exacerbated problems of timing, leadership, organization, political alliances, and related issues, considerably straining the entire framework of Marxist concepts. For instance, the notion that the bourgeoisie cannot fulfill the ideological promises of the bourgeois revolution was a central tenet of Marx and Engels. But Lenin's idea that the bourgeoisie will not carry out or even initiate "its own" revolution (which will instead have to be accomplished by the proletariat and its allies) requires very bold use of Marxist class terminology. In its mature form Bolshevism takes even greater liberties with the original Marxist conception when it assigns to colonial and other dependent nations a significant role in the hoped-for "proletarian" revolutions. Underdeveloped nations here assume some of the traits which Marx had attributed to the industrial workers of the West. But as a consequence, the "proletarian revolution" itself turns into something very different from what Marx had assumed
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it to be. Originally thought of as the act of taking over the mature industrial establishment created (and mismanaged) by capitalism, it now can take over nothing but a backward economy and culture; this leads to the paradoxical conclusion that the proletarian state (a "superstructural" phenomenon) will have to begin constructing its own economic "base," making use of "capitalist" methods in doing so. In their controversies over policy and organization, the different factions of Russian Marxism emphasized those portions of the ideology which seemed to support their views, at the expense of other portions. Lenin and his Bolsheviks were so intent on reaching their goal, the proletarian revolution, that they amended Marx's revolutionary timetable beyond recognition; this led to the accusation that they were Blanquists rather than Marxists. The more cautious Mensheviks, in turn, seemed so concerned with following the timetable provided by Marx that Lenin accused them of postponing socialism and the revolution ad calendas Graecas and thus betraying the cause of the proletariat. The schism which split Russian Marxism into two hostile social-democratic parties was extended to the entire world-wide movement in the years from 1914 to 1920. Disagreements over the proper attitudes a Marxist should take toward the war and the Russian Revolution divided Marxism irreconcilably into socialists and communists, each creating their own international federation of parties. The most important issue between them was their difference of attitude toward the Bolshevik seizure of power and method of governing. The communists regarded their state as the pioneer of the international workers' movement. The socialists saw in it an ill-timed and irresponsible adventure which discredited the Marxist movement. In subsequent decades, the communist-socialist split hastened the process by which democratic socialism came to dissociate itself from Marxist ideology. [See SOCIALISM.] Marxism as the ideology of a ruling party Once in power, the Russian communists sought to use Marxism as a guidebook for the further road toward socialism and for managing a proletarian dictatorship. The difficulties they encountered and the sketchiness of the hints Marx and Engels had provided for solving these problems led to new and sharp controversies among the communists themselves, in which the broadest spectrum of Marxist concepts was once again discussed from divergent points of view. With Stalin's rise to power
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the debate was forcibly closed, and his own views were imposed as dogma over all communist parties. The substance of this dogma, based on Leninist principles, might be summarized as follows: Marxism is both scientific truth and ideology—-the ideology of the working class. The Communist party alone possesses full scientific insight and expresses the true interests of the workers. Hence, only he who is loyal to the party can be loyal to the proletariat, in tune with the course of history, or capable of grasping the truth. Nothing can be true which contradicts the party. Further, official Soviet doctrine justifies the communist state, its policies and social structure, as a proletarian dictatorship and a true democracy engaged in "constructing socialism." Marxism here has turned into a theory of state defending, as virtually perfect, a regime violating all the libertarian and egalitarian values expressed by Marx. The success with which Marxist concepts have been used to fashion a conservative and authoritarian doctrine of this kind is a major achievement in ideology making. In the Soviet Union this has recently been supplemented by a program for the "transition to communism," which is an obvious attempt to tone down expectations. Calling for little significant change in present-day Soviet society, it signals the withering away of Utopia on this branch of Marxist ideology. Finally, contemporary communist ideology incorporates a program for the further spread of the "proletarian" revolution. But although the workers in the industrialized countries have not been written off formally, in effect the communist movement has now substituted the colonial and other dependent nations in the historic role which Marx attributed to the proletariat of the capitalist world. The function of the ideology in communist political systems has been the subject of much controversy. Many scholars (echoing communist dogma) see Marxism-Leninism as the master plan guiding all communist thought, actions, and institutions. Others assert that it is no more than rationalization which easily adapts to any changes in policy. However contradictory, both theories have some plausibility but are easily refuted in their exaggerated forms. Marxist ideology, as amended by Lenin and his successors, did inspire the men who made communist revolutions and has influenced communist regimes and institutions even more directly than the ideas of Rousseau and Locke have shaped the institutions of the French and American republics. Although the ideology becomes primarily rationalization after the communist seizure of power, it
does remain the language of politics, meaning not only a code of communications for the political elite but also the conceptual frame of reference used for cognitive and ethical self-orientation. It thus determines both analysis and action, if only negatively, that is, as ideological blinders and as a brake ("bad conscience") on freedom of action. [See IDEOLOGY.] A doctrine which is meant to serve as a useful aid to cognition must be realistic and flexible, whereas a doctrine functioning as a communications code need only be rigid. These and other conflicting functions of the ideology strain it. Primarily, perhaps, the ideology functions as a legitimation device, implying not only an exercise in public relations to attain legitimacy among the citizens but, even more important, a continual attempt by the party leaders to convince themselves of their own legitimacy; more generally, it functions as an ideological exoskeleton for insecure bureaucrats in a vast and powerful administrative machine. The implication is that communist leaders in making doctrinal pronouncements speak more to themselves than to their citizenry, and least of all to the outside world. This phenomenon of self-encouragement or self-legitimation, observable in all societies, has been unduly neglected by contemporary communications theory. Ideological strains Since World War n, communist parties have come to power in close to a dozen countries of eastern Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean area. These various Marxist-Leninist regimes came to power by widely divergent methods and, once installed, faced very different tasks because of the great differences in the cultures, economic development, political traditions, and social structures of the countries concerned. If to these variations in national interests and outlooks of the several communist regimes one adds the bitter memory of past disagreements and injuries, plus the normal political rivalries between groups and personalities within a large group of states, it is not astonishing that sharp conflicts arose in the communist camp, straining relations between the different regimes and within each communist party. Given the relations between politics and ideology within the communist movement, these disagreements sooner or later had to become doctrinal and thus turned into questions of fundamental principle. Hence, the dialogue between Tito and Stalin, between Khrushchev and Mao, and between revisionists and dogmatists in every communist party led to a discus-
MARXISM sion of not only basic problems in revolutionary strategy and socialist construction but also of the most fundamental concepts of Marxism-Leninism. The resulting differences within the communist world are today as deep as the schism between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks half a century ago. Moreover, the issues under discussion are similar to those which divided Russian Marxism at that time, even though the circumstances and the concrete reference points have changed. The unity of the communist movement is as irretrievably gone as was the unity of European Marxism at the time of the October Revolution. As a result, what 15 years ago seemed well-established dogma is now subject to doubt. Within some of the communist societies, party dogmas today are also being criticized in the name of science, while the practices of communist governments and the rhetoric which justifies them are challenged in the name of Marxist humanism. In short, official ideology is assailed from several directions. Two tendencies are likely to result from this multiple onslaught. Official ideological output may turn increasingly into empty, meaningless political oratory, ritually incanted on suitable ceremonial occasions but as removed from life as Sunday sermons and Independence Day speeches. At the same time, a genuine dialogue conducted between and within the several communist parties over a sufficient period of time might serve to reinvigorate Marxist ideology, especially in communist parties that have not yet come to power, even though it may also lead many former adherents to repudiate this ideology. [See the articles under COMMUNISM,] Marxism in the noncommunist world Although the communist movement (or movements, as one must now write) claims to be the legitimate heir of Marxist ideology, Marxism continues to exist, in the Western world, as a noncommunist ideology. To be sure, most socialist parties have gone far in severing their ties with Marxism. Yet interest in it has increased in certain intellectual circles. Most of this is roundly critical and, especially in its recent intensified form, is a function of the cold war. The variety of points of view from which Marxism, or what is understood to be Marxism, has been criticized cannot be summarized here. But some of the recent interest has been sympathetic. This may have been stimulated by the collaboration of many diverse elements with communists and socialists during and shortly after World War n. In addition, political, economic, racial, and other difficulties that have beset the
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Western world since the war have increased many intellectuals' awareness of defects in their social system. For anyone focusing his attention on negative aspects of contemporary social life, Marxism offers considerable attraction, principally because of two elements: one is the message of inevitable doom derived from the analysis of the capitalist economy; the other is the humanist ethic of Marxism—the emphasis on the evil features of a commercial civilization, the romantic anger at institutions and practices that degrade, oppress, or exploit some men, and the sanguine belief in the inherent goodness of mankind, which under favorable circumstances can and will free itself from inhibiting and corrupting institutions. In the last decade or two interest in this humanist philosophy of Marx and in the early writings in which it is expressed has increased rapidly. Finally, there is some increase in the interest social scientists have in Marx as a precursor of contemporary social science : some of his methodological contributions are only now receiving recognition. ALFRED G. MEYER BIBLIOGRAPHY
See the bibliographies following the articles on EN GELS; LENIN; and MARX for their major works. BLOOM, SOLOMON F. 1941 The World of Nations: A Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. CHAMBRE, HENRI (1959)1963 From Karl Marx to Mao Tse-tung: A Systematic Survey of Marxism-Leninism. New York: Kennedy. -> First published in French. COLE, G. D. H. 1953-1960 A History of Socialist Thought. 5 vols. New York: St. Martins; London: Macmillan. H> Volume 1: Socialist Thought: The Forerunners 1789-1850, 1953. Volume 2: Marxism and Anarchism 1850-1890, 1954. Volume 3: Second International 1889-1914, 2 parts, 1956. Volume 4: Communism and Social Democracy 1914-1931, 2 parts, 1958. Volume 5: Socialism and Fascism 19311939, 1960. DANIELS, ROBERT V. 1960 The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia. Russian Research Center Studies, No. 40. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. FETSCHER, IRING (1956) 1959 Von Marx zur Sowjetideologie. 4th ed. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg. Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism. 2d ed., rev. (1959) 1963 Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» First published as Osnovy marksizma—leninizma. GAY, PETER 1952 The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier. GREGOR, A. JAMES 1965 A Survey of Marxism: Problems in the Philosophy and Theory of History. New York: Random House. HAIMSON, LEOPOLD H. 1955 The Russian Marxist &the Origins of Bolshevism. Russian Research Center
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Studies, No. 19. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. KOLARZ, WALTER (1959) 1964 Books on Communism: A Bibliography. 2d ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. LABEDZ, LEOPOLD (editor) 1962 Revisionism: Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas. New York: Praeger. LEHMBRUCH, GERHARD (1956) 1958 Kleiner Wegweiser zum Studium der Sowjetideologie. Bonn: Gesamtdeutscher Verlag. -> A revised and enlarged edition of H. Gollwitzer and G. Lehmbruch's Kleiner Wegweiser zum Studium des Marxismus—Leninismus. LICHTHEIM, GEORGE (1961) 1964 Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study. 2d ed., rev. London: Routledge. -> A paperback edition was published by Praeger in 1965. MARCUSE, HERBERT (1941) 1955 Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. 2d. ed. New York: Humanities; London: Routledge. -> A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Beacon. MARCUSE, HERBERT 1958 Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -* A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Vintage. MEYER, ALFRED G. 1957 Leninism. Russian Research Center Studies, No. 26. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Praeger. MITRANY, DAVID 1951 Marx Against the Peasant: A Study in Social Dogmatism. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. PLAMENATZ, JOHN P. (1954) 1961 German Marxism and Russian Communism. New York: Longmans. RAMM, THILO 1955 Die grossen Sozialisten als Rechtsund Sozialphilosophen. Stuttgart: Fischer. ROSENBERG, ARTHUR (1932) 1939 A History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five Years' Plan. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -> First published in German. RUBEL, MAXIMILIEN 1956 Bibliographie des oeuvres de Karl Marx: Avec en appendice un repertoire des oeuvres de Friedrich Engels. Paris: Riviere. -> A 74page supplement was added in 1960. SCHORSKE, CARL E. 1955 German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SCHWARTZ, BENJAMIN I. 1951 Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. TIMASHEFF, NICHOLAS S. 1946 The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia. New York: Button. TUCKER, ROBERT C. 1961 Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. Cambridge Univ. Press. ULAM, ADAM B. 1960 The Unfinished Revolution: An Essay on the Sources of Influence of Marxism and Communism. New York: Random House. WETTER, GUSTAVO A. (1948) 1959 Dialectical Materialism: A Historical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the Soviet Union. New York: Praeger. -» First published as II materialismo dialettico sovietico.
MARXIST SOCIOLOGY Karl Marx introduced into the social sciences of his day a new method of inquiry, new concepts, and a number of bold hypotheses to explain the rise, development, and decline of particular forms
of society; all of which came to exercise, in the later decades of the nineteenth century, a profound and extensive influence upon the writing of history, political science, and sociology. Marx was also a man of action, a revolutionary, whose political creed stood in a complex and uneasy relationship to his scientific investigations, and his followers, the Marxists of various hues, have tended toward one or the other limit of his ideas, to doctrinal exposition, or to the furtherance of a science of society. Marxist sociology has been one of the principal battlefields in this conflict between objective science and political commitment. Marx's contributions On the side of scientific method, Marx made two important contributions. One was to adopt, and to maintain consistently in his work, a view of human societies as wholes or systems in which social groups, institutions, beliefs, and doctrines are interrelated and have to be studied in their interrelations rather than treated in isolation, as in the conventional separate histories of politics, law, religion, or thought. The second contribution was the view of societies as inherently mutable systems, in which changes are produced largely by internal contradictions and conflicts, and the assumption that such changes, if observed in a large number of instances, will show a sufficient degree of regularity to allow the formulation of general statements about their causes and consequences. Historical materialism. Marx's ideas, which played an essential part in the formation of modern sociology, had been adumbrated in the works of earlier thinkers as diverse in other respects as Hegel, Saint-Simon, and Adam Ferguson, all of whom greatly influenced Marx; and they resemble in some aspects the ideas which Comte and Spencer propounded in their attempts to lay the foundations of sociology. But Marx elaborated his conception of the nature of society, and of the appropriate means to study it, in a more precise, and above all more empirical, fashion than did his predecessors. He introduced an entirely new element by attributing to the characteristics of the economic system and to the derived relations between social classes a predominant influence in determining the structure of each society. It was this feature of Marx's method, to be known subsequently by the somewhat misleading term "historical materialism," which was widely accepted by later sociologists as offering a more promising starting point for exact and realistic investigations of the causes of social change than could be found in such notions as the three stages of man's intel-
MARXIST SOCIOLOGY lectual development (Comte) or the process of superorganic evolution (Spencer). Social class and social conflict. Marx's theories followed to a great extent from the above methodological conceptions, which he referred to as the "guiding thread" in his studies (1859, preface). The significance of the economic system of society was elaborated in a theory which traced the formation of the principal social groups—the classes—to the forms of ownership of the means of production and the forms of labor of nonowners. The idea of social change resulting from internal conflicts was developed in a theory of class struggles which made social classes the principal, if not the sole, agents of political activity; and this conception in turn led to the distinction between ruling and oppressed classes and to a distinctive theory of the state. The conviction that social changes display a regular pattern led Marx to construct, in broad outline, a historical sequence of the main types of society, proceeding from the simple, undifferentiated society of "primitive communism" to the complex class society of modern capitalism; and he sketched an explanation of the great historical transformations which demolished old forms of society and created new ones in terms of economic changes which he regarded as general and constant in their operation. Although this theoretical scheme was intended to have a universal character, Marx actually employed it in a partial manner. His own researches were limited almost entirely to the nineteenthcentury capitalist societies, and he gave only fragmentary accounts of the other types of society, in brief allusions in Capital, in newspaper articles and correspondence, and in manuscripts which were published after his death (see especially 18571858). Furthermore, some of his most important theoretical ideas were derived immediately from the observation of modern societies, and they fit closely only these particular societies. His theory of social classes applies in the main to the formation and development of the modern bourgeoisie and proletariat; it is not so helpful when applied to the phenomena of a caste system. Clearly, the theory of social conflict originated in an interpretation of the French Revolution, the materials for which had been prepared by earlier historians, and it was developed further by observation of the class struggles which accompanied the growth of the labor movement in western Europe. The concept of ideology, similarly, originated in Marx's criticism of some contemporary social doctrines—utilitarianism, the "critical philosophy" of the Young Hegelians, political economy in some
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of its aspects—which he regarded as concealing or distorting the real relationships between men and the actual social conflicts in the European societies of his time (Marx & Engels 1845-1846). It is not a concept which Marx brought, or tried to bring, within the framework of a general sociological theory of knowledge. This intense preoccupation with the origins and development of industrial capitalism is, indeed, a feature of Marx's theories which helps to account for the interest which they still excite. It has enabled Marxists to represent his thought as a modern philosophy that is closely linked with the progress of science and industry, and it has enabled sociologists to discover in it the elements of a theory of industrialization and economic growth. Marx's influence in the nineteenth century Marx's scientific writings were not widely noticed or criticized during his lifetime, and he became known principally as the author of a political doctrine expounded in the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and as one of the animators of the International Working Men's Association. Furthermore, the early expounders of his ideas, other than Friedrich Engels, were themselves political leaders of the growing working class movement in Europe— men such as August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, and Eduard Bernstein in Germany; Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue in France—rather than scholars. Only in the late 1880s did Marx's theories begin to claim the serious attention of academic social scientists. The first major work of sociology to recognize his importance and to display the influence of his thought was Ferdinand Tonnies' Community and Society (1887). In this book Tonnies expounded his distinction between two forms of society—"community" (Gemeinschaft) and "association" (Gesellschaff)—which has become one of the classic themes of sociology. His debt to Marx is indicated by the importance which he assigned to the system of production in determining these different forms of society and by the character of his analysis of modern capitalism. Much later Tonnies published an excellent short study of Marx's life and work (1921), in which he examined more fully the nature and limitations of Marx's contribution to sociology. A more general recognition by the German academic world of Marx's importance as a sociological thinker became apparent in the 1890s with the publication of a long essay by Werner Sombart on Marx's theory of modern capitalism, books by Rudolf Stammler and Thomas G. Masaryk on the methodological foundations of his theories, and
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numerous discussions in scholarly journals. At this time Marx's work also began to be discussed by eminent scholars in other European countries: in Italy by Antonio Labriola (1895-1896), Benedetto Croce (in several essays which are collected in Croce 1900), Giovanni Gentile, and Vilfredo Pareto; and in France by Georges Sorel, who expounded Marx's theories in a number of articles from 1894 onward and published in his journal, Le devenir social, some notable essays on Marx by European scholars as well as his own reviews, from a Marxist standpoint, of the work of contemporary sociologists. Marx's sociology also figured prominently in the contributions to the first international congress of sociology held in 1894. Divergence of Marxism and sociology By the beginning of the twentieth century, therefore, Marx had been generally accepted as the author of a profound and original system of sociology, yet in the following period the influence of Marxism upon sociology diminished rather than increased. Many of the writers who had first drawn attention to the importance of Marx's theories— among them Croce, Sorel, and Pareto—now became severe critics of Marxist thought and advanced new social and historical theories which, however much they might owe to the initial shock which Marx's ideas had produced, were conceived in an entirely different fashion. On the other hand, a number of influential Marxist thinkers came to regard more critically the claims of sociology as a positive science and to insist more strongly upon the character of Marxism as a revolutionary social philosophy. In the early 1900s only the small but distinguished group of thinkers who became known later as the Austro-Marxists were engaged in an attempt to set forth and develop the sociological elements in Marx's thought. Max Adler (1925), a philosopher deeply influenced by Neo-Kantianism, represented Marx as having established the epistemological foundations of social science, as Kant had done for the natural sciences; he saw in Marxism a sociological system of causal explanation. Another member of the group, Karl Renner (1904), produced what is still the outstanding Marxist contribution to the sociology of law, a study of the effect of economic forces and social changes upon the working of modern legal institutions. The writings of the Austro-Marxists, however, did not arrest the growing divergence between Marxism and sociology, which appears most clearly in the contrast between the work of Max Weber and Pareto in sociology and the fresh expositions of
Marxist thought by Karl Korsch and Gyb'rgy Lukacs. Sociology—Weber and Pareto. Marxism was unquestionably one of the strongest influences upon the work of Max Weber, much of which is devoted either to testing, in a particular context, some part of Marx's theories, or to reassessing in a more general way his concepts and methods. In the first of these directions, Weber's best-known study is that on the origins of modern capitalism (1904-1905), which is intended to show that a body of religious ideas (the Protestant ethic) played a vital part in the development of European capitalism, alongside the economic changes and the rise of a new class, through the inculcation of new attitudes toward wealth, science, and work. From this first revision of Marx's economic interpretation of history, Weber went on to examine on a wider scale the social influence of religious ideas, to amend and supplement the Marxist theory of classes, to outline a radically different theory of political power, and to suggest an interpretation of modern European history as a movement, not toward socialism but, rather, toward greater bureaucratic regulation. In the sphere of methodology, Weber's preoccupation with historical materialism is evident in his discussion (1907) of a book by Stammler and especially in an editorial in the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904, in which he observed that while the materialist conception of history should be rejected as a comprehensive Weltanschauung, the interpretation of historical events from the aspect of their economic conditioning or relevance may be accepted as a useful methodological principle, above all in the study of modern societies. The impression made by Marxist ideas is equally clear in the earlier writings of Pareto, who singled out, as Marx's chief contribution to sociology, the theory of class conflict (1902-1903). This provided the basis for Pareto's own later elaboration of the idea of the struggle between elites for political power, which became the vital element in an interpretation of history directly opposed to that of Marx. Pareto replaced the idea of the progressive development of class systems by a cyclical theory of the rise and fall of elites, and concentrated attention upon the conditions of social equilibrium rather than the causes of social change. Marxist philosophy. Both Weber and Pareto aspired, though in different ways and with varying success, to establish sociology as an objective social science. Korsch and Lukacs, on the other hand, questioned the possibility, and also the value, of
MARXIST SOCIOLOGY such an objective science, and they expounded Marxism as a philosophy of society which approaches every problem from the point of view of the working class. Korsch, in Marxismus und Philosophie (1923), began by criticizing those thinkers who had regarded Marxism either as a set of methodological rules or as a system of universal causal laws, that is, as a general sociology in the positivist sense. According to him, Marxism includes both empirical and philosophical elements, but the latter are those which distinguish it clearly from other social theories. It is empirical in the sense that it deals with real social movements in modern society and is not in flagrant contradiction with actual events; it is philosophical in the sense that it interprets the facts by means of a conception of history as a process which will terminate in a "classless society." Because of this vision of the future which it contains, it is above all a theory of social revolution which expresses the outlook, and reflects the practical social activity, of a revolutionary class. In similar fashion Lukacs argued, in several of the essays collected in Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1919-1922), that Marxism is not to be regarded as an objective interpretation of man's social history—still less as a scientific theory of social evolution—but as an interpretation, from the standpoint of the revolutionary working class, of the historical origins and development of capitalist society. Both writers insisted upon the opposition between Marxism and sociology. For them, Marxism is essentially a theory of history concerned with unique sequences of events and taking account both of objective conditions and of subjective human strivings. Sociology, on the other hand, by its ambition to establish general social laws, in the first place turns man into an object and discounts the subjective aspects of human action and, second, substitutes for the view of society as a historical process the conception of an unvarying system of social relationships which is to be discovered in every form of society. This idea of Marxism did not find favor with the orthodox Marxist-Leninists, whose opinions were authoritatively expressed at that time through the Third Communist International. However, there were few scholars among the orthodox who attempted to set out an alternative version or to meet the sociological criticisms of Marxism on their own ground. The most important of them was undoubtedly Nikolai Bukharin, whose exposition of historical materialism (1921) is noteworthy for the serious attention which it gives to the difficulties arising from the claim that Marxism is at the same
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time an objective social science and the doctrine of a particular social class, and for its discussions of some of the more important criticisms of Marx. During the early 1900s, the intellectual and political influence of Marxism and the discussions of Marx's sociological theories were largely confined to the continental European countries. In Britain, Marxism made little impact upon sociology, either then or later. The influence of Marxism was greater in the early development of American sociology, but it was soon overshadowed. Thorstein Veblen is the most notable of those who turned to Marx as a source of powerful and radical ideas, which he then developed in his own fashion in theories of the influence of technology upon social structure (1899) and of the rise to power of the engineers (1921). Albion W. Small, who assigned to Marx a place as the Galileo of the social sciences, also played a large part in introducing Marxist ideas and was himself strongly influenced by Marx in working out his theories of social conflict. Marxist influence since the 1930s In the period from the early 1930s to the present day, the lines of thought distinguished above have continued and have been enriched by new studies. A number of Marxist writers have upheld the opposition between Marxism and sociology, and they have found new evidence for their views in Marx's early manuscripts, which began to be published in 1932. Thus, Korsch expounded his ideas more fully, but in the same form, in a study of Marx (1938) that was contributed to a series on the great sociologists. A few years later Herbert Marcuse (1941), in a study of the relations between Marx and Hegel, represented Marx's thought as the culminating achievement of the Hegelian dialectical method, as a "critical philosophy" of society which Marcuse contrasted with the positive philosophy and sociology of Comte. The same general view of the nature of Marx's thought, inspired in this case by Lukacs, is to be found in the work of Lucien Goldmann on the methods of the social sciences (1959) and on the social context and the literary expression of Jansenism in France (1955); and it has recently been expounded at length by Jean-Paul Sartre (1960), who argued that sociology, as an empirical discipline, either stands opposed to, or must be comprehended within, Marxism, which alone makes possible an understanding of the historically changing totality of social life. Mainstream of sociology. In the mainstream of sociological thought, many writers continued to turn to Marx's work as a source of specific ideas and problems which they could develop along new
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lines. One of the most important ideas which was thus reassessed was that of ideology. It had already attracted the attention of Marxist writers at the end of the nineteenth century, and Franz Mehring's Die Lessing-Legende (1893) is the first major attempt to make use of Marx's theories in the interpretation of literary styles. But it was not until a quarter of a century later that Marxist literary criticism revealed its full scope in the work of Lukacs, beginning with the publication of Die Theorie des Romans (1920) and continuing with his studies of nineteenth-century European realism (1935-1939) and of the historical novel (1947). Another Marxist writer who was greatly preoccupied with problems of ideology in a broader sense is Antonio Gramsci, much of whose work was done during his imprisonment by the Italian fascist government and has become generally known and influential only since the 1950s. Gramsci was especially concerned with the nature of the cultural dominance exercised by a ruling class, to which he attributed much greater importance than other Marxists had done, and, on the other hand, with the means by which the working class in a capitalist society might resist bourgeois cultural influences while developing its own forms of expression in literature, art, and thought. The notion of "social hegemony" which he introduced was meant to emphasize the interdependence of economic, political, and cultural elements in class conflicts; and his studies of the role of intellectuals, of the educational system, and of other aspects of culture (Gramsci 1949), inspired by this idea, were highly original contributions to the discussion of the old Marxist problem of the relations between "base" and "superstructure" in social life. The notion of ideology also provided the central theme in the work of Karl Mannheim, who envisioned his task as the elaboration of a general sociology of knowledge from Marx's one-sided criticism of bourgeois ideologies, as a means of understanding the ideological and political conflicts of the twentieth century. Mannheim's writings were symptomatic of a deep concern with the problems of ideology which has lasted until the present time and has produced a number of notable works, from the brilliant critical study by Ernst Griinwald (1934) to the historical survey, dealing at length with Marx and Nietzsche, by Hans Earth (1945). Theories of class structure. Mannheim was exceptional in attributing such overwhelming importance to the problems of ideology, and it is through other concepts—particularly those of class and conflict—that Marx has had his chief influ-
ence upon modern sociology. All the major theories of class structure, from those of Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and Theodor Geiger up to those of the present day, have begun from Marx's formulation of the question and have been more or less strongly influenced in their conclusions by Marx's own results. Among recent writers, few have been prepared to abandon entirely Marx's model of the class system; but most of them have introduced modifications and have questioned Marx's explanations and predictions. Raymond Aron (1950; 1964), C. Wright Mills, and Ralf Dahrendorf (1959) reject, as inconsistent with the evidence, the constant association between economic ownership and political power which is a basic postulate of Marx's theory, and they draw attention in particular to the alternative bases of political power in societies where private ownership of industrial wealth is nonexistent. Marshall (1934-1962), Lockwood (1958), Lockwood and Goldthorpe (1963), and Mills (1951) examine the changing composition of the main social classes during the past century, especially the changes in the position of the middle classes, and show how these changes affect the relations between classes in a manner of which Marx's theory takes no account. Class conflict. Most recent sociologists have criticized Marx's theory of class conflict, especially that part of it which asserts the inevitability of working-class revolutions in capitalist societies and the eventual cessation of conflict in a society without classes. The critics, such as Dahrendorf (1959) and Aron (1964), argue that the growing differentiation of functions and the increasing separation between the economic, political, and other spheres in the advanced industrial societies have removed the basis for the coalescence of industrial, political, and ideological conflicts in massive class struggles, and that revolutionary movements have in fact disappeared from these societies. At the same time, they assert that some forms of conflict are unavoidable in any large and complex society and that a society without intergroup conflict, such as Marx envisaged, is sociologically impossible. The work of these writers shows, however, the extent to which the Marxist theory of conflict has influenced recent sociology; it has restored to the center of attention the problems of conflicting interests and values and of the strains produced by social change, which had been neglected in those theories, previously in the ascendant, that were chiefly concerned with consensus, integration, and social order. Communist countries. It might have been anticipated that with the spread of Marxism as a po-
MARXIST SOCIOLOGY litical creed in eastern Europe and Asia after 1945, there would be some revival of Marxist sociology in the countries concerned. However, so far this has not taken place. The later years of Stalin's rule were not propitious for any kind of sociology, and Soviet Marxism became increasingly occupied with adapting conventional formulas to political circumstances rather than with developing philosophical or sociological arguments; it was even less concerned with encouraging empirical investigations into Soviet society. Since Stalin's death there has been a resurgence of sociological research in communist countries, but it is not in any obvious respect inspired by Marxist ideas. Much of the research is concerned with problems which are to be found in all industrialized, or rapidly industrializing, societies—technological change, productivity, urban growth, delinquency, education, and leisure—and it is carried out by the same methods that are used elsewhere. Only in a few instances, where there is some significant difference in the institutional setting of the problems, as in studies of the workers' councils in Yugoslavia, does the Marxist theoretical system appear to have any importance in shaping the investigations. In the sphere of theoretical sociology, the contributions from communist countries have been few, and they have often revealed the difficulty of maintaining the Marxist system intact. A good example may be found in one of the most distinguished of these contributions: the last work published by the Polish sociologist Stanislaw Ossowski (1957), in which a profound reappraisal of Marx's theory of class leads to conclusions which do not differ widely from those reached by sociologists elsewhere. Ossowski recognizes that substantial changes have occurred in the class structure of capitalist countries, and he observes, in particular, that in all the modern industrial societies the political authorities increasingly determine the system of social stratification, rather than being determined by it, as a rigorous Marxist view would maintain. He also considers and criticizes the arguments which have been put forward, on opposite sides, for regarding both the United States and the Soviet Union as "classless societies." Perhaps his most important Contribution, however, is to distinguish the various conceptions of class which were incorporated into Marx's theory, to establish the tentative character of Marx's synthesis, and to show its potentialities for further development so long as it is not accepted as dogma. Ossowski's book may be seen, to some extent, as the harbinger of a more creative Period of Marxist thought in communist countries.
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Defining Marxist sociology The record of the encounter between Marxism and sociology since the 1880s shows plainly that while they are distinct, and even opposed, they have never ceased to have a powerful influence upon each other. Marxism is more than a system of sociology; it is a philosophy of man and society, as well as a political doctrine. Sociology, as it has mainly developed in the present century, is an attempt to describe impartially, to measure exactly, and to connect by means of scientific generalizations the diverse phenomena of social life. Even if it be held that a "philosophical anthropology" underlies every major system of theoretical sociology, as Karl Lowith does in his illuminating comparison of Weber and Marx (1932), Marxism still retains a distinctive character; no other body of social thought has become, in this way, the unique doctrine of a political movement and finally the orthodoxy of a ruling party. No other theory, therefore, has been so liable to end in dogmatic assertion and estrangement from social science. Betwixt Marxism and sociology, the place of Marxist sociology is variable and uncertain. In one sense, Marxist sociology could be regarded as the sociology of those thinkers (for example, Nikolai Bukharin and Max Adler) who, on other grounds, are Marxist in their general philosophical or political outlook. It would then be of the same kind as any other school of sociology—let us say Thomist or Hindu sociology—which is based directly upon a philosophical world view. But it would still be affected by, and would have to respond to, the findings of empirical social research; and at some stage Marxists would be led to consider, as has happened in recent years, whether in fact there can be a separate Marxist sociology any more than there can be a separate Marxist physics. In a broader sense, however, Marxist sociology might be regarded as including the work of all those thinkers who attach prime importance, in the investigation and explanation of social events, to the role of economic interests, relations between classes, and intergroup conflicts, without necessarily agreeing with the particular conclusions that Marx himself reached. But this category may seem too broad, since it would include those, from Weber and Pareto up to the recent sociologists discussed above, who have acknowledged Marx's outstanding importance as a thinker and have turned to his work for concepts and hypotheses, but who have revised or rejected so much of his system that it would be eccentric to refer to them as Marxists.
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Lastly, Marxist sociology may be treated as a methodology, as a persistent critique of the aims and methods of the social sciences. In this form it has undoubtedly been prominent and important, as the writings of Lukacs, Marcuse, and Sartre bear witness; but here it becomes not so much Marxist sociology as Marxist "anti-sociology." T. B. BOTTOMORE [See also ALIENATION; KNOWLEDGE, SOCIOLOGY OF; LEISURE; MARXISM; STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL, articles on SOCIAL CLASS and THE STRUCTURE OF STRATIFICATION SYSTEMS; and the biographies of CROCE; LENIN; LUKACS; LUXEMBURG; MANNHEIM; MARX; MILLS; OSSOWSKI; PARETO; SOMBART; TONNIES; TROTSKY; WEBER, MAX.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ADLER, MAX 1925 Kant und der Marxismus. Berlin: Laub. ARON, RAYMOND 1950 Social Structure and the Ruling Class. British Journal of Sociology 1:1-16, 126-143. ARON, RAYMOND 1960 Classe sociale, classe politique, classe dirigeante. European Journal of Sociology 1: 260-281. ARON, RAYMOND 1964 La lutte de classes. Paris: Gallimard. EARTH, HANS 1945 Wahrheit und Ideologic. Zurich: Manesse. BUKHARIN, NIKOLAI I. (1921) 1926 Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. London: Allen & Uriwin. -> First published as Teoriia istoricheskogo materializma. CROCE, BENEDETTO (1900) 1922 Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan. --> First published as Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica. DAHRENDORF, RALF 1959 Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society. Stanford Univ. Press. -> A greatly revised and expanded edition of a book first published in German in 1957. FROMM, ERICH (editor) 1961 Marx's Concept of Man. New York: Ungar. GOLDMANN, LUCIEN 1952 Sciences humaines et philosophic. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. GOLDMANN, LUCIEN 1955 Le dieu cache. Paris: Gallimard. GOLDMANN, LUCIEN 1959 Recherches dialectiques. Paris: Gallimard. GRAMSCI, ANTONIO (1919-1937) 1959 The Modern Prince, and Other Writings. New York: International Publishers. GRAMSCI, ANTONIO 1949 Gli intellettuali e I'organizzazione della cultura. Turin: Einaudi. GRUNWALD, ERNST 1934 Das Problem der Soziologie des Wissens. Vienna and Leipzig: Braumiiller. KORSCH, KARL (1923) 1930 Marxismus und Philosophic. 2d ed. Leipzig: Hirschfeld. KORSCH, KARL 1938 Karl Marx. London: Chapman. LABRIOLA, ANTONIO (1895-1896) 1908 Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History. Chicago: Kerr. H> First published in Italian. LICHTHEIM, GEORGE 1961 Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study. New York: Praeger.
LOCKWOOD, DAVID 1958 The Blackcoated Worker. London: Allen & Unwin. LOCKWOOD, DAVID; and GOLDTHORPE, J. H. 1963 Affluence and the British Class Structure. Sociological Review 11:133-163. LOWITH, KARL (1932)1960 Max Weber und Karl Marx. Pages 1-67 in Karl Lowith, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. LUKACS, GYORGY (1919-1922) 1923 Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein: Studien iiber marxistische Dialektik. Berlin: Malik. LUKACS, GYORGY (1920)1963 Die Theorie des Romans: Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch iiber die Formen der grossen Epik. 2d ed., enl. Neuwied am Rhein (Germany): Luchterhand. LUKACS, GYORGY (1935-1939) 1964 Studies in European Realism. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. -> Contains essays first published in Hungarian and German. First published in English in 1950. LUKACS, GYORGY (1947) 1965 The Historical Novel. New York: Humanities. -> First published in book form in Hungarian as A tortenelmi regeny. Parts 1 and 2 first appeared in 1937 in volumes 7, 9, and 12 of Liter-aturnyi kritik. MARCUSE, HERBERT (1941) 1955 Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. 2d ed. London: Routledge. -> A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Beacon. MARCUSE, HERBERT 1958 Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Vintage. MARSHALL, T. H. (1934-1962) 1964 CZass, Citizenship, and Social Development: Essays. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. -> A collection of articles and lectures first published in England in 1963 under the title Sociology at the Crossroads and Other Essays. A paperback edition was published in 1965. MARX, KARL (1844) 1963 Early Writings. Translated and edited by T. B. Bottomore. London: Watts. MARX, KARL (1844-1875) 1964 Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. 2d ed. Edited by T. B. Bottomore and M. Rubel with a foreword by Erich Fromm. New York: McGraw-Hill. MARX, KARL (1845) 1956 The Holy Family. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -> First published as Die heilige Familie. MARX, KARL (1857-1858) 1953 Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie. Berlin: Dietz. -> Written in 1857-1858. First published posthumously by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow, in 1939-1941. A partial English translation was published as Precapitalist Economic Formations in 1965 by International Publishers. MARX, KARL (1859)1913 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Chicago: Kerr. -*• First published as Zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1845-1846) 1939 The German Ideology. Parts 1 and 3. With an introduction by R. Pascal. New York: International Publishers. -» Written in 1845-1846; first published in German in 1932. MEHRING, FRANZ (1893) 1953 Die Lessing-Legende: Zur Geschichte und Kritik des preussischen Despotismus und der klassischen Literatur. Berlin: Dietz. MILLS, C. WRIGHT 1951 White Collar: The American Middle Classes. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1956.
MASARYK, THOMAS G. OSSOWSKI, STANISLAW (1957) 1963 Class Structure in the Social Consciousness. London: Routledge; New York: Free Press. -» First published as Struktura klasowa w spolecznej swiadomosci. PARETO, VILFREDO (1902-1903) 1965 Les systemes socialistes. 3d ed. Paris: Droz. -* Constitutes Volume 5 of Pareto's Oeuvres completes. RENNER, KARL (1904) 1949 The Institutions of Private Law and Their Social Functions. London: Routledge. -> First published in German in Marx-Studien under the pseudonym J. Karner. SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL 1960 Critique de la raison dialectique, precedee de question de methode. Paris: Gallimard. -» An English translation of the prefatory essay, "Question de methode," was published in 1963 by Knopf as Search for a Method. TONNIES, FERDINAND (1887) 1957 Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press. -> First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper. TONNIES, FERDINAND 1921 Marx: Leben und Lehre. Jena (Germany): Lichtenstein. VEBLEN, THORSTEIN (1899) 1953 The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library. -» A paperback edition was published in 1959. VEBLEN, THORSTEIN 1921 The Engineers and the Price System. New York: Huebsch. WEBER, MAX (1904-1905) 1930 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons, with a foreword by R. H. Tawney. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Scribner. -» See especially pages 35-92. First published in German. The 1930 edition has been reprinted frequently. WEBER, MAX (1904-1917) 1949 The Methodolgy of the Social Sciences. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. ->• First published in German. See especially pages 50-113, "Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy." WEBER, MAX (1907) 1922 R. Stammlers "Uberwindung" der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung. Pages 291-359 in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr. WIATR, JERZY J. 1964 Political Sociology in Eastern Europe: A Trend Report and Bibliography. Current Sociology 13, no. 2.
MASARYK, THOMAS G. Thomas G. Masaryk (1850-1937), Czechoslovakian statesman and social theorist, was born in Hodonin on the Moravian-Slovakian border. His father, a Slovak, was a coachman on one of the imperial estates; his mother came from a small Moravian town. He studied first at the Gymnasium in Brno, but after a conflict with the Roman Catholic church he left there and attended the Gymnasium in Vienna. Later, at the University of Vienna he wrote his dissertation, "Das Wesen der Seele bei Hato" (1876), under the philosopher Franz Brentano. In 1877 he studied with Gustav Theodor Fechner at the University of Leipzig, but Masaryk
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was influenced less by Fechner than by Charlotte Garrigue, a music student whom he met at Leipzig and later married. She came from a well-to-do American Unitarian family, whose religious faith had been shaped by Theodore Parker, and her religious views helped Masaryk define his own. Through her he also gained an understanding of English philosophy and American society: Locke, Hume, Mill, and Spencer influenced his thought, and American institutions guided his social and political aspirations. Masaryk acknowledged the extent of his debt to his wife by taking Garrigue as his middle name. In 1879 Masaryk became Privatdozent of philosophy at the University of Vienna. His interests centered on sociology and on Czech political life. His first important book was Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation (1881). In this work he attempted to deal with suicide as a social phenomenon and to support his conclusions statistically. According to Masaryk, Europe was then in a period of high suicide rates. This could be directly attributed to a decline of monotheistic religion and thus was the "fruit of progress, of education, of civilization" (p. 146). When the Czech university was established at Prague in 1882, Masaryk was called there as extraordinary professor of philosophy. He held his post for 32 years. During those years he helped to form the political and moral ideas of a significant part of the Czech and South Slav intelligentsia, although before 1914 he was not popular among the Czechs. His opposition to the Catholic church, on the one hand, and to Marxism, on the other, his pronounced Westernism, and his "realistic" moderation in political and national demands prevented him from exercising a wider influence. While a professor in Prague, Masaryk published his Versuch einer konkreten Logik: Klariftkation und Organisation der Wissenschaften (1885), his last scholarly work. From then on, most of his work was more directly concerned with moral and political education. He founded and edited several journals, among them Athenaeum and Nase doba ("Our Epoch"), and a political weekly, Cas ("Time"). He was active politically as a member of the Austrian Reichsrat, representing first the Young Czech party, from 1891 to 1893, and later, from 1907 to 1914, the tiny Progressive party (more generally known as the Realist party), which he had founded. Masaryk's political activities reflected the themes of his writings published during these years, in which he discussed Czech nationalism and deplored the deficiencies of the Marxist approach to basic social problems (1895; 1896; 1898). He knew
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Russia from both studies and travels and wrote two volumes interpreting Russian culture, history, and religion (1913). He planned but never completed a third volume, on Dostoevski, whom he regarded as the key author for an understanding of Russia and whose philosophy and outlook he totally rejected. Masaryk's own nationalism revived and extended the ideas underlying the work of the first modern Czech historian, Frantisek Palacky. Masaryk saw the Czech national awakening in the nineteenth century as a continuation of the Hussite reformation of the fifteenth. And the movement of the Bohemian Brethren, in his view, encompassed the highest aspirations of the Czech nation and of the whole of mankind. This vague, moral nationalism was sharply criticized by professional Czech historians like Jaroslav Goll and Josef Pekaf. In 1914 Masaryk left Prague, and during World War i he became the leading propagandist urging the establishment of independent small nations (1918) and the identification of Czech national traditions with those of Western democracy. He made London the center of his activities and in 1917-1918 visited Russia and the United States. It was his plan to create a Czechoslovakia in which Czechs and Slovaks would be united on the strength of ethnic principles and Germans and Magyars would be included on the basis of historical principles; his views prevailed at the Versailles peace conference. He was elected the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and was continuously reelected until he resigned in 1935 for reasons of ill health. Until 1948 he was revered as the "father of his country," but because of his strong antiBolshevik stand the post-1948 communist regime has been sharply critical of him. HANS KOHN WORKS BY MASARYK
1876
Das Wesen der Seele bei Plato. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Vienna. 1881 Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation. Vienna: Konegen. (1885) 1887 Versuch einer konkreten Logik: Klarifikation und Organisation der Wissenschaften. Vienna: Konegen. -» First published as Zdkladove konkretni logiky. (1895) 1935 Ceskd otdzka: Snahy a tuzby ndrodniho obrozeni (The Czech Question: Efforts and Aspirations Towards the National Rebirth). 4th ed. Prague: Cin. (1896) 1920 Karel Havlicek: Snahy a tuzby politickeho probuzeni (Karel Havlicek: Efforts and Aspirations Towards the Political Awakening). 3d ed. Prague: Laichter. (1898) 1935 Otdzka socidlni: Zdklady marxismu sociologicke a filosoficke (The Social Question: The Sociological and Philosophical Foundations of Marxism). 3d ed. Prague: Cin.
(1913) 1955 The Spirit of Russia: Studies in History, Literature and Philosophy. Rev. & enl. ed., 2 vols. New York: Macmillan. -> First published in German. 1918 The New Europe: The Slav Standpoint. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. (1925) 1927 The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914-1918. New York: Stokes; London: Allen & Unwin. -> First published as Svetovd revoluce za vdlky a ve vdlce, 1914—1918. (1931-1933) 1944 Masaryk on Thought and Life: Conversations With Karel Capek. New York: Macmillan. First published as Hovory s T. G. Masarykem. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Festschrift Th. G. Masaryk zum 80. Geburtstage. 2 vols. 1930. Bonn: Cohen. LUDWIG, EMIL (1935) 1936 Defender of Democracy: Masaryk of Czechoslovakia. New York: Robert McBride. First published as Gesprdche rn.it Masaryk: Denker und Staatsmann. NEJEDLY, ZDENEK (1930-1935) 1949-1950 T. G. Masaryk. 2d ed., 2 vols. Prague: Orbis. SETON-WATSON, ROBERT W. 1943 Masaryk in England. New York: Macmillan.
MASS BEHAVIOR See COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR and NOMENA.
MASS PHE-
MASS COMMUNICATION See COMMUNICATION, MASS. MASS CULTURE See COMMUNICATION, MASS; MASS SOCIETY. MASS MEDIA See COMMUNICATION, MASS. MASS PHENOMENA The term "mass phenomena" as it is used in this article is intended to cover the same range of behavior as that denoted by two frequently used similar expressions: "collective behavior" and "mass behavior." Under this general rubric a number of more specific terms have commonly been employed to refer to the five major subtypes of mass phenomena: (1) apathy, (2) panic, (3) mob, (4) craze, and (5) social movement. These major subtypes are in turn divisible into still finer subclassifications, denoted by a miscellany of terms which have come to be used conventionally to describe local varieties of unique forms. Thus some mob situations are commonly labeled "riots," as in "race riots," and certain others are referred to as "lynchings"; some social movements are called "revitalization movements," and these are still further classified by local terms, such as "cargo cults" (Oceania), "nativistic move-
MASS PHENOMENA ments" (American Indians), etc. The nomenclature for mass phenomena is so vast and so intricately related to varying criteria that there is no reason to review or attempt to rationalize it in detail here. It should be noted that there are also other terms, like "mass hysteria," which crosscut this natural historian's nomenclature. These terms draw attention to certain psychological or social attributes which several types of mass phenomena have in common and which they sometimes share with behavior that is not included under the category of mass phenomena. Definition. Although there seems to be an intuitive recognition by most observers that all of these forms of human behavior have something in common which justifies treating them as a unit, the efforts to define this commonality are not always in agreement. Smelser has provided a definition in his book, Theory of Collective Behavior: "we define collective behavior as mobilization on the basis of a belief which redefines social action" ([1962] 1963, p. 8). Brown (1954) in his discussion of the varieties of mass phenomena suggests a set of dimensions for their classification (size, frequency and regularity of congregation, frequency and regularity of polarization of attention, and continuity of identification of individuals with the group), but he provides no definition. Any definition must not only state common features of the various referents of the term but must also state common features which nonmembers of the class do not possess. Certainly the term "mass phenomenon" cannot be taken to refer to all attributes of a large group of people (however "large" may be defined); otherwise, we should have to include culture, acculturation, culture change, population growth, voting behavior, rumor circulation, and many other social and cultural attributes and processes under the rubric of mass phenomena. Neither can we comfortably include all situations in which a large group of people is collected in one place, or in which many people are simultaneously the target of communication: not all audience or crowd behavior will fall within the intuitive boundaries of the concept. Nor can we be satisfied with a definition that emphasizes a single psychological or social process—such as fear or mobilization—without regard to the size (or "mass") of the group involved. If we keep these considerations in mind, it would appear that Smelser's definition is nearly adequate to our needs. But its emphasis on mobilization makes it difficult to include the disaster syndrome (including shock, apathy, disorientation, and the very opposite of mobilization of a
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group for action). Thus I suggest the following, somewhat less analytical, definition: "Mass phenomenon" signifies that class of social event in which a large number of people at the same time behave in a way which constitutes a notable interruption of their routine, socially sanctioned role behavior. The varieties of mass phenomena. Let us now consider how the characteristics recognized by the above definition are manifested in the subclasses of mass phenomena to which I have referred. Apathy and the disaster syndrome. The disaster syndrome occurs after a major catastrophe, usually physical, has destroyed important features of a group's natural and/or cultural environment, frequently with severe casualties. In this case the interruption of routine behavior implies the virtual cessation of any kind of adaptive behavior. Initially, the surviving population appears to be in a state of shock: people are passive, emotionally numb, relatively insensitive to physical pain, apathetic, disoriented, unable to understand the magnitude of the disaster, and unresponsive beyond minimal survival action; little mutual aid is undertaken, and remedial action is often trivial. After minutes or hours—and perhaps longer—as aid enters from outside the disaster area, the survivors become less apathetic and enter into a suggestible stage in which, under leadership, they can begin to engage in rescue, repair, and other useful activities. Eventually the syndrome moves into a euphoric stage of mutual aid in reconstruction, and at last it tapers off into the culturally standardized routine. [See also DISASTERS. For discussion of the disaster syndrome see Wallace 1956a.] Panic. Panic occurs when a group is subjected to an overwhelming and imminent threat to which escape appears to be the only effective response, and when escape routes are perceived to be inadequate to accommodate all of the group before the impact of the threatened event. In such a situation, the group structure disintegrates into an "every-man-f or-himself" state of anarchy: individual escape tactics are apt to be chosen impulsively, with little foresight and with restricted attention to the real environment; jamming is likely to occur at the exits from the situation, with attendant injury, loss of life, and increased slowing of the escape flow. The interruption here is twofold: first, the abandonment of group structure by individuals (even though the group itself may have had a plan for handling the problem by reducing the threat or by orderly escape); and second, the severe constriction of perceptual and cognitive functions of individuals under the stress of fear.
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Mob. The mob is an angry group which attacks and attempts to injure or destroy an object (usually a person or persons or some item of material culture identified with some human being or group). It differs from a military or police force insofar as the members of the mob are not performing socially sanctioned roles and insofar as the attack is not undertaken as an implementation of a rational policy concerted by the mob's members (although, to be sure, there may be a leader who, unknown to the rank and file, is exciting and directing the mob, carrying out a policy of his own or of some other group). The interruption of routine behavior here is the abandonment of the socially sanctioned roles of peaceable, law-abiding private citizens and the assumption of primitive judgmental and punitive roles which are carried out with minimal concern for justice (as locally defined) or for long-term consequences. Craze. The craze is a short-lived rush, by many persons, to worship, to touch, or to acquire some object (human or material) or characteristic of value. In its milder forms it may be referred to as a "fad"—a clothing style, a type of haircut, a dance; in more extreme expression it may be termed a "craze" (proper)—such as the adulation of a popular singer by thousands of screaming fans, a kind of financial investment, or a rush to settle new lands or to exploit unclaimed mineral resources. The interruption here is the abandonment of previous objects of interest and the substitution for them, by many people at the same time, of a standardized object. [See FASHION.] Social movement. The social movement (or revitalization movement), whether religious or political and whether revolutionary or reformative, is by definition an organized effort to induce the members of a community to abandon certain customs or practices and to adopt different ones. The participants in the movement, starting with the prophet or leader, then his disciples, and eventually at least some followers, do in fact change their ways and the distribution of their energies. In every social movement, therefore, there is an interruption of a routine and the substitution of a new pattern of behavior, rationalized by reference to an ideology. The aim of the movement, of course, may be to accomplish a much more extensive interruption and to institute a much more pervasive new system than ever is accomplished. [See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS.] Phenomena not considered. It may be pointed out that in the above discussion we have left out certain phenomena which are included in some treatments. Thus, for instance, we have not treated
crowds per se as examples of mass phenomena, because many crowds are engaged in perfectly routine, standardized activities. Thus, for instance, we do not treat as a mass phenomenon the audience at sports events, at theaters, and at religious ceremonials because it is an organized group interacting with another group (the performers) in a patterned, culturally institutionalized way, even in cases (as at political rallies, voodoo rituals, or Holy Roller types of religious revival) where the behavior is excited or hysterical in a technical sense. Similarly, crowds on arteries of transportation, in markets, or in military units, however poorly or well organized, are not treated as mass phenomena, because the behavior involved is perfectly explicable and predictable from a knowledge of the culture. Nor do we consider the gross characteristics and social activities of vast aggregates —like "the masses," "the consumer," "the proletariat," "the Negro," or "the Southern white"— as mass phenomena in themselves. The reader may, however, note that while the behaviors which have been treated as mass phenomena do have in common the feature of interruption of routine, they range from the nonpurposeful, inactive, maladaptive extreme of the disaster syndrome, through grades of increasingly purposeful, active, adaptive behavior, to the social movement, which is eminently purposeful, active, and adaptive. In the next section we shall take up the question of explanation, not only for the mass phenomenon in general, but for the occurrence of its varieties. Explanations of mass phenomena. Explanations —and predictions—of mass phenomena usually invoke a mixture of psychological and sociological principles. Sometimes efforts are made to provide purely sociological explanations; these efforts, however, are generally justified by pointing out the deficiencies of early psychological theories that postulated "herd instincts," "the group mind," and the atavistic vulnerabilities of civilized men. Although such appeals to supposed universal psychological tendencies are fruitless as guides for research, the "pure" sociological approach merely reintroduces psychology through the back door via definitions of "social" concepts in terms of sentiments, goals, values, needs, and so forth. It seems wisest to make use explicitly of both psychological and sociological variables, evaluating the utility of each by more or less operational criteria. On the most generic level, the following conditions seem to be required for the occurrence of any mass phenomenon: (1) a certain type of information must be presented to the members of
MASS PHENOMENA the target group, approximately simultaneously; (2) the type of information which is presented must describe a difference between the individual's present situation and that which either has obtained in the past or very probably will obtain in the future; (3) the difference must be sufficient to constitute a dramatic gain, or loss, of important values (such as life, health, or self-respect); (4) the present or future loss must be perceived as avoidable, or the future gain as achievable, if something is done. The resultant action is, in fact, the behavior described as the mass phenomenon. Further conditions need to be specified before it is possible to predict what that action will be. Important classes of such conditions are, first, the precise nature of the threat, disaster, or future gain; and, second, the existing cultural system of the target group—its goals, its fears, its ontological beliefs, its social organization, and its modal personality structure. Apathy and the disaster syndrome. In a major disaster or in a situation of threat from which no escape route can at the moment be perceived, the mass action is, in effect, no action, or apathy: the only relief from the awareness of an unchangeable contrast between good past and bad present, or good present and bad future, is denial or withdrawal from awareness of reality as thus defined. The disaster syndrome, the cultural situation of universal demoralized individual behavior resulting from anomie, and the fictional social condition of an impending world's end described in Nevil Shute's popular novel On the Beach are examples of the apathetic response. It is worth noting that panic does not occur under these conditions. Panic. Where the catastrophe has not yet occurred and there is still a possibility—but a narrow and diminishing one—of escape, panic occurs instead of apathy. The action involved is frequently precipitate physical flight, but other activities may represent the appropriate mode of escape: the selling of property, as in a financial crash or in a neighborhood threatened with invasion by an unwanted social group; or the hoarding of food in anticipation of shortages. Mob. Where a catastrophe may occur but is not imminent, and where its likelihood is believed to be increased by the actions or inaction of some other person or group who is not believed to be responsive to the fears of the threatened group, a likely response is mob action. Mob action is also likely where an important goal is believed to be achievable but blocked by the action or inaction °f some nonresponsive social group. The critical factor here seems to be the group's belief that the
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disparity between present and future (whichever way the balance lies—good present and bad future or bad present and good future) can be resolved only if some weak and evil persons are injured or destroyed. In the mob situation, furthermore, it is possible for the group to find relief for their feelings of guilt in scapegoating, that is, attributing to others those faults, often irrelevant to the precipitating issue, whose recognition in themselves would cause the members of the mob to feel further discomfort. [See PREJUDICE.] Craze. In the craze, the members of the group seem to be driven by both a hope for some desirable thing and a fear of being left behind while others enjoy themselves. In a sense the craze is a "positive" panic: the urgency of the situation lies not in the imminence of danger, escape from which becomes less likely with each passing moment, but in the availability of a benefit, access to which may be reduced in the near future. Social movement. The social (or revitalization) movement is the most positive, most organized, and most deliberate of the mass phenomena. In polar contrast to apathy, the participants in such a movement must maintain an effective social organization over considerable periods of time. The social movement defines the present as a transfer point between an undesirable past and a glorious future. It mounts a carefully calculated campaign, by a mixture of religious and political procedures, to transform society from an evil to a good condi' tion. In the social movement, the character of the existing culture is closely relevant to what happens. Prevailing beliefs about the mechanisms of change are apt to determine the form of—but not to precipitate—the movement. Thus, among Jews the belief in a Messiah, and among Muslims the belief in the Mahdi, have heavily colored the movements that have occurred among these peoples; the Melanesian "myth dream" of their ancestors returning with cargo and the Christian concept of the millennium have shaped many of the movements in their respective parts of the world. [See MlLLENARISM; NATIVISM AND REVIVALISM.]
It should finally be pointed out that mass phenomena of different types can follow one another in sequence in a given group. Thus, an apathetic phase following the awareness of disaster may be succeeded by a revitalization movement; a rioting mob may be swept by panic; an enthusiastic meeting of participants in a craze may turn into a riot if the object of the craze is withheld; and so on. It follows from the definition and from the general statement of conditions that a mass phe-
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MASS SOCIETY
nomenon, once established, can readily be transmuted in form as the nature of the information given to the group is varied. ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE [Directly related is the entry COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR. Other relevant material may be found in GROUPS; INTERACTION; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY The bibliography on mass phenomena is extensive and diffuse. Smelser 1962 contains the most useful general bibliography on the topics considered in this article, except for the subject of apathy, which is not treated. The National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council has published a series of monographs on disaster behavior, including the apathetic reaction, and maintains a large card catalogue of works on disaster. See also the bibliographies of COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR and DISASTERS. BLUMER, HERBERT 1957 Collective Behavior. Pages 127158 in Joseph B. Gittler (editor), Review of Sociology: Analysis of a Decade. New York: Wiley. BROWN, ROGER W. 1954 Mass Phenomena. Volume 2, pages 833-876 in Gardner Lindzey (editor), Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: AddisonWesley. FESTINGER, LEON; RIECKEN, HENRY W.; and SCHACHTER, STANLEY 1956 When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. QUARANTELLI, ENRICO 1954 The Nature and Conditions of Panic. American Journal of Sociology 60:267-275. SMELSER, NEIL J. (1962) 1963 Theory of Collective Behavior. London: Routledge; New York: Free Press. WALLACE, ANTHONY F. C. 1956a Tornado in Worcester. Washington: National Research Council. WALLACE, ANTHONY F. C. 1956b Revitalization Movements. American Anthropologist New Series 58:264281.
MASS SOCIETY "Mass society" is best understood as a term denoting a model of certain kinds of relationships that may come to dominate a society or part of a society. Terms like "mass production" and "mass communication" refer to activities that are intended to affect very large numbers of people who are seen, for these purposes, as more or less undifferentiated units of an aggregate or "mass." Similarly, a "mass society" is one in which many or most of the major institutions are organized to deal with people in the aggregate and in which similarities between the attitudes and behavior of individuals tend to be viewed as more important than differences. Societies or institutions organized in this way are said to have a "mass character," and the life of individuals in such societies is said to be governed primarily by "mass relations." The structure of mass society Large populations do not by themselves produce mass relations, although mass relations are less
likely among small populations. In the past, large societies were divided into many segments with relatively clear boundaries separating each segment from the other. Even though a society contained thousands of villages, all of them much alike, it was not a mass society because human relations centered on the village and supported the integrity of the village as a social unit. Unlike the village-based society, the mass society does not help to sustain spontaneously evolving and durable social units. "Mass" in its simplest sense means an aggregate of people without distinction of groups or individuals. In mass production, for example, workers are organized according to the logic of specialization and control rather than as members of social groups or as distinct persons, and production is geared to a market of similarly undifferentiated people. Mass production, of course, involves a highly structured mass, by virtue of the division of labor and administrative organization, and it is therefore to be distinguished from the unstructured mass represented, for example, by the aggregate of unemployed workers. Moreover, some industries have more of a mass character than others: the assembly-line system of automobile factories is much more conducive to the emergence of the mass than is the craft-based system of printing (Blauner 1964). Nevertheless, the mass character of the market is a decisive factor in the organization of most manufacturing industries. It is not so much the large size of the population as it is the large scale of activities that favors mass relations. Where the scale of activity is very great, it is more likely that the social relations which individuals bring with them or develop will be easily ignored or transformed by the dictates of technical efficiency or effective control. Thus, mass relations are likely to emerge where large-scale activities predominate, as in nationwide organizations, markets, audiences, and electorates. The decline of community. Large-scale activities favor the emergence of the mass because they tend to develop at the expense of communal relations. The local community comes to provide for fewer of its members' needs and therefore cannot maintain their allegiance. The rural community no longer is isolated and self-sufficient. As it becomes dependent on the city, and particularly on national markets and organizations, the rural community loses its significance and cohesion. The city does not develop the communal life that was formerly provided by the rural community. The individual who migrates to the city does not enter the community as a whole, nor is he likely to enter a subcommunity of the city. The urban subcommunity loses its coherence as a result of the increasing
MASS SOCIETY tie and specialization of common activities. Inad of affiliation with a community, the urban ident frequently experiences considerable social lation and personal anonymity. Ethnic and religious groups also tend to lose :ir coherence as their members are drawn into ge-scale organizations and arenas. Individuals rive less of their social identity, style of life, and ;ial values from their ethnic and religious back)und. As ethnic cultures come in contact with iss culture, they cease to preserve their unique alities. Religious groups tend to de-emphasize 5ir theological and liturgical differences. The parular religious affiliation loses its significance for th religious and secular beliefs and conduct, en if people continue to associate primarily with religionists, this has little influence on the quality their lives or on the manner of their participan in the larger society. Like local, ethnic, and religious communities, iss-based communities tend to lose their imrtance and coherence where the whole population incorporated into large-scale activities. Social isses weaken as sources of distinctive values, fles of life, and social identity; and they increasgly resemble one another in the beliefs, values, id interests of their members. Class distinctions e leveled, and class boundaries are blurred. Class nsciousness and class solidarity dissolve into ass consciousness and mass solidarity. The lower asses are increasingly brought into arenas of comunication, politics, and consumption previously nited to the higher classes. Class differences in >portunities and modes of participation that reain are no longer believed to be desirable or :rmanent. Common symbols of the good life and rights and obligations replace class-differentiated incepts. Classes remain as categories of people ho differentially share in common ways of life .ther than as self-conscious groups with distincve ways of life. Status strivings and anxieties )ound, but this testifies to the ambiguity of status here fixed social hierarchies no longer exist. The ascendance of organization. Mass organiitions replace communal groups as the charactertic units of society. Mass organizations are large id formal, but some large and formal organizaons exhibit more of a mass character than do :hers. The additional features that constitute a lass character include a membership that is strucired primarily by administrative devices rather lan through social relations, and, correlatively, stivity that is mobilized from the center rather lan generated through various groups within the fganization (Selznick 1952). Mass organizations o not build on the primary relations of members,
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nor do they support and facilitate primary relations among members. The result is a relatively unmediated and depersonalized relationship between the membership and the organization. Where the organization seeks a highly active membership, as in certain kinds of mass parties, intense identifications with the organization may be created. Most mass organizations do not seek a mobilized membership, however, and do not possess the symbols or other resources for mobilization. Instead, they are content with passive support from their members, who in turn acquire little social identity from the organization. Solidarity tends to be weak under these conditions, and symbolic or personal gratifications correspondingly slight. Unlike membership in communities, membership in mass organizations tends to be a fragile bond because relations are impersonal and leveled. This weakness is indicated by high rates of mobility of members, as they respond to opportunities for greater benefits and to new interests elsewhere. As mass organizations replace communities, so do "mass arenas" displace local arenas. Mass arenas, including national markets and electorates, are spheres of activity common to all sections of the population. Like mass organizations, mass arenas are managed from the center rather than structured through social relations. They are managed primarily through the mass media of communication, since only in this way can an entire population be presented simultaneously with the same objects of attention. People participate in mass arenas by selecting from among the alternatives presented through the mass media. Since the alternatives are standardized in order to reach the entire population simultaneously and since they are directed to individuals as undifferentiated members of the society, participation transcends the individual's social relations (Blumer 1939). Mass equalitarianism. Pervading all kinds of mass relations is a common normative orientation of equalitarianism. All members of mass society are equally valued as voters, buyers, and spectators. Numerical superiority therefore tends to be the decisive criterion of success. In the political realm this means the number of votes; in the economic realm it is the number of sales; and in the cultural realm it is the size of the audience. Mass equalitarianism is strengthened by the attenuation of the social bases of inequality, notably membership in ethnic and religious groups and especially in social classes. In contrast to the equalitarianism of small numbers, as in friendships, mass equalitarianism emphasizes the similarities of individuals rather than the uniqueness of persons. Mass equalitarianism is also linked to the bu-
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MASS SOCIETY
reaucratization of organization. Mass organization simultaneously encourages the bureaucratic centralization of governing powers and the leveling of social differences among the governed (Weber 1906-1924). The incorporation of all sections of the population into large-scale activities summons centralized organization for coordination and control. Mass bureaucracies favor the leveling of social differences in the interest of efficiency. By treating everyone alike, according to functionally rational rules and procedures, mass bureaucracies foster equalitarianism. However, bureaucratic recruitment on the basis of professional competence raises new hierarchies. To be sure, careers open to talent are in greater harmony with equalitarian beliefs than is selection according to family and property. But professional elites are nevertheless elites and thereby introduce new social distinctions. This is a source of strain in modern society; in the political realm, for example, there is a tension between planning by experts and participation by mass electorates [see ELITES]. Mass equalitarianism is expressed in the populist character of mass society. Whatever is believed to express the popular will or to meet the most widely shared expectations is considered legitimate (Shils 1956). Political regimes strive to be popular regimes, whether they are dictatorial or constitutional. While this popular legitimation of authority centers in the polity, it pervades all kinds of social institutions. Populism places a premium on the capacity of leaders to create and placate popular opinion. Those who are effective in mobilizing large numbers of people have great power, and this generally means the leaders of mass parties. The mass leader seeks to embody and reflect popular desires; masses, not elites, are the ultimate sources of legitimation in mass society. This leads elites to make themselves readily accessible to popular pressures: that is, they are forced to be responsive not only to periodic expressions of public opinion through regular channels such as elections, but also to momentary and ad hoc representations of whatever is claimed to be popular. Leaders, of course, do not seek merely to respond to mass opinion. They also try to control it. Since they lack firm bases of independent authority, their control tends to take the form of manipulation and mobilization rather than command. The very presence of large numbers of only loosely organized and committed people summons efforts of leaders to manipulate and mobilize them. For if elites are highly accessible to mass pressures, so are masses readily available for mobilization by elites. People are receptive to direct appeals from remote elites, because they are poorly attached to proximate sym-
bols and relationships and increasingly caught up in distant events and activities (Kornhauser 1959). Mass movements. As mass society develops, there is a growing cleavage between those who continue to be integrated in local groups and those who have already been incorporated into mass relations. In part this is a difference between the old classes and the new classes—craftsmen versus industrial workers, independent entrepreneurs versus industrial managers, free professionals versus members of professional staffs, and so forth. Increasingly isolated from the larger society, members of the declining classes readily come to believe that they are the victims of it. More generally, the locally attached, in their resentment of the ascendancy of big cities, big government, big business, and big labor, become receptive to the appeals of mass movements directed against the forces of mass society. Then there is the growing number of people who have been detached from communal relations but who are not, or not yet, incorporated into mass relations. It is