A history of social thought

by Emory S. Bogardus

The labor problem, when applied to men, brings forth a multiplicity of contradictory opinions. The idea of industrial democracy is the storm center. While praising modern capitalism for its stimulus to initiative and for its large-scale enterprises that have been highly beneficial in many ways, the social technologist pronounces modern capitalism undemocratic. He declares that it must purge itself or be supplanted by another industrial order; it must take cognizance of social changes and adjust itself accordingly or be routed.

The injustice in modern capitalism is often stressed in social technologic thought. Only one factor, wealth, is represented in the management of business. The skilled or unskilled laborers, often “the hardest working partners” in the business, are not represented. Applied sociology, unlike socialism, would keep industry in the hands of individuals. The idea has been best developed, perhaps, by a social theorist, Professor A. W. Small. Labor and capital must both have representation on boards of directors, if capitalism is to prove that it is not undemocratic.[XXIV-11]

Tripartite management of industry is a current phase of industrial thought. Where employers and employees have reached a common ground of co-operation, they have often joined forces in collusion against the public and the consumer. The employer agrees to a rise in wages for the employee, and the employee to an increase in dividends, providing he receives a portion of the added returns—meanwhile the public is apathetic or rages impotently. The best thought today is urging that on boards of directors and managers all three interested parties shall have representation, namely, labor, capital, and the public.

It is a current opinion that the failure of capitalism to democratize itself will result in the rise of socialism by revolutionary means. If capital with its one-sided control of industry is supplanted by labor with another type of control, it is doubtful how much will be gained. The labor standard is manifesting itself as a class standard, and at times arbitrarily. To have society controlled by labor standards, no matter under what form of socialism they may appear, will not guarantee progress. The labor classes, the capitalist classes, the professional classes—all must rule, and unselfishly for the welfare of society.

The current socialist thought ranges from a radical bolshevist theme of a dictatorship of the proletariat to a conservative state socialism, like that advocated by John Spargo. Bolshevism has the earmarks of class autocracy. Progress cannot be secured by a social order in which the least educated and trained are in control. On the other hand, it is not clear that state socialism, with its governmental control of interest-producing capital and rent-producing land, will best guarantee progress. The socialization of individuals will probably be more effective than the socialization of industries.

The tendency is toward the elimination of profitism. This negative thought, it is claimed, will relieve capitalism of its worst evils, and allow the educational process of socializing individuals to go forward.

The concept of social insurance has been given a remarkable reception since 1882. Social insurance was introduced as a means of pacifying labor and of making it contented under the rule of capitalism. It was admitted into governmental economy by Bismarck as an agency of forestalling socialism. It spread rapidly. It has met with two setbacks. (1) In the first place it has acquired such momentum that capitalism sees it as the entering wedge of a genuine socialism. (2) In the second place social insurance is guaranteeing so much security to the workingman that he is constrained at times to sacrifice his initiative and even to become shiftless, saying in effect to himself, “I’ll be taken care of anyway.” It is this second type of antagonistic thought that indicates the real weakness in social insurance. It would be better to have a society in which the workingmen as a class would have an ample opportunity of caring for, and be stimulated to care for, their old age and for periods of disability. For the individual exceptions, special provisions could be made.

The unemployment problem has produced many reform theories. Unemployment insurance, now being made the subject of experiment, is probably not reaching the main causes. The causal factors are many and deep-seated; they range from individual shiftlessness and mental defectiveness on one hand, to economic injustice and social callousness on the other.[XXIV-12] The prevailing thought urges a more efficient training of the individual; the increasing of the workman’s opportunity to enlarge his personality through each day’s work; the development of industrial democracy and justice; and a complete socialization program.

Another set of problems concerning which applied sociology is endeavoring to find solutions relates to the family, feminism, marriage, divorce, and housing. Professor George Elliott Howard[XXIV-13] and Dr. Edward Westermarck[XXIV-14] have traced the development of the family and marriage throughout human history. The primitive relationships between sexes have been described by many anthropological writers. A history of the American family has been written by A. W. Calhoun.[XXIV-15] Single volume treatments of the family as a social institution have been made by Bosanquet[XXIV-16] and Goodsell.[XXIV-17] These works essentially agree that the family is an evolutionary product, that the primitive family centered about the mother and child, that patriarchalism introduced a high degree of masculine arbitrariness, and that the family is at present undergoing marked changes whereby the spirit of democracy is gaining ground.

In the new found spirit of freedom, woman has sometimes been captivated by the desire to follow man into all the man-made occupations. Sex nature predestines woman to the chief occupation or profession of all, that of motherhood. For woman to rush headlong after men into industry may turn out to be not liberty, but license and deterioration. Current social thought protests vigorously against the idea of women being household drudges, and also against women wasting their time in pluming themselves or in idling away their days in dolls’ houses, supported dependents of men. Women are entitled to learn vocations and to live constructive lives, in an atmosphere of the largest possible freedom consistent with the development of themselves and the race. On the other hand, any movement which weakens the home as a societary training institution apparently defies the laws of social advance.