(2) Deceptive conflicts are of an order slightly higher than the militant. They include thieving, swindling, adulteration of goods, false advertising. They imply a greater degree of intelligence than the purely destructive types of conflict.
(3) Another form of conflict is persuasive in character, for example, political, erotic, commercial, and legal conflicts. Political competition includes seeking governmental appointments, running for office, campaigning for a political party. Erotic conflicts are in the main different forms of courtship. Commercial persuasion utilizes the agencies of advertising and salesmanship. Legal conflicts include litigations in the courts. In all these illustrations the individual strives to further his own interests by his persuative ability. Oftentimes resort is made to cheap persuasive methods, such as demagogy or political claptrap. Sometimes the persuasion falls to the level of deception and, occasionally, to destructive depths.
(4) The highest form of conflicts are the productive types. Some productive conflicts refer to rivalries in producing economic goods; others to rivalries in rendering service. In his Essays in Social Justice, Professor Carver discusses three forms of economic competition at length. Here he includes competitive production, competitive bargaining, and competitive consumption of economic goods. The second class has already been referred to as commercial persuasion. Competitive production increases the supply of economic goods and “always works well.” Competitive consumption, however, “always works badly.” It means “rivalry in display, in ostentation, in the effort to outshine or to outdress all one’s neighbors, or at least not to be outshone or outdressed by them.” It is usually deceptive; it has no productive features about it. It may even assume a form of waste and destruction. The highest type of conflict is friendly rivalry in rendering service to other people.
Professor Carver would have self-interest direct its efforts toward the welfare of the nation. Since neither law nor government can eliminate self-interest, the next best thing is to connect it with national well-being. Nearly all useful things that are done in a community are undertaken through self-interest.[XX-15] Even co-operation is a form of competition.[XX-16] The purpose of co-operation is to enable groups of individuals to compete more effectively against opposing groups.
Competition is not an evil in itself. The spirit which dominates competition is the important thing. Some people are motivated by the pig-trough philosophy, which emphasizes struggle for the sake of possession and consumption of goods. The workbench philosophy accents “action and not possession, production and not consumption.”
These theories, excellent in many particulars, apparently do not rate at full value the fact that education and love can and do modify the self-interest of the individual, and at the same time direct the attention of the individual toward unselfish service. In stressing service through achievement and production, they neglect to emphasize achievement through service. Competition in rendering unselfish service is underrated.
It was Novicow, the Russian sociologist, who laid bare the alleged benefits of war, showing that the gains which come from war may be obtained through other methods of social interaction.[XX-17] Novicow argued forcefully that the real enemies of a group of people are disease germs and death, not the best people of other nationality groups. Novicow’s vision enabled him to perceive the foolishness of men who lock themselves together in destructive conflict, when the real enemies are microscopic disease bacteria and the gaunt black specter of death.
Conflict bulks large in the sociology of Edward A. Ross. Any interference with the carrying out of the individual’s plans and with the satisfying of his interests creates opposition. The best characteristic of the phenomenon of opposition is that it awakens and stimulates.[XX-18] Competition operates according to psychologic laws; for example, the intensity of competition varies according (1) to the degree of personal liberty, (2) to the rate of social change, and (3) inversely as the efficiency of the selective agents.[XX-19]
One of the most important forms of competition is found in industrialism. The invention and adoption of the power-driven machine has created an industrialism which is moulding and transforming society in startling ways, and which is causing “its members more and more to cluster at opposite poles of the social spindle.”[XX-20] Professor Ross expresses slight hope that the ownership of industrial capital will be disseminated through the working class according to the conflict rules of the present economic system.
Other conflict theories will be presented in the following chapters; for example, the conflict theories of Gustav Ratzenhofer and Albion W. Small will be noted in the chapter on co-operation concepts, and Gabriel Tarde’s analysis of conflict will be taken up in the discussion of psycho-sociological thought.