In general, the social conflict doctrines, when carried to the extreme, fail to recognize that conflict and co-operation are correlative social processes. Humanly speaking, one is as old as the other. Both spring from the deepest types of human needs. While the earliest types of associative life may have been characterized by a predominance of conflict, the highest stages are ruled by the co-operative spirit. This transition together with the leading co-operation theories of social progress will be taken up in the chapter which follows.
Suffice it to say here that conflict and competition are essential to social advance. They are both highly useful when operating in the fields of production and service.
Chapter XXI
Co-operation Theories in Sociology
One of the first persons to work out a systematic interpretation of co-operation was Giovanni Vico (1668–1744), an Italian philosopher.[XXI-1] Vico rejected the social contract idea because he believed that it was a false interpretation of the true principle of co-operation. The concept of a social contract embodied an artificial and metaphysical notion of social life.
In his chief work, Principles of a New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations, Vico inaugurated a study of actual social phenomena. He sought to discover possible social laws. He attempted to cast aside the accidental social elements and to organize the regularities of social phenomena into laws. He searched for the laws governing the growth and decay of societies. He undertook to analyze the history of human society.
Although Vico’s important treatise was not known outside of Italy until a century and a half after it was originally published, it contained a statement of the factor which is basic to any sound co-operation theory of social progress. Vico was one of the first writers to describe the principle that all human groups have a common nature. His comparative studies of human institutions everywhere, led him always to the belief in the common mind of mankind, a concept which in recent years has been ably elaborated by D. G. Brinton. For this contribution Vico has been called “the father of sociology.”
According to Vico, the fundamental social movement is a gradual unfolding or evolution of social institutions in response to the common needs of people. Society owes its development in part to the reflections of the wise, as the social contract theorists have said, but also to the human feelings even of the brutish. This natural sociability of man has furnished the chief basis for the rise and development of the spirit of co-operation.
The natural sociability of human beings has led, more or less unconsciously on the part of man, to the establishment of necessary social relations and institutions. The purpose of social organization is to produce perfect human personalities. Vico outlined the evolutionary character of society according to the spiral theory, namely, that society does return upon itself but that, when it completes a cycle, it is upon a higher plane of co-operation than when the given cycle began. Vico also made religion a necessary principle of progress. Although in adjusting himself to the prevailing theological dogmas of his time, Vico committed serious scientific errors, he nevertheless is deserving of special credit for his emphasis upon the common nature and natural sociability of mankind.
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the celebrated Dutch scholar, gave to social thought the international concept. He advanced the idea of the coming co-operation among the nations—nations which in his time were moved primarily by jealousy and hatred in their relations with one another. Grotius was the originator of a definite set of principles and laws for international co-operation. His work in this regard accentuated the importance of like-mindedness in matters of international polity.
Spinoza, whose contributions regarding the concept of sovereignty have already been stated, declared that the instinct to acquire is naturally stronger than the tendency to share. Hence, man must be educated to perceive the advantages of co-operative living. When this appreciation occurs, when the advantages of co-operation become clear, then man will sublimate his egoistic and self-seeking desires to altruistic communal living. As man comes to understand, step by step, the values of co-operative conduct, he will overcome, degree by degree, his selfish impulses.