These, then, are the principal lines of development of the psychical integration. Common interest in maintaining order and law and peace produce a strong feeling of solidarity, which may be called “a consciousness of belonging to the same state.”
(c) THE DIFFERENTIATION: GROUP THEORIES AND GROUP PSYCHOLOGY
On the other hand, as in all organic growth, there develops pari passu a psychic differentiation just as powerful. The interests of the group produce strong group feelings; the upper and lower strata develop a “class consciousness” corresponding to their peculiar interests.
The separate interest of the master group is served by maintaining intact the imposed law of political means; such interest makes for “conservatism.” The interest of the subject group, on the contrary, points to the removal of the prevailing rule, to the substitution for it of a new rule, the law of equality for all inhabitants of the state, and makes for “liberalism” and revolution.
Herein lies the tap root of all class and party psychology. Hence there develop, in accordance with definite psychological laws, those incomparably mighty forms of thought which, as “class theories,” through thousands of years of struggle guide and justify every social contest in the consciousness of contemporaries.
“When the will speaks reason has to be silent,” says Schopenhauer, or as Ludwig Gumplowicz states the same idea, “Man acts in accordance with laws of nature, as an afterthought he thinks humanly.” Man’s will being strictly “determined,” he must act according to the pressure which the surrounding world exerts upon him; and the same law is valid for every community of men: groups, classes, and the state itself. They “flow from the plane of higher economic and social pressure to that of lower pressure, along the line of least resistance.” But every individual and each community of men believe themselves free agents; and therefore, by an unescapable psychical law they are forced to consider the path they are traversing as a freely chosen means, and the point toward which they are driven as a freely chosen end. And since man is a rational and ethical being, that is, a social entity, he is obliged to justify before reason and morality the method and the objective point of his movement, and to take account of the social consciousness of his time.
So long as the relations of both groups were simply those of internationally opposed border enemies, the exercise of the political means called for no justification, because a man of alien blood had no rights. As soon, however, as the psychic integration develops, in any degree, the community feeling of state consciousness, as soon as the bond servant acquires “rights,” and the consciousness of essential equality percolates through the mass, the political means requires a system of justification; and there arises in the ruling class the group theory of “legitimacy.”
Everywhere, the upholders of legitimacy justify dominion and exploitation with similar anthropological and theological reasoning. The master group, since it recognizes bravery and warlike efficiency as the only virtues of a man, declares itself, the victors,—and from its standpoint quite correctly—to be the more efficient, the better “race.” This point of view is the more intensified, the lower the subject race is reduced by hard labor and low fare. And since the tribal god of the ruling group has become the supreme god in the new amalgamated state religion, this religion declares—and again from its view-point quite correctly—that the constitution of the state has been decreed by heaven, that it is “tabu,” and that interference with it is sacrilege. In consequence, therefore, of a simple logical inversion, the exploited or subject group is regarded as an essentially inferior race, as unruly, tricky, lazy, cowardly and utterly incapable of self-rule or self-defense, so that any uprising against the imposed dominion must necessarily appear as a revolt against God Himself and against His moral ordinances. For these reasons, the dominant group at all times stands in closest union with the priesthood, which, in its highest positions, at least, nearly always recruits itself from their sons, sharing their political rights and economic privileges.
This has been, and is at this day, the class theory of the ruling group; nothing has been taken from it, not an item has been added to it. Even the very modern argument by which, for example, the landed nobility of old France and of modern Prussia attempted to put out of court the claims of the peasantry to the ownership of lands, on the allegation that they had owned the land from time immemorial, while their peasants had only been granted a life tenure therein,—is reproduced among the Wahuma, of Africa,[46] and probably could be shown in many other instances.
Like their class theory, their class psychology has been, and is, at all times the same. Its most important characteristic, the “aristocrat’s pride,” shows itself in contempt for the lower laboring strata. This is so inherent, that herdsmen, even after they have lost their herds and become economically dependent, still retain their pride as former lords: “Even the Galla, who have been despoiled of their wealth of herds by the Somali north of the Tana, and who thus have become watchers of other men’s herds, and even in some cases along the Sabaki become peasants, still look with contempt upon the peasant Watokomo, who are subject to them and resemble the Suaheli. But their attitude is quite different toward their tributary hunting peoples, namely, the Waboni, the Wassanai, and the Walangulo (Ariangulo) who resemble the Galla.”[47]