In chapter i conflict groups were divided into gangs, labor organizations, sects, parties, and nationalities.[219] Common to these groups is an organization and orientation with reference to conflict with other groups of the same kind or with a more or less hostile social environment, as in the case of religious sects.
The spontaneous organizations of boys and youths called gangs attracted public attention in American communities because of the relation of these gangs to juvenile delinquency and adolescent crime. An interesting but superficial literature upon the gang has developed in recent years, represented typically by J. Adams Puffer The Boy and his Gang. The brief but picturesque descriptions of individual gangs seem to indicate that the play group tends to pass over into the gang when it comes into conflict with other groups of like type or with the community. The fully developed gang appears to possess a restricted membership, a natural leader, a name—usually that of a leader or a locality—a body of tradition, custom and a ritual, a rendezvous, a territorial area which it holds as a sort of possession and defends against invasion by other groups. Attention was early called, as by Mr. Brewster Adams in an article The Street Gang as a Factor in Politics, to the facility with which the gang graduates into a local political organization, representing thus the sources of political power of the typical American city.
Although the conflict of economic groups is not a new nor even a modern phenomenon, no such permanent conflict groups as those represented by capital and labor existed until recent times. Veblen has made an acute observation upon this point. The American Federation of Labor, he states, "is not organized for production but for bargaining." It is, in effect, an organization for the strategic defeat of employers and rival organizations, by recourse to enforced unemployment and obstruction; not for the production of goods and services.[220]
Research in the labor problem by the Webbs in England and by Commons, Hoxie, and others in this country has been primarily concerned with the history and with the structure and functions of trade unions. At present there is a tendency to investigate the human-nature aspects of the causes of the industrial conflict. The current phrases "instincts in industry," "the human factor in economics," "the psychology of the labor movement," "industry, emotion, and unrest" indicate the change in attitude. The essential struggle is seen to lie not in the conflict of classes, intense and ruthless as it is, but more and more in the fundamental struggle between a mechanical and impersonal system, on the one hand, and the person with his wishes unsatisfied and insatiable on the other. All attempts to put the relations of capital and labor upon a moral basis have failed hitherto. The latest and most promising experiment in this direction is the so-called labor courts established by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and their employees.
The literature upon sects and parties has been written for the most part with the purpose of justifying, to a critical and often hostile public, the sectarian and partisan aims and acts of their several organizations. In a few works such as Sighele's Psychologie des sectes and Michels' Political Parties an attempt has been made at objective description and analysis of the mechanisms of the behavior of the sect and of the party.
The natural history of the state from the tribe to the modern nation has been that of a political society based on conflict. Franz Oppenheimer maintains the thesis in his book The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically, that conquest has been the historical basis of the state. The state is, in other words, an organization of groups that have been in conflict, i.e., classes and castes; or of groups that are in conflict, i.e., political parties.
A nationality, as distinct from a nation, as for instance the Irish nationality, is a language and cultural group which has become group conscious through its struggle for status in the larger imperial or international group. Nationalism is, in other words, a phenomenon of internationalism.
The literature upon this subject is enormous. The most interesting recent works on the general topic are Dominian's The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, Pillsbury's The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism, and Oakesmith's Race and Nationality.