5. Fashion, Reform and Revolution
A great deal has been written in recent times in regard to fashion. It has been studied, for example, as an economic phenomenon. Sombart has written a suggestive little monograph on the subject. It is in the interest of machine industry that fashions should be standardized over a wide area, and it is the function of advertising to achieve this result. It is also of interest to commerce that fashions should change and this also is largely, but not wholly, a matter of advertising. Tarde distinguishes between custom and fashion as the two forms in which all cultural traits are transmitted. "In periods when custom is in the ascendant, men are more infatuated about their country than about their time; for it is the past which is pre-eminently praised. In ages when fashion rules, men are prouder, on the contrary, of their time than of their country."[320]
The most acute analysis that has been made of fashion is contained in the observation of Sumner in Folkways. Sumner pointed out that fashion though differing from, is intimately related to, the mores. Fashion fixes the attention of the community at a given time and place and by so doing determines what is sometimes called the Spirit of the Age, the Zeitgeist. By the introduction of new fashions the leaders of society gain that distinction in the community by which they are able to maintain their prestige and so maintain their position as leaders. But in doing this, they too are influenced by the fashions which they introduce. Eventually changes in fashion affect the mores.[321]
Fashion is related to reform and to revolution, because it is one of the fundamental ways in which social changes take place and because, like reform and revolution, it also is related to the mores.
Fashion is distinguished from reform by the fact that the changes it introduces are wholly irrational if not at the same time wholly unpredictable. Reform, on the other hand, is nothing if not rational. It achieves its ends by agitation and discussion. Attempts have been made to introduce fashions by agitation, but they have not succeeded. On the other hand, reform is itself a fashion and has largely absorbed in recent years the interest that was formerly bestowed on party politics.
There has been a great deal written about reforms but almost nothing about reform. It is a definite type of collective behavior which has come into existence and gained popularity under conditions of modern life. The reformer and the agitator, likewise, are definite, temperamental, and social types. Reform tends under modern conditions to become a vocation and a profession like that of the politician. The profession of the reformer, however, is social, as distinguished from party politics.
Reform is not revolution. It does not seek to change the mores but rather to change conditions in conformity with the mores. There have been revolutionary reformers. Joseph II of Austria and Peter the Great of Russia were reformers of that type. But revolutionary reforms have usually failed. They failed lamentably in the case of Joseph II and produced many very dubious results under Peter.
A revolution is a mass movement which seeks to change the mores by destroying the existing social order. Great and silent revolutionary changes have frequently taken place in modern times, but as these changes were not recognized at the time and were not directly sought by any party they are not usually called revolutions. They might properly be called "historical revolutions," since they are not recognized as revolutions until they are history.
There is probably a definite revolutionary process but it has not been defined. Le Bon's book on the Psychology of Revolution, which is the sequel to his study of The Crowd, is, to be sure, an attempt, but the best that one can say of it is that it is suggestive. Many attempts have been made to describe the processes of revolution as part of the whole historical process. This literature will be considered in the chapter on "Progress."