Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and MoralsSumner, William Graham
General
Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
Sumner, William Graham
Manners and customs
+55. Organization of the masses.+ Masses of men who are on a substantial
equality with each other never can be anything but hopeless savages. The
eighteenth-century notion that men in a state of nature were all equal
is wrong-side up. Men who were equal would be in a state of nature such
as was imagined. They could not form a society. They would be forced to
scatter and wander, at most two or three together. They never could
advance in the arts of civilization. The popular belief that out of some
such horde there has come by the spontaneous development of innate
forces all the civilization which we possess is entirely unfounded.
Masses of men who are approximately equal are in time exterminated or
enslaved. Only when enslaved or subjugated are some of them carried up
with their conquerors by organization and discipline (negroes and
Indians amongst us). A horde in which the only differences are those of
age and sex is not capable of maintaining existence. It fights because
only by conquering or being conquered can it endure. When it is
subjugated and disciplined it consists of workers to belabor the ground
for others, or tax payers to fill a treasury from which others may
spend, or food for gunpowder, or voting material for demagogues. It is
an object of exploitation. At one moment, in spite of its aggregate
muscle, it is helpless and imbecile; the next moment it is swept away
into folly and mischief by a suggestion or an impulse. Organization,
leadership, and discipline are indispensable to any beneficial action by
masses of men. If we ignore this fact, we see the machine and the boss
evolved out of the situation which we create.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account