The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
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.”
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