A Critique of "Social Structure"

The essay below was written by my father, Robert. He requested a response, and I though the exchange might be of possible interest to others. I present his work in its entirety, and will parse through it in detail.

-emc


Social Structure

Many years ago, several thousand young men were under orders to commit multiple homicides. Then, one day it was deemed appropriate for two Generals to meet and talk it over. They were not classmates, but both had attended the same military academy. To the vast majority of literate people it would have been very, very inappropriate for them to use their revolvers on each other. When so ordered, enlisted soldiers must kill their counter parts on the other side, but only under very special conditions are commissioned officers expected to kill each other, even their counterparts on the other side. Occasionally, during a war, a high ranking commissioned officer is killed, but the event is usually considered an accident, having little or no connection to the war.

Today in Afghanistan and Iraq there are a few hundred thousands of U.S. privates whose duty it is to kill natives of those two countries when so ordered. This and their own possible death are in the interest of making their own neighborhoods in the U.S. safer. In view of the fact that they are on duty "24 - 7", their salary is probably in terms of tens of dollars per hour. While this was going on, several, (possibly a few hundred) radio and television talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann and others were discussing events in the middle east among other things. These gentlemen are almost never in harm's way, although they do sometimes launch some rather pointed remarks at each other. I suspect that these gentlemen's salaries are hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hour.

A few years ago a television personality, (Martha Stewart) served a few weeks in prison, (albeit one of the "nicer" prisons) for the crime of "inside trading." If I can depend my memory at all, it seems to me that I recall hearing our then President admit to having done the same thing. I do not remember anyone seriously suggesting that the President spend a few weeks in prison.

I used to feel that situations, such as those mentioned above were "not in the best interests" of the greater number of people. I even had two or three rules in mind that, over time might have changed the conclusions of these situations. However, even then I believed that most people would probably not "buy" the suggested rules. I also felt that war should be the last method to consider when trying to resolve international problems.

Then, I came across a book entitled "Sociology" circa 1971 by one David Popenoe. In said book I was reminded again of what my peers have been trying to tell me for years. "That's the way it IS!" According to the book, I have been not only negative and pessimistic, but also mistaken about virtually everything that has come to my attention!
The book also suggests that probably the most important requirement for the survival of any group is a stable social structure. Even the production and distribution of the necessities such as food, shelter and clothing are improved under a working social structure. An important part of the social structure is the establishment and maintenance of the social stratification. This determines the distribution of the desirables.

So it appears that the situations that I find difficulty in accepting are actually the desired results of maintaining a social structure. Considering my limited qualifications, this is really all I need to know.

War seems to be a good thing for at least two reasons:
1.) I seem to remember that during World War Two the prevailing disposition in the population was one of comradeship. People felt that, "We are all in this together."
2.) War seems to have the effect of reinforcing the social stratification. People in the middle and lower classes are told what they should do and when they should do it, thus relieving them of the responsibility of making decisions they are not qualified to make.

The current two wars do not seem to have the effect noted in (1) above. Perhaps they are simply not big enough.


Well, let us begin at the beginning…

Many years ago, several thousand young men were under orders to commit multiple homicides.
By definition, to kill a human being is, necessarily, to commit a homicide – but I am confident that that is not the point being made here. It is clear from the very outset that we will not be limiting ourselves to an objective discourse about facts, but will be subject to an attempt at emotional persuasion. This is an arena that I try, often not very successfully, to avoid. I have to grant that our emotions are important, and that our lives would be not only rather grey, but almost unimaginable without them. That being granted, a lifetime of observation has convinced me that very few problems, either personal or political, are ultimately solved by the application of invective or anger, no matter how righteous or justifiable it might be. Thus, despite the irony, I must at least attempt to approach any discussion of either war or inequality in a logical, methodical way. To discuss such matters in anger is not to understand them, but rather to be consumed by them.

Then, one day it was deemed appropriate for two Generals to meet and talk it over. They were not classmates, but both had attended the same military academy. To the vast majority of literate people it would have been very, very inappropriate for them to use their revolvers on each other.

This is a reference to Lee’s surrender to Grant at the close of the American Civil War.

When so ordered, enlisted soldiers must kill their counter parts on the other side, but only under very special conditions are commissioned officers expected to kill each other, even their counterparts on the other side. Occasionally, during a war, a high ranking commissioned officer is killed, but the event is usually considered an accident, having little or no connection to the war.
This is not an accurate portrayal of history. Officers are commonly killed and commonly called upon to kill. Many weapons are indiscriminate, killing or wounding anyone within a certain zone. While one might plead that these are special circumstances, most combat aircrews are composed chiefly of officers, and they both kill people in sizable numbers and subject themselves to serious risk of death. Many fighter pilots in both world wars no doubt killed far more enemy officers than enlisted men. Neither have officers been exempted from combat as parts of ships crews. A simple review of a few weeks worth of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan will reveal that in the current wars officers are killed in some approximate proportion to their number, even the occasional Major or Lt Colonel. Whether they are killed by enemy officers or partisan snipers seems rather immaterial. Either way, they are equally dead. While it is true that the highest ranks of commissioned officers are rarely killed in war, it is also true that cooks, quartermasters, and other sorts of “rear echelon” troops are rarely killed. All these groups avoid death for approximately the same reason: they are not of much military utility as direct combatants. In circumstances where they are of some actual use in harm’s way, high ranking officers will usually present themselves. Naval warfare is the most obvious example of this; it is a rare task force than is not commanded by an Admiral in situ.

If we may set aside our emotional reactions to war for a moment and look at it as a purposeful endeavor, it may become at least intelligible. I do not dispute that war is an inherently brutal, wasteful and tragic activity – I merely take the position that it is generally neither a mass exercise in cruelty for its own sake, nor a straightforward bloodletting of a nation’s lower classes. War is, as Clausewitz said, the “continuation of politics by other means.” As such, its motivations are essentially political ones. In general, wars are conducted either to expand or preserve the power of such bodies of persons as rule the countries involved. They may or may not be in the interests on the broad majority of the citizens of countries involved, and whether they are or not is not always an easy mater to determine.

At an operational level, the goal of war is not an orgy of “multiple homicides,” but rather the collapse of the opposing state’s capacity to continue military operations. This goal being accomplished, the victorious state’s political ends may (at least in theory 1) be carried out without resistance. From this perspective, it would not only have been “inappropriate” for Grant and Lee to attempt to gun one another down at the surrender table, but entirely senseless from a military point of view. It would not have changed the outcome of the war. Warfare inevitably involves a loss of life, and often a needless loss of life, but warfare is still, for the most part, a means to an end. It is only in a few truly exceptional conflicts that killing takes place as a deliberate policy of genocide, which is to say as an end in itself.

It has been apparent since the Gulf War of 1991 that contemporary American military doctrine centers on the destruction on the opposing state’s command and controls systems, which is to say, their headquarters and communications facilities rather than the opposing soldiers on the front line. The American military exercises this doctrine not because the Joint Chiefs are better, more humane people than they were in World War Two, but simply because they have the technology to carry out such a doctrine. Destruction of an opposing military’s leaders is an efficient means of rendering its conventional forces impotent. While this does not make either war in general or American foreign policy in particular necessarily moral, it does contradict the implied hypothesis that the goal of war is necessarily to kill a maximum of underlings while leaving the upper classes of both sides intact.

Today in Afghanistan and Iraq there are a few hundred thousands of U.S. privates whose duty it is to kill natives of those two countries when so ordered. This and their own possible death are in the interest of making their own neighborhoods in the U.S. safer.
Current U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq totals well fewer than 200,000. I have no idea what fraction of these are privates.

The U.S. is still a signatory to the Geneva Convention so, strictly speaking, who American soldiers may kill and when they may do so is more-or-less narrowly defined by international law. That such restrictions are often breeched during the actual conduct of a war is not a matter I would attempt or even want to dispute – this does not, however, mean that such restrictions are irrelevant. While not explicit, there is an implication in the essay that the soldiers of the United States would be bound, if ordered, to liquidate the populations of Afghanistan and Iraq in the manner that the SS liquidated the population of the Warsaw ghetto. There have certainly been occasional and predictable abuses of civilians among the soldiery, and even (I believe) actual war crimes originating in high government circles, but I don’t think the majority of American soldiers are either indoctrinated or inclined to gun down children in cold blood. Incidents occur, but they are incidents. Our soldiers are not an aggregate of saints, but neither are they an aggregate of butchering robots.

I sympathize with what I presume to be sarcasm, the notion that anything about the current conflicts ultimately makes us any safer. I would go further, in that I am appalled at the extent to which the slogan “support our troops” has come to be interpreted as “support our policy.” It is not a good use of the life of a soldier to shovel him or her into a grave without a clear purpose. If one believes that it is always wrong to question one’s government in time of war, then one must believe that the German people had no right to question their government after 1939. If one believes that rules that apply to Germans (or any other people) should not apply to us, then one is has taken the first patriotic step toward a very deep abyss. Whether or not a government’s policies are either moral or successful are questions one should always be able to ask. Whether or not the current conflicts make us any safer is debatable, and there appear to be worthy arguments for either position.

In view of the fact that they are on duty "24 - 7", their salary is probably in terms of tens of dollars per hour. While this was going on, several, (possibly a few hundred) radio and television talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann and others were discussing events in the middle east among other things. These gentlemen are almost never in harm's way, although they do sometimes launch some rather pointed remarks at each other. I suspect that these gentlemen's salaries are hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hour.

A US Army PFC with a few years of service earns $1923 per month. If one works this out as an hourly rate on a 24-7 basis, the resultant figure is $2.63 per hour. Of course, soldiers do not have to pay for their own food, medical expenses, etc. – but let’s not muddy the water unnecessarily: celebrities don’t necessarily cover all of their expenses either. Olbermann’s annual salary is rumored at $4,000,000. Limbaugh’s salary in 2007 was $33,000,000. If one calculates Limbaugh’s hourly rate on a 24-7 basis (though it’s rather doubtful that he’s “on duty” all the time) one gets a figure of $3764.54 per hour. If you want look at his pay in military terms, Limbaugh is paid as much a US Army battalion, officers and all. Whatever one may feel about this, these are the facts.

The cliché that “money is power” is a very true one. Money is not only power in the sense of being able to buy political power, but is power in the more mundane sense of being able to buy goods and services. If one goes into a store and buys an object, one is exercising a form of power. Obviously, this power is not inherent in the money itself, but is present only by virtue of a common understanding among the people who circulate it. Power can be embodied in other forms. In medieval society, for example, money was important but a poor nobleman might still get the better of a rich merchant. Likewise, the clergy had rights and powers beyond the gold that they possessed (not that the material wealth of the church was in any way lacking).

Money is just a particular way of distributing certain social “rights,” but those “rights,” in one form or another, are an apparently inevitable feature of human social behavior. I cannot think of a single instance of a human society, of any size, that is not hierarchically structured. While there is a considerable variability from society to society in the depth of the disparity between their least and most powerful members, all societies distribute power unequally.

Getting back to example offered, an Army private has the “right” to acquire a certain amount of petty property, to gamble money on poker, stocks or other entities, to claim benefits provided in the contract he or she signed with the government, etc. Mr. Limbaugh has the “right” to a far greater amount of petty property, may speculate with vastly greater sums if he so chooses, and is neither encumbered by the heavy duties nor provided with the modest benefits of a soldier. He may, significantly, cease working forever at more-or-less the time of his choosing without fear of wanting for housing, food, or any common run of luxuries in his lifetime – or in fact, in many lifetimes. The soldier usually knows were his next meal is coming from, but has little promise of security to the end of his days.

While a “rights” perspective is not as neatly quantifiable as a financial one, it offers the advantage of allowing broader comparisons. One can, for example, compare capitalist and non-capitalist societies this way. Under communist hierarchies, for example, the lower strata of society have as many options and as much personal security as their governments (the highest strata of their society) are inclined to (or can) provide. The upper strata get as much compensation as they feel they deserve. Looked at from this narrow perspective, capitalism and communism are not greatly different. Both allow notably more social mobility that the hereditary hierarchies that preceded them. Getting rich in America or becoming a governmental official in Cuba are both at least within the realm of possibility for individuals from the lower classes of those societies; becoming a nobleman was not even a possibility for a medieval peasant.

While the salaries of TV celebrities, bankers, football players, etc, are out of any proportion to their demonstrable value to society, the system we live under makes no real claim to reward people in accordance with their social worth. A little less economic disparity might be nice, but any scheme that eliminates economic tyranny by introducing political tyranny is not much of an advance. The reverse is not that laudable either. Human beings have yet to devise a system of social organization that works for everyone. I am justifiably skeptical about this happening, ever. Evolution is not a process that tends toward a complete and uniform state of happiness for all the members of a species.

A few years ago a television personality, (Martha Stewart) served a few weeks in prison, (albeit one of the "nicer" prisons) for the crime of "inside trading." If I can depend my memory at all, it seems to me that I recall hearing our then President admit to having done the same thing. I do not remember anyone seriously suggesting that the President spend a few weeks in prison.
Here too, we have another example of the admittedly uneven distribution of power, not explicitly stated in law, but nonetheless quite apparent. People connected to the highest tier of government are only at the mercy of the law to the extent that some quorum of their peers chose to enforce it. The impersonal, bureaucratic wheels of justice that constrain the rest of us have difficultly punishing the people who invest those wheels with authority. This was true of Bushes’ insider trading, Cheney and others’ apparent complicity in war crimes, and Obama’s failure to publically produce his birth certificate.2 Martha Stewart, though a celebrity, had no extralegal powers. The best that she could do was hire expensive counsel. It wasn’t a charge like those against Michael Jackson, who had the option of just buying off the families of his accusers. Uniform justice is a pleasant ideal, perhaps even a useful one, but while one can be disgusted at its failure in application it takes an impressive naiveté to be shocked. Such events are as old as human society.

I used to feel that situations, such as those mentioned above were "not in the best interests" of the greater number of people. I even had two or three rules in mind that, over time might have changed the conclusions of these situations. However, even then I believed that most people would probably not "buy" the suggested rules. I also felt that war should be the last method to consider when trying to resolve international problems.
So spoke Don Quixote to the world. Well, perhaps an anarchist, pacifist Don Quixote – but Don Quixote nevertheless.

Personally, I agree that war should be the recourse of last resort. This also seems to be the general historical trend. As late as the 19th century, openly expansionist wars were the norm, especially wars conducted against technologically less advanced nations. There was relatively little moral backlash about the conquest of the British Empire, either within Britain or without. Such a series of imperialist wars would be utterly unthinkable now. One has only to consider the nearly universal backlash against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait or the more recent American invasion of Iraq. Most contemporary wars are either revolutions or civil wars resulting from the creation of artificial, multinational states in the wake of colonialism. Iraq, for example, is one state but essentially three nations. While such conflicts can be bitter, long, and bloody, the unabashed expansionism of earlier times has greatly abated. While wars of conquest still occur, the belligerents are usually more cautious and inclined to take greater care about the defensibility of their pretexts.

It is indeed unfortunate that we have not arrived at utopia in the course of one man’s lifetime. It is untrue, however, that amid all the carnage of the 20th century there haven’t also been significant movements away from warfare, and, at least here and there, some little progress toward more humane and equitable societies.

Then, I came across a book entitled "Sociology" circa 1971 by one David Popenoe. In said book I was reminded again of what my peers have been trying to tell me for years. "That's the way it IS!" According to the book, I have been not only negative and pessimistic, but also mistaken about virtually everything that has come to my attention!

The book also suggests that probably the most important requirement for the survival of any group is a stable social structure. Even the production and distribution of the necessities such as food, shelter and clothing are improved under a working social structure. An important part of the social structure is the establishment and maintenance of the social stratification. This determines the distribution of the desirables.

So it appears that the situations that I find difficulty in accepting are actually the desired results of maintaining a social structure. Considering my limited qualifications, this is really all I need to know.
I am neither familiar with the book referenced here nor have I made a formal study of the field of sociology. However, accepting that Popenoe’s assertions are as you have summarized, the point is so self evident as to be hardly worth making. As I have already stated, I cannot think of a single instance of a human society that is not hierarchically structured. For the sake of argument though, let’s try to imagine one.

Such a society, to begin with, would look nothing like ours in a physical sense. Nothing could be built beyond what a handful of friends might manage to wrest from nature. There could be no buildings of any great size, no roads, and nothing as complex as an automobile, certainly. There would be no music other than what a person might make on simple instruments crafted with the simplest of tools. It takes an organized society to produce anyone as specialized as a violin maker. There could be no symphonic music in any case, because orchestras are hierarchies. Likewise, it is hard to imagine science advancing very far without some organization to support the scientist’s inquiries, provide instrumentation, and disseminate discoveries. In the hierarchy-free society Beethoven and Einstein would have to dig potatoes, clean skins, or hunt and fish with everyone else.

The problems get worse. What if, in this amorphous mass of absolute social equals, some little group decided to seize some measure of power by threat of force or cleverness? What mechanism inherent in the nature of the amorphous mass would prevent them from succeeding? It would have to be some trait inherent in individual human beings. Even such a constraining entity as a circle of tribal elders is a body with special authority, and therefore a hierarchy. One cannot look to laws or other sorts of rules, because these are, themselves, features of hierarchies requiring someone to enforce them. While most human beings do resist authoritarian constraint beyond a certain point, it is evident in every society on earth that real human beings endure or even welcome authority up to that point. Power abhors a vacuum, and states of anarchy never last long. The hierarchy-free society can be no more than an imaginary construct, since its existence would require an isolated population of flawlessly egalitarian human beings. To the best of my knowledge, no such population has ever existed.3
Now, none of this is to say that more and deeper hierarchy is always better, or that the concentration of power without limit is either good or inevitable. I would not assert this. I merely assert that an absolute rejection of hierarchy is tantamount to a rejection of human nature. Any scheme of social improvement that requires that human beings be something other than what evolutionary forces have made them is bound to be repressive, and a repressive scheme that, by its own principle, cannot be enforced can equally not succeed. It is also quite an odd conception on its face that people could be free of oppression if only they adhered to certain unshakable rules.

War seems to be a good thing for at least two reasons:
1.) I seem to remember that during World War Two the prevailing disposition in the population was one of comradeship. People felt that, "We are all in this together."
2.) War seems to have the effect of reinforcing the social stratification. People in the middle and lower classes are told what they should do and when they should do it, thus relieving them of the responsibility of making decisions they are not qualified to make.

The current two wars do not seem to have the effect noted in (1) above. Perhaps they are simply not big enough.

Again, these assertions seem rather hasty. Wars tend to increase a sense of national unity if there is a widespread perception that the enemy poses a serious threat to the nation and its institutions. This is what happened during the Second World War in Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and eventually Germany. The polities of these states were all justifiably concerned about the consequences of loosing. When wars seem less justified, more people are inclined to dissent. The protests during the Viet Nam War are a clear example of this. A general feeling of righting an injustice will also provide some measure of public acceptance for a war, even without an existential threat. The difference in public opinion between the Gulf War of 1991 and the present Iraq War points out this tendency. Though there was no great sense of national peril during the Gulf War, there was a general perception that Saddam Hussein had done something unacceptable by invading another country purely for the purpose of conquest. As I alluded to earlier, opposing this invasion met the modern criteria for a “just” war. On the other hand, when it became apparent that the justifications for America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 were largely fabrications, a substantial fraction of America’s population began to oppose the war. While many people seem to have a penchant for blind obedience, it isn’t true that most of us do.

Clearly though, populations can be utterly divided by war – to the point of the very dissolution of the state. For example, the First World War destroyed the social order of Czarist Russia. It also created deep hostilities toward the sizable German ethnic group within the United States. Rule #1 is certainly in need of qualifications.

Ignoring the sheer darkness of its sarcasm, rule #2 seems to be essentially a corollary of rule #1, and suffers from the same limitations. It is true that during both world wars censorship and economic controls were rife. There was a general decline in civil liberties in those nations that had previously had them. Likewise, the Bush administration attempted to use the Iraq War as a pretext for a general centralization of power, and not without some success. Still, extensions of emergency government powers tend to breed resentment if they are not rescinded at the conclusion of the emergency. While the tendencies toward the centralization of power are strong, so are the countervailing forces of decentralization and individual freedom. If this were not so, revolutions would never occur and trade unions would not exist.

It is no easy matter to conclude a critique of an essay about such far reaching and open ended topics. Obviously, the work reflects a number of views which are substantially different from my own, though I do not reject it all. I’m not an avid proponent of either inequality or bloodshed.

The essay reminds me of nothing so much as the beliefs of the 19th century anarchists. If I may be forgiven a brutal oversimplification, the anarchists believed that hierarchy was the sole source of evil in human society. If one could simply take away the bosses, human beings would live harmoniously and cooperatively forever. The source of all suffering was the evil of a few, and thus it might be readily expunged. In its simplicity, this was undeniably a beautiful dream. A handful of anarchists threw bombs into crowds, or shot the odd president or aristocrat here or there, but most simply hoped, grumbled, and brooded until their movement withered away. No person with a heart can wholly despise a beautiful dream, but one can certainly grow weary of the pile of invective that it rests on.

Compared to the life of our species, the life of any individual is fleeting. We know a little about our species’ origins, but can only conjecture dimly about its future. We play small parts during our tenure here, the full repercussions of which we lack even the capacity to understand. I cannot say that human beings will never live in perfect equality and perfect peace. I can say however, with reasonable confidence, that they never have. Many facts about the world are not to my liking – yet they are facts nonetheless.

-----------------------------

1 Guerilla war is an exception to this. While really a worthy topic in itself, I will suffice to say that most governments that set out to defeat another nation’s regular army do so in the hope that the opposing populace with acquiesce quietly after that defeat. No government wishes to engage in a protracted war with armed civilians.

2 Obama’s failure to publically present his birth certificate may seem trivial compared to plausible allegations of war crimes, but it is a perfect illustration of my point. Few of us have the opportunity to commit war crimes, but all of us are required to present identification from time to time. If you or I were applying for a driver’s license but told the examiner “I can’t show you my birth certificate – I will only show it to the highest official of your bureau, and then only on the proviso that its contents be kept absolutely confidential” – we would be escorted politely out of the office. Not so a senator and the darling of his party.

3 A failure to understand that hierarchies arise spontaneously was the undoing of 20th century communism. Neither Marx nor Lenin predicted the rise of Stalin, because they believed naively in a power that would emanate from the public as a whole in some completely unprecedented, inexplicable way. They made no provision for the possibility that anyone within their own organization might harbor any dictatorial ambitions. The result was little more than a medieval tyranny under a thick coat of red paint.