Lewis Coser Replies
Geltman's and Plastrik's critique of my essay seems to me to be based on a misunderstanding of what a typological procedure aims to accomplish. Social scientists can use concepts which are closely...
...Since every historical phenomenon is individually unique, a scientific conceptualization can never fully exhaust empirical reality, but without such conceptions we would be unable to move beyond the level of sheer description...
...Quality of thought can obviously not be measured by organizational affiliations —except in the minds of sectarians...
...Nowadays one may be a member of the SP and at the same time belong to a non-socialist party...
...Of course, in the sense I used the term the Socialist Party is not a sect—which makes it not a bit more "desirable" an organization...
...But while 183 the radical sects have made exclusiveness a principle of organization, the SP is actually so inclusive that membership in it is compatible with the most diverse political, religious, social and organizational views...
...When my critics attribute to me a desire to deny that sectarians have made significant contributions to thought and that non-sectarians are often mediocre bores, they seem to have carried the polemical spirit a bit too far...
...What I claimed was rather that in the structure of the sect there emerges a unique type of combination of a certain number of characteristics and that this combination distinguishes the sect type from the church type...
...When I suggest that sects have certain common structural properties, my critics answer by pointing to the undeniable fact that empirically most sects do not exhibit all the characteristics I describe and that, on the other hand, some of these characteristics can be found in other types of organizations also...
...All this would appear more plausible to my critics had I utilized types with which they are more familiar...
...I was, however, clearly not concerned with this or that particular sect but with their common structural features...
...but what of it...
...I tried to show that despite a great variety of ideological and political content certain similarities emerge in all sect organizations...
...Striving for profit may be one of the elements that enters into the constructed type "modern capitalism"—but if someone should point out that the Phoenicians seem already to have been eager to make a fast buck he wouldn't really have advanced the argument very far...
...They would have found it easier to agree that these types are indeed abstractions from concrete reality, and that the different elements which form the type may all be found independently...
...Constructed types set up logically consistent conceptions...
...Both the Socialist Party and the political sects are indeed without contact with the masses of the American people...
...Surely my critics don't believe that I am naive enough to think that only sects are intolerant or level individuality...
...184...
...True enough, both the radical sects and the SP are isolated from the main stream of political events but the difference between them is roughly that between a girl who has taken a vow of chastity and one who just happens to be unattractive...
...I am aware that in the socialist movement the term sect has been used not as an analytical tool but as a term of abuse, but there is surely no need to maintain the socialist tradition in this respect...
...they can never serve fully to explain any specific empirical case, but they may serve as a kind of measuring rod by which we can measure concrete variations from the abstract norm...
...Had I talked about romanesque or gothic architecture or about capitalism and feudalism they would, I am sure, not have misunderstood me to mean that certain elements of romanesque could not be found in many a gothic structure or that certain elements of feudalism were not present in most capitalist societies...
...In any case, I wasn't handing out grades, I was attempting to analyze...
...That Trotsky was a more significant thinker than Ramsay MacDonald, that George Fox ranks higher in intellectual eminence than Monsignor Sheen, few would dispute...
...To be sure...
...If, as my critics seem to believe, all the key characteristics of the radical socialist sects of our time stem only from concrete political and historical circumstances, I wonder how they would explain the obvious similarities between political, religious and, I may add, psychoanalytical sects...
...but this in itself is hardly a criterion for assessing the social and political or religious significance of their respective organizations...
...Social scientists can use concepts which are closely geared to the empirical and historical reality at hand or they may endeavor to use "pure," abstract concepts which are farther removed from concrete historical reality but offer great advantage if one is concerned with comparative analysis...
...All this is of course not meant to imply that study of any concrete sect can dispense with analysis of its particular and unique qualities, or that ideological and political elements should not concern such an analysis...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
