BACKGROUND TO DANGER
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Background To Danger By HARRY ELMER BARNES I HAVE POINTED out in several articles that probably the chief reason why we face so many, so vast, and so apparently insoluble social problems, both at...
...In economics, the middle class extolled the freedom of trade and the immunity of business from extensive governmental regulation...
...Between 1500 and 1750, as the Middle Ages came to an end and modern times came into being, these changes were mainly the product of the agitation of the new mercantile middle class...
...We no longer regard a scientific invention or a mechanical improvement as sacriligious...
...In conjunction with the Protestant ministers, the middle class brought into being the capitalistic system and the eulogy of pecuniary profits...
...There have been thousands of Newtons and Edisons, or at least of lesser Newtons and Edisons, but only a mere handful of social inventors—Jean Jacques Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, Edward Bellamy, Leo Tolstoi, Henry George, and Thorstein Veb-len are about the only outstanding ones who readily come to mind...
...The system thus created by the middle class tended thereafter to crystallize and to resist change...
...There have been countless millions of "handy" humans, but not over a hundred outstanding philosophers during all recorded history...
...Conditions in our modern world have, for more than a century, worked strongly, on the one hand, for scientific and mechanical advance, and, on the other hand, for institutional stability...
...Hence, the business and financial classes threw all of their tremendous power into the maintenance of things as they are in our institutional life...
...We are organically interested in gadgets and favor and foster those who can provide bigger and better gadgets for us...
...I will take a couple of articles to deal with this important matter...
...developed an appropriate type of political and economic theory to justify the new bourgeois system...
...Further, science and invention have been pretty thoroughly secularized in modern times...
...It is quite obvious that no civilization can long endure with such extensive lag between the two great aspects of its structure and life processes...
...The middle class turned its attention from undermining medievalism and absolutism to defending the new social order it had created...
...But a number have asked me to go further and explain how this cultural lag—this gulf between machinery and institutions came about—and why we do not bestir ourselves to do something about it all...
...It helped along the growth of the national state and transformed it from* an absolutistic to a representative basis...
...Background To Danger By HARRY ELMER BARNES I HAVE POINTED out in several articles that probably the chief reason why we face so many, so vast, and so apparently insoluble social problems, both at home and abroad, is the phenomenon of cultural lag —the fact that our machines have got out away ahead of our social institutions and social thinking, with the result that we are trying to control a dynamo technology with windmill institutions...
...Our Simian Heritage Most of these innovations in economics and politics had been executed by the close of the 18th Century...
...The middle class repudiated most types of medieval institutions and social thought...
...There has been greater scientific and mechanical progress since 1500 than in the whole million or more years of human experience before 1500...
...and brought into being the liberal political philosophy, justifying revolution against the privileged aristocracy and defending outstanding civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, press assemblage, religion, and the like...
...After it had built the new bourgeois social order, the middle class believed that its interests were linked up with preserving the status quo in institutional life and social thought...
...But a quasi-supernatural aura still shrouds our institutional life...
...This is a main reason for the strange and alarming state of affairs which we face today: namely, the juxtaposition of a thoroughly up-to-date science and technology and a heritage of antique social institutions and social thought which date, for the most part, from around 1800 or earlier...
...As simians, we are very "handy" and like to fuss and experiment with material things...
...Therefore, while scientists and inventors can proceed with public acclaim, our social reformers must contend with all the horror and savagery which greeted the theological heretic in the Age of Faith...
...It is not, as some suppose, because our institutional development in modern times has been slower than in earlier ages...
...Another important' element in the situation is that the powerful business classes have, since about 1750, thrown the whole weight of their influence to stimulate science and machinery, while they have, at the same time, sought to stabilize institutions and frustrate social change...
...Most readers of these articles who have offered any comment at all have seemed to agree with this general idea...
...Middle Class Pressure What has brought about the great gulf between machines and institutions in our day is the fact that science and machinery have gone ahead with a rapidity never dreamed of before...
...We continue to confer sanctity on our existing form of government, economic life, religious beliefs, and moral codes...
...It created constitutional government...
...Institutional development, even though relatively rapid in the last four centuries, has simply not been able to keep pace with scientific and mechanical progress...
...We throw our hats in the air to greet a new giant air bomber, but throw a spasm of terror when confronted by a modest proposal to reform the Supreme Court...
...A little reflection on the history of modern times and social psychology makes it easy to understand how this dangerous disparity between our material Culture and our social institutions has come about...
...The Alternative We Face On the other hand, the abstract thought and social vision required for conceiving and planning social change come hard for us...
...In this way, we are naturally inclined to stimulate scientific research and mechanical invention...
...Therefore, from about 1750 to the present time, the dominating social and economic groups in modern society have tended to resist social and institutional change, while at the same time they have encouraged advances in science and technology...
...As a matter of fact, institutional progress has been more rapid since 1500 than in any other period of comparable length in human history...
...The middle class took an active part in colonialism and the creation of modern imperialism...
...It is this great institutional gulf which has brought on the fourth world-revolution and forced upon us the necessity of either making constructive readjustments o¥ facing social chaos and disintegration...
...These sweeping institutional changes, which we have just summarized, were far more rapid and extensive than the mechanical advances between 1500 and 1750...
...Another important cause of cultural lag is to be found in the fact of our simian heritage...
...In this way, the very social class which, between 1500 and 1750, had strongly encouraged the transformation of institutions and social thought, became an insuperable obstacle to social change in the 19th and 20th Centuries...
...In early modern times, there was actually a greater social impulse to institutional changes and to new types of social thought than there was to the progress of science and invention...
...This they did at the very time when they were becoming most enthusiastic in the way of promoting progress in science and technology in the hope of increasing their business profits...
...It developed the ideas of natural law, which placed jurisprudence behind the protection of property...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 44
