Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Methodological
Misconceptions
in the Social
Sciences
Rethinking Social Thought and Social
Processes
Methodological Misconceptions
in the Social Sciences
Angelo Fusari
Methodological
Misconceptions
in the Social Sciences
Rethinking Social Thought
and Social Processes
Angelo Fusari
Former ISAE Director of Research
Via Voltaire 18
00137 Rome, Italy
anfusari@hotmail.it
1
See Ekstedt and Fusari (2010).
2
See Fusari (2000). This study starts from primitive societies and embraces the great Asian and
Mediterranean empires and societies, Arab civilization, European Feudal and Medieval societies
and the Renaissance, through to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
3
See Fusari (2008).
vii
viii Preface
that afflicting the natural sciences before the methodological revolution of the
seventeenth century. If this is indeed so, it is urgent to clear these misconceptions up.
Method is a two-edged sword: it offers powerful assistance in and enhances our
capability of understanding and solving the problems of everyday life; but if the
chosen method is inappropriate, it can seriously obstruct the advancement of knowl-
edge. Significantly, the best contributions to social knowledge have been ad hoc
studies that disregard method and simply apply common sense. But ad hoc studies
suffer a lack of coordination, and the neglect of method makes it difficult to evaluate
and select findings and results. As a consequence, ad hoc analyses have little chance
of stimulating the cumulative growth of knowledge. Science needs method; in its
absence, scientific thought is not possible and the growth of knowledge is difficult.
The human mind is able, in principle, to understand all that is the object of expe-
rience. In particular, humans should be particularly clever in the understanding of
the social world, this being a product of human action, its creation. Seen in this
light, it is surprising that the understanding and management of society on the part
of its creator appears so difficult. But the dominant methods, together with their
potential mistakes, always exert enormous power on the social scientists using
them; and they may have the power to mislead even those who contest them. In fact,
the critique deriving from the burgeoning perception of the limits and mistakes of
those methods, instead of aiding clarification, has increased confusion, as is typical
of times of profound crisis of current visions and methods of inquiry. The interna-
tional scientific conferences on social problems, which assemble skilful scholars,
are the best representation of this situation. Conferences inspired by heterodoxy and
aiming to foster pluralism demonstrate a remarkable inability of participants to
engage in dialogue with one another, due to the methodological cages that separate
them and impede the valuation and dissemination of scholarly contributions, while
those inspired by orthodoxy refuse a platform to dissenting views and persist
in building on some crucial mistakes, even though these errors have been clearly
identified and proved.
It seems not exaggerated to say that there is a need to go back to what may be
termed the Medieval organizational view, that is, the attempt to understand the reason
why societies have been organized the way that they are, and hence to learn to orga-
nize them more satisfactorily. Significantly, Bertrand Russel wrote: “it is false, from a
theoretic point of view, to allow the real world inflicting us a model of good and evil”.4
The present study is intended as a contribution that prevents method from
becoming a prison for the mind as opposed to a stimulant of creativity and knowl-
edge. In a sense, we are today living a condition opposite to that of the Enlightenment.
In that era, a great intellectual revolution prognosticated reforms that sometimes
proved unrealistic due to excessive abstraction but that, nevertheless, stimulated an
intensive social change. Now the contrary is taking place: a deep social change is
at work but is obstructed by the absence of a methodology able to promote the
understanding and the profitable working of its content.
4
See Russel (1981, p. 37).
Preface ix
We shall try to make clear our proposal on method by setting out a multiplicity of
applications in the main branches of social thought, economics excepted as it has
already been treated in another book (students interested in economics can read some
substantial development of the discussion in Sect. 1.4 on positive and normative
views, in the final section of Chap. 2 entitled ‘Economic and social planning’ and in the
section of Chap. 3 entitled ‘Mainstream economics and its opponents’). But we have
considered that those applications are not sufficient and that, to adequately clarify our
methodological proposal, the reasons standing behind it, and to stimulate meditation, a
number of criticisms of outstanding social theories and schools of thought were also
required. We beg the pardon of readers and authors for any misunderstandings that,
notwithstanding our severe attempt at accuracy, may have occurred in the handling of
such extensive and difficult literature.
Naturally, it is difficult to challenge well rooted methodological convictions.
Probably, any hopes of overcoming the current difficulties of social thought must be
placed on: (a) that minority of heterodox scholars aware that the absence of some
shared methodological rules makes impossible a serious confrontation and reciprocal
interaction among the plurality of contributions and a real challenge to mainstream
methodologies; (b) those orthodox scholars who start to perceive the unreliability of
traditional methodologies when applied to social science; (c) young scholars and
their tendency to distrust current thought and cultivate a critical attitude, but hope-
fully found their own work on the accurate analysis of facts and errors, not mere
polemic; (d) the good sense and mental openness of educated people, primarily
those troubled by a growing dissatisfaction with the usual teachings on society; (e) and,
last but not least, the dimension of the present social crisis and the growing percep-
tion of the impotence of conventional thinking in understanding and facing it.
Throughout history, men’s instincts and special interests have caused untold
human and social misery, often justified by a utilization of reason for purposes
of mystification. The discussion, development and results that follow are aimed at
combating those mystifications and miseries; the results on ethics should be of
interest for educational and religious institutions.
Finally it is to be emphasized that, in light of the innovative content of our
proposal on method, some initial patience is required of any serious reader; after the
half of Chap. 2 understanding will progress quickly and, with it, enjoyment.
References
Ekstedt, H., & Fusari, A. (2010). Economic theory and social science. London/New York:
Routledge.
Fusari, A. (2000). Human adventure. An inquiry on the ways of people and civilizations. Rome:
Edizioni SEAM.
Fusari, A. (2008). Reason and domination. Ethics, politics and economics in modern global soci-
ety. Cosenza: Marco Editore.
Russel, B. (1981). Philosophy and science. Rome: Newton Compton.
Acknowledgements
It is a duty to acknowledge:
My very helpful direct and indirect interaction with Boudon’s extensive treatment
of the method of the social sciences, which occurred primarily through my reading
and criticism of various stimulating essays that he has published in Mondoperaio,
together with a parallel reading of his main works. I was attracted by Boudon’s
attempt to provide social thought with scientific objectivity, including ethical values;
but I found the basic idea of such a research unsatisfactory: the gravitation, in the
very long run, of social phenomena and ethical values towards rational standards by
trial and error in order that social systems may survive (diffuse rationality). Such an
obliged landing of the author’s objectivism as based merely on the observational
method (and hence the connected idea of spontaneity) strengthened my initial
conviction that the problem of social thought is rather to define a method able to
illuminate the organization and administration of social systems so that to reduce
the frequency and dimensions of the monstrosities of history implied by merely trial
and error (i.e., Weberian diffuse rationality) but preserving the important role of
creativity and free choice and avoiding that social interventions result in errors and
abuses of a level directly proportional to their incisiveness.
Erudite and deep discussions with Hasse Ekstedt concerning central parts of this
book, mainly in the light of logical-empiricism, his predilection for formal rigour in
analytical procedure and his criticism of the basic postulates of mainstream economics.
Luciano Pellicani’s stimulating criticisms and advice, mainly regarding my
interpretation of social development and historical process. Pellicani also provided
precious suggestions on valuable sociological literature. I found admirable and most
instructive the orientation and impulse toward acute deepening of social, political
and historical processes that he promoted as editor of the review Mondoperaio.
Guido Preparata, for profound criticisms and suggestions mainly concerning: the
meaning and work of the market, in particular its reduction to a pure mechanism for
imputation of costs and efficiency; the transformation of the financial market into a
servant of production as opposed to a master of production; profit, the interest rate
and banking system.
xi
xii Acknowledgements
Angelo Reati, who read various parts of this work, providing substantial criticisms
and advice on the intelligibility of crucial points in my exposition.
The intellectual openness of the review Sociologia and its former editor Michele
Marotta that published various articles of mine concerned, in the main, with pointing
out a paradoxical vicissitude in the Medieval Christian teaching on science. The
teaching underlined that the aim of scientists should be to understand the reason
why the world has been made the way it is; but, the natural world being the product
of an unfathomable will, a much more fecund approach has proved to be the attempt
to understand its functioning through observation. My articles reproved the substan-
tial acceptance in the end, by Christian social thought, of the hegemony of the
observational view to the detriment of the Medieval teaching, notwithstanding that,
being a product of humanity, it is crucial to understand the reason why the social
world has been made the way it is and any implied ‘errors’, rather than merely
observing its functioning.
Simon John Cook, who provided improvement of my English style
Contents
Part I Theory
xiii
xiv Contents
1. We are living in the age of science and technology, but modern humans appear
increasingly unable to understand what concerns their immediate interests, which is
to say, social relations. The methodological confusion that obscures thought on
social problems and binds our hands will probably seem incredible, inexplicable,
to future generations and will inspire great regret for the immense damage done to
humankind. An energetic response to the situation seems indispensable.
Social thought has been imprisoned in a blind alley for a good long time now.
Today a profound crisis has shaken its very foundations. The doubts and conceptual
revisions are often taken for signs of cultural vitality, but they actually express a
great bewilderment that, sooner or later, must bring to fore the necessity for some
sounder, more fruitful methodological anchorage, as is already the case with the
natural and logical-formal sciences. In pursuing such an anchorage, let us provide
some brief definitions of notions crucial to the analysis on method that will follow:
The word being is intended to express existing reality, while the word doing is
intended to express the human activity of transformation, implementation and, in
sum, the organization of existing reality. For its part, the expression necessity-
constriction indicates unavoidable aspects of reality that are required in the organization
and management of social systems for reasons of organizational efficiency; while
the expression choice-possibility-creativeness refers to possibilities, in the organi-
zation and development of social systems, resulting from choice and creative
processes. The meaning of the last two expressions will be extensively clarified in
Sect. 1.4 of Chap. 1.
This book proposes a methodological procedure and rules that: (a) weigh the role
of observation with great caution, for social events are very largely non-repetitive
and, in particular, flank the observational standpoint (being) to the organizational
(doing); (b) allow a precise distinction between necessity-constriction and choice-
creativeness, extending this distinction to the field of ethics. We show that the meth-
odological specifications under (a) and (b) are essential prerequisites to understanding
the generation and organization of societies over time and to surmounting diffuse
misconceptions and acute contrasts afflicting social thought, such as the apparently
xix
xx Introduction
strict sense), which is based on the two hypotheses of ‘acceptance of the observed
reality’ (what has happened had to happen) and its ‘recurrence’; and (b) weak
observation method, which rejects the hypothesis of ‘recurrence’. This second method
may be usefully referred to the case of minor mutations, e.g. such as casual and slow
biological mutations and those of quasi-stationary societies. But it is inappropriate
when faced with the accelerating, endogenous and innovative motion of dynamic
societies. A large part of social thought and the most important students of society
make use of the weak observation method, which consequently has caused the most
important and the most rooted misunderstanding in the social sciences. The main
cause of the inappropriateness for social studies of both the strong and weak obser-
vation methods is that they are based on being while ignoring doing, while doing
constitutes the larger and most typical aspect of social reality.
We then turn to the constructivist view that, by contrast, is centred on doing
but substantially ignores being. Accordingly, we insist on the need, in the social
sciences, of a method able to conjugate being and doing and that, on this basis,
seeks to understand becoming.
The fact that the social sciences mainly concern the organization of social systems
implies the importance of a transition, in social studies, from the observational
to the organizational standpoint. This need may be served by a methodological
reformulation based on the binary contrast of ‘necessity’/‘choice-possibility-
creativity’ as developed in Chap. 2. The combination of being and doing allows us
to transcend both abstract rationality, appropriate to the logical-formal sciences, and
especially naturalistic rationality, in favour of an organizational rationality that
rejects pure abstraction. But the organizational standpoint, while strictly combining
permanence with change, must be careful not to imply the suppression of the
subjective side – that is, the suffocation of individuality (a primary source of creative-
ness) beneath hypothetically all-pervasive social structures and organization.
Chapter 2 focuses on identifying some procedures and rules for the formulation,
in social thought, of general principles. It seeks also for the design of some notions
concerning the organization and development of social systems that are robust in the
face of the intensification, in modern societies, of innovation and change and that
may act as guidelines for social thought and action. The failure of the observation-
verification method with regard to social reality, primarily due to the growing role
of innovation and hence non-repetitiveness in society, implies that the method of the
social sciences must be deductive. But the importance (as just seen) to be attributed
to being indicates that deductions must be based on realistic postulates. The choice
of these postulates represents, indeed, the real methodological problem (since we
are obliged, by the marked non-repetitiveness of social reality, to mistrust of
observational verification); its solution requires the definition and specification
of rules and classification procedures to guide scholars in the research and the
corroboration of initial postulates so as to move from generic, subjective and merely
hypothetical deductions to an objective and more penetrating deductive approach
that can offer general formulations and explanatory principles on a continuously
changing reality. So the methodology we suggest begins with the classification and
selection of postulates and deduces their implications for the organization of social
systems. This means that our method embodies a completely different notion of
xxii Introduction
scientific rationality from that of the natural sciences. Both those rationalities are
scientific in that they are referred to the question of method. But, unlike observational
(naturalistic) rationality, which is based on the acceptance of existing conditions
(with the underlying idea that the real is rational) and which is typical of positivist
and evolutionary social thought, ours is a prescriptive and organizational rationality
appropriate to a reality that is the work of humanity. We do not specifically expose
here the rules and classificatory procedure concerning the choice of postulates but
rather set out some applications.
Some fundamental deductions may be based on postulates concerning important
characteristics of the general conditions of development of the period under study.
This allows to derive organizational features that may be called functional imperatives
(but not in Parsons’ sense) in that are features required by pressing reasons of
functional efficiency not linked to the pursuit of specific (ideological, technological
and naturalistic) objectives, conditions and choices but only to the ‘general conditions
of development’. These basic organizational features are enduring; that is, they change
only when the general conditions of development change. Also basic technologies,
i.e. technologies that are fundamental in characterizing the general conditions of devel-
opment, and the organizational forms that they imply, are functional imperatives.
Some institutional and organizational features may be imposed by the conditions
of nature. They are local and were decisive in characterizing the societies of the
past. Their influence has been strongly reduced by technological development,
mainly through the increasing speed of communications and the role of artefacts.
The implications of the conditions of nature and the functional imperatives give
the field of ‘necessity’ in the organization and functioning of social system.
An important generalization is expressed by the notion of ontological imperatives.
These are the result of very general and fundamental aspects of human nature, and
so their operation is essential to the unfolding of human evolutionary potentialities.
Ontological imperatives are, for instance, constituted by the tolerance principle and
other conditions able to stimulate creativity. As such, these imperatives are universally
valid, in all historical eras and mainly concern important ethical values. But unlike func-
tional imperatives, they are not imposed and required (for organizational efficiency)
by the general conditions of development and their motion. As a consequence, they
may be repressed even for very long periods of time by the existence of a civilization
that opposes them. They will certainly triumph only if, in the course of development,
they also become functional imperatives. The suffocation of ontological imperatives
prevents social development, that is, the change of the general conditions of
development and hence the advent of new functional imperatives. With the estab-
lishment of modern dynamic society, various ontological imperatives have become
functional imperatives; that is, they must be satisfied if this kind of society is to
survive; they have thus become a ‘necessity’. Among the other things, the notions
of functional and ontological imperatives also offer clarifications on the concept of
utopia and its possible relationship with scientific procedure.
Moving from the general to the particular, i.e. to classification concerning choice
and innovation, an important notion is that of civilizations. This is intended as an
institutional set of ideological and technological choices with the consequent
Introduction xxiii
contradiction with the existing form of civilization, this form will inevitably be
transformed into another that is consistent with the new functional imperatives.
And so forth through the subsequent surges of innovation.
It is important to note that the pace of the development process depends chiefly
on a civilization’s accordance with ontological imperatives. If a civilization is
adverse to (and hence suffocates) important ontological imperatives, i.e. suffocates
the expression of the evolutionary potential of individuals and peoples, innovation
and hence evolutionary motion will be obstructed, condemning the social process to
a flat or parabolic course (stagnation and decadence). Stagnation or disintegration
are powerfully spurred by an ‘excess’ of, respectively, rational drive or creative flair,
and vice versa. Otherwise, a lengthening cyclical trend is fuelled by the alternation
between innovation and the consequent structural reorganization; the length of the
cycle depends on the degree of coordination between innovation and structural
organization. Thus the degree of satisfaction of ontological imperatives and the
relation between innovative drive and structural organization give rise to a sine,
parabolic or flat development curve.
Our interpretation and its analytical tools allow a rigorous distinction of social
process into historical ages. The notion of historical era, to be unambiguous, needs
to be based on factors belonging to the realm of ‘necessity’ (such as functional
imperatives), not the realm of ‘choice’ – even such crucial choices as those between
civilizations. In short, historical ages are singled out by the character of the functional
imperatives as demanded by the general conditions of development.
That the aspect of ‘necessity’ is flanked, in our theory, by that of ‘choice-possibility-
creativity’ shows that the historical process is not deterministic. And the world
appears – both from a scientific and a practical point of view – in its true characteristics:
a never-ending ‘correction process’, resulting from the limitations of human nature
and mind; a process that may ultimately bring humanity, not to the achievement of
some earthly paradise (a senseless expectation indeed), but to the realization of the
best of their potentialities – intellectually, ethically and operationally. Unfortunately,
historical processes have not uncommonly involved devastating events and devia-
tions from ontological and functional imperatives that have prevented the potential
advance along that evolutionary path.
Chapter 5 offers, in the light of our interpretative framework, a critical review of
some of the main theories of social and historical processes, ending up with Eliade’s
‘terror of history’ and historical monstrosities. The reference to our methodological
categories in the building and administration of human societies shows that it is
the lack of a scientific basis of social thought that has allowed these horrors to have
been perpetrated throughout history.
Part II explores some applications in various branches of the social sciences of
the methodological proposal developed in Part I.
Chapter 6 concerns anthropology, which refers to the first stage of the human
adventure and to very simple societies, albeit with a variety of cultures; such variety
highlights the importance of civilization in investigating social processes and its
crucial role in stimulating or, more frequently, obstructing further development.
A number of functional imperatives typical of primitive ages are considered that
Introduction xxv
allow us to bring to light and to better understand some basic common features of
primitive societies, notwithstanding their extreme variety. In particular, we comment
upon the nature and the meaning of the ‘power of society’, which, with its various
and sometimes eccentric features, is probably the most important and involved char-
acteristic of primitive civilizations. We underline the strong opposition of the power
of society to evolutionary process and take note that the oppressive character of such
a power is frequently misunderstood by anthropologists who eulogize a mythical
freedom of primitives from domination. Finally, the chapter sketches the transition
from the power of society to ‘command-power’ and ‘state-power’.
Chapter 7 is mainly concerned with politics. Political action – the exercise of
power – is particularly subject to abuse and mystification. We analyze the problem
of sovereignty and its legitimization, starting with the contributions of Benjamin
Constant, Jean J. Rousseau, Gaetano Mosca, Karl Schmitt, and Hans Kelsen to
show that, without a strict distinction between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’
in the organization of social systems, the theoretical legitimization of power is
impossible. The remedy offered by democracy is partial, and the separation of
powers may simply produce (as it has often done) a division of the power to abuse.
The notions of power of domination and functional (or service) power are sketched
out, and we show that a science of the organization of social systems, built mainly
upon the analytical categories disclosed in Chap. 2, provides a powerful antidote
to the degeneration of power by providing a scientific solution to the problem of
how to control controllers.
The binary ‘freedom-responsibility’ and the relations between the two and with
the problem of power are then investigated. We note that ‘responsibility’ goes beyond
individual action and point out that the definition of a system of responsibilities
requires the notions of functional and ontological imperatives, necessity and choice-
possibility. The philosophical and theological aspects of this question and theodicy
are examined.
We then emphasize that the observational method is anti-reformist, in that the
acceptance of existing conditions (the real is rational, the real is necessary) is
inherently conservative. We also consider the hyper-relativist prejudice that any and
all ethical choices and reform proposals are acceptable in principle. It appears that
the primary cause of these attitudes and prejudices is the lack of a clear distinction
between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’. Afterwards, the problem of inequalities
versus social justice and its far-reaching implications are deepened. The last section
provides a wide-ranging illustration of the meaning of political action in the light of
a number of major historical events and lost opportunities.
Chapter 8 begins by underlining that law is mainly concerned with doing, even if
it cannot disregard being. We show that if we are to justify normative action, explain
its foundations and detach the command power (as far as possible) from free
will, the connection of being with doing and the organizational view, together with
our methodological categories, are indispensable. Using our distinction between
‘choice-possibility’ and ‘necessity’ and the objective character of some ethical
values, we set out a critique of the following: natural law doctrine, positive law, and
the sociology of law.
xxvi Introduction
Next, and by way of a comparison between stationary and dynamic societies, the
relativist and absolutist views are analysed and some equivocations on values, as
characterizing social and religious thinking respectively, are discussed on the basis
of what we have called cultural objectivism. The roots of civilizations (which feed
opposition between peoples) are considered in historical perspective; their vitality
and ability or inability to adapt to evolutionary motion weighed and the usefulness
of cultural objectivism (that is, the objective definition of fundamental ethical values)
to this type of inquiry is emphasized.
Finally, we treat some current misunderstandings regarding the problem of a
global ethics – crucial in this age of globalization – illustrating them with examples
that bring out the substantial nature of cultural objectivism. Some aspects of Christian
social thought and its mix of faith and reason are discussed, and the positions on
values of some philosophers and students of society of modern and contemporary
ages are criticized.
Part I
Theory
Chapter 1
Preliminary Considerations on the Method
of Social Thought
1.1 Introduction
Both natural world and human societies gravitate, in the long run, toward functional
coherence and efficiency – toward organizational rationality. This gravitation toward
rationality is indispensable to their survival and evolution. A reality differently
1.2 Great ‘Errors’ Fuelled by Methodological Misconceptions 5
acting would tend to self-destruction and perhaps would never have emerged from
the primordial chaos.
But the great difference between the evolution of human societies and the evo-
lution of the natural world must be emphasized. Natural evolution proceeds so
slowly that spontaneous evolutionary motion and selection processes can develop
without substantial discontinuities. Humanity, by contrast, having lived for a long
time in almost immutable primitive societies in which we little differed from other
species of animals began to advance many centuries ago: at first with faltering
steps, then with a slow and uncertain pace, and finally, much later, with a progres-
sively accelerating pace that has often times been set by the temerity and success
of individual pioneers.
This acceleration of the pace of evolution entails that the spontaneous gravitation
toward efficient and rational organizational forms and social relations has become
increasingly beset by wandering and even retrograde movements. We have seen that
such difficulties are in part inevitable, arising from limitations of human knowledge
that oblige even research activities endowed with very sophisticated means and
procedures to learn by trial and error. It is impossible to eliminate all errors, but it is
judicious to attempt to reduce their dimensions to the minimum set by the levels of
human cognitive skills; not the levels of individuals, which may be very poor indeed,
but rather those levels embodied in the social scientific organization of knowledge
by way of the cooperation of many minds.
What is particularly impressive in the study of social processes are both the
numbers and the magnitude of the “errors” that have troubled the cycles and
rhythms of human societies and led them to trample underfoot ethical values
and institutions that have subsequently proved to be of fundamental impor-
tance for human evolution. Many examples might be cited, but we will limit
ourselves here to the discussion of one extremely instructive illustration from
the recent past.
In the historical period immediately preceding our own, billions of people
believed it not only possible but also imperative that a more just and efficient society
be organized, one more able to develop than the capitalist systems of the West. This
was a laudable intention indeed, and appears today even more urgent than it did
yesterday. In the name of such a project, multitudes of dissenters and innocent
persons suffered incredible repression, while countless others worked hard for its
realization. The worst of it is that the promised new society inflicted pains by no
means inferior than those demanded by the transition toward it. Renowned social
commentators and revolutionaries had declared that the building of the new world
required the suppression of the entrepreneurial function and the market, considered
the major causes of exploitation, immoralities and alienation. But their suppression
propelled the birth of a bureaucratic-centralized, grey and oppressive order. In the
end, these systems of “real socialism” collapsed. They represented a dead-end, an
organizational form that trampled on some fundamental values, suffocated creativ-
ity, engendered a profound alienation and was unable to develop and compete with
rival Western social systems. Humanity pretended to open the door to a more
advanced historical phase and, according to the opinion of the most enthusiast
6 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
‘believers’, was actually in the very process of stepping out of this door and into a
paradise on earth, simply by re-establishing bureaucratic forms and forms of social
obedience reminiscent of the quasi-stationary ancient world. These organizational
forms allowed for acute and wise government of the most advanced societies of
ancient time, but they are unable to cope with social change. In this way a tragedy
of immense proportions was prepared in the name of stepping onto the road toward
a bright and glorious new dawn.
A major cause of this failure was disregard for one elementary fact: social change
requires agents and institutions that, out of a sense of duty or for personal advan-
tage, are able or inclined to stimulate change and to face the consequent uncertainty.
We shall see that cumulative change needs a decentralized order and hence the
market, not a bureaucratic class that requires nearly perfect knowledge and that,
consequently, detests innovation and clings rather to a merely repetitive stationary
motion. In brief, one crucial error was a disregard for the fact that modern dynamic
societies are permeated by radical uncertainty.
A new challenge has now arisen with the rebellions against the autocrats of Arab
societies. One fear is that these rebellions will facilitate a transition from autocracy
to fundamentalism and theocracy (just as happened in Iran); a movement, that is,
toward a regime even more oppressive and inclined to immobility than the auto-
cratic one, which will require decades to escape and which will be even less
appropriate for modern dynamic societies than was real socialism. Another fear is
that the result of rebellion will be merely confusion, or perhaps a reproduction of the
worst aspects of Western societies.
The experience of such great errors does not immunize modern dynamic societ-
ies from the danger of making even greater ones; at least, not unless social thought
provides humanity with the requisite knowledge. If we do not specify its method-
ological roots, the error that has impeded our vision of the dead-end of bureaucratic
real socialism is incomprehensible, thus making useless that experience. These
methodological roots consist in a disregard for what we shall see to be a main point
of the method of social thought: attention to the general and basic characters of the
considered reality and to the current general conditions of development with their
institutional requirements and imperatives.
Methodological equivocations have an extraordinary ability to suffocate the
acuteness of scholars and wise men, who are accustomed to systematic reason-
ing. An excellent illustration, in line with our considerations above, is the impor-
tant misunderstandings about the entrepreneur found in the writings of the most
famous of writers on the notion of entrepreneurship, Joseph A. Schumpeter, who
forecasted the collapse of capitalism as a consequence of the advancement of the
process of bureaucratization. Some decades later, John K. Galbraith forecasted
the convergence of capitalism and socialism by way of the bureaucratization
typical of big business. Well, if these two great economists, sociologists and
students of historical processes did not see the bureaucratic dead-end in the
1940s and 1960s, what chance had Lenin and the Bolsheviks to see such a dead-
end at the beginning of the century? This occlusion points to something very
misleading in the analyses of students of society; and this misleading factor lies
1.2 Great ‘Errors’ Fuelled by Methodological Misconceptions 7
in the problem of method, the strongest intellectual tool conditioning the activities
and thinking of scientists.1
A review of the vicissitudes of real socialism makes immediately evident a
simple and crucial issue. Some basic organizational and ethical-ideological aspects
of societies are forced, with the advancement of the general conditions (and phases)
of development, not only to change, but also to assume some general features (as
witnessed, for instance, by the transition from the crucial role of kinship in primitive
societies to bureaucracy in ancient empires and the market in the modern age). It is
important to be aware of the differing institutional, ethical-ideological and organi-
zational pillars upon which human societies rest in the various historical ages. One
main purpose of this book is to show that such knowledge is indispensable for
understanding historical processes and properly governing social process.
Nevertheless, these institutional requisites continue to be often disregarded. For
instance, we can see that the transition process of the current period from real social-
ism toward the market often privileges the worst (and by no means indispensable)
elements of capitalism, not to mention a number of absurdities absent in the history
of Western capitalism, while it disregards or undervalues some organizational
aspects that actually represent the true force of capitalism.
It is very rare, in the course of history, to see an omnipotent and strongly-armed
ruling class almost submissively cede power. In its last days of despair, the bureau-
cracy of real socialism could easily have initiated a nuclear war and, as a result, the
stagnation of the real socialist countries would have been followed by a tremendous
regression on a world-wide scale. By chance and good fortune, however, the process
of decay had been sufficiently prolonged that an invertebrate and confused ruling
class had come into being.2 It was the wearing down of this socialist ruling class that
saved the world; after some decades of tribulations, the apple fell by itself.
The power systems of every society, even if senseless, always try to preserve
themselves and hide their deficiencies; and this can lengthen significantly the
time demanded for the transition to a more appropriate and rational social order.
Only scientific knowledge can clearly make evident the mistakes and, in this
way, accelerate the transition. Otherwise the spontaneous convergence toward a
more efficient and appropriate organization may require a very long time and
face serious difficulties.
It is surprising that social theory has not yet achieved a method consonant with
the reality it investigates, notwithstanding the clear unsuitableness of the current
methodologies. But the problem is that the dominant cultural climate strongly
opposes convergence on a general method in social inquiry. This opposition is
1
Some students (in particular, von Mises and Hayek) did indeed declare the inability of real social-
ism to govern society and attributed that inability mainly to the elimination of prices and the
entrepreneurial function; a conviction subsequently confirmed by Popper. But it was not a widely
shared conviction and was often derided by social scientists. It lacked persuasiveness because not
founded on a solid and shared methodological base.
2
The almost grotesquely reactionary coup d’état attempted in Russia in 1991 demonstrated the
total ineptness of the old Soviet bureaucracy.
8 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
fuelled by the epistemological critique of science that dominated the scene in the
second half of the last century and that even today shows great vigour. Such a
critique originated ‘cultural relativism’, that is, the assumption of non-comparability
between different explanatory models, and hence an idea of science as an almost
untrammelled way of reasoning. The result is that a multitude of methodological
proposals have issued forth, multiplying the confusion.
The formal-logical and natural sciences have general procedures and rules
that are shared by the community of scholars; this guarantees commensurability
and comparability of contributions, hence the cumulative growth of knowledge,
notwithstanding the cavils of cognitive relativists and epistemology. But mod-
ern social thought is not only afflicted by the lack of codified procedures and
methodological rules appropriate to social reality and shared by the academic
community; it is also the victim of a paralysing doctrine of incommensurability.
This has fragmented social studies into countless schools of thought, each with
its own method and hence unable to interact. This means that social scientists
have essentially repudiated one of the greatest intellectual discoveries of man-
kind: shared methodology that allows the cumulative growth of knowledge. This
repudiation expresses a real failure of human thought. Therefore, a main prob-
lem of our time is constituted by our extensive equivocations on the method of
social thought.
completely ignored. These formulations may sometimes seem nothing but pure
logical jokes; but due precisely to their abstractness they may provide unexpected
services to scientific investigation.3
But the formal-logical procedure is completely inappropriate for natural and
social studies, which must pay great attention to the nature of the reality investi-
gated; in fact, the serious mistakes discussed in Sect. 1.2 were primarily due to the
absence of realism. Economic theory, with its sometimes exaggerated pretensions to
mathematical rigour, is the branch of social thought that has most abused abstract
rationality, an abuse that has occurred mainly in the theories of general economic
equilibrium that ignore uncertainty, entrepreneurship and endogenous innovation.
Of course, every theory of society or nature needs abstraction, but from this need
must not follow unrealistic basic assumptions. An inquiry on method of both natural
and social sciences may conveniently start from two opposite hypotheses concern-
ing the reality investigated:
(a) Reality remains unvaried over time or is subject only to stationary-repetitive
changes.
(b) Reality is subject to innovations, i.e. to a substantial and persistent evolutionary
dynamics.
In the first hypothesis time is reversible; it is possible to go backwards and
forwards, and it is a matter of indifference which temporal direction is taken (i.e. the
plus sign in front of t may be substituted by a minus sign); in a word, there is not
history. In the second hypothesis, time includes singular and irrevocable events;
therefore time is irreversible and there is history.
An efficacious tool for the study of reality under (a) is represented by the method
that can be denominated mechanistic observationism, and which is based on statisti-
cal inference and experiments and on the formalization, through suitable differential
or difference equations, of subsequently discovered uniformities. This method has
yielded great achievements in astronomy and physics. But its application to reality
under (b) must be considered with great circumspection and critical sense.
In order to consider this subject more deeply, we refer to a generalization of the
above method that purifies it of any reference to particular techniques of theoretical
formulation. It consists in the methodological procedure that can be synthesized
through the following succession of three stages: Initial Observations – Formulation
of Theoretical Hypotheses – New Control Observations directed to verify the speci-
fied theory. We shall indicate this procedure, with which the scientific method is often
identified, with the notation O-H-Oc, i.e. Observation-Hypothesis-counter Observation.
This procedure is not immune to indeterminateness and inconsistencies that concern
both the terms H and O, as has been clearly established by the epistemological debate.4
3
Significant examples are Boolean algebra and non-Euclidean geometries that, long after their
initial formulation, proved to be highly valuable in, respectively, information theory and the explo-
rations of sidereal space.
4
See Pera (1982). But some scholars (e.g. Popper) deny the necessity of the first term O of the
procedure.
10 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
5
One may conjecture that the Whole always remains identical in its immortality; but such a
statement has not a scientific character, as it is unverifiable. Reality is always evolutionary.
6
I. Lakatos emphasizes this aspect by saying: “If science aims at the truth, it must aim at coherence;
if it renounces to coherence, it renounces to the truth” See Lakatos (1984, p. 220).
1.3 Excursus on the Methodological Peculiarity and Equivocations… 11
way they interact with the surrounding environment and eventually are selected. So,
a representation of the evolutionary movement, specifically the Darwinian mecha-
nism of selection and differentiation of species, will be provided.
As we can see, the usefulness of the procedure O-H-Oc in the example just
discussed (with H expressing competitive, cooperative or predation hypothe-
ses), both for explanatory and forecasting purposes, is mainly due to the small
number of accidental mutations and the slowness of the evolutionary process
during time, which imply little violation of the postulate of the invariability of
the observed reality.
2. Now let us turn to the consideration of the difficulties faced by the observational
procedure and the principle of rationality, i.e. the method O-H-Oc, when applied to
social reality. If one adopted the hypothesis that human activity, like that of bees and
termites, is carried out in quintessentially repetitive forms, the effort to understand
its patterns and implications certainly could (and indeed, should) be centred on the
method of observation and empirical verification, just as is the case with the natural
sciences. But the fact is that individual ends, value choices and judgments, and
technological knowledge may continuously and unpredictably change. Man is dis-
tinguished by his adaptability and, even more, by his great capacity for innovation.
There is no question of denying that the state of nature has a strong influence on
human activities. Nevertheless, in the conduct of such activities innovation unques-
tionably plays an extremely important and, we may say, a decisive role, not only
qualitatively but also in strictly quantitative terms, as everything that humankind has
accomplished since its first appearance on the Earth is substantially the fruit of
innovation (deliberate or unplanned).7
The basic characteristic of innovations is that they are the product of human
creativity, and as such are by definition unpredictable and can arrive in any number
of unexpected guises and forms. The succession of innovations gives rise to the
phenomenon of social change. That, in a word, is the great difference between
society and nature: social change, which assumes dimensions much larger than
change generated by the mutations in the natural world.
Social reality is a slippery, mobile, undulating terrain. Strict observation of it,
therefore, does not provide the kind of great illumination that sensory experience
provided for Galileo, but rather a feeble, flickering flame. The unforeseeable varia-
tion of social reality over time, with respect to the reality considered by the initial
control observations, makes senseless both of the extremes in the succession
O-H-Oc. The application of such a methodology to social events requires (as we
saw) the hypothesis that reality means necessity (i.e., what happened had to happen),
which ignores the optional or creative aspect of social life; in fact, the simple
assumption that alternative choices or events were possible makes the method based
on strict observation logically indefensible. The worst of it all is that the great
7
The whole route of human history is characterized by the indefatigable search for successful
innovations in order to achieve power; this phenomenon is particularly evident in the modern
economy, where competition is mainly based on innovations.
12 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
8
The omission of doing has been justified by positivist social scientists through an interpretation of
Hume’s law according to which it is a logical mistake to move from being to doing or, in other
words, a prescriptive statement cannot be rationally grounded. Let us insist that this is true for
nature (and hence for the observational-experimental method pertaining to this), since doing does
not exists in nature. But as we shall see, a method appropriate for the understanding of social
reality must first of all concern itself with combining being and doing.
1.3 Excursus on the Methodological Peculiarity and Equivocations… 13
limit itself to a merely observational kind of rationality, i.e., one based on the idea
of a long-run spontaneous process of rationalisation of the kind typical of nature; it
needs, so to speak, a constructivist rationality.9 Unfortunately, the great prestige
achieved by the merely observational method in natural sciences induces contempo-
rary students of society to make widespread use of it and implicitly seek, as a con-
sequence, to understand that which is a result of human activity as if it were not, and
to restrict its field of inquiry to being and, so, to deny the scientific nature of doing.
To make clearer just how unsuitable the observational method is for inquiring
into social reality, let us imagine we want to study a bureaucratic social system.
Observation would allow us to understand its functioning. For instance, it would
show that the system tends to suffocate creative processes and to promote stationary
repetitive motion, this being congenial to bureaucratic decision-making. But if we
want to go deeper into the path of transition from this to some other organizational
form, we need an alternative methodology to positivism; specifically, we need a
method consisting of: (a) comparison with some different social systems (analogi-
cal procedure) aimed at discovering better organizational forms; or (b) the definition
of some methodological procedure and rules capable of enabling us to understand
what mere observation hides, i.e. the reason for the inefficiencies of the society
under examination, and indicating the way to eliminate them.
As a matter of fact, only procedure (b) is possible. Procedure (a) requires the
existence of superior societies, which may not exist; moreover, it may cause serious
mistakes. In fact, every social system includes both institutions that are indispensable
to its functioning and other aspects that are contingent, ‘optional’. This means that
there is a risk of confusing what we shall call necessity with choice-possibility in the
interpretation and organization of social systems; and there is a consequent risk that
the imitation of the supposedly “superior” system will adopt some undesirable
aspects in the belief that they are indispensable to its functioning.
To deepen and better reflect upon these questions, we turn now to discuss the
meaning of the rationality principle with regard to social reality. We apologize for
some repetition, which seems to be called for, however, if we really are to clarify
and to overcome some widespread misunderstandings.
The notion of rationality considered here does not refer simply to the optimization
of some objective function under the constraint of given means. It also refers to the
rationality achieved through selection and includes forms of limited rationality
imposed by the high degree of uncertainty (i.e. by the lack of knowledge)
characterizing social systems and by the consequent impossibility of precisely
defining means that induce people to take decisions on the basis of simpler conven-
tional procedures. Besides, the concept of rationality concerns here the building of
9
Scholars often say that the objectivity of the social studies is undermined by the fact that Man is
both agent and observer; but this ignores the fact that what is relevant for science is the objectivity
of the scientist, not of Man as such. Moreover, hermeneutics maintains that as Man is part of soci-
ety, intuition is fundamental in understanding social phenomena; but, unfortunately (or fortu-
nately), everybody has his own intuition! We can see, therefore, that our methodological distinction
between natural and social reality rests on reasons different from those emphasized by Dilthey,
Rickert and – as we shall see extensively – Weber.
14 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
social structures and institutions: we do not consider these as given, i.e. as a part of
the constraint system of an optimization problem, but rather as some entities that
require an accurate explanation.
There can be no doubt that selection propels spontaneous social behaviour
toward the surprising harmonies generated by unintentional behavior, as underlined
by Hegel’s cunning of universal reason that would use individuals’ action to achieve
his highest ends, and the Smithian invisible hand. But the evolutionary movement
of society, being a much more intensive movement than that of nature, and generating
as a consequence higher uncertainty and lack of knowledge, make learning by doing
crucial. Together with other numerous rigidities, this fact may cause frequent non-
linearities, dependence on initial conditions (hysteresis) and even chaotic behavior.
There is more. Social selection does not exhibit the inflexibility distinctive of the
natural world selection, being affected by voluntary actions concerning choices of
value, the building of institutions, normative interventions in sum, the enormous
variety of motives and behaviours characterizing human action, the most part of
which have very feeble counterparts in the life of other species. This implies the
emergence, with respect to natural reality, of a much larger number of oppositions,
contradictions and inefficiencies during the adjustment process toward equilibrium
based on trial and error, and a persistent violation of the equilibrating tendency.
More precisely, the drive toward spontaneous order and efficiency emphasized, as
we shall see, by Smith, Mandeville, Hayek and the Weberian principle of ‘diffuse
rationality’, according to which in the long run everything settles down automatically,
is not warranted in a world continuously shaken by innovations. Furthermore, path
dependency and ‘lock in’ phenomena (that is their dependence on and impris-
onnement in previous paths) slow the flexibility of social systems and accentuate the
rise of fractures.
The much larger errors and fluctuations of the social than the biological process
are amplified further by the impulses and passions (that D. Hume’s enquiry empha-
sizes) that characterize much of human action. Hobbes’ Leviathan has lucidly
underlined the destabilizing effects that the unconstrained use of human intelli-
gence for the satisfaction of the passions of individuals may have on social life. But
it is important to stress that these considerations are far from obscuring the role of
the rationality principle. On the contrary, they increase the need to accurately
deepen the meaning, contents and implications of such a principle. The above-
mentioned big errors and inefficiencies of the trial and error process cannot be
accepted as unavoidable, as simply a cruel cost imposed by the impersonal evolu-
tionary mechanism of the struggle for existence generating the spontaneous order
through selection.
Of course, unintentional phenomena and lack of knowledge are extremely impor-
tant aspects of reality, as Hayek points out. Spontaneous behaviour and the freedom
of individuals are crucial conditions for creativity and innovation, so that human
knowledge is obliged to grow through trial and error. Besides, human beings need
competition in order to improve; the repression of emulation and competition gen-
erates corruption, sclerosis and decline. But a task of human intelligence is to reduce
the errors that the unfolding of the social processes generates. It is a cynical and
1.3 Excursus on the Methodological Peculiarity and Equivocations… 15
mystifying nonsense to extend to the social system the identities that the real means
the rational and that reality means necessity, which, as we saw, can be attributed to
the natural world. Social scientists deny their own true methods and facilitate criti-
cism by empirical historians if they accept the identity between reality and rational-
ity on which the method of natural science, based on observation, is founded. Their
task is in fact to develop and improve rationality in the organization of social
systems (this being the result of human action), and hence the explanation and
administration of those systems so as to minimize the errors and difficulties that
accompany the auto-selective gravitation toward order and efficiency.
The content of the social sciences is both explanatory and normative. They
require, therefore, a stronger notion of rationality than do the natural sciences. More
precisely, mere observational rationality based on the identity between reality and
rationality (and instrumental rationality, that is, concerning the acquisition of
means) is not sufficient in social science; it needs to be complemented by a con-
structivist notion of rationality also concerning values and ends, imposed by the
frequent violations of the above identity (between reality and rationality) that occur
in social reality (where it embodies only a mere long run tendency) and by the
pursuit of programmatic objectives. This is the reason why social theory must
simultaneously be a science of being and of doing.
It is well known that the comprehension of social processes through the method
O-H-Oc implies much greater difficulties than when applied to the natural world. This
fact can be considered a sign of the inadequacy of the above method as applied to
social reality that, being generated by human beings, should be, in many of its aspects,
easier to understand than natural world – as Vico pointed out many years ago.
3. To avoid confusion, it may be useful to point out that the extension of the obser-
vational-experimental method from the study of nature to social thought has taken
two forms. One may be denominated the strong observational method or social
positivism (including also neo-positivism and falsificationism) and consists in the
full adoption within the social sphere of the two hypotheses of acceptance of exist-
ing reality and the repetitiveness of observed phenomena. The other form may be
denominated the weak observational method or social spontaneity. This second
form excludes the hypothesis of repetitiveness in recognition of the increasingly
central role of innovation within modern dynamic societies, but retains the accep-
tance of existence and, therefore, a merely observational attitude. As a matter of
fact, the strong observational method also embraces spontaneity, for the acceptance
of existence always implies a spontaneous view. But as we have just seen, the weak
observational method limits itself to the acceptance of existence and rejects the
hypothesis of repetitiveness, thereby escaping the positivist standard typical of
strong observationism10; it has, therefore, a higher spontaneity standard. What is
important for our thesis is simply that both the weak and the strong observational
methods erase the main significance of human action. The underlying idea is, as we
10
The weak observational method is not absent in the study of natural phenomena, e.g. Darwinian
teaching as centered on accidental mutations.
16 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
have said, that what happened had to happen, implying the acceptance of existence.
In a word, both of these methods direct effort at the understanding of spontaneous
behavior. This means that both strong and weak observational methods exclude
reform action. Reform is, in principle, inconsistent with the observational method
that highlights being at the expense of doing. The consequence has been a growing
inability of social thinking to illuminate reform-orientated action, as we shall see
extensively later.
In the age of commercial revolution, social changes caused by the growth of
capitalism were for the most part interpreted, at least by the sharpest scholars, on the
basis of the weak observational method, i.e. as spontaneous but non-repetitive
behavior. The attitude of economists, who analyzed the most dynamic subsystem of
society, is illuminating in this regard. Political economists were attracted by the idea
of a so-called ‘invisible hand’ that, driven by personal interest and by way of the
market, seemed able to fulfill automatically the great variety of people’s needs and,
on the whole, warrant the coherence of many non-repetitive decisions operating
separately from one another and even, at times, in reciprocal opposition. Writing at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, Bernard Mandeville described in colorful
terms “the vileness of the ingredients that represent on the whole the healthy mixture
of a well ordered society”,11 and described the operation of the social process as a
whole in terms of the transformation of ‘private vices into public benefit’.
The first industrial revolution did not much disturb the existing reality, at least
with respect to more recent increasing social change. While it is true that the
discontinuities caused by innovation have always caused difficulties in the under-
standing and management of society, nevertheless, in spite of such initial intensifi-
cation of social change, the social thought of the nineteenth century was dominated
by positivism. More precisely, the weak observation method, which rejects the
hypothesis of the repetition of events and only postulates their spontaneity, prevailed.
This method has permeated the most important lines of social thinking: free trade
and social naturalism, evolutionary and historicist thought of various kinds. Its basic
fault is to be centered on an exclusive regarding of being and disregarding of doing.
An outstanding example is Weberian teaching that, while on the one side gives a
great importance to ethical values, on the other side considers value in a merely
observational perspective that provides an explanation of ethical values through the
idea of ‘diffuse rationality’, stating their supposed approach by trial and error toward
right ethical values. The Marxian inspiration to Darwinian evolutionism and to
Hegel’s philosophical teaching (the dialectical motion toward improvement and the
identification of reality with reason), strongly resembles the ‘diffuse rationality’; in
fact, Marx eluded the question of the organization of social system (doing), leaving
the matter to the ‘fancy of history’. Thanks to these various schools of thought, the
spontaneous vision gained, both implicitly and explicitly, a considerable influence
within social thought.
Over the course of time, some theoretical advancement has made the management
of human societies an easier task. But, in the form of the weak observational method,
11
(Mandeville 2000), p. 4.
1.4 Necessity and Choice-Possibility-Creativeness in the Organization… 17
Human societies are the outcome of conscious and unconscious human actions, but
the building process is by no means completely free; social organization and
government are not unconstrained. Creativity, intuition and even the most fearless
human initiatives must always encounter de facto reality and, consequently, a vari-
ety of constraints. This is fairly self-evident, and in fact the distinction between
‘freedom’ and ‘constraint’, between that which is the object of choice and that
which is constrained by preexisting reality in the building of human societies, is not
ignored by social thought. Nevertheless, engagement with it is afflicted by heavy
ambiguities, which are difficult to defeat because they are the result of and, at the
12
In particular, Rawls’ principles of justice, which provide the basis of the most recent and severe
forms of contractualism, do not really clarify the distinction between objective and subjective
aspects, between freedom and constriction. See (Ekstedt and Fusari 2010), chapter 3, pp. 82–84).
18 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
same time, a deep cause of misunderstandings on method. It may seem at first sight
that the distinction between freedom and constraint is well expressed by constrained
optimization models or, more precisely, the objective function and the constraints of
those models. But this is not the case. The distinction is prior to such modeling; as
such, it concerns both the objective function (primarily through ethical values with
their subjective or – as we shall see – objective character) and the constraints
(primarily technology and institutions that do not simply express constraints but
also imply choice and creativeness). All this, let us note, will be extensively clarified
later, at the end of Chap. 2.
It is neither surprising nor reprehensible that ancient students of society neglected
the opposition between freedom and constraint. The substantial invariableness of
the operational mechanisms of their societies favored their perfection and consoli-
dation in the course of time, while the field of freedom did not significantly affect
the generation of these societies and their quasi-naturalistic standards. The most
appropriate way to understand their functioning was, therefore, the observation of
phenomena in order to discover the mechanisms behind a repetitiveness that was
only exceptionally interrupted by traumatic events, such as invasions, rebellions, or
natural disasters. The management of stationary social processes requires a
regulatory rationality, i.e. one directed to perfect the coherence of the system. The
invariableness of these social systems is protected by some fairly pristine pillars,
such as the legitimization of power over time as habit to subjection generates the
consent of the governed. Such quasi-repetitive societies are, therefore, easy to
govern, provided that they benefit from some solid institutional and administrative
support in the form of experienced and faithful civil servants and a strong and
enduring value system. Chinese mandarins and Confucian ethics, marked as is the
latter by respect for hierarchy, a well defined distinction of functions, the suffocation
of creativity, worship of tradition, and reverence for the elderly, have constituted
one of the most appropriate organizational forms for the government of stationary
societies that has appeared in the course of history.13
The advent, in some Western countries, of self-propelled development, has
upset this traditional state of affairs in society and government. In such countries,
the repetitiveness of social phenomena began increasingly to be contradicted by the
advent of novelties, generated primarily by competition based on innovation. The
distinction between freedom and constraint gained in importance, rendering social
studies based on the mere observation of existing phenomena less and less reliable.
Under such conditions, the investigator is obliged to disentangle the place of the
13
For the most part, ancient societies were careful to sanction the intangibility and consecration
of inherited values, institutions and usages. On the whole, intellectual inquiries were not directed
to the discussion of such contents, but rather evoked new horizons and aimed at the acquisition of
immutable truths, as in the case of Plato’s ideas (Plato’s teacher Socrates of course proving an
exception, his fate pointing to a perceived incompatibility between such exception and the stabil-
ity of ancient society). There were in addition comparative analyses, such as we find in the politi-
cal works of Aristotle and Polybius, but such comparisons always served to emphasize the
importance of stability and repetitiveness in social processes across the cyclical vicissitudes of
institutional forms.
1.4 Necessity and Choice-Possibility-Creativeness in the Organization… 19
We will now articulate the distinction between freedom and constraints by way of a
terminology that seems to us more appropriate and incisive, specifically, in terms of the
place of ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility-creativeness’ (henceforth, simply: choice-
possibility) in the organization and management of social systems. Organizational
20 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
necessities are not an observational matter; in fact, history shows that they can be
ignored, largely violated in practice and even strongly opposed and denied. It is also
immediately evident that the term that refers to freedom, that is choice-possibility, has
not, by its nature, an observational substance and hence cannot be studied and under-
stood through observation. Let us examine this more closely.
The observation of a storm at sea does not allow for the discovery of the laws of
the motions of the waves. But the circumstance that the observation of some strong
and much perturbed behavior is unable to teach something does not imply the
impossibility of understanding. Every organizational system rests on a proper logic;
the problem is to understand the terms of this logic, with the aim of distinguishing
the important from the ephemeral aspects, the steady points from what can fluctuate
and transform almost at the drop of a hat. If we lack the skill to do this, global soci-
ety will appear more and more like an unintelligible storm at sea and spontaneous
adjustments will not save us from the violence of the wind or lessen the danger of
being drowned.
To understand social processes we must concentrate on the field of ‘necessity’,
primarily the organizational (but also naturalistic) necessities. The study of histori-
cal processes (for instance, the transition from the feudal period to the mercantile
society of the middle ages) clearly shows the strength of ‘necessity’ as represented,
for example, by the absolute need for proper institutions, power forms, ethical
values and visions of the world in particular developmental phases, and their
dispensability in others. History teaches us, moreover, that the spontaneous ten-
dency toward existing or emergent organizational ‘necessities’ has always incurred
the risk of immense torments; in the cases in which it has been unsuccessful, social
systems have been forced to regress toward antecedent phases of development. The
dimension of such torments (inflicted by spontaneous behavior) tends, let us repeat,
to grow with the acceleration of development processes and social change; this
gives rise to a pressing need to scientifically arrange and specify ‘necessity’ and
‘choice-possibility’.
Before going on to unveil, in the next chapter, a methodological proposal aimed
at allowing the student of society to face in a systematic way the situation just out-
lined, it may be useful here to sketch some examples of the distinction between
‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’. Some supplementary commentary upon
Mandeville’s analysis may be useful in this regard. We have previously seen how
Mandeville was fascinated by the tendency of complex European economies to
automatically generate consistency (at least, in the main) out of many reciprocally
clashing decisions. Scottish social philosophers also subsequently paid great atten-
tion to this phenomenon. They all perceived clearly that the author of such a marvel
was the market, and a number of them attributed to it the character of natural law.
But the market is simply an ‘organizational necessity’ of modern dynamic econo-
mies, since the limits of human knowledge and the presence of growing flows of
radical uncertainty caused by innovation make futile any attempt to govern dynamic
economies through centralized decision making.
The development of those organizational forms particularly suited to modern
dynamic economies makes evident, not only the necessity of the market, but also
1.4 Necessity and Choice-Possibility-Creativeness in the Organization… 21
that of the entrepreneur and hence of the profit rate (where this last term is not
intended as a category of income distribution but simply as an accountability
indicator, that is, an indispensable marker in terms of the need to define the degree
of success and hence the responsibility for decision making). This triad (market,
entrepreneur and profit rate) expresses the basic mechanism of dynamic competition
and economic development14; it is not required in stationary societies as their repeti-
tiveness can be efficiently managed by bureaucratic decision-making. In fact, the
presence of the market in ancient societies represented a mere historical contingency
and market agents could be persecuted, expropriated and suppressed without sig-
nificant consequences to the efficiency of production.
This explanation of the market, the entrepreneur and profit is based on organiza-
tional considerations and not only differs from current economic theories but also
clarifies some misunderstandings caused by them. To give but one example: the
most influential economic theories consider the market concretely observed, that is,
the capitalist market, which implies particular forms of income distribution. The
shortcoming of these observational theories lies in the fact that they disregard the
separation of ‘necessity’ from ‘choice-possibility’ and, more specifically, are
disinclined to separate ‘necessity’ from other contents that are simply typical of
capitalist civilization. The result has been a harsh and unsolvable conflict among the
supporters and the opponents of the capitalist market. What is worst, the opponents
of the market, disgusted by the injustice, deceits, immoralities and oppression
attached to it, have hoped for the suppression of the market tout court.15 An organi-
zational (as opposed to observational) view and, more specifically, the distinction
between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’ in the organization of social systems,
allows the avoidance of these misunderstandings by way of the clarification that the
capitalist features of the economy (and of the market) belong to the realm of choice-
possibility while the market by itself is an organizational necessity of dynamic
economies. This allows a demonstration that Mandeville’s statement of the useful-
ness, in complex and dynamic societies, of the vileness of human behavior, may be
true from an observational view but not from an organizational one. In fact, from the
observational statement (and evidence) of the conversion of private vices into public
benefit it can easily be deduced that robberies are useful to society. Such a statement
stimulates thefts, to the utmost joy of the lawyers in The Fable of Bees. But this
baseness is not indispensable; it can be separated from the market intended as an
organizational necessity and erased.16
14
A detailed analysis of this subject may be found in (Fusari 2005), and in: (Ekstedt and Fusari
2010), mainly chapters 5 and 8.
15
The misunderstandings considered have been accompanied by others caused by senseless
abstractions; for instance, those typical of neoclassical economics which model the market leaving
out of consideration the entrepreneur and profit (this last being identified merely with interest on
capital), and also leaving out of consideration innovation and radical uncertainty.
16
The race toward moral perversion is greatly anterior to Mandeville’s teaching and is deeply
rooted in a world the operational mechanisms of which have always been largely based on cheating
and intrigues; a world that has been largely inspired by the following ancient saying: “The burglar
of a kingdom is praiseworthy, but he who robs too little deserves prison”. Byzantine theology gave
22 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
merit to him who succeeded in becoming emperor, even if he ascended to imperial power through
the worst crimes. The guiding idea here was that sovereignty came from God’s will, thus forgetting
that frequently sovereign power has been Satan’s armed hand. It is time to take to flight from these
cynical stupidities.
17
This aspect has been developed extensively by A. Fusari in chapter 8 of Economic theory and
social change, Routledge, 2010.
18
More details on the matter are to be found in A. Fusari, Reason and domination, as well as Sect.
4.6 of Chap. 4 of this book.
1.4 Necessity and Choice-Possibility-Creativeness in the Organization… 23
and display a decisive influence on the functioning of human societies. They begin
to waver when they become inconsistent with new organizational ‘necessities’. This
inconsistency marks the starting point of a difficult and delicate phase of transition,
as we shall see more extensively in Chap. 4.
To understand the main contents of the emerging crises, it is important to place
knowledge about necessity and knowledge about choice-possibility side by side.
Among other things, the absence of such a distinction (or the existence of heavy
confusions in the matter) deprives social reform of a compass, or perhaps supplies
it with one that indicates North in the place of South, thereby entailing that reform
advances only gropingly and falls too easily into dead ends and discredit. The
knowledge of what is necessary is a condition of sensitizing public opinion about
such necessity. Reform also requires an ability to discern what is possible, to assign
a degree of preference to the various possibilities, and a coherence that ensures an
awareness of the dividing line between necessity and possibility. A lot of reforms,
after a difficult introduction, have fallen into total discredit and ultimately have been
cancelled, albeit only after having caused serious damage; and this is not even to
speak of the tremendous dramas and failures spread by the great revolutions. Well,
such failures have been caused mainly by ignorance of the distinction between
necessity and choice-possibility, or a confusion of the one with the other.
The distinction between what is necessary and what can be the object of
choice or is the result of creative processes can significantly contribute to the
reduction of the harshness of reforms. It can also help to construct consent. In
particular, the distinction helps to reduce the harshness of conflicting interests by
making evident the aspects of the social system that cannot be refused. Moreover,
such a distinction helps to attenuate the collision among civilizations, mainly
through the assessment of the objectivity of important ethical values. Finally, it
facilitates the combination of old and new values, the meeting of tradition and
change, as well as the clarification of what is vital and what decaying or unpropi-
tious among the elements of existing and emerging organizations.
It is also important to place the notion of ‘duration’ side by side with the
distinction between necessity and choice-possibility. As we shall see extensively in
Sect. 2.4 of Chap. 2, duration is a different thing from necessity. In fact, some
important phenomena that in principle are optional are deeply rooted in existing
reality, for instance civilizations. If these deeply rooted aspects obstruct and oppose
important and necessary changes, a strong public mobilization must occur in order
to remove them, but only the notion of ‘necessity’ can allow such a mobilization.
F. Wilkinson includes a section entitled ‘The role of technical and social factors in
the distinction between necessities and surplus in the Sraffian system of reproduc-
tion’ that emphasizes the Sraffian notion of technical and social necessities. Social
necessities are seen as a consequence of the peculiarities of different social systems,
for instance, corporate (managerial) capitalism with its separation of ownership from
control, or the operation of the worldwide financial hegemony of capital. But such a
notion of social necessity mixes up necessity and choice-possibility, as becomes
clear in light of our distinction between the two. Probably this is a consequence of the
absence, in the Sraffian system of prices, of basic necessities of a dynamic economy
that are independent of its characterization as a capitalist civilization: entrepreneur-
ship, profit in its accountability role, innovation, radical uncertainty, etc. This absence
undermines the Sraffian price system and prevents the founding of the discourse on
surplus upon a notion of necessity amended by the reference to specific institutional
and civilization choices.
The statement that, in corporate firms with separation of ownership from control,
wages and the interest rate on capital represent social necessities of capitalism, and
that also the heavy malfunctions deriving from the hegemonic power of interna-
tional financial capital are social necessities of capitalism, is not especially illumi-
nating as capitalism represents a particular kind of civilization. The participants in
the debate neglect the necessary role of entrepreneurship and the necessary pres-
ence of radical uncertainty in an economy where competition largely acts through
innovation, and hence neglect the necessary role of the profit rate intended as a mere
variable of accountability required to judge the degree of success of a manager’s
action and decision-making, which is indispensable to control controllers. As far as
I know, not one of the participants underlines that a true achievement of Sraffa’s
work – the demonstration of the reswitching of techniques – undermines the ‘social
necessity’ of the interest rate. As a matter of fact, reswitching implies that the level
of the interest rate cannot be explained on the basis of the demand-supply of capital
but instead depends (as underlined by Keynes) on the demand-supply of money and
that, as a consequence, the real interest rate can be eliminated in principle while
preserving its nominal terms as a counterpart of inflation in order to defend saving.
The necessity of the entrepreneurial profit rate in its accountability role prevents the
wasting of capital, but such a necessity is ignored by neo-Ricardian economics.
A wider breadth and an appreciable coherence and completeness are offered by
Zamagni’s treatment of the question of necessity. This author’s civil economy
underlines the necessity of market relations, social justice and the reciprocity prin-
ciple in order to allow, respectively, the efficiency, cohesion and the same survival
of economic order in the age of global society with its milestone represented by the
hegemony of the international financial market. We shall see that a powerful way
to combine the three above necessities is the reduction of the market to a pure
mechanism for the imputation of costs and efficiency that allows the maximum
separation between efficiency and income distribution and hence a coherent com-
bination of the first with both social justice and reciprocity. But a deep revision in
the method of the social sciences, a revision primarily based on the organizational
view of social systems, is needed in order to avoid current confusions on the three
1.5 A Primary Methodological Misunderstanding in the Social Sciences… 25
terms of the combination, for instance the association of the elimination of profit
to the principles of reciprocity and fraternity; in fact, this elimination overlooks the
importance of the profit rate in its accountability role mentioned just above, the
profit rate being (let us repeat) the only reliable measure of the degree of success
of entrepreneurial decision making, the issue of distribution aside. This means that
there is no opposition between profit, from one side, and social justice and reci-
procity from the other. One of the major afflictions of social thought is represented
by equivocal mixings between necessity and choice-possibility in the organization
of social systems. We shall see that these mixings afflict the most important social
theories.
To prepare the ground for the exposition, in the next chapter, of my proposal on
method, it seems opportune to consider here the opposition, in economics and social
thought, between positive and normative elements. It may be useful, in this regard,
to refer to a study by Valeria Mosini centered on a criticism of Friedman’s ideas on
method.19 Her study goes well beyond a mere criticism of Friedman, both in what it
says and what it implies.
Mosini rejects the position on method that Friedman borrows from the natural
sciences, that is, the positivist idea of discovering laws of motion through observation
and, subsequently, the use of the laws so discovered in order to formulate prescrip-
tions of political economy. She underlines that such a methodology implies a total
submission of normative to positive elements, and as such a substantial negation of
the normative. In parallel, Mosini repeatedly condemns Friedman’s disdain for the
realism of assumptions and his corresponding explicit acceptance of a complete
unrealism of assumptions, making evident that such a position is contradictory with
respect to the above positive standard. More generally, Mosini takes pains to clarify
the fact that Friedman’s supposed contribution to the method of economics fails to
establish a true scientific standard.
We have seen in the previous sections that observations concerning a reality
affected by frequent innovations do not allow the specification and verification of
laws of motion. Friedman manages to overcome such a difficulty by associating the
validation of theories with their ability to generate correct predictions, irrespective
of their degree of realism. But as a matter of fact the growing non-repetitiveness of
social events caused by innovation also makes void the forecasting power of the
supposed economic laws, particularly if these are not based on realistic assumption
(in Sect. 2.7 of the next chapter we show that economic and social forecasts can
19
See Mosini (2011).
26 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
only operate in very narrow ambits and that, to may be effective, those forecasts
require a very different method).
Without doubt, a conjunction of disdain for the realism of assumptions and a
celebration of positive method is contradictory. In fact, mainstream economics uses
the method of abstract rationality (that excludes the realism of assumptions) and the
observational-experimental method separately, employing sometimes the first and
at other times the second. In so doing it has both achieved great intellectual success
and subordinated the normative to the positive. Why such a success?
Mosini discusses the relationship between positive and normative elements in
the works of some important economists: J. S. Mill, H. Sidgwick, F. Y. Edgeworth,
L. Robbins, A. Marshall, A. C. Pigou, L. Walras, and J. Neville Keynes. In each
case, she makes evident their concern with the normative side of economic
problems. But such attention to the normative has been placed in the shadow by
the ever-increasing abundance within economics of the methods of the logic-formal
and natural sciences. We must ask ourselves the reason why the normative good
sense of these renowned older has so easily been defeated by the subsequent
Neoclassical impact on the method of social thought. It seems evident that the
success of Neoclassical economics has been made possible because the attention
to the normative side by such economists as just noted collided with the well-
tested methodologies of the logic-formal and natural sciences (which latter are
accurately used by Neoclassical economics), while those with normative concerns
failed to build an alternative method appropriate to social reality, thus leaving
unstated the true implication of their criticism. Even today, this indifference to
method weakens attempts to avoid the suffocation of the normative by the posi-
tive, as implied by the use of the method of the natural sciences. It seems to us that
the revaluation of the normative side to the detriment of the positive that Mosini
extracts from the works of those important economists mentioned above is not
relevant by itself; indeed the normative is not amended by methodological misun-
derstandings, even if they be different from positivist-naturalist ones. Nevertheless,
such a revaluation of the normative side is important since it allows for the percep-
tion that the distinction positive-normative needs to be overcome and appropri-
ately replaced. Let us clarify this matter.
We have previously shown that the method of the social sciences must strictly
combine positive and normative aspects, being and doing, within a unified method.
We have also clarified that a different distinction plays an important methodological
role: the distinction between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility-creativeness’. This
matter will be better explained in Chap. 2, which is devoted to the presentation of
our proposal on method. We must underline here, however, that the distinction
between positive and normative aspects and that between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-
possibility’ do not overlap: some necessities and choices-possibilities are present
both in the positive and normative sides, and vice-versa. To see this, it may be useful
to recall some examples discussed in the previous section on necessity and
choice-possibility.
In that section, we have seen that, for instance, fundamental ethical values
pertain to the side of necessity, while some others pertain to the field of
1.5 A Primary Methodological Misunderstanding in the Social Sciences… 27
choice-possibility. But values are always referred to the normative side by the
predominant cultural relativism: in Mosini’s book the ethical aspects represent the
main part of the normative aspect. Again, we have seen that a dynamic economy
needs the entrepreneurial role, the market and profit rate (taking the last in its
accountability role of indicator of the degree of success of decision making);
those institutions are organizational ‘necessities’ the cancellation of which pushes
society toward a stationary state. We have also seen that a very large part of
income distribution pertains to the field of ‘choice-possibility’. In sum, the market
taken as a pure mechanism of imputation of costs and of efficiency, and the con-
nected entrepreneurial function, represent some organizational necessities of
dynamic economies, while the capitalist market and the capitalist entrepreneur
and profit, which are strictly linked to specific kinds of income distribution, per-
tain to the side of choice-possibility, that is, they express organizational and value
options. Normative action should plainly operate on the side concerning choice-
possibility that, however, includes aspects currently attributed to the positive side,
while it cannot concern the side of ‘necessity’ that, however, includes aspects
currently attributed to the normative side. Thus the distinction between necessity
and choice-possibility makes evident that the distinction between positive and
normative creates the potential for much confusion with regard to the organiza-
tion and management of social systems. The absence of the distinction between
necessity and choice-possibility implies confusion with regard to the distinction
between endogenous and exogenous-instrumental variables.
To perform a more profound exploration of these issues, it may be useful to refer
to an important historical period that Mosini neglects. As we have seen, she points
out that Neville Keynes focused on the normative side of economic questions. But
she ignores the work of Neville’s son, J. M. Keynes, probably because he did not
explicitly consider method. As is well known, J. M. Keynes underlines the impor-
tance of the following realistic assumption: a dynamic economy, as characterized by
high uncertainty and the role of expectations and hence an economy in which invest-
ment is a ‘flying bird’ is, by its nature, afflicted by a deficiency of demand and
consequent depression. This analysis points to the importance of the accurate
management of final demand (and of deficit spending, welfare state, etc.). Clearly,
such an approach amalgamates positive and normative elements, being and doing,
just as our proposal on method sets out; in other words, Keynesian economics erases
the distinction between economics and political economy, combining the two in a
unitary explanatory and prescriptive approach. Well, such an amalgamation of posi-
tive and normative elements needs the distinction between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-
possibility’ if it is not to be misleading. In the absence of such a distinction, the
amalgamation amounts simply to programmatic constructivism, precisely, that is, to
the idea that important social and economic changes and transformations may be
freely projected (as we shall see in Sect. 2.8 of Chap. 2). Economic and social
planning, promoted in Western countries by the Keynesian teaching, was condemned
to failure and ultimately condemnation by the lack of perception of the binary
‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’; a lack that has entailed the subjection of
programming to a crazy constructivism. In socialist countries, the disdain for such
28 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
20
See Mosini (2011), p. 139.
1.5 A Primary Methodological Misunderstanding in the Social Sciences… 29
the attempt to defeat the neoliberal paradigm, do not seem to focus on the true prob-
lem: such a paradigm may much more efficaciously be defeated through a scientific
demonstration of its groundlessness. As a matter of fact, the dominating confusion
on method is grist to the mill of various dominant powers within society, the will and
hope of people subjected to acute paradigmatic hegemonies notwithstanding. Many
times humans have hoped to achieve redemption through the power of the normative;
they have sometimes even believed to be building a paradise on earth, but have sub-
sequently discovered that what they had built was rather hell on earth. The hope of
earthly improvement does not depend solely on the will but requires also that will is
aided by the teaching of science, primarily a social science that, unfortunately, does
not yet exist. In sum, Mosini’s disdain for the positive view should take care to
replace the positive not simply with the normative side but something expressing
aspects that cannot be the object of the normative action, that is, what we call ‘neces-
sities’. Mosini’s disregard for those necessities contradicts her insistence on the real-
ism of assumptions and this contributes to the legitimization of the positive view.
A last digression on the question of the ‘realistic assumptions’ may help our
understanding of the vicissitudes of the Friedmanite teaching and the undue success
of mainstream economics. J. M. Keynes focused upon an important realist assump-
tion, viz. the factors causing the deficiency of effective demand. Unfortunately, he
ignored some other important realistic assumptions. In particular, he disregarded the
fact that the strategic role of effective demand requires the satisfaction of two condi-
tions: (a) that the economy is not afflicted by important structural lacks and dual-
isms so that the stimulus to demand draws forth the remaining variables; (b) the
impossibility of endemic pressures from income distribution (that Keynes excluded
through the hypothesis that the labour market determines money wages, not real
wages, which latter should be a residual determined by price movements). When
conflicts for income distribution became acute and frequent, mainly propelled by
the rise of the contractual force of trade unions, economists started to argue that
demand was in excess (instead of being insufficient); but in fact the operation of the
old, and indeed the central realistic assumption of J.M. Keynes, which legitimated
demand leadership, was obstructed by the violations in de facto reality of those two
further conditions, (a) and (b). Thus, the failure of the Keynesian paradigm has not
been caused by ‘exogenous shocks’, but rather by its limitations. The cessation of
the leading role of effective demand favored Friedman’s criticism and fuelled the
well known conflict between Keynesians and monetarists, a conflict that expressed
a real confusion due to basic errors in the interpretation of reality. Let us see.
Monopolistic capitalism, characterized by high productivity and low wages
(and hence high profits, which were not fully reinvested due to the volatility of
investments caused by the volatility of expectations and radical uncertainty),
implied the situation that Keynes diagnosed, that is, one inclined towards the
deficiency of effective demand. But the advent of conflictual-consumeristic capi-
talism, fostered by wage increases that the main industrial sectors offered to
stimulate mass consumption, reversed the situation, thereby implying a radical
change in the role of money.
30 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
Keynes’ theory of money and the interest rate was based on the notion of liquid-
ity preference, implying that increased money supply does not cause inflation but
rather stimulates production (through the reduction of the interest rate). Friedman’s
teaching reaffirmed the quantity theory of money, according to which the money
supply determines prices while the interest rate is determined by real factors. Both
Keynesians and monetarists were wrong. In conflictual-consumeristic capitalism
money had lost the exogenous-instrumental character that both Friedman and
Keynes attribute to it. The money supply was endogenously determined by acute
conflicts for income distribution operating both in the domestic market and (through
high increases in oil prices) at the international level. In conclusion, in conflictual-
consumeristic capitalism inconvertible money operated like don Circostanza (in
Ignazio Silone’s well known 1933 book Fontamara), a lawyer who proposed the
attribution of three-quarters of the available water of a river to each one of the two
opposing parts. The discovery by trade unions of don Circostanza’s trick directed
their attention toward real wages. Thereupon, the money supply ceased to stimulate
production and accumulation, as it does in the presence of monetary illusion. The
exigency of restrictive money policies commenced, thus giving rise to the so-called
‘stop-go’ phenomenon. Countries afflicted by wide sectoral and territorial disequi-
libria experienced an accentuation of the failure of both Keynesianism and
Friedmanism. Income policy became a remedy practiced in the presence of acute
crises. In order to return money to an instrumental role, a clear distinction between
‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’ is needed, as well as a clear awareness of the
fact that income distribution pertains to the last.
A brief review of the historical-social process may help us to see better some of the
mystifying implications of both the strong and the weak observational views, as
well as the usefulness of the organizational view and the analytical categories speci-
fied in the two previous sections. It is mistaken to think that the observation of his-
torical events leads to well-founded interpretations of history. We know that the
non-repetitiveness of those events prevents observation from discovering laws of
motion and that the observational method inclines toward determinism, is afflicted
by analytic rigidity and imprisoned by what actually happened in the course of time.
In short, the observational method cannot provide us with clear and profound
answers to those queries that are provoked by the study of history. The past of a
world characterized by growing innovations is liable to deceive us if we do not
approach it with an organizational view. We must ask ourselves, then, if we want to
really learn from the study of history, why certain things happened in a certain way,
whether it might have been (objectively) possible for them to have unfolded in a
different and better (in the sense of more profitable) way, and what decisional and
directional errors and interested mystifications occurred in the course of time.
1.6 An Allusion to the Interpretation of Social and Historical Processes 31
21
Many examples on this matter, framed on a planetary scale, may be found in: (Fusari 2000).
32 1 Preliminary Considerations on the Method of Social Thought
1.7 Conclusion
This chapter has sought to call the reader’s attention to some basic but question-
able features of the standard methods of social and historical inquiry. It has set
out, as a preliminary, some peculiar contents of social reality that carry profound
implications for methodology. In particular, we have emphasized the importance
of properly combining being and doing in the context of an organizational view
strictly rooted in reality. We have also noted the importance of distinguishing
optional and creative aspects from structural necessities and arranging them
appropriately. This has highlighted the limitations of both social naturalism and
constructivism and traced the roots of the methodological confusion expressed
chiefly in the widely held idea of the incommensurability of social knowledge. We
have also sketched the way in which this confusion affects the interpretation of
historical processes.
We have seen that, on the one hand observational rationality ignores the fact that
verification merely based on facts is not possible with reference to social reality,
given its non-repetitive nature and, more generally, humanity’s ability to modify
society. In this situation, the “falsification” of social theories is inevitable, which
produces an impasse of observation based knowledge. Further, the observational
method concerns being and not doing, and this makes it quite unsuitable for inquiry
into social organization, particularly with regard to values, which represent a crucial
part of social reality and organization. We have also seen that an opposite mistake
afflicts constructivism, which privileges doing but disregards being. On the other
hand, an anti-positivist reaction, following Weber, has confirmed that the scientific
investigation of values is impossible, and has plainly accepted the doctrine of
incommensurability. We have underlined the importance, for the understanding of
social reality, of the distinction between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility-
creativeness’, and the way misunderstandings in this regard afflict important theo-
retical buildings, affect the conflict between normative and positive view and the
interpretation of history.
A more stringent, systematic and detailed discussion on the method of the social
sciences will be provided in the pages that follow.
References 33
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2.1 Introduction
This chapter points forcefully to the fundamental methodological problem facing the
social sciences: drawing up analytical criteria capable of identifying general princi-
ples and sound, reliable knowledge despite the rising flood of innovation within soci-
ety. As discussed in Chap. 1, such a problem originates from the fact that, being social
reality a product of human will and action, it cannot be investigated on the basis of the
method of natural sciences, as social positivists do. The identification of general prin-
ciples is obstructed to a remarkable degree by the dominant conflict between social
scientists following rationalist constructivism and scholars who emphasize spontane-
ous behavior. The discussion of method that is developed below will show, purely on
the basis of the crucial importance of spontaneous and non-intentional behaviors and
also of the lack of knowledge, that these aspects are consistent with the unfolding of
rational constructivism and, furthermore, that they imply and solicit it.
This chapter may also be seen as a study of the explanatory power of the ratio-
nality principle for the analysis and organization of social systems. Such a power
has been largely misunderstood by scholars, who have both taken it to excess, e.g.
in the Enlightenment and by the majority of positivists, and by default, by irratio-
nalists, historicists and a large part of sociologists. In general, studies on method
insist on the definition of the procedures and rules for the control and verification
of theoretic formulations, while considering the achievement of the hypotheses on
which those formulations hinge intractable from a methodological point of view,
being the unfathomable result of some scientist’s particular genius. Popper is the
main defender of this position, which may tend toward doctrines of incommensu-
rability and a refusal to embrace scientific method. We shall see that social theory
must reverse such a methodology and insist on the definition of some procedures
and rules useful to the specification of initial hypotheses, and on their classifica-
tion, which are decisive in the deriving of general principles; at the same time,
social theory must develop a distrust of the usual procedures of control and verifi-
cation, whether expressed in a falsificationist or in a positivist form.
1
Long lasting discussions and controversies on axioms and postulates have agitated logical-formal
sciences notwithstanding these sciences need, by their nature, a very limited number of postulates.
The situation with regard to postulates is much more complicated when deductive procedure is
applied in the social sciences; nevertheless, these sciences have dedicated little attention to the
question of postulates.
40 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
2
See Albert (2012 [1963]), Kapeller (2013).
2.2 An Alternative View on the Confrontation with Social Reality… 41
that are used in social thought ignore the classifications we propose and so fall into a
generic deductivism, or Popper’s hypothesis-falsification deductivism. For their part,
those deductions that follow the abstract rationality standard forget reality. So the
methodology we suggest begins with the classification and selection of ‘realistic’
postulates, and then proceeds to deduce their implications for the organization of
social systems. Such a procedure implies the combination of being (realistic postu-
lates) and doing (the organization of society). Let us remember that, unlike observa-
tional rationality, which is based on the acceptance of existing conditions (with the
underlying idea that the real is rational) and is typical of positivist and evolutionary
thought, prescriptive and organizational rationality is appropriate to a reality that is
constructed by humanity.
To summarize, the method of social sciences must be deductive and must
derive deductions from realistic postulates on the basis of the principle of orga-
nizational rationality. Moreover, it must be centered on the specification of rules
and procedure of classification that lead scholars in their research into and cor-
roboration of significant initial postulates, thus supplying some efficient tools to
deductive analysis to replace the term H-Oc, i.e. warranting the solidity of deduc-
tions notwithstanding the absence of an empirical verification of the theory.3 So
the proposed method, while suggesting a need to concentrate on the definition of
procedures and rules suitable to facilitate the specification of initial hypotheses,
which in social reality may be much more accurately defined than in natural real-
ity, at the same time refuses the observational search for falsifying (or confirm-
ing) events, since social change causes a substantial evaporation of the usefulness
of falsificationism as well as of other kinds of observation. In some sense, then,
the falsification (observational) procedure might only be referred to initial postu-
lates, i.e. the first term (O-H) of the succession O-H-Oc. In sum, the method we
propose, instead of being based on the criterion of observational verification of
theories, implying that reality means necessity, is based on the analysis of plau-
sibility, efficiency and realism of postulates. This implies that an important fac-
tor in the evolution of social science is represented by changes over time in the
degree of plausibility and effectiveness of postulates. Therefore, the method we
propose differs from all deductive methods: the Popperian one; the method based
on the principle of abstract rationality; and the deduction method based on mere
observation, i.e. abstracting from the rules and classifications specified above.
The nature of the difference will be further explored in the next section, devoted
to the derivation of general principles.
3
C.S. Peirce underlined the sterility of induction as a supposed seed of creativity, as well as the
conservative inclination of logical deduction. He added, therefore, a third category to induction
and deduction that he termed “abduction”, which concerned creative formulation of explanatory
hypotheses. But this new category has not generated any elaboration on method that facilitates
creativity in formulating theoretical hypotheses. The role that Peirce attributes to metaphor in this
regard must be considered with great caution; in fact, and as pointed out above, methods elaborated
by other sciences are completely inappropriate to social research.
2.3 The Formulation of General Principles in the Social Sciences 43
We have noted above that the observer of social reality sees an effervescent world,
replete with contradictions and changes that make orientation difficult. The over-
coming of this disorientation requires an answer to the following questions: toward
what long run order does the auto selective process that converts disorder into order,
through often extremely painful trial and error, push the system? Which existing
situations best approach such an adventurous tendency, and how best to accelerate
the convergence of spontaneous behavior toward it? More precisely, the overcoming
of this disorientation needs a method that allows for the articulation of the gravita-
tional attractions and other stabilizing forces or, in other words, derives some solid
and reliable generalizations that act as fundamental explanatory and leading prin-
ciples. As just seen, the satisfaction of this requirement requires some appropriate
classifications, as well as some methodological rules that help to select realistic
postulates4 in the unfolding of the process of the deduction of general principles.
Not everything is free to change. In every society, the forces of continuity and
necessity flank those of change. As we know, it is crucial to distinguish the elements
expressing choice from those expressing necessity. Change is due to innovations.
We shall see later the way in which innovations enter into modeling and explanatory
analyses. Here we must concentrate on permanence, the factors of duration that
allow the derivation of general principles, the skeleton of scientific knowledge, and
bench-marks of theoretic modeling, that unable the scientist to find his bearings
within the vortexes of changeable social reality. This section will discuss the method
of deriving such general principles. Clearly, these general principles must concern
necessity, not choice, as choice generates particular; besides, our principles must
concern long duration. We are going to outline a notion satisfying those requisites,
in particular, embodying both the aspects of permanence and necessity. We shall
denominate this notion functional imperative, following T. Parsons’ terminology.5
As is well known, Parsons listed some imperatives valid over time and space
that the social system must satisfy in order to preserve interior equilibrium and its
own existence. Unfortunately, the fact that Parsons’ notion of functional impera-
tive aspires to express historical constants gives the analysis a stationary imprint.
In particular, Parsons’ insistence on his functional imperative concerning the pres-
ervation of the value premises mixes necessity, duration and choice, thus causing a
4
Note that structural change due to creativity impedes the use of conventional modeling and stabil-
ity analysis, i.e. analysis based on a precise quantitative structure from which are derived eigenvec-
tors and which allow the development of quali-quantitative analyses of the effects of changes in
parameters.
5
See Parsons (1987) and Parsons and Smelser (1964).
44 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
total confusion of those elements and thereby severely obstructing the progress of
social theory. In effect, Parsons’ functional imperatives express, more properly,
merely functional exigencies. Moreover, Parsons proposes a treatment of the ethi-
cal-ideological aspect focusing upon the functional side, while almost completely
neglecting the optional-innovative and conflictual sides, which are crucial for
social change. But value premises mainly express choice, even when they involve
long duration. The notion of functional imperative, if it is to possess all its potential
explanatory power, must be emancipated from such limitations as well as from any
confusion between necessity and choice. In particular, it is important to distinguish
this notion from that of civilization (see next section), which, by contrast, is com-
pletely embodied within Parsons’ concept of functional imperative. It is urgent to
enunciate a definition and some rule for the derivation of the functional imperative
immunizing it from these ambiguities.
The functional imperative must express an organizational order or principle
imposed by mere reasons of systemic efficiency, it expresses necessary conditions
of efficiency; in sum, it must refer to pure organizational rationality. As such, it
concerns the element of necessity, not of choice; in particular, it must not embody
ethical-ideological’ options’ irrespective of their possible great importance and
solidity. It is also useful to underline that the functional imperative cannot be
directed to the designation of some historical constants as these can be referred only
to stationary societies; rather, it must express some dynamic entities that are vari-
able over the very long run. A primary task for social theory is thus the definition of
some rules that allow for the discovery of organizational categories fulfilling the
above requisites. Let us attempt this task with more detail than hitherto.
Clearly, the greatest adversity with which the social sciences must contend in
their effort to generate enduring principles, possibly valid over a wide geographical
range, is the process of ideological and technological selection and revision – in a
word, innovation. To deduce such principles, then, one must generalize with respect
to innovative phenomena.6 More specifically, the deduction of general principles for
the social sciences must begin from premises that concern the general aspects of the
social reality considered, which descend from its general conditions of develop-
ment; it must not begin from premises (postulates) that themselves include specific
ideological or technological conditions and choices, or specific aspects of nature,
however important and decisive (and even if extremely long-lasting), because these
are particular, optional aspects.
A useful rule for the derivation of functional imperatives may consist in concen-
trating on the existing general conditions of development, in order to extract from
them some extremely general and meaningful aspects, which will then act as pos-
tulates from which to derive all implications for the efficient organization of social
systems, in the form of functional imperatives. Of course, the imperatives derived
in such a way vary with the general conditions of development, thus providing a
basic expression of the dynamics of society. In sum, these organizational catego-
ries emerge over the course of history, as the product of the sedimentation of
6
Of course, abstracting also from the particular conditions of nature.
2.3 The Formulation of General Principles in the Social Sciences 45
7
For instance, and as we shall see in the paragraph on exemplification, Kirzner’s analysis of eco-
nomic process implicitly specifies (and is hinged on) some basic functional imperatives of modern
dynamic economies (the entrepreneur, market process, decentralization of decision making).
Again, Williamson’s analysis centered on transaction costs, as well as the economic analysis of
rights (EAR), are substantially aimed at pointing out that the firm’s organization and some rights
represent functional imperatives.
46 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
In fact, reality may differ widely from functional imperatives, which latter only
represent some gravitational attractions of the auto selective process of trial and
error. There is no guaranty that they will be present in reality and thus constitute
a possible object of experimental verification; indeed, very often they are not
reflected by reality. It is a task of theory to enunciate their functional role, prop-
erties, the necessity of building them and the way to do so. The verification of
general theories (i.e. characterized by high permanence) may cautiously be based
on observation, but only in the special case that social organization satisfies (i.e.
embodies) the functional imperatives pertaining to the considered development
phase with its general conditions.
The above treatment allows us to understand that social research currently uses a
deductive procedure more insidious than the abstract deductive method. This par-
ticularly problematic deductive procedure is represented by observational deductiv-
ism, which does not follow the rule of derivation of functional imperatives expressed
above, but rather pretends to derive general principles from postulates that include
particular ideological aspects; in this way, this procedure mixes indistinctly neces-
sity and choice, ignoring the optional-creative aspect on the assumption that reality
means necessity. Economics, which is the most advanced branch of social theory,
contains numerous examples not only of the abstract deductive method (mainly
represented by models of general equilibrium) but, even more, of observational
deductivism (as represented by, for example, the opposite Smith’s and Marx’s
appreciations on the market and the entrepreneur, which consider these synony-
mous with the capitalist market on the basis of an historical observation that shows
these organizational forms strictly embodied in a specific kind of civilization, the
capitalistic one, and on the associated value premises).
1. The above notion of functional imperative entails some basic results concerning the
crucial issue of value premises and the cumulativeness of social knowledge. We saw
before that an important rule for the derivation of these imperatives is the exclusion
from postulates of particular technological and ethical-ideological aspects, as these
are objects of choice. The exclusion from postulates of specific ideological aspects
denies the Weberian assumption that the building of theory cannot abstract from value
premises and, therefore, this avoids the incommensurability (i.e. non comparability)
of the theoretical principle (functional imperative) in question. The rationality princi-
ple and the comparability of social theories receive another important support from
the fact that functional imperatives may also concern some basic values with which
the system of values as a whole must cohere (we considered this already in speaking
of ‘necessity’ and we shall further clarify this important point later through some
2.3 The Formulation of General Principles in the Social Sciences 47
examples). This circumstance has another important consequence. The statement that
some ethical aspects may represent (be derived as) functional imperatives and there-
fore express necessity, implies a scientific limitation (in addition to limitations of a
religious and metaphysical type) to cultural relativism: the scientific, i.e. objective
character of some value premises proves the groundlessness of the equal rank that
cultural relativism attributes, in principle, to all such premises. The current failure to
grasp this crucial point concerning value premises generates numerous, profound and
well rooted misunderstandings in social theory, most notably an extremely harmful
confusion between the elements of necessity and choice, impeding the building of a
scientific theory of social and historical development.
In other words, the notion of functional imperative considerably reduces the
indeterminacies and strong contrasts fueled by the idea of the inescapable perva-
siveness and equal dignity of different “points of view”. This result amplifies
remarkably the role of scientific analysis in the field of social phenomena and, in
particular, the cumulativeness of scientific knowledge.8 But it may be useful to
underline, in this regard, that Parsons’ approach, which emphasizes, as we have just
seen, the duration of values and their functional role, forgets that the value premises
not constituting functional imperatives are object of choice, i.e. are characterized by
a scientific ambiguity. Some contemporary scholars insist upon the possibility of
scientific investigation of impersonal, objective, social values that are shared by
a large number of people, as distinct from strictly personal, subjective, individual
values that cannot be the object of science. We think our notion of functional imper-
atives goes beyond such assertions and clarifies some of their limitations. The sci-
entific nature of functional imperatives is unquestionable, even when they concern
value premises, independently on their degree of sharing among people. Weber’s
denial of the possibility for science to investigate ethical aspects of phenomena is
exaggerated, while Parsons’ position on the matter seems too extensive as social
values do not escape – in principle and in contrast to Parsons’ imperatives – options
and creativity, and, hence, some sort of scientific ambiguity (except in the case that
they represent functional imperatives in our sense).
The scientific derivation of values based on the notion of functional imperative
does not deny the historical nature of social events and it does not need metaphysi-
cal supports, as does the doctrine of natural rights. In some sense our notion of
functional imperative lies between historicism and jus naturalism. The theoretical
principles that this notion allows us to formulate, being derived from the general
conditions of development concerning the investigated society, represent a result of
historical processes. But these principles share with the theory of natural rights a
derivation based on the rationality principle and a non-relativistic content. They
express an inevitable need for social organizations belonging to the same phase of
development. Functional imperatives do not depend on some specific civilization
8
The results presented in this and the previous paragraph may provide a substantial contribution to
the solution of the “post positivist puzzle of relativism” and the incommensurability problem,
pointed out by Ardebili (2003). R. Bhaskar’s solution here is not exhaustive since it eludes the
ontology of science, i.e. “the scientists’ conception of reality”.
48 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
but, rather, and as we shall see, influence such civilization as this must be congenial
to them. They express all that science may say on ethics that, for the remainder,
admits only criteria of justification based on faith. We shall see in Chap. 8 that these
imperatives may offer a basis for a contractualist notion of right immune to the criti-
cism formulated by juridical positivism, and provide a foundation upon which to
build a theory of right hinged on a science of social institutions and organizations.
2. The notion of ‘ontological imperative’ concerning, as we saw, the unfolding of
human evolutionary potential, provides another important support to the scientific
derivation of ethical values. This notion expresses some general and basic character-
istics of human beings. In contrast to functional imperatives, ontological imperatives
do not vary with the general conditions of development and hence are not pushed to
impress themselves upon it over the course of history but, rather, remain valid for ever.
They may be repressed, however, for unlimited periods of time if a particular social
order is characterized by a civilization adverse to them. Their triumph is warranted
only if the evolutionary process is not obstructed, so that they are transformed, sooner
or later, into functional imperatives; at that point, the past insistence upon them by
some scholar, wise man or religious seer will appear retrospectively as a sort of proph-
ecy. One particularly important ontological imperative is the tolerance principle. This
is a consequence of the limitations and the intensive differentiation of human knowl-
edge, which both imply that nobody has a complete monopoly upon reason and that
human beings may profitably use reason only if they accept (and look for) confronta-
tion with different and dissident points of view; in fact, knowledge proceeds by trial
and error and heterodox propositions may indicate some fruitful solutions to the prob-
lems of daily life. Another important ontological imperative concerns the role of the
individual. The fact that the individual is the first source of both creativity and of the
dynamics and variety of social processes implies the (ontological) importance of indi-
vidual action and dignity and of the principle of personal responsibility as indispens-
able in warranting the social profitableness of that action.
The presence or absence (i.e. by violation) of ontological imperatives is a distin-
guishing mark of, respectively, open and closed societies. As we shall soon see, with
the advent of the stage of modern dynamic societies some important ontological
imperatives also become functional imperatives, for they are indispensable to the
preservation of social dynamism.
The five chapters in Part II of this book will consider a wide number of ontologi-
cal and functional imperatives with reference to the most important fields of
social sciences. However, it is indispensable to provide soon some examples of
those imperatives, aimed at reducing the abstractness of the analysis and improv-
ing understanding. It may be useful to start from some further examples of onto-
logical imperatives.
2.3 The Formulation of General Principles in the Social Sciences 49
exchange and the advent of the global economy require new economic institutions.
More generally, the planetary breadth of modern societies determines an increasing
need for supranational compulsory powers9 that, together with the need for decen-
tralization expressed above, favors federalism over the national state; moreover, a
penetrating operation of reciprocity is needed in order to warrant social cohesion, as
underlined by S. Zamagni.
The entry of the masses onto the scene of contemporary society determines an
increasing need for institutions capable of conjugating operational efficiency and
social justice, for instance: the ‘separation’ of the firm from the conflict for income
distribution thereby making the market a pure mechanism for efficiency and accoun-
tancy, the rationalization and redefinition of welfare state, the definition of indica-
tors of efficiency concerning activities characterized by market failure.10
Basic technologies, i.e. technologies that are fundamental to the existence of the
general conditions of development, and the organizational forms that they imply, are
also functional imperatives.
It is important to underline that the specification of ontological and functional
imperatives is based on our notion of organizational rationality; they are incon-
sistent with other notions of rationality, previously criticized. A reference to
S. Zamagni’s development of this matter may allow some further clarification.
Zamagni opposes Ulysses’ instrumental rationality, exemplified by the com-
mand of this mythological Homeric hero that he be fastened to the mainmast so
that he might listen to the song of the Sirens without being drawn to wreck his
ship, to Jason’s relational rationality, i.e. Orpheus’ use of extraordinary lyrical
and musical skills to allow the Argonauts to freely listen to the song of the Sirens
without risking a shipwreck. Zamagni underlines that the virtues of relational
rationality are: to conjugate efficiency and freedom, to allow the possibility of
combination with different values, to not separate the head from the heart. This
is wonderful, but it illustrates some scientific ambiguity. The heart is an ambigu-
ous advisor; it is important to avoid it operating against the head, and this end
requires some objective specification concerning both ethical values and the rela-
tion between efficiency and freedom. Our notion of organizational rationality
has a much wider extension than instrumental rationality, in particular regarding
important values that we proved to have an objective substance (in the form of
ontological and functional imperatives), e.g. the values of reciprocity and frater-
nity (which Zamagni underlines) as deriving from postulate c regarding social
cohesion; moreover, our distinction between necessity and choice-possibility
provides a scientific conjugation of efficiency and freedom. These extensions
avoid the possible ambiguities of relational rationality. Unfortunately, instru-
mental rationality is often considered the most genuine expression of scientific
thought. This widespread conviction is helped by the above mentioned ambiguity
of relational rationality.
9
Such powers might be substituted by forms of imperialism; but these are strongly opposed by the
conscience of modern Man.
10
See (Ekstedt and Fusari 2010), chapter 8.
52 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
That which is the result of choice does not always imply change and temporariness.
One important exception is given by the basic ideological choices around which the
entire social fabric revolves, is structured and is integrated. Such exceptions may be
11
For instance, a desert people and a seafaring people will be induced by their differing environ-
mental circumstances to construct dissimilar institutions and social orders. Institutional and orga-
nizational dissimilarities will also mark the social systems of peoples with – for example – different
religious beliefs and/or different technological conditions.
2.4 From General to Particular: Continuity and Permanence Versus Change 53
defined as grand options. The following are examples of grand options: the idea of
progress typical of Western societies, worship of the autocrat and of the state, the
spirit of conformity and the culture of obedience typical of bureaucratic centralized
systems. These key ideas define the fundamental physiognomy of the social system;
they are its supreme, guiding criterion, the inner fire that warms its hearth. They are
the product of very long lasting elaborations and cannot be overturned by sharp,
sudden decisions but can only be removed gradually over a protracted period of
transition; for their removal implies the dismantling of an entire and relatively cohe-
sive set of concepts, behaviors, ideals, institutions, and so on. In a word, the removal
of grand options implies the waning of the old social universe and the construction
of a new one. Such grand options constitute an important factor of continuity. Their
extensive persistence over time and/or their derivation from protracted sedimenta-
tion and synthesis assimilates them to the postulates from which functional impera-
tives are derived. But they differ from the latter (concerning necessity) in that they
imply specific value-ideological choices. There can be no doubt but that they repre-
sent elements crucial for systems modeling. There exists a correspondence between
the concept of grand option and that of civilization. We define a civilization as an
institutionalized set of value-ideological and technological choices, together with
the organizational forms consequent to those choices and to the conditioning of the
natural environment, marked by the grand options. This concept of civilization
differs from that of society and that of ‘social system’ in that it excludes: those ideo-
logical and technological choices and innovations not yet institutionalised, func-
tional imperatives plus basic technologies (in that these categories characterize all
societies at a given level of development, whatever their form of civilization).12 We
shall se in Chap. 4 that the concept of civilization plays a central role in the con-
struction of a theory of social development and the historical process, in interaction
with functional and ontological imperatives and with non-institutionalized innova-
tions and choices.
There exists an opposition between the concepts of civilization and functional
imperative. Both concepts refer to the long run, but the first concerns choice,
while the second refers to the formulation of general principles and necessity.
This opposition makes clear the great importance of the distinction between
necessity, duration and choice. Civilizations are always the result of choice, not-
withstanding their duration. As such, they have a conflictual character: they do not
change automatically together with the general conditions of development, as do
functional imperatives, but have rather a strong propensity to preserve themselves,
together with their peculiarities. Thus, civilizations constitute an important con-
servative factor. More precisely, while they are born from a great creativity, which
provides a strong initial momentum to their developmental processes, their
12
It should be noted that the term civilization as so defined means something different than does the
term culture. Even when this latter term is taken in the wide sense attributed to it by anthropolo-
gists, the notion of civilization just given is, still, the wider and more stringent one. Of particular
importance, the term civilization as so defined expresses better than the term culture the imprinting
of what I have called ‘grand options’ upon the basic features of the social system, side by side with
the other basic organizational categories that I denominate functional and ontological imperatives,
and avoids mixing with these categories.
54 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
The factors behind evolutionary motion are choice and innovation. More pre-
cisely, only innovative choices generate such a motion. A stationary system (e.g.
a stationary economy) carries out choices; but these latter, which can be defined
as adaptive choices to distinguish them from truly innovative choices, express
stationary-repetitive motion and, as such, may be explained through some model
of interaction.
We classify innovations in relation to two distinct categories.13 On the one hand
we have ideological and value innovations, which are relative to the sphere of ideas,
values, and world views. On the other hand we have technological innovations,
which in an advanced state of knowledge stem from the application of the appropri-
ate sciences to problems of life. In contrast to functional imperatives, these aspects
of the social system are specific, contingent and reversible. They may be removed
or altered without necessarily violating rationality or organizational efficiency, pro-
vided that one has the strength, capacity and resolve to do way with the premises
(i.e. the specific choices and innovations) from which they derive. Of course, they
provide some well defined initial hypotheses for deductive procedure.
It is important to articulate accurately the position that innovations occupy in the
building of theory. Theory may explain innovation at the aggregate level, but cannot
do so with regard to the specific character of innovations, as this depends crucially
on creativity, which is unpredictable by definition. It is senseless to try to foresee or
explain specific innovations. But this is no reason for alarm. It simply is, and all we
can do is to recognize the fact. Some of the chief tasks of the social sciences com-
prise ensuring that society is as open as possible to the infinite variety of possible
innovative choices, pointing out their implications and teaching us how to prevent
13
Naturally, the two types interact; indeed, the same innovation may belong to both categories.
Other types of innovations, such as radical and incremental ones, should be considered; they
play a crucial role in economic modeling (see, for instance, Fusari and Reati 2013; Ekstedt and
Fusari 2010).
56 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
or promptly remedy any de-structuring consequent to the advent of the new. The
social process is largely described by the interaction between two phases: the inno-
vative dash and the subsequent structural organization. Such an interaction provides
the engine of evolutionary motion.
The processes by which innovative choices mature are varied. They may be con-
flictual or participatory; they may be propelled by religion, by art or by science, and
so on. Factors that put a brake on the occurrence of innovations are no less impor-
tant. Changes in the way in which human needs are served, in custom and tradition,
in life styles and decisional rules, in the very conception of life generated by the
appearance of new technologies and new knowledge, cannot and do not impinge
continuously upon everything and everyone. Entrenched habits and customs, espe-
cially the grand options, offer powerful resistance to the rise of technological or
intellectual innovations that conflict with established ways. Although for reasons of
efficiency they will eventually give way, arriving at that point will be a long drawn-
out process involving a great deal of friction and not infrequently entailing post-
ponement and only gradual introduction of the new ways. Besides, changes in moral
or value premises are limited by the fact that they must not contradict those value
premises constituting functional imperatives. Finally, some technological choices
are broader in operational scope and more enduring in their effects than others. This
applies to fundamental technologies, i.e. those that are an essential element of the
general conditions of development and whose absence therefore implies that the
corresponding level of development is unattainable. Such technologies have a vast
and enduring impact on the social sphere. The well known phenomena of path
dependency and lock-in confirm the above considerations.
Studying the diffusion and capacity for endurance of customs, traditions, value
premises and technologies is of the greatest importance and allows an assessment of
the friction and the contradictions that technological developments and other inno-
vations (such as a plan of social reform) will have to overcome.
The first and crucial work that must be performed by the method of the social science
is the definition of rules, procedures and classifications that facilitate the definition of
postulates, which latter stand at the basis of the process of scientific construction. In
particular, the first steps must derive: (a) general principles (functional imperatives)
from realistic postulates not including specific choices and conditions of ideology
and technology but concerning very general, significant features of society; (b) onto-
logical imperatives. The next steps consist in the identification of the grand value-
ideological options and the civilization that they characterize and which govern the
society being studied or, in utopian constructs, the civilization to which one aspires.
The resultant framework can then be enriched by considering more specific aspects
of reality, for instance, conditions of nature. Hence, the implications of all that on the
2.5 Synthesis of the Methodological Framework. The Interrelationships… 57
14
For example, it must be ascertained that the value premises adopted constitute a consistent set,
headed by supreme ideals, followed by some other general value premises and, still further down,
specific value premises. In other words, each norm must be coherent with the overarching system
of ideals.
58 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
The elements of choice and the working out, through innovation, of man’s
creative capacities correspond to freedom in the development of social systems.
This freedom is not significantly limited by the fact that choice must not contradict
necessity as represented by functional imperatives (the necessary conditions for
efficiency). This appears evident when it is recognized that the realistic postulates
in the general configuration of reality, from which our functional imperatives are
derived, are generated by the historical accumulation of innovations. In addition,
this sedimentation of choices and innovations will eventually alter not only the gen-
eral conditions of development but also the conditioning power of both nature and
of the basic technologies themselves, that is, all the elements constituting the aspect
of necessity, while the fulfillment of ontological imperatives determines the evolu-
tionary strength of the social system.
It might seem that the above considerations darken our distinction between necessity
and choice. But the point is that a society may not violate functional imperatives, natural
conditions and basic technologies without seriously compromising its organizational
efficiency. These are the necessary conditions of efficiency. Unfortunately, the ingrained
tendency of choices, especially when they touch on the grand options, to take root and
vigorously resist revision not infrequently induces people to mistake these optional ele-
ments for necessities and to give the preference to them over and above those functional
and ontological imperatives with which they are not consistent. To further clarify the
analytic importance of this distinction would require a treatment of social development
and historical explanation (see Chaps. 4 and 5).
In social discussion, the failure to separate the merely functional from the ideo-
logical, necessity from choice, aggravated by the frequent identification of necessity
with duration, inextricably entangles science and faith, thus generating fierce and
irresolvable disputes. Operationally, the consequences are more harmful still, for
the result is two diametrically opposed tendencies the effects of which are simply
devastating on the planetary scale. First is the tendency, which can be termed
“pseudo reformist”, to reduce necessity to the rank of ideology, i.e. to substitute
value-ideological options, mainly grand options and the related civilizations, for the
necessary conditions of efficiency. This tendency has inflicted terrible defeats on
movements for social reform. Second is the tendency, which can be labeled “pseudo-
scientific”, to raise ideology to the rank of necessity, i.e. to mistake (or pass off)
value-ideological elements for purely functional necessities, as well as to justify and
exalt moral choices for their alleged purely functional quality (functionalist preju-
dice). This latter tendency is strengthened by the propensity of optional elements to
take root which, together with the axiomatic equivalence of reality and necessity
implicit in the observational method, confers upon it a seeming seal of scientific
standing. Confusion here is aggravated by the fact that the character of ontological
imperatives stands half way between necessity and choice, thereby obscuring the
importance of fulfilling these imperatives.
We have these confusions and theoretical shortcomings – among others – to
thank for the fact that mankind has steadfastly condemned the just and elevated
frauds and impostors.
60 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
15
Such an invariant structure permits quali-quantitative mathematical analyses directed to investi-
gate the existence of equilibrium, its stability or to point out the existence of strange attractors
shaping chaotic areas.
2.8 Economic and Social Planning 61
the investigation of social reality, both the O-H-Oc observational method (with its
quantitative content) and deductive procedure previously discussed and proposed.
Nevertheless, a qualitative gulf separates micro from macro theory; a distance that
is not due to the choice of a holistic perspective but results simply from aggregation.
The dimension of this gulf varies according to whether one or other of the two fol-
lowing situations is in operation: (a) micro variables and macro variables act in the
same sense, so that the observation of the latter permits the immediate perception of
the behavior of the first; (b) the behavior of micro variables are not unidirectional and
they take unexpected directions at the aggregate level. Situation (a) is frequent in the
economy (think, for instance, of the aggregated and disaggregated functions of
demand and supply); in this case, the discontinuity existing between the aggregated
and disaggregated levels is to be imputed simply to the fact that aggregation sup-
presses particular innovations, on which evolutionary movement depends. But the
economy also falls under case (b). For instance, the phenomenon of deficiency of
effective demand may only be expressed at the aggregate level. L. Pasinetti defines
as genuinely macro conditions “those relations that represent characteristics of the
whole economic system”,16 and accurately analyzes them. Sociologists are acutely
conscious of cases falling under (b), for instance, that individual discontent does not
translate into collective discontent and mobilization.
The true disadvantage of aggregation derives from the fact that the suppression
of variables can markedly distort the representation of reality. But this limitation
goes hand in hand with some advantages, principally the fact that macro analysis is
able to represent some phenomena that micro analysis does not perceive, and also
the wide spectrum of methodological tools available to macro theory. However, the
above two fields display complementary roles for the development of knowledge. It
is important to be conscious of their methodological differences.
Economic and social planning and related instruments of reform have roused great
expectations on a world-wide scale, but have been followed by bitter disillusion-
ment. It may be useful to analyze the causes of such unhappy outcomes from the
perspective of our inquiry into the method of social thought.
The main cause of the failure of centralized planning has been implicitly set
out by our above analysis of the ‘necessities’ of dynamic economies, primarily
the necessity of the market, entrepreneurship and related ethical values. Much
more difficult is the explanation of the failures of economic and social planning
in market economies.
Some important mathematical approaches to planning came to light in the con-
text of the Soviet experience, for instance the linear programming of L. Kantorovich,
L. Pontryagin’s maximum principle for the optimal control theory of dynamical
16
See Pasinetti (1993), p. 49.
62 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
systems, and the input-output approach of V. Leontief that flourished after this
author’s migration to West; but the major usefulness of the first two has proved
to concern firms’ planning while the major usefulness of the third has been in
regard to statistical national accounting. The 1960s and the 1970s of the last century
witnessed an efflorescence of what can be denominated the programmatic approach,
which emphasizes doing in the context of economic and social planning. R. Frisch,
J. Tinbergen, L. Johansen played a leading role in the field. Their teaching was con-
cerned by the main lack of constructivism, that is, an inclination to disregard being
in the name of doing; an issue previously considered but that warrants some further
discussion. We shall see that economic and social planning offers the best grounds
for a criticism of the constructivist perspective.
Many economists who lean towards the free market have underlined the ingenu-
ousness and abstractions inherent to planning projects. Hayek is associated with
some of the most caustic and sarcastic polemics against constructivism in the name
of spontaneous behavior. Unfortunately, Hayek did not understand that constructiv-
ism and spontaneity mutually feed upon one another, owing to gaps in both of these
schools of thought that allow each to assert itself as the remedy for the errors of the
other. The more problematic of the two is no doubt constructivism, for its pretension
to deviate from spontaneous tendencies infuses heavy error and turbulence into
those already contained within spontaneous processes, if a science of the organiza-
tion of social systems does not exist. One major theoretical consequence of con-
structivist errors and ingenuousness is represented by the blossoming of the most
scientifically consistent kind of spontaneity represented by evolutionary social
thought, which has expanded its tentacles into a large part of institutional thought,
notwithstanding the intrinsically constructivist nature of institutional phenomena.17
The Keynesian discovery of ‘the principle of effective demand’, which was in
the air from the beginning of the nineteenth century and that, as a matter of fact,
must be basically attributed to Hobson’s analysis of imperialism, opened the door
to an age of great reformist hopes and to a large diffusion, in the Western world,
of national planning. In fact, during the Great Depression and later, the violation
of such a principle took the form of a deficiency of demand and this suggested
therapies designed to increase aggregate demand that raised an extensive and
attractive possibility of social reform related to income redistribution, the building
of the welfare state, and increased public spending. But later bitter disillusion fol-
lowed, caused by the partiality and one-sidedness of the approach and by inherent
shortcomings of the diagnosis that will be diffusely considered in the last section
of Chap. 3.
It may seem that the crisis of economic and social planning contradicts our state-
ment that the organizational view, which stands at the basis of planning, is appropri-
ate to social reality. We need to explain, therefore, why, if our analysis is correct,
17
The European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) provides one of the best
instances of the attempt to marry evolutionary and institutional thought. This is expressed well, for
example, in the convergence of the institutionalism of G. M. Hodgson and the social evolutionism
of U. Witt.
2.8 Economic and Social Planning 63
economic and social planning has failed, the consistency of its constructivist character
with social reality notwithstanding. The explanation is that the appropriateness of the
vision at the basis of a method is, in itself, insufficient to ensure the correct investiga-
tion and management of the considered reality; some other requirements are needed,
and these, unfortunately, have often been ignored or misunderstood by social plan-
ners. Let us investigate this matter more closely.
The vulnerability of planning is primarily derived from a lack of methodologi-
cal rules allowing for the definition of realistic postulates in order to warrant the
combination of being and doing and make possible the distinction between
necessity and choice-possibility. We have seen that in both observational and
spontaneity positivism, being dominates while doing is absent and that, by con-
trast, doing, i.e. the guiding aspect, dominates in social planning. Unfortunately,
however, the reference of planning to being, i.e. de facto reality, is weak and
confused; it is this that has generated the abstractness and the unconstrained
constructivism that are often reproved to the various approaches to economic and
social planning. A coherent combination of being and doing does not exist in
social thought, as far as we know. More precisely, we have seen that social think-
ing disregards the selection of realistic postulates, notwithstanding the fact that
this is indispensable to replace the control and verification of theories based on
facts, such verification being prevented (as we know) by the non-repetitiveness
of observed events. It must be added that planning and related schemes of reform
constitute some further elements militating against the hypothesis of the repeti-
tiveness of events. This makes it a terminological and substantial contradiction to
hinge the (limited) reference of planning to being on the observational method.
Notwithstanding, economic and social planning has used strict observation in the
attempt to escape unrealism, as testified, among other things, by the extensive
use of econometrics, which is a strongly observational science.
The dissociation between reality and the guiding aspect is well expressed by the
distinction between economics (with its laws of motion) and political economy. In
fact, the inductive or deductive experimental procedures typical of positive economics
are inconsistent with the guiding character of political economy, since such a charac-
ter (implicitly constructivist) contradicts the hypothesis of repetitiveness, which is
indispensable to the inductive or deductive experimental method. Constructivism,
specifically the guiding character of political economy, needs, let us repeat, a non-
observational method of inquiry into reality. But economic and social planning has
not been able to satisfy such a methodological need.
The difficulties and failures of planning can be better understood by return-
ing to the distinction between necessity and choice-possibility. We know from
our proposal on method that such a distinction derives from the rules of selec-
tion of ‘realistic postulates’. The distinction cannot be enunciated otherwise, for
instance, through the optimization models that can be considered the canonical
formulation of planning. In fact, and as seen in Sect. 1.4 of the previous chapter,
the distinction between necessity and choice-possibility precedes the logical
structure of optimization approach. We shall try to further clarify this through
some simple considerations.
64 2 The Core of the Methodological Question: Procedure, Rules, Classifications
18
F. Archibugi has argued acutely against positive economics. His emphasis on the ‘programmatic
approach’ highlights the most relevant tools on optimal planning. But this kind of constructivism,
which emphasizes doing and almost forgets being and ignores the distinction between ‘necessity’
and ‘choice-possibility’, expresses a totally unilateral constructivist feature, which is the main
reason for the failure of the method of economic and social planning. See (Archibugi 2007),
Preliminary draft, Italian.
2.8 Economic and Social Planning 65
2.9 Conclusion
The initial development of social theory was heavily influenced by the thought and
discussion of philosophers. Later, the separation of social from philosophic thought,
fully justified by the deviations from scientific method generated by the links
between the two, and the steady advance of specialization have led to the progres-
sive narrowing of the scope of social theory. Furthermore, this provides an unsatis-
factory treatment of the ethical-ideological problem, of the organic-functional and
conflictual aspects and, more broadly, the distinction between choice and necessity
and other related issues. The work of three of the most wide-ranging and famous
social theorists – Marx, Weber and Parsons – fully bears witness to the analytical
shortcomings of current social theory. The harm that results from this state of affairs,
especially in the sphere of the organization and management of social systems, is
glaringly obvious, and the present tendency is for the situation to be exacerbated.
We have seen in the previous chapter that reliance upon methodology based
strictly on observation (and in this context it does not matter whether it is deductive
or inductive-experimental) entails the implicit assumption that everything that hap-
pened had to happen and, furthermore, privileges the idea of spontaneous process:
from the careful observation of reality (conceived of as necessity) one seeks to
derive scientific “laws” as guides to action. We have also seen that the constructivist
method that replaces the observation of being with an emphasis on doing does not
offer a more satisfactory perspective; indeed, we have provided an extensive analy-
sis of the shortcomings of such a method with reference to the main ground of its
application: economic and social planning.
19
See, Ruffolo (1973) Rapporto sulla programmazione, Laterza, Bari.
References 67
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Chapter 3
Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought:
Weakness or Strength – Is There a Synthesis?
3.1 Introduction
The degree to which the various branches of human thought can be called ‘scientific’
may be thought of as inversely correlated to the number of methodologies they use.
It becomes practically zero if all methods are considered acceptable, which means
the simple cancellation of the problem of method. Considered in this light, the
current state of social thought is very discouraging indeed. The critical review of
some of the dominant methodologies of social theory that will follow later on is
aimed at clarifying the situation. Here, accordingly, we insist on the variety of meth-
odological proposals; this approach prevents us from going thoroughly into each
proposal, but the consequent lack of analysis will be partly remedied in later
chapters, where some critical observations are made on the theories discussed there.
A discussion and critique of some major scholars not treated here may be found in
Ekstedt and Fusari (2010), particularly chapters 1 and 3.
This analysis of some of the main scholarly contributions on the method of social
sciences is intended to help the reader to understand better the reasons behind this
book, its contents and its implications. To this end it may be useful a synthetic
classification that re-proposes in part some distinction set out in Chap. 1. We classify
the contributions on method as follows:
(a) Those that, implicitly or explicitly, assume that reality means rationality. These
contributions limit themselves to the accurate observation of reality and derive
its explanation on the basis of observed behaviour, just as is necessary in the study
of nature, a study which is aimed at finding laws of motion that help to interact
with nature. This group can be split into two sub-categories:
(a′) The formulations that place before the idea that real means rational the idea
that reality means necessity (that is, what happened had to happen). This
group includes idealists, aspiring to capture the meaning of the Whole and
historical necessity; their belief that reality proceeds toward some final end
implies the presumption that the real, as the expression of the tendency
toward that end, is rational. But this idealist reference to final ends has a
metaphysical, not scientific content; therefore, analysis of it lies outside the
bounds of our study.
(a″) The formulations that make the observational hypotheses of acceptance of
reality and that real means rational. This group includes positivists, empiri-
cists and experimentalists, in short, all scholars who utilize the method of
strict observation. Members of this group consider reality in inductive
terms or as the basis for verifying hypothetical-deductive theories. The
observational method of this sub-group (a″) exaggerates duration, while it
is unable to interpret creative and optional processes and their contribution
to evolution. As we saw in Chap. 1, the formulations that make the dual
hypothesis of acceptance of reality and repetition may be denominated the
strong observation method, while those limitating themselves only to the
acceptance of reality may be denominated the weak observation method.
The dual assumption ‘reality means regularity’ and ‘reality means rational’
simply removes the aspect of choice-possibility from social theory, thus
implying a substantial fatalism, only apparently mitigated by the presumption
of the possibility to build and direct society in a scientific way once its laws
of motion have been discovered, as both the Enlightenment tradition and eco-
nomic and social planning proclaim. In this respect, however, there is a differ-
ence of degree between sub-groups (a′) and (a″): the former claims to derive
great laws of motion concerning final ends, while the latter seeks only to
determine limited, partial and particular laws.
(b) The formulations that reject the ideas that ‘real means rational’ and ‘real means
regularity’, and also reject the postulate of recurrence. They underline the
importance of creative events, the role of the individual, evolutionary motion
and the organizational view of social systems. Unfortunately, this group suf-
fers from incoherent and fragmented conceptual approaches, a variety of ideas
that are hard to bring together to fully express their potential. This group rep-
resents a whole galaxy of formulations that do not have a true methodological
base and are often distant from one another: evolutionary and constructivist
approaches, the neo-Austrian school, social action theory, critical realism,
institutionalism.1
(c) The formulations based on the principle of abstract rationality, which as such do
not take actual reality properly into account. The principle of abstract rationality
is also present in various formulations of groups (a) and (b) as well, but without
taking a pure form as in the formal-logical sciences does.
This chapter does not include a specific section devoted to constructivism, this
being extensively considered in the last section of the previous chapter.
1
A special case is represented by the insistence on “natural law” but referring to doing, with the
Enlightenment philosophes at the extreme, professing explicit hostility to history.
3.2 Popper’s Double Face and Pareto’s Methodological Dualism 73
1. This and the following section are not specifically dedicated to the group (a″), the
deficiencies of which in relation to social reality have been discussed in the second
section of Chap. 1; rather, they consider the thought of some important philosophers
of science and methodologists that, in some sense, legitimate the present-day
tendency of social thinking to overflow out of this group within the group (b).
The observational method is undoubtedly a scientific one but, as is well known,
it is impotent against Hume’s objection in principle to the postulate of the repeti-
tiveness (hence the reliability) of experience.2 At a first glance, the Popperian
falsification principle (the search for contradicting evidence) appears to attenuate
the strength of such an objection that rejects the Cartesian postulate of the “invari-
ability” of natural laws on the basis of its non-verifiability. In reality, however,
falsificationism does not escape it. As a matter of fact, the falsification principle
simply proposes a particularly severe criterion of verification based on experi-
ence. It must be recognized that it does not exclude the non-repetitiveness of
events; in fact, it considers a theory reliable as long as contrary evidence is not
produced. But the problem is that the falsifying event does not constitute a remote
possibility in the social field; it is always around the corner, at least when we are
concerned with social change.3 This makes meaningless the verification or falsifi-
cation of social theories based on experience.
Popper does not derive all consequences from his admission of fallibility. He
seems to attribute fallibility much more to the limits of human intelligence than to
the non-repetitiveness of events, as is plainly suggested by the wedding of his idea
of the conjectural nature of scientific theories to the adoption of the observational-
experimental method, requiring the repetitiveness of events. Popper has taken care
to declare4 his disagreement from the belief that the real means the rational; but this
statement contradicts the criterion of verification based on observation that he
accepts and which implies such a belief as a postulate.
Truth to tell, a great ambiguity characterizes Popperian thought. As a scientist,
Popper suggests the method shared by the scholars of group (a). Yet, as a philosopher,
Popper must be included in group (b), as we shall soon see. This methodological
duplicity causes serious drawbacks and misunderstandings. In particular, Popper’s
analysis with regard to group (a) results, in social theory, in an extremely reductive
2
The empiricist David Hume wrote: “all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition
that the future will be conformable to the past. To endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last
supposition by probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence, must be evidently going in
circle, and taking that for granted, which is the very point in question.” (Hume 1997), Italian
edition with English text, p. 54.
3
This has induced some social students (e.g. Brian Loasby) to remark that it is sometimes reasonable
to ignore the destructive effect on theories of new events inconsistent with them.
4
Popper says: “neither observation nor reason can be described as a source of knowledge”
(Popper 1969), p. 73.
74 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
tool: the so called (by Popper) “piecemeal technique”, based on observation of the
effects of particular interventions and measures and a subsequent experimentation
in small changes with regard to them, with the aim of deriving theoretical hypoth-
eses. Such piecemeal technique clearly reveals (also trough its denomination) the
poverty of the contribution to the analysis of social reality of what Popper considers
the scientific method (i.e. a method based on observation and experiment). But there
is more. The coherent extension of Popper’s analysis with regard to group (b)
implies the denial of scientific method. Let us see why this is the case.
The incommensurability principle initially stated by German historicism on the
basis of the singularity and non-repetitiveness of social events, asserting as it does
the impossibility of deriving general principles of society and hence the impossibil-
ity of social science, still appears vital today. An important reason for this sustained
vitality must be imputed to Popper’s philosophical and ethical teaching, which
belongs to group (b). The Popperian insistence on the conjectural origin of discov-
eries implies an evident openness to the thesis of the incommensurability and non-
cumulativeness of scientific knowledge. Popper of group b tries to overcome this
implication, which denies scientific procedure, by arguing that the struggle among
rival theories will select those that best interpret reality and are therefore corrobo-
rated by it. But such an argument asserting the evolutionary growth of scientific
knowledge is obliged to base itself either on an idea of gravitation toward theoreti-
cal improvements by way of trial and error, which does not express a methodologi-
cal criterion since it does not suggest any learning procedures and rules, or on
corroboration based on experience, which recalls the observational side of Popper’s
teaching, implying the assumptions that the real means the rational etc., and which
deletes choice. It is not a casual circumstance that Popper’s teaching has injected
some seminal contributions into an important epistemological debate of the second
half of the last century (with N. R. Hanson, T. Kuhn, M. Polanyi, S. Toulmin key
actors) centered on the question of the incommensurability of scientific knowledge,
nor that this debate has propitiated the methodological anarchism of P. Feyerabend.
A critical confrontation with the reasoning of these scholars on incommensurability
needs to put the rationality principle and the problem of the relation between science
and reality in a different light, both with respect to observationalism (as we saw in
Chap. 1) and, as we shall see, the theorists of action, so as to allow an unambiguous
derivation of general principles in social theory.
2. Some misunderstandings discussed here are particularly evident in Pareto’s meth-
odological dualism. For Pareto’s investigation jumps from the abstract deductive
method of his pure economics to a sociological teaching adhering so strictly to
the reality of human action that it denies the deductive method as contradicted by
the instincts and irrational behaviour of men, and for which he substitutes the
approach of residuals and derivations. This gives an impressing example of the
strength of the observational blindness even on the great rationalist that Pareto was.
Pareto here forgets that humanity is forced to act rationally by competition with
rivals and the struggle for existence, and that instincts or ignorance may cause only
occasional deviations, albeit sometimes ruinous, from rational behaviour. A task of
3.3 I. Lakatos and T. S. Kuhn 75
5
See Lakatos (1984b), pp. 375 and 376.
76 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
with the success of rival theories. Thus, Lakatos insists: “in my approach, criticisms
do not clear off – and must not clear off – with the quickness that Popper imagined.
More precisely negative and destructive criticism, such as ‘confutation’ or the proof
of some incoherence, does not eliminate a program”.6
So Lakatos sets out an interesting alternative to Popper’s fallibilism: the idea
of the ‘research program’. This alternative is suggested by a distrust of mere
observation. But even if Lakatos, with his concern for natural reality, founds his
methodology on experiments rather than an organizational view (which is more
appropriate to social reality), the notion of the ‘research program’ guards against
any theoretical instability caused (as in Popper’s fallibilism) by the refutations
provided by particular and more or less crucial experiments. This virtue is very
important with reference to social theory where, as we have seen, fallibilism is
inconclusive and unreliable as a result of the continuous refutations caused by
social change. However, this virtue is insufficient to satisfy the methodological
needs of social theory.
With reference to natural phenomena, Lakatos emphasizes the difficulty of
verification based on experiments; with regard to society, however, this kind of
verification is simply impossible. What to do? In Chap. 2 we have discussed a
methodological proposal that seems much more appropriate to the study of social
reality. It is based on something more stringent and general than the ‘research
programs’ and, indeed, precedes them. It is based on the specification of the rules
of selection of realistic postulates suitable for illumination and solid deduction.
The first step is to distinguish ‘necessity’ from what is the object of ‘choice’ in the
organization of social systems. As soon as the realistic postulates loose validity,
in consequence of changes in the general conditions of development (or new
choices), it becomes necessary to set out new theories based on new premises.
This reference to the general conditions of development provides some general
explanations allowing for the construction of solid and versatile knowledge on a
reality beset by continuous and increasing changes.
It is important to note the rationalistic flavour of Lakatos’ development. This is
articulated in his controversy with Kuhn, for instance, where he explains that “where
Kuhn sees ‘paradigms’, I also see rational ‘research programs’”.7 Lakatos insists on
the continuity of scientific progress as the product of rational effort. He adds that
what Kuhn “calls ‘normal science’ is nothing but a research program that has
achieved monopoly”, while the “history of science has been and should be a history
of competing research programs (or, if you wish, ‘paradigms’); it was not, and must
not become, a succession of periods of normal science: the sooner competition
starts, the better for progress”8 (here, we may append the comment, the past tense
is inappropriate while the future conditional is completely appropriate). In short,
Lakatos underlines, coherently, the need to combat the tendency towards monopoly
of research programs, while Kuhn underlines their endurance. His notion of research
6
See Lakatos (1984a), p. 257.
7
(Lakatos 1984a), Volume I, p. 90.
8
I Lakatos, ibidem, p. 69.
3.3 I. Lakatos and T. S. Kuhn 77
9
(Kuhn 1978), p. 119.
10
Kuhn (1984), p. 412.
78 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
11
(Kuhn 1978), p. 248.
12
(Dosi 1982), p. 148.
80 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
overlap between the two approaches is great enough to borrow from them a few
basic definitions”.13 In effect, the more rational standard of Lakatos’ notion of
research program with respect to Kuhn’s paradigm, which we have previously
emphasized, is important in relation to the methodology of knowledge but almost
irrelevant with regard to the explanation of technological innovation.
The succession of innovation-structural organization, specifically the succession of
technological paradigms (or research programs) and their development in the context
of technological trajectories, are physiological features of innovative processes.
However, Dosi’s assertion of strong similarities between the nature and procedure
of science, as stated by modern epistemology, and the nature and procedure of
technology concerns Kuhn and Lakatos’ methodologies and also their limitations
and, as such, has not (and does not pretend to have) a strict methodological relevance.
Instead, Dosi’s succession technological paradigm-technological trajectory can
be reproved for an important omission: the absence of consideration of radical
uncertainty,14 notwithstanding that this phenomenon significantly accompanies the
innovative drive toward a new paradigm. In fact, this non-probabilistic uncertainty
(which, however, can and must be measured)15 represents perhaps the main brake in
jumping from one technological paradigm to another, an important factor inducing
innovators to insist in specific technological trajectories: paradigmatic jumps cause
an increase in radical uncertainty that discourages radical innovation. In the last
section of Chap. 4 we shall analyze the relation between innovation and radical
uncertainty through a predator-prey model; such a relation has been given a more
detailed formalization in Fusari and Reati (2013).
Here it is important to underline that the core of the method of the social sciences
is different from and antecedent to the representation of the scientific and technologi-
cal process as expressed above. In Chap. 2 we have exposed the substance of the
core: procedure, rules and classifications appropriate to social reality, an organiza-
tional view that combines being and doing; in sum, some peculiar methodological
tools able to promote and implement knowledge that must precede its diffusion and
use. The derivation of the important notions of functional imperative, ontological
imperative and their combination with that of civilization follow. All this, let us
repeat, is antecedent to the opposition-interaction between innovation and structural
organization (or whichever is its denomination). Moreover, we shall see that such
opposition-interaction is only one aspect of our explanatory model of social-historic
process and must be flanked or preceded by the other methodological categories
referred to above. The notions of paradigm, research program, normal science and
technological trajectory associated with the works of Kuhn, Lakatos and Dosi are
useful in completing the picture; but the method of social sciences needs much more.
13
Ibid, footnote 14 at p. 152.
14
Indeed, Dosi recognizes the phenomenon of radical uncertainty when he says: “increases in cur-
rent information augment future predictability if they can sample on a closed lake but not neces-
sarily on a flowing river”. See G Dosi and J S Metcalfe, On some notions of irreversibility in
economics. In: (P P Saviotti and J S Metcalfe 1988), (ed), p. 141.
15
See Fusari 2013.
3.4 T. Lawson’s Treatment of Emergence and Ontological Naturalism 81
I have considered Tony Lawson’s analysis of the method of the social sciences
elsewhere,16 in the context of some critical comments addressed to the school of
social thought known as ‘critical realism’. In those comments I remarked upon the
importance, from a methodological point of view, of Lawson’s distinction between
natural and social reality. In a recent study,17 Lawson contends the doctrine of
ontological naturalism, according to which “everything can be explained in terms
of natural causes” (p. 346). He considers, in the light of this contention, a number
of social phenomena, starting from the ‘emergence’ in natural and social reality
of novelties, by which he means “something previously absent or unprecedented”
(p. 348). This is certainly true with reference to social reality, where the (extrinsic)
work of innovations plays an increasing role.
Lawson distinguishes between stronger and weaker forms of emergence, and
concentrates his analysis on the former. Stronger forms of emergence, he explains,
are those that, in contrast to weaker forms, are not “concerned with the possibility
of synchronic reducibility… of higher level elements… to lower level ones alone
and at a given time” (p. 351). He attributes irreducibility to the emergence of
organizational features in the passage from lower to higher level phenomena.18 I am
not sure this is the only reason behind the impossibility of synchronic reductionism.
At any rate, I strongly agree with author’s insistence that the future is entirely open
(emphasis added). However, Lawson adds that such a statement “does not violate
the thesis that all explanations are in terms of natural causes” (p. 358). But, in my
view, this is an equivocal thesis that may be right only if intended in a generic sense.
For instance, it is possible to state that the emergence expressed by creativity is a
result of the natural creative skills of humanity. The true problem, however, is that
creativity causes, in the social sciences, a serious need for some qualifications on
method that are not required in natural sciences. To better clarify the point, it may be
useful to define ‘innovation’ as the emergence intentionally produced by humanity,
which largely and increasingly characterizes social reality. It seems evident that
‘innovation’ is something completely different from those rare accidental mutations
and the connected and extremely slow selective processes concerning animal species
that are considered by the Darwin’s evolutionary approach, which is a primary
reference for social reductionism as we shall see soon.
16
(Ekstedt and Fusari 2010), chapter 1.
17
Lawson (2012), Ontology and the study of social reality: emergence, organization, community,
power, social relations, corporations, artifacts and money’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 36.
(the page numbers of quotations concerning this article are referred in brackets inside this section).
18
Lawson says: “the lower level components indeed do not contain all that is causally relevant; and
this is precisely because higher-level properties depend in part on how the lower-level components
come to be organized involving relations external to the component organized, where this organi-
zation is itself part of the higher-level.” Ibid, p. 358.
82 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
Lawson, then, comes to treat specifically social systems and sets out some
notions useful to the study of society: community, collective practice and its accep-
tance, obligations, legitimacy, positions and powers, etc. Let me pass over all this
for the moment and insist on his attempt to make evident some conciliation of the
doctrine of ontological naturalism with his strong notion of emergence and associ-
ated notion of irreducibility. Does such conciliation represent a real requirement?
I think not, except for rejecting that social realm is unconnected to the non-social
realm. More precisely I think that, with reference to social reality, the conciliation
above may generate ambiguities, even if there can be no doubt that social ontology,
i.e. the study of the nature of social being, deserves attention. In some sense, this is
expressed by our notion of ‘ontological imperative’, as derived from the necessity
to allow the expression and operation of human potentialities.
At any rate, it seems to me illuminating the author’s criticism to J. Searle’s treat-
ment of ‘causal reduction’ and ‘downward causation’, in the light of the association
of these to the questions of emergence and extrinsic nature of the organization with
respect to the organized components. After consideration of complex recurrent
dynamics of emergence, Lawson concludes that: “with features extrinsic to and not
produced solely by the interactions of the lower level components, causal reduction,
as a generalization certainly, does not seem to be sustainable.”19 The author extends
the discussion to ‘downward causation’, with this expression stating that the causal
actions of lower level are in part caused by the higher level entities, and concludes
that “the prominent evaluations of the relevance of the first conception are mistaken,
as indeed are assessments of the coherence of the second”.20 This contention is right
and important, in my opinion, with reference to social reality. But what to do for
achieving some better explanatory specification? To answer this crucial point, I need
to recall some of mine own views. To begin with it is my view that, on the whole,
Lawson’s analysis constitutes a real advance in the representation of social reality,
with respect to working forward (in his terms) reductionism of some more orthodox
ontological naturalists who pretend to build social reductionism and the social
sciences on what are considered to be the more solid theoretical approaches of
natural sciences, for instance on the evolutionary theory of biology. Nevertheless,
I also maintain that it is necessary, with reference to social reality, to go well beyond
ontological naturalism. As I have said, social reality should warrant, for its substance,
some crucial methodological qualifications that are not needed in the natural sciences.
On the other hand, the dualist conception cannot be regarded as inappropriate in
principle. In fact, it is already present in scientific thinking, as clearly shown by the
wide difference between the method of abstract rationality typical of the logical and
mathematical sciences on the one hand, and on the other the methodology of the
natural sciences founded on the observation-verification principle. Lawson does not
deny that. The large and growing presence of creativity and innovation that constitute
core instances of the strong forms of irreducible emergence he emphasizes implies
a marked methodological peculiarity of social sciences.
19
See Lawson (2013), p. 15.
20
Ibidem, p. 20.
3.4 T. Lawson’s Treatment of Emergence and Ontological Naturalism 83
We have underlined in Chaps. 1 and 2 that, in the study and attempt to understand
social reality as characterized by high and growing non-repetitiveness and the
consequent failure of the observation-verification method of the natural sciences,
the most important methodological features are represented by the distinction
between the field of ‘choice-possibility-creativity’ and that of ‘necessity’ and by the
adoption of an organizational view. Choice-possibility-creativeness is not a mere
contingency; in fact, it is headed by the choice of civilization, which is characterized
by long duration and penetration. Moreover, in Chap. 2 we place ‘ontological
imperatives’ side by side with ‘functional imperatives’ (that is, organizational forms
imposed by the level of the general conditions of development). Functional impera-
tive represent organizational necessities that, in some respect, are much more
pressing than ontological imperatives, being strongly propelled by stringent reasons
of organizational efficiency. We show that such a push of functional imperatives
is so strong that it may even imply the overthrow of civilizations that contrast
with them, notwithstanding that such civilizations are deeply rooted in social context;
while (on the contrary) such roots may obstruct the advent of ontological impera-
tives contrasting with civilizations and, in this way, strongly hinder development.
Chapter 4 will fully clarify the important implications of all that for the interpretation
of historic-social development.
These methodological categories, completely inappropriate to the logical and
natural sciences, are indispensable, together with the associated developments, to
the proper management of the various explanatory categories of social reality that
Lawson considers. For instance, the notions of necessity and choice-possibility
are essential for the understanding of the foundations of collective practices and if
(and how) these must be changed in the course of the development process, both
if they are part of the field of choice-possibility (even if well-rooted in the form of
civilization) or express the field of necessity. The same distinction is essential for
understanding: the character of acceptance and when this must be reversed and
becomes disagreement; the substance of community, its evolution, the meaning and
appropriateness of existing social rules and positions; as well as the distinction
between domination power and the necessity of power, the understanding of social
relations at large and the organization of groups.
This meditation on Lawson, a main critical realist scholar, brings to our consid-
eration F. Lee’s proposal to combine Critical Realism (CR) and the Grounded
Theory Method (GTM), a combination aimed at providing a unifying methodologi-
cal approach for heterodox economists.
We have just considered some weaknesses of critical realism: its attention to
the peculiar character of social reality is by no means negligible, but it disregards
to delineate methodological procedures and rules and contains within it some
unsatisfactory treatment of primary contents of social reality.
For its part, the Grounded Theory Method proposes an extensive use of statistical
data as a base for theoretical suggestion and verification, together with the use of
mathematics for modeling. But, as we know, a methodology that is merely observa-
tional is misleading in the social sciences. After all, a method so strictly rooted in
reality, even in the particular contents of this, as GTM appears to be, is not used
84 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
even in the natural sciences, for instance in physics and astronomy, notwithstanding
the marked repetitiveness of the events they consider.
The crucial problem facing the social sciences is indeed the definition of a method
(procedure and rules) able to meet the marked and increasing non-repetitiveness of
social reality.
In this section and those that follow we turn our attention to group (b) of the
introduction. Our discussion will include the methodological considerations that
underline the importance of innovation, choice and value judgments, processes of
discovery, and our inability to foresee social events. Some reference to group
(c) will also be considered.
An eminent position is occupied in group (b) by the neo-Austrian school, distin-
guished by its insistence on: creativity and non-repetitive evolutionary motion, our
lack of knowledge and our uncertainty, learning processes, and the methodological
implications of all these elements. In particular, Hayek has centered attention on the
evolutionary motion caused by unintentional events, learning processes through
trial and error, and has underlined the important institutional role that these
phenomena imply for the decentralization of decision making.
Ludwig von Mises goes even further, accurately deepening the meaning and
the role of the rationality principle with the intention of drawing a rigorous yet
broad methodological picture: the science of human action. He expresses a very
important and unquestionable assertion from a methodological point of view
when he writes: “All that observations teach us is that the same situation has dif-
ferent effects on different men”. He derives from this evidence the conclusion, on
the surface undeniable but – as we know – utterly misleading, that the deduction
of general principles needs an a priori science, not an empirical one, “as mathe-
matics and logic, [this science] does not derive from experience but precedes it.
It is, so to speak, the logic of action and act”. “Its procedure is a formal and
axiomatic one”.21 The a priori character of the principles articulated by such a
science of action would protect them from the winds of change, from the unfore-
seeable variability of social reality. We have called this methodological criterion,
which sharply separates the rationality principle from reality, the ‘principle of
abstract rationality’. Let us illustrate some of the profound misunderstandings
it may generate.
As is well known, some basic categories of Misesian speculation – such as
economization, preference, means-ends relations – make it quite suitable to explain
21
(von Mises 1988), pp. 39, 40, 41.
3.5 The Theorists of Social Action: L. von Mises and T. Parsons 85
which he calls ‘analytic realism’ and which opposes to the Weber’s ‘useful fictions’.22
Chapter 2 has clarified the limitations of Parsons’ treatment of values and his
specification of the notion of functional imperative. If Parsons had given more
importance to the phenomenon of evolutionary change, he would have been obliged
to consider explicitly how to derive general principles in the face of such change, as
did von Mises. This would have helped him avoid the great theoretical ambiguity
that afflicts his conception of the functional imperative, as we saw in Chap. 2.
Some scholars regard the constrained maximization approach as the most
rigorous formalization of the theory of action. We have extensively considered
and criticized this approach in Chap. 2, in the section dedicated to economic and
social planning.
A (for the time being) brief reference to the thought of Max Weber will allow a
deepening of some of the above discussion. Weber dedicated great attention to the
question of the objectivity and scientific content of social knowledge, in the light of
value premises. But, as a descendant of German historicism, he remained substantially
convinced of incommensurability. Thus Weber consistently maintained that social
inquiry is always conditioned by some value premises and judgments. This statement
may be accepted in the restrictive sense that value premises influence and limit the
choice of the field of investigation. But Weber goes beyond this restrictive meaning; his
‘ideal type’ is a useful fiction based on the point of view of scientist.23 As we saw in
Chap. 2, this emphasis on incommensurability ascribed to social theories by the
ethical-ideological premises is exaggerated and forgets the importance of defining
rules useful for the choice of initial hypotheses. More precisely, it implies an
exaggerated weakening of the principle of rationality, thus emphasizing the optional-
conflictual aspect. Weber makes the opposite mistake with respect both to the
positivist assumption that reality means necessity, thereby erasing choice, and the
abstract rationality principle that characterizes the Misesian teaching.
22
“Some general concepts of science are not fictitious but adequately represent the objective
external world”. See (Parsons 1987), p. 780.
23
“The ideal type is obtained through the unilateral accentuation of one or more points of view”.
“The possibility of a sensible knowledge is constrained by the continuous reference to specific
points of view”. See Weber (1974), p. 108.
3.6 G. Myrdal’s Thought on Method 87
relations among these facts? How may he avoid a preconceived vision?”24 Myrdal
goes on to articulate an uncompromising subjectivism with regard to values. In a
footnote to the third chapter he writes: “To underline the subjectivity of valuing
process, I deliberately use the term ‘valuations’, renouncing the word ‘values’, so
popular in the social sciences – except in the combination ‘value premises’ – when
some valuations have been defined and are explicitly used in research… The use of
the word ‘values’, mainly within sociological and anthropological literature, implies
in addition an occult value premise: a ‘value’ is eo ipso capable of being valued in
an objective sense: what implies a prejudice…”.
Cultural relativism constitutes a strong reaction to what can be denominated an
‘absolutist relativism’ that identifies values as precepts of faith, i.e. as relative to
some religion. Myrdal insists that a “disinterested social science has never existed
and cannot exist”, and that, “by logical necessity, valuations permeate research,
from the beginning to the end” (pp. 44 and 46). This strong relativist denial of the
existence of objective values is an exaggeration.
We have seen that the emergence of human potentialities requires the operation
of some ‘ontological imperatives’, represented mainly by ethical values, and that
these values have, therefore, an objective substance. After all, natural sciences iden-
tify phenomena as ‘objective’ expressions of the potentialities of nature. The same
should be accepted for social sciences. There is no justification for a statement to the
contrary, viz. that human potentialities and related phenomena may be obstructed
and suffocated by a subjective choice of values. Myrdal says that “rationality is one
of the value premises” (p. 51). It represents, indeed, an ontological imperative
(one of the most relevant for the expression of human potentialities) and, under this
respect, constitutes an objective value (or valuation), not a subjective one.
With regard to the selection of value premises, Myrdal’s refers, appropriately, “to
their relevance [as] determined by the valuations truly shared by people or social
groups” (p. 53). This aspect is well expressed, indeed, by the choices of civilization.
Myrdal’s proviso on the relevance of value premises reflects his unexpressed need
for some degree of objectivity. But it is not enough. A leaning toward a kind of half-
way-house of objectivity is also glimpsed when Myrdal emphasizes the need for
“modernization to avoid a catastrophic development” since “the possibility either to
return to a traditional society or to leave society in the present condition of back-
wardness does not exist” (p. 56). These provisos (in which the intent is to escape, in
some way, the substance of value subjectivism) are plainly surmounted by our
notion of ‘ontological imperative’, implying the objectivity of the ethical values that
are indispensable to the expression of human potentialities.
Myrdal’s distinction between high and low level valuations constitutes another
attempt to attenuate the embarrassing implications of his postulated “relativism of
valuations”. The underlying ambiguity of his subjectivism regarding values
becomes more evident and leads him to a real contradiction when he considers the
24
Myrdal (1969), The objectivity of social research, Pantheon Books. We consider here the Italian
edition by Einaudi, Turin, and translate the reported extracts, (the page numbers of quotations are
referred in brackets inside this section).
88 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
“supreme value premises”: respect for life, pacifism and the equalitarian principle.
Pacifism is an ontological imperative parallel to that of tolerance, discussed in
Chap. 2: men are different each other and the advancement of society needs a
variety of skills, and therefore requires that the dialectical contrasts, tolerance and
pacific cohabitation are outflanked; in particular, it is necessary to avoid wars that
modern technology would make extremely devastating. So pacifism has become a
functional imperative, thereby strengthening the objectivity of this value.
Respect for life is a principle containing a non-minor objective substance: each
man must be helped to live and express his potentialities. In fact, great potentialities
may be hidden in the most unhappy, ill and poor of men. This shows the great objec-
tive substance of the principle that men are all God’s children and hence brothers.
Similar reasons provide an objective character to the principle of equality and the
universal right to dignity and to distributive justice (with the exception of the need
for material incentives and excluding material equality, this latter contradicting
the fact that men are endowed with greatly differing skills; all of which will be
discussed fully in the section on equalities and inequalities in Chap. 7).
Finally, let us remember what may be called a law of moral and material prog-
ress: the transformation, in the course of the development process, of objective ethi-
cal values constituting ontological imperatives, which do not necessarily characterize
social systems, into functional imperatives that is something that society is obliged
to accept for pressing reasons of functional efficiency (such as, e.g., the tolerance
principle, important to allow the operation of individual skills and of which the
dynamics of societies cannot do without).
This brief review cannot omit some consideration of the various institutional analy-
ses, these being of central importance for understanding social change. In this
regard, it may be useful to remind that, while it is meaningless to investigate why
laws of nature exist as these are not a result of human activity, it is, by contrast,
extremely useful, from a scientific point of view, to investigate the reason why
humanity has constructed existing social institutions, as such a question helps to
understand the way social reality develops and changes.
Institutional analyses have yielded some important elaborations. Those aimed at
explaining institutions on the basis of their contribution to organizational efficiency
of social systems deserve particular attention. Williamson’s explanation of the firm
based on the argument that it allows the minimization of transaction costs is one
example of these elaborations, the questionable role he attributes to methodological
individualism notwithstanding. Douglass North goes much further, placing the con-
cept of transaction costs at the basis of a theory of institutional change and historical
process. Another main application of institutional analysis concerns the justification
of rights. None of these theoretical insights are immune from inconsistencies, and
some are exercises in apologetics. It seems to us that these drawbacks are largely
3.7 Institutional and Evolutionary Analyses 89
due to the absence of a rigorous method that would serve to identify institutions
expressing necessary conditions for efficiency. A large part of Chap. 2 has been
dedicated to the elaboration of such a method. Chapter 4 will show that the interac-
tion between civilizations and functional imperatives, as well as the interaction
between the dash to innovation and structural organization play a crucial role in the
explanation of institutional evolution.
The most ambitious studies of institutions are joined with evolutionary thought.
G.M. Hodgson pursues the combination of institutionalism and the evolutionary
approach with great vigor. He underlines the importance for social development of
novelty and variety, which provide the material of evolution and imply free choice,
indeterminateness, and hence the open-endedness of social processes. Hodgson also
flanks to these aspects the role that institutions play in limiting indeterminacy
through their relative stability, thus allowing causal analysis. He upholds the need to
replace institutionalist reductionism to individualistic reductionism, and empha-
sizes the usefulness of a biological metaphor for the interpretation of social events.
But this last characteristic must be considered with caution; the methodologies
developed by other sciences have often played a misleading role in economics and
social research. The method of analysis of society should take inspiration from
social reality. Unfortunately, there exist misunderstandings on this point even in the
most recent development on the method of social sciences. For instance, J. B. Davis,
in hoping (rightly in my view) “a future orthodoxy emergent from current hetero-
doxy”, remarks that “all the new programmes on the research frontier have their
origins in other science”.25
The wedding of institutionalism and evolutionism is not a happy one, also for the
reasons referred in Sect. 2.8 of Chap. 2. Let us see more extensively. The evolution-
ary approach focuses on some elements of primary interest, such as the distinction
between the factors of permanence (genotype) and of change (phenotype) and irre-
versibilities. It also underlines the fact that social evolution is much more rapid than
biological evolution, and that the former, promoted as it is by endogenous factors, is
closer to the Lamarck than the Darwin’s mechanism. But it is no accident that the
Lamarck’s theory of evolution has never enjoyed a success in social thought compa-
rable with that of Darwinism in natural science. The reason is that Lamarck’s thesis
that mutations are not casual, which social evolutionists are glad to adopt because
unlike Darwinism it can represent the human activity of innovation, implies rejec-
tion of the weak observation method (appropriate to explain the low evolution of
animal species). But this rejection gives rise to methodological problems extending
well beyond the evolutionary approach.
In a conceptual analysis of the differences of the evolutionary processes in biology,
physics and economics, M. Faber and J. L. R. Proops give an incisive description of
the substantial differences distinguishing, in the three cases, the behavior of the
so called genotype and phenotype that, with reference to economics, respectively
correspond to invention-innovation and market adjustment. They indicate three
reasons for why economics is conceptually more difficult than biology:
25
See Davis (2008), pp. 363 and 364.
90 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
26
See M Faber and John L R Proops. Evolution in biology, physics and economics: a conceptual
analysis. In: P P Saviotti and J S Metcalfe, 1988 (ed), p. 82.
27
See H. Ekstedt and A. Fusari. Economic theory and social change. Routledge 2010, pages 21 and 22.
3.8 The Limitations and Difficulties of Heterodox Social Thought in the Light… 91
Two major characteristics of social thought are its fragmentary character and the
intense flourishing of new theories, largely due to the investigations of heterodox
theorists. Paul Feyerabend’s criticism on method may provide useful starting
points for reflection on this fragmentariness and on the contribution to knowledge
of heterodox students of society. We shall see that his criticism illuminates, among
other factors, the way in which the methodological difficulties afflicting social
theories are just the opposite of those troubling the natural sciences.
Feyerabend emphasizes the crucial importance for scientific progress of both the
plurality of theoretical approaches and methodological pluralism and tolerance.
A similar thesis was developed by J. S. Mill in his essay entitled ‘On Liberty’. But
it must be recognized that Feyerabend’s insistence on counter-induction, the utility
of ad hoc hypotheses (as a necessary defense of new formulations awaiting confir-
mation) and several other elements of his discussions of method amount to a bril-
liant exposition of various methodological implications of Millian thought that he
sincerely admires. The statement that “learning does not go from observation to
theory but always involves both elements”28 appears sober and well balanced on; as
do his claims that “facts and theories are much more intimately connected than is
admitted by the autonomy principle [of facts with respect to theory]” (p. 39), and
that “variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge” (p. 46). In point of
fact, the advent of new theoretical hypotheses is often indispensable for the discovery
of new facts; this implies that the usual relation of events to theory must be countered
by a relation of theory to events and implies, as a consequence, the profitableness
of a variety of opinions for discovering numerous facts that otherwise would remain
unknown; just as emphasized by J. S. Mill.
It is undeniable that too many rigid and detailed methodological rules repress the
imagination and inventive skills. Natural science, characterized as it is by a well-
established methodological tradition, is at times a victim of this “sterility disease”,
against which Feyerabend’s methodological anarchism represents a healthy and
stimulating inoculation. Almost the opposite disease afflicts social thought, as my
previous critical review has shown: a large variety of incompatible methodological
approaches.
Some reference to Feyerabend’s position on “incommensurability” may be
illuminating. The first two theses of this author on the subject appear to be quite
reasonable, while the third seems extremely hurtful to knowledge. Feyerabend’s
third thesis is that “the views of scientists and especially their views on basic
matters are often as different from each other as are the ideologies that underlie
different cultures” (p. 274). The acceptance of such plurality of incompatible views
28
See Feyerabend (1975), p. 268. (the page numbers of quotations are referred in brackets inside
this section).
92 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
pluralism and, at the same time, allows interactions and synergies among different
areas and lines of research, avoiding the increasing and irremediable separation,
incommunicability, reciprocal refusal and confusion afflicting social theories.
The astonishing contribution of the natural sciences to knowledge is mainly
due to their methodological ability to profit from observations, the shortcomings
of the observational method notwithstanding. Social inquiry has need of a method
that enables the investigation of the factual base of society in spite of its floating
character – a character that arises from the fact that society is the outcome of
human action.
The methodological lacuna of social thought is particularly evident in economics,
which stagnates dramatically, its impressing apparatus of mathematical and statistical
procedures notwithstanding. A primary goal of the present book is to provide some
contribution that rescues social thought from this devastating drawback.
1. We now come to the discussion of some contemporary economic theories that are
currently considered important examples of scientific procedure. We refer to so-called
mainstream economics and also to some important theories that have strongly opposed
it. Curiously, both the dominant economic teaching and its opponents will be seen to
suffer from the same, crucial methodological shortcoming: a disregard for basic
aspects of economic reality and, hence, a fall into an ‘abstract rationalism’ that often
renders misleading the works and teaching of economists. This observation, if correct,
will provide confirmation that the methodology of the social sciences is hampered by
some general and deeply-rooted equivocations.
It will be useful to begin with the famous controversy between the two
Cambridges: Cambridge U.K. and Cambridge, Massachusetts (U.S.A.); a contro-
versy that for some while animated economic debate but which has now been con-
fined to the history of economic thought. From here we will be led to aspects of
other important theories: that of Keynes and the post-Keynesians, Schumpeter, the
neo-Austrians and also the fragmented positions that make up modern heterodox
economics. Notwithstanding the vigorous attack directed from Cambridge U.K., the
neoclassical school associated with Cambridge, Massachusetts remains the domi-
nant orthodoxy of the present. We must ask the reason for this continual dominance
of the neoclassical tradition, and this essay will attempt to clarify the primary rea-
sons for the substantial failure of the attack upon this mainstream, except the criticism
to the aggregate function of production and the aggregate notion (and hence
measurement) of capital. In addition, this essay will specify some – possibly crucial –
points that were omitted from the controversy.
An efficient way of performing the required analysis will be to focus primarily
upon Luigi Pasinetti’s attempt to complete the post-Keynesian revolution and
94 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
remedy the theoretical fragmentation that has by-now arisen from the multiplicity
of those post-Keynesian contributions that have recently become a part of so-called
heterodox economics.29
Pasinetti’s analysis establishes two important methodological principles: the
realism of postulates and the so called ‘separation’ theorem. These two principles
are strictly linked to each other in that, while the first generates a substantial meth-
odological impasse, the second provides a means of overcoming that impasse. More
precisely, the first principle (realism of postulates) prohibits the ‘abstract rationality’
implied by the method of the logical-formal sciences and, at the same time, collides
with the use in social science of the method based on observation because this
method is contradicted by the non-repetitiveness of the large part of social phenom-
ena. So, the statement concerning the realism of postulates is inconsistent with the
operation in social studies of current methods (abstract rationality and
observation-verification).
The idea of ‘separation’ between, so to speak, fundamental and non-fundamental
variables, provides the means of overcoming such a methodological dead-end.
Something analogous may be seen in P. Garegnani opposition of the ‘core system’
(the Sraffian system of prices) to ‘outside variables’, the variables concerning
surplus. Both Pasinetti and me share the analytical importance and necessity of
‘separation’, even if we have different opinions on how and where to lay down the
demarcation line between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’. I’ll show soon that
to profit from the idea of separation a deep revision of the method of the social
sciences is needed. Pasinetti does not seem to perceive this exigency. He uses the
‘separation’ principle in the context of the ‘natural’ system of classical economists.
But unfortunately, and as we shall see, such a system omits crucial aspects of
modern dynamic economies, thereby ignoring the principle concerning the realism
of postulates. In sum, the separation that the natural system implies has no real
methodological relevance (i.e. one aimed at avoiding the methodological dead-end
previously discussed). The use of ‘separation’ with regard to the natural system acts
merely as a simplification.30
However, it seems to us that the failure of the attack of heterodox economics and,
more particularly, of Cambridge U.K. against mainstream economics, must be
attributed mainly to the omission of a basic problem of social sciences, viz. the
difficulties inflicted upon the method of social thought by the non-repetitiveness of
observed events. In fact, further developing such methodological difficulty and
consideration seems to be the only way to show the weakness of mainstream
micro-economics.
Pasinetti builds up a theoretical approach aimed at challenging the orthodoxy
dominating economics. Following the tradition of classical thought, he opposes the
production paradigm to the exchange paradigm, the latter of which he takes as the
basic feature of neoclassical thinking and which he criticizes for its multitude of
unrealistic assumptions and implications. Coherently with such reproach, he underlines
29
Pasinetti (2007).
30
It acts as “An analytical device to face complexity”. See Pasinetti, ibid p. 322.
3.9 Mainstream Economics and Its Opponents: A Great Methodological Confusion 95
that a main task of economic theory is to found itself on initially realistic hypotheses.
More precisely, Pasinetti opposes the neoclassical scheme with one that combines
Sraffa’s equations of prices (and production) and the Keynesian principle of effective
demand. Something similar was performed by using the Leontief’s dynamic model
to determine sectoral quantities and prices in the preparation, at the end of 1960s,
of the reference framework of the second Italian Economic and Social Plan (see our
criticism to national planning in the final section of Chap. 2).
In developing his opposition to neoclassical thinking, Pasinetti points out the
basic relations that are treated as ‘natural’ by classical economists (the natural
system), distinguishing them from the contingent ones (for instance, natural from
market prices). Pasinetti’s modeling intends, in this way, to make evident the objec-
tive and fundamental variables of an industrial economy that logically precede
every institutional asset. This ‘natural system’ is taken as expressing optimal posi-
tions, both in terms of efficiency and social equity.
According to Pasinetti, the exponents of the school of Cambridge (U.K.) have
failed to separate the fundamental relations from the institutional side of economic
life, and this is a main cause of their failure to formulate a comprehensive and unified
theoretical system able to prevail against the neoclassical mainstream. Pasinetti’s for-
malization incorporates, in the system of equations, both exogenous technical prog-
ress and the long run dynamics of consumptions, thereby deriving prices, production
and employment. The institutional side, as well as the policy decisions of political
economy, should be derived in compliance with this ‘natural system’. A comparison
between effective results and ‘natural’ configurations would provide a criterion by
which to judge the actually existing institutional mechanisms of a society.
Unfortunately, this approach forgets Pasinetti’s emphasis upon the need for
realistic postulates and thereby falls into the trap of what we have denominated
‘abstract rationality’. Excessively pure theories can determine serious equivocations
on human societies and their administration, even more if they are also specified as
pre-institutional. A comparison between the Walrasian model of general equilibrium
and Pasinetti’s ‘natural system’ will help to clarify the point.
Contrary to the statement of Pasinetti (and his objection to Langlois),31 Leon
Walras’ general equilibrium model does not necessarily need free market (and
capitalist) institutions. This is clearly proved by two well known applications of
his model: that of Enrico Barone in his essay ‘The ministry of production in the
collectivist state’; the other by Lange-Lerner-Taylor in the course of a debate on
market socialism in the 1930s. Barone demonstrated that the problem of prices and
optimal allocation of resources is identical in both socialist and capitalist econo-
mies, and can be solved by a ministry of production operating through trial and
error. For their part, Lange-Lerner-Taylor showed that the simple decisional rule
marginal cost = price allows the entrepreneur’s role to be eliminated. Both approaches
31
Pasinetti states: “The [neoclassical] model is – with regard to institutions – very demanding; or,
we may say, from another point of view, very constraining and exclusive”. In: R Delorme and
K Dopfer 1994 (ed), p. 37.
96 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
32
The manager of a socialist economy, responsible for implementing the rule marginal cost = price,
has nothing to do with the role of the entrepreneur (as we shall see) in meeting radical uncertainty
and introducing innovation.
33
(Pasinetti 1981), p. 25.
34
(Ignazio Silone 1990).
3.9 Mainstream Economics and Its Opponents: A Great Methodological Confusion 97
35
(Fusari 2013).
36
This representation does not necessarily require a micro specification but can be represented at
the sectoral level. See, Fusari and Reati (2013). See also the formal model in chapter 5 of Ekstedt
and Fusari, Routledge 2010.
37
This clearly appears from the formulation of a problem of optimization under the constraint of
the available entrepreneurial skills (or some other scarce factor).
3.9 Mainstream Economics and Its Opponents: A Great Methodological Confusion 99
Our extension is indispensable if we are to derive any real profit from Pasinetti’s
‘separation’ idea and, in particular, to supply clarifications regarding the institu-
tional side. The entrepreneur and profit, being necessary and irrefutable elements of
the economy, must pertain to the left or ‘natural’ side of the separation. But it is not
necessary that they take a capitalist form; they can also be related to public firms
operating in the market and directed by managers endowed with entrepreneurial
responsibilities. This means that the choice between public and private entre-
preneurship pertains to the right-hand or institutional side of the separation.
The questions considered in this section also clarify some serious and frequent
equivocations that mar the teaching of those economists who have focused on deep-
ening our understanding of the extensions discussed above. For example (and as we
saw in Chap. 1): Schumpeter’s forecast of a convergence upon socialism by way of
the great managerial firm, an idea resumed by J. K. Galbraith; the appeal of this
forecast was premised upon an ignoring of the phenomenon of radical uncertainty
that allowed Schumpeter and Galbraith to negate the entrepreneurial function
(“innovation is reducing to a routine”).38 For their part, neo-Austrians based the
legitimization of capitalism on the necessary role of the entrepreneur in the presence
of radical uncertainty, but ignoring the possibility that the entrepreneur partake of a
non-capitalist substance.
Why are so many misleading abstractions, typical of mainstream economics,
reproduced by other prestigious schools of economic thought? Such an outcome can
only be due to a fundamental methodological problem besetting social thought.
This seems the only reliable explanation of the fact that social thought has for so
long, in the form of its various components and paradigms, persistently preserved,
produced and reproduced so many limitations; in particular, of the fact that main-
stream economics has preserved its dominance despite the harsh and well founded
criticism directed at it. Such a state of affairs makes clear that a deep methodological
revision and rebuilding is urgently required within social thought.
3. Now we shall try to provide a better expression of Pasinetti’s idea of ‘separation’.
The building of any social system always involves institutions; therefore, speaking of
a pre-institutional nucleus can be inappropriate. Classical economists asserted the
‘natural’ character of the market (intending the capitalist market). But history teaches
us that in the past that market has often been but a very minor institution, and that it
was harshly opposed in the most advanced societies of the ancient world, represented
by the great bureaucratic-centralized empires. Today, in our modern dynamic societ-
ies, in which competition based on the introduction of innovations prevails, along
with the associated forms of radical uncertainty, the market has become an ‘organi-
zational necessity’. An important merit of Pasinetti’s idea of ‘separation’ is to pro-
vide a precious analytical tool for distinguishing necessity from choice-possibility
in the organization and management of social systems. The existence, in the present
historical epoch, of economies that have moved beyond the quasi-stationary state
necessitates and/or implies: the market, the entrepreneur, profit, innovation and
38
(Schumpeter 1977), p. 128.
100 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
39
Fusari (2012).
3.9 Mainstream Economics and Its Opponents: A Great Methodological Confusion 101
40
The basic lines of this organizational model are set out in A. Fusari, Toward a non-capitalist
market economy: spontaneous order and organization. In: Ekstedt and Fusari 2010, chapter 8 and
also in Fusari 2005, American Review of Political Economy. We show here that the statement
insisted upon by adherents of the neoclassical school, viz. that efficiency is in collision with social
justice, and that this implies distributional inequalities, is a mistaken one, with the exception of the
material incentives required by alienating works.
102 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
41
This model can be transformed into a ‘necessary’ standard simply by the following operations :
(a) money wages must be expressed only as a function of the demand and supply of the labour
force and represent a mere element of the cost that firms will charge on prices, not a component of
income distribution; (b) by contrast, in the equation of consumption, total money wages should be
replaced by a component of income distribution that substitutes for them; (c) the real interest rate
should be zero, and hence the nominal interest rate should equate with inflation; d) the degree of
inequality in income distribution must be erased as a variable stimulating product innovations,
such a stimulus being relevant in a particular social system, capitalism.
3.9 Mainstream Economics and Its Opponents: A Great Methodological Confusion 103
42
(Knight 1950).
43
(Pasinetti 2007), pp. 322 and 323.
104 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
44
(Delorme and Dopfer 1994 (eds.), p. 40 (emphasis in original).
45
See E. Zaghini, R. W. Clower, etc.
3.10 Methodological Monism or Pluralism? 105
Our proposal on method has a pluralistic character. In fact, it asserts the distinction,
from a methodological standpoint, between logical-formal sciences, natural sci-
ences, and social sciences and the conflict/cooperation among various research
programs. But heavy exaggerations and confusions are at work concerning the role
of methodological pluralism.
Starting from Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm, S. C. Dow (2003) highlights the
role of different schools of thought in promoting open-system theorizing and gener-
ating the understanding from different points of views. She emphasizes how schools
of thought put up barriers to discourse, express a sort of division of labor and are
able to stimulate cross-fertilization. A similar position has been expressed by some
F. Lee’s studies on method. In a sense, all this is true. But the difficulty that schools
of social thought face in communicating with each other and with promoting cross-
fertilization are also impressive, as M. H. Ardebili (2003) has vigorously under-
lined. It is significant here that the natural sciences, which have achieved a much
more efficient method of investigation of reality than has social theory, also exhibit
a much greater communication between schools of thought as well as a marked
capability to stimulate the exponential growth of knowledge.
Previous chapters have underlined the fact that the great success and effective-
ness of the method of the natural sciences has negatively affected our understanding
of social phenomena because this method, while totally inappropriate for the study
of social phenomena, has nevertheless been widely adopted by social sciences.
A growing awareness of the inadequacy of the method of the natural sciences for the
study of social reality has recently promoted the diffusion, among students of social
thought, of a multiplicity of more or less heterodox supplementary methods, which
are unable to interact or communicate one with another; an extreme instance of this
trend is the denial of method advocated by methodological anarchism. But some
different attitudes toward heterodoxy are also at work. J. B. Davis emphasizes the
alternation in social thought between pluralism and dominance.46 This alternation
expresses a physiological feature of the process of knowledge. But the pathology of
social thought is different; it consists in some well-rooted methodological miscon-
ceptions that afflict the whole history of social theory and that, if it is to be reversed,
46
This author writes: “it might not be too much to argue that dominant research programs create
conditions for their subsequent fragmentation, whereas periods of pluralism create conditions for
the re-emergence of new dominant approaches”. See Davis (2008), p. 351.
106 3 Heterogeneity of Methods in Social Thought: Weakness or Strength…
demands a real methodological rebuilding that is able, inter alias, to meet two main
peculiarities of social reality that Davis underlines: the difficulty of experimentation
and value-ladeness in economics. Unfortunately, no real progress in the matter
seems to be on the road, as far as we know. In fact, this need of rebuilding is not
achieved by the multiplicity of recent methodological developments (behavioral
and experimental economics, neuroeconomics, happiness and subjective well being
research, agent based modeling, evolutionary thinking, computational economics,
etc.) that Davis refers.47 For its part, the Salanti and Screpanti’s reference to meth-
odological pluralism, sociological understanding, the complementary of methods
and the distinction between pluralism of academy and of methods by one researcher48
is no less insufficient with regard to the need of defining some methodological pro-
cedures and rules that are shaped around the basic features of social reality, We have
also set out at the end of Sect. 3.4 of this chapter some weaknesses of Lee’s proposal
to combine critical realism and the so called ‘grounded theory method’ as a unifying
methodological tool for economics.
Recently, an interesting proposal directed to overcome or at least attenuate
heterodox incommensurabilism and unconstrained pluralism, and hence paradig-
matic struggle, and to increase “constructive interaction and engagement between
different theoretical traditions for a unified paradigmatic competitor to neoclassical
economics” has been set out by L. Dobusch and J. Kapeller. They say: “The impera-
tive for dissenting economists is to create interested pluralism”,49 i.e. a pluralist
paradigm to oppose to the pluralism of paradigms. This is an interesting program.
But the reference to paradigm makes the proposal a bit equivocal. There is no doubt
that, from a descriptive point of view, the notion of paradigm is instructive, for the
simple reason that such a notion well describes the history of scientific evolution:
long time and a large number of failures required to discard preexisting paradigms.
But from a prescriptive and constructive point of view, Kuhn’s paradigm says almost
nothing. The term paradigm emphasizes separation, instead of interaction and dia-
logue among students; it expresses a sort of fideistic concept. Lakatos notion of
‘research program’, which is aimed at remedying to the opposite exaggerations of
Popper’s falsificationism and Kuhn’s paradigm, seems much more appropriate than
the notion of paradigm to Dobusch and Kapeller’s ‘interested pluralism’. In fact,
the confrontation among research programs in Lakatosian approach implies inter-
action and competition among students, instead of separation and irreducible
opposition. But the effectiveness of such a competition and interaction needs the
availability of shared general methodological lines so that to facilitate reciprocal
understanding, as is the case of logic-formal sciences for one side and natural sciences
for the other. This confirms, once again, that the real problem of social sciences is
represented by the dramatic lack of a general methodological approach appropriate
to social reality.
47
See Davis and Wade Hands (2011).
48
See Salanti and Screpanti (1997).
49
See Dobusch and Kapeller (2012).
References 107
Perhaps the most curious aspect in the unfortunate condition of the social sciences
is that the doubts of natural scientists on method have not opened the eyes of stu-
dents of society. Those doubts arise from the philosophy of science and may seem
exaggerated; yet they are extremely helpful when developed with reference to social
theory: both through some positive teaching and also negatively, in that they help
spread a willingness to challenge venerated taboos on method. Nevertheless, these
doubts and teachings (by Popper, Lakatos, etc.) have not been effective in their
impact upon students of society infatuated by the usual method of natural sciences,
nor upon heterodox attempts to revise accepted thinking on method.
We have seen that Popper’s critical review leads to a methodological duplicity
that unfortunately has favored incommensurabilism. We have also underlined the
profitability of Lakatos’ proposal on method, in particular his notion of the ‘research
program’, and also his insistence on rationality; but we have also taken note of the
insufficiency of these methodological advances. We have shown that the fecundity
of Kuhn’s criticism and proposal concerns the interpretation of the history of thought
and social-historical processes, not his idea of method; unfortunately, the former
interpretative fecundity has led to an undue reverence for Kuhn’s methodological
ideas. The works of all these authors offer very little in terms of an alternative and
more efficient method for the analysis of social reality.
Moreover, this chapter has extensively considered the proliferation of very partial
methodological proposals; a proliferation that has resulted from a growing con-
sciousness of the limitations of the usual methodologies for the analysis of social
phenomena, which has been fueled primarily by sociological thinking. Also the
work of important economists concerned with the whole social side has been treated.
All those critical analyses seem to clarify the necessity of facing with energy the
problem of procedure and the definition of basic methodological rules suitable for
the study of social phenomena (as we have tried to do in Chap. 2). In fact, the sup-
posed impossibility of defining a clear standard for distinguishing science from
non-science has been claimed as proof of the irrefutability of incommensurability.
That pretension is based on the idea that research activity is obliged, by the limited
nature of Man’s cognitive capacity, to learn by trial and error. But this very state-
ment shows the groundlessness of such a pretension, as exactly the trial and error
procedure needs commensurability, i.e. the comparison of various contributions to
knowledge and their selection, in order to permit the cooperation of different human
minds for the growth of knowledge.
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Chapter 4
Social Development and Historical Processes
4.1 Premise
The use here of the term “development” instead of “evolution” is not casual but
reflects the fact that evolution refers to spontaneous tendencies embodying only a
few changes and giving rise to very slow processes of adaptation. But social systems
cannot be considered the product of spontaneous phenomena; they are the conse-
quence of creative acts, hypotheses, choices, organizational needs and decisions
that arise over time.
Our treatment of social-historical development will be largely based on the
distinction between ‘necessity’, ‘choice-possibility’ and ‘duration’; in particular,
the treatment will show that the notions of functional and ontological imperative
and civilization are invaluable in explaining social-historical process.
Section 4.2 emphasizes the importance of the interaction between functional
imperatives and civilizations and also underlines the importance of ontological
imperatives in characterizing civilizations. This initial section is followed by: a
theory of the development and decline of social systems; a discussion of the notion
of historical phase and the interpretation of history and of some main necessary
organizational requirements, often disregarded, of the current stage of social and
economic development; and finally a formal (and econometric) application. The present
chapter is followed, in Chap. 5, by a systematic comparison of the theory proposed
here with some primary theories of social-historical process.
The drive to social development stems from innovative phenomena and choices.
In their absence, there would be nothing but the infinite repetition of unvarying
processes, even if disturbed by casual exogenous events. Changes in the state of
1
Disregard for the notions of ontological imperative and civilization probably represent the main
lacuna of the evolutionary paradigm – both in its Darwinian and Lamarckian form – for the study
and understanding of human societies.
4.2 Initial Elements of a Theory of Social and Historical Development 115
2
Faced with far-reaching changes in the general conditions of development, the existing civiliza-
tions either give up the fight and make an honourable surrender or, if they resist, are eventually
undone by their paralyzing systemic inefficiencies.
116 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
We turn now to some very general features of developmental processes, namely their
parabolic or sine-curve-shaped evolution. The considerations set forth in the forego-
ing section on the concept of civilization point to a precise explanation for this pat-
tern. As just seen, every civilization arises, flourishes, and decays, more or less
rapidly, after having performed its mission, or else falls with a crash, dragging down
with it also the relative social system. At the same time, new civilizations are born.
The lack of resistance from earlier, elaborate and pretentious forms of civilization
facilitates the birth of these new civilizations, especially in regions that are exposed
to strong, suggestive stimuli from the outside world. If the new civilizations are espe-
cially well adapted to the dominant lines of development and the inherent functional
imperatives, they will flower prodigiously, and with them also their social systems
will germinate. To fully explain this parabolic or sine-curve trend of social develop-
ment, we need to recall a general characteristic of the processes of development that
powerfully influences the forms of civilization and is influenced by them.3
A general theory of the development and decadence of social systems would
seem necessarily to hinge on the succession of the two great moments that mark the
course of every society namely, that of innovative drive and that of organizational
structuring. The distinction between these two moments is both chronological
and conceptual. The rise of innovations requires propitious social conditions and
(as previously seen) the fulfillment of ontological imperatives; if these are present,
they will spur a proliferation of reciprocally interactive innovations; hence the need
for a subsequent phase of adjustment and consolidation. Conceptually, the distinc-
tion between the two moments is even sharper. For while the moment of innovative
verve involves principally the overthrowing or undermining of existing conditions,
the moment of organizational structuring involves above all the reorganization and
rearrangement of the society as a consequence of the innovations that have arisen
along the road to the advent of a new system of mutually compatible arrangements.
Of course the consolidation phase may entail creative, innovative insights. But this
does not alter the fact that the moment of organizational structuring is a different
and, so to speak, dialectically opposed entity to the moment of innovative processes;
it is aimed at digesting the innovative drive. Essentially, it represents the unfolding
of adaptive processes in order to digest innovations and place them in the stagnant
area of daily routine.4 Let us examine this more closely.
3
The following exposition is an analytical structure that can be applied also to various aspects of
social development, such as economic development, artistic development, scientific development,
and so on.
4
In a way, this succession of the two moments of innovative drive and organizational structuring is
found not only in societies but also in the life of individuals and, let us repeat, even in artistic and
scientific processes.
118 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
The moment of innovative drive has a multitude of effects. The appearance of the
new is always a provocation to the status quo, because it automatically calls into
question the established equilibria, habits, behavior patterns, organic rules, cre-
dences, values, and so on, that govern and animate the society’s way of being.
Innovations never fail to generate imbalances, ruptures, and uncertainties. They lay
down challenges and bring up problems, engender new functions and new view-
points, and in one way or another never fail eventually to bring the established order
into question. Thus innovations open the way to new possibilities and new desires.
At the same time, they break with existing privileges and thereby generate contrasts,
conflicts and structural contradictions that are more or less virulent, uncertain and
precarious. The resulting instability, disorganization and explosive tendencies are
more widespread and profound the greater the impetus of the innovative drive.
The various forms of de-structuring and the contradictions provoked by the inno-
vative drive can seriously impede the functioning of the system, even to the point of
bringing it to the point of catastrophe or self-annihilation, a point that is reached
with the help of frictions and oppositions arising from the late comers sectors of
society. If the development process spurred by the innovations is to continue, if it is
to be consolidated and extended and all its potential fruits brought to maturity, these
de-structuring phenomena have to be followed (or accompanied) by the vigorous
consolidation and rearrangement of the society’s organizational structures.
Specifically, it is necessary that alongside the flow of innovation a re-proportioning
action be initiated, that works to eliminate dysfunctions, smooth out conflicts and
contradictions, and seeks to establish the requisite system of compatibilities. In short,
there has to be a rationalizing effort that, so to speak, can consistently draw the
consequences of the innovative choices that have been made, that consolidates
and divulges those innovations; in a word, that prepares the new base from which
to advance.
The second moment, like that of innovative verve, is obligatory and indispensable
to the process of development.
5
A deeper meditation on this matter, based on a variety of historical examples, may be found in
(Fusari 2000).
6
The role of geography in conditioning the birth of the ancient poleis, as well as the ancient
bureaucratic and autocratic empires, is well known.
4.3 The Development and Decline of Social Systems 119
In primitive societies this condition was made possible by isolation from the rest of the world,
7
while in caste societies it has been mainly the effect of the doctrine of karma.
120 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
At this point, innovation becomes an impelling necessity; new solutions to the new
problems must be found. But its anemic innovative capacities make such a system
rigid, unfit to take up the challenge of new exigencies. Thus crisis and malaise become
more deeply rooted and more widespread, and we find periods of decadence that are
longer and more turbulent the more solid and pretentious is the pre-existing civiliza-
tion. Ultimately, traumatic collapses may result, perhaps the product of clashes with
neighboring peoples. The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire provides an
important example of this case.
In the quasi-stationary world of the past, another outcome was also possible.
The social system might successfully institutionalize, in utter consistency, the moment
of organizational structuring, turning toward the typical organizational forms and
choice of civilization of centralized and bureaucratic orders that dislike ontological
imperatives such as the role of the individual and the principle of tolerance. If success-
fully followed, this path could enable the society to survive for some time and
foster the advent of possibly very long-lasting periods of prosperity and splendor.
Indeed, a centralized social order can sometimes achieve some internal flexibility
and mobility, enough at least to slow the processes of sclerosis and decay. In this
latter case, the parabola that leads to the ultimate collapse of the social system will,
under the pressure of the new functional imperatives, follow the course over a much
more protracted arc of the rise and fall of the form of civilization itself.
The history of the Eastern Roman Empire as well as the Byzantine and Ottoman
Empires offer perhaps the most apt examples of such outcomes. But the best exam-
ple is that of imperial China, which, due to its internal flexibility, succeeded in
surviving over centuries, through both collapses and resurrections, and was only
defeated, in the end, by the acceleration of developmental processes imported from
Western industrial society.
In the modern world, however, with our very rapid pace of change, things are
quite different. As the relative importance of economic activities has grown within
Western societies, the tendencies to development and social change have steadily
increased, owing principally to the impulse imparted by businessmen. In the end, as
that which contains the innovative entrepreneur, the economic sphere has achieved
a central role within the social system. As we know, the entrepreneur is an institu-
tion (and an endogenous force) permanently directed, under the lash of competition,
to exploring new paths, generating new development and organizing productive
process. The central role of the entrepreneur’s activity implies and requires flexible
and dynamic forms of civilization.
In these circumstances there is a ceaseless alternation between innovative
drive and organizational structuring; an alteration that is inevitable given the
coexistence of highly dynamic sectors, on the one hand, and on the other largely
non-innovative sectors based on custom and traditional practices that need time to
adapt to changes generated elsewhere. As a consequence, the interminable periods
of stagnation, generalized decadence, breakdowns and catastrophic annihilations of
entire societies found in so much of the past have been replaced by cyclical move-
ments on the sine-wave pattern, i.e. such that recovery is generated from within the
period of crisis itself. As soon as the structural moment has more or less performed
4.3 The Development and Decline of Social Systems 121
its task, there is a vigorous resumption of exploration of new ways forward, new
solutions, especially as at this point the ground has been prepared, since old invest-
ment has been amortized, proportions and compatibilities re-established, adjust-
ments and adaptations made, lags caught up, while the fruits of the preceding period
of innovative drive are now ripe and harvested, their premises developed. The old
order is no longer satisfactory. New problems and new opportunities arise. To
respond to the former and exploit (or generate) the latter, a new innovative verve is
needed. Even during the structuring phase, the forces of the new period of innova-
tive drive arise and gather strength.8
The recovery of innovative drive opens the door to a phase of structural organiza-
tion that restores consistencies (mainly as a result of the promptness by which busi-
nessmen take steps to benefit from the opportunities offered by disequilibria and
inconsistencies). With the advancement of the general conditions of development
during the motion innovation-organizational structuring, new functional impera-
tives will mature that open the door to new civilizations.
Historically, the duration of these cycles was at first long indeed. Perhaps the first
such cycle can be identified in the history of Western Europe from the eleventh to
the fifteenth century. This initial cycle was continued with the new and tumultuous
phase of the Renaissance, after which great disequilibria and disaster followed in
the seventeenth century, leading to the placid eighteenth century in which era the
adjustment process was founded on the revival of agriculture and the restoration of
landlord privileges. It was on such soil that the first industrial revolution would
blossom and the long waves of industrial society begin.9
The intermediate cycles also appear to be similar to the long cycle in nature. That
is, they too seem to stem from the contraposition between the phenomena of innova-
tive drive and those of organizational structuring intermediate with respect to the
more sweeping and more radical clash and innovations (involving the advent of new
functional imperatives and perhaps of grand options) that mark the very long wave.
Resuming and developing the classification at the end of previous section, the
main typologies of social systems are, therefore:
(a) Social orders of pluralistic and decentralized character and hence containing an
intense internal antagonism. They initially display high creativity and develop-
ment, but this is then followed by deeper and deeper and shorter and shorter
oscillations and ruptures that lead the system to disintegration or transformation
into a more stable but less dynamic organizational form (e.g. the ancient Greek
and Mediterranean world).
(b) Social orders dominated by organizational structuring. These display a wide
and almost flat parabolic behavior, as is typical of caste society and many primi-
tive societies; but they may also fall into traumatic declines caused by external
aggression or undergo transformation into some more coherently centralized
8
See (Ekstedt and Fusari 2010) where, among other things, a formalized model of such behavior
is set out.
9
On long waves, see (Fusari and Reati 2013).
122 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
order, such as those universal empires of the ancient world that embodied the
most coherent forms of past quasi-stationary societies and which, if they suc-
ceeded in achieving some flexibility, enjoyed a very long and almost vegetative
survival.
(c) Modern decentralized orders, marked by high innovation, competitiveness and
rational skills. These have inaugurated the era of cyclical development. The
advent of these social orders marks the beginning of the destruction of previous
typologies.
4.4 S
ynthesis of the Theory and Some
Prescriptive Suggestions
Case A .
Societies highly
respectful of Cycle innovation-
ontological imperatives (e.g. organization, and New
New
decentralized orders) advancement of the functional
civilizations
general conditions imperatives
of development
Creative Forms of
verve civilization
At the outset is the creative verve, for it is through that verve that any civilizing
process begins. The diagram only considers two opposite typologies of civilizations:
those distinguished by a high level of dynamism (case A) and those dominated by
the moment of structural organization (case B). The amount of time that elapses
before the emergence of new functional imperatives is much longer in the case of
branch B than in the case of branch A. The paths shown in the figure are not linear,
but as discussed in the previous section; more precisely:
Underlying the parabolic curve (development, maturity, decadence) or the
cyclical evolution of the various social systems is the contraposition and lack of
coordination between the moment of innovative verve and that of organizational
4.4 Synthesis of the Theory and Some Prescriptive Suggestions 123
4.5 T
he Interpretation of History and the Notion
of Historical Phase
The less general and less permanent functional imperatives may be said to correspond to histori-
10
cal sub-phases.
126 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
imperatives because, for reasons cited earlier, humanity and its social systems are
obliged to proceed rationally.11
Every historical phase is characterized by some technological and productive
capabilities, certain forms of the division of labor and a certain level of knowledge,
to which correspond particular organizational properties and exigencies – in sum,
its own functional imperatives. All those who seek to unlock the potential of that
historical phase must accept its functional imperatives. Otherwise, they will stumble
into inefficiency and into painful and possibly even paralyzing contradictions.
In the historical process, the phases are part of a chain, and they may be more or
less tightly linked with one another. A single society may stand in connection with
two different links at once, it may move forward and backward along the chain, it
may skip some links, may create others anew, and so on. It can be asserted with
confidence that the historical process is progressive in nature. This should not, how-
ever, be taken to mean that it proceeds in the direction of any specific, particular
choices of civilization or toward the realization of certain ideals; this notion of prog-
ress is metaphysical not scientific. From a scientific point of view, progress across
history consists in movement along the different, consecutive phases of develop-
ment, each of which carries the inheritance of the past, opens the way to the phases
that follow, and imposes precise rules of the game that must be obeyed.
In the next chapter we turn to a theoretical verification by way of the confronta-
tion of our theory of social and historic process with those of the principal students
in this area; while some quantitative formalization and estimates are set out in
Sect. 4.7 of this chapter.
The exceptional leap forward in the general conditions of development that has
been promoted by modern dynamic society and its world-wide diffusion have
opened the door to a transition toward a more advanced historical stage: a difficult
transition indeed, causing different problems in developed, developing and under-
developed countries. Such transition is particularly complicated in developing and
underdeveloped areas as it hastens within them the parallel construction of func-
tional imperatives that, in advanced countries, were built up over a much longer
period of time during the transition to previous stages of development. The main
purpose of this section is to establish knowledge about some organizational needs
that mankind is obliged to face at present and in the near future. An investigation
of how to overcome the difficulties associated with the age of globalization needs,
first of all, to think in terms of the functional imperatives typical of the present age.
In what follows, we briefly discuss three important and strictly related functional
11
In a society still incapable of scientific organization, this attraction will come about in what we
might call Darwinian forms; that is, will be the product of a universal struggle for life. In societies
that have scientifically developed social theory, it will take place in explicit, planned forms.
128 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
The exceptions are the material incentives strictly required by efficiency that are, as
such, the outcome of demand and supply conditions. However, an accurate inspec-
tion illustrates that those incentives are enormously less than those advocated to
justifying current forms of income distribution and privileges; in fact, they are only
really required by alienating work and hence decrease if a social organization that
allows each man to express natural skills (and hence reducing alienation) is pur-
sued.12 In effect, social justice is an important condition for efficiency and this is a
preliminary condition if social justice is not to be just an effect and the complement
of a generalized misery. Let us explore this important point further.
To mobilize the great potential represented by the very large variety of skills that
nature disseminates at random among human beings, it is essential not only that the
equality in dignity of men is stated in principle; the emergence of individual skills
also requires that a fair income distribution is achieved. Moreover, social justice is
essential for society because submission and oppression lead humans to become
ever more hostile to social cohesion. In the second half of last century, the European
combination of the market and welfare state has represented an important organiza-
tional feature. In fact, competitive market (including competition based on innova-
tion and hence with some degree of temporary monopoly but excluding institutional
monopolies) represents an insuperable tool for stimulating efficiency, included the
instruction of workers inside the firms and the interest of these to stimulate their
collaboration also trough incentives, while welfare state warranted social cohesion
and increased social justice. But the degenerations of welfare and the disregard for
the efficiency of public sector, the consequent public debt and high taxation, have
caused a push toward sink economy that has caused a corruption of the situation.
In these conditions, a substantial transformation of welfare as suggested by
A. Sen and S. Zamagni is needed, precisely a direct financing of people that neces-
sitate help, with the purpose of stimulating individual responsibility and the propen-
sity to act and defend personal specificities: just the contrary of traditional welfare.
A welfare policy mainly directed to promoting personal skills and responsibility
would stimulate economic development, instead of breaking it as does the old
welfare – for in the present age, in which the Keynesian demand led postulate does
not operate, the traditional welfare policy tends to generate stagnation and exclusion
and is impotent against the poverty trap. There is more. The increasing need for
efficiency and social justice makes the transformation of the market as a mere
mechanism of imputation of costs and efficiency (but not implying an impact on
income distribution) essential to meet such a need, that is, to enable a substantial
freedom in the pursuit of social justice without damaging production. This repre-
sents an important functional imperative of the present age. In some sense, such a
transformation would restore the Keynesian leading role of demand on production,
12
It is evident, in particular, that individuals endowed with exceptional skills are even inclined to
work hard for nothing in order that they may use their skills, as many and sometimes dramatic
historical examples show. It is a moral and functional mistake to consider those individuals as
entitled to receive exceptional monetary rewards that often lead to the dissipation of these excep-
tional qualities through the corrupting effects of luxury.
130 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
being this amended by the pressures coming from income distribution. I have shown
in another work the possibility and the organizational way for reducing the market
so as to operate as a pure mechanism for the imputation of costs and efficiency13
and, at any rate, we come back to the subject in Sect. 7.5 of Chap. 7.
Another functional imperative raised in the age of globalization concerns the
financial market. There can be no doubt of the crucial importance for the financing
of production, in an entrepreneurial market economy, of the banking system. In the
context of the whole financial market banks are flanked, in this task, by some other
financial activities and tools (shares and bonds). This market has increasingly
become a worldwide one, to which is attached an increasingly pervasive and
sophisticated financial power that, rather than serving production, dominates and
enslaves it. Thus today, speculations that are obscure in origin and unconstrained
in action have a significant impact upon production and the performance of the
whole economy.
In the present age of globalization, worldwide financial power constitutes a
major international power, the only power that really operates at world scale; it can
shift enormous capitals instantaneously. Unfortunately, it operates in degenerate
ways with regard to production. Expectations and manipulations of very large finan-
cial activities may result in impressive destabilizing rushes. A masterly and stimu-
lating treatment in the matter has been provided by G. Ietto.14 We limitate to say that
the financial side of social and economic life has become a turbulent and sulky
master of production, instead of being its servant. It thus amounts to an epidemic
scourging our global society, a state of affairs that it is imperative we reverse: the
national and international financial systems have to be led back to their inner
nature, which is to be the servant of production. Such a transformation (representing
a new vital functional imperative) would involve the role and the functioning of the
banking system, the nature of financial activities, the character of financial flows
and interest rate. We have delineated in another work a concise and incisive pro-
posal on the way to convert the financial system from master to a simple servant of
production.15 This new functional imperative is in some way connected to the reduc-
tion – previously considered – of the market to a pure mechanism of imputation of
costs and efficiency. Moreover, the present international financial system menaces
to inflict to global society a destruction of social cohesion thus making functional
imperatives the ontological imperatives of reciprocity and fraternity that Zamagni
points out.
The third functional imperative of the global world refers to the sphere of politi-
cal power; it is linked to the imperative above concerning financial markets and
represents a necessary condition for the achievement of that financial imperative.
The establishment of the various forms of political power in the course of history,
often propelled by functional necessities, has been accompanied (and followed) by
13
See Ekstedt and Fusari 2010, chapter 8: ‘Toward a non-capitalist market system; spontaneous
order and organization’.
14
(Ietto-Gillies 2012).
15
See the reference in the footnote above.
4.7 A Simple Formalized Model and Its Estimation 131
atrocious conflicts and domination and has promoted geographical forms of both
integration and disintegration. In the leading Western countries, the emergence of
national states out of the earlier medieval communes and seigneuries was given a
strong impetus by the rise of capitalism and the resultant powerful stimulus given to
the general conditions of development. The notion of absolute and unlimited sover-
eignty that leading students of law and political thought began to attach to the new
national states led toward oppressive political domination and bloody wars; and this
notion appears, in the present time, increasingly in contradiction with globalization.
But, in spite of this, there persists strong opposition to the growing need of suprana-
tional forms of political power.16 The fatiguing and contradictory political unification
of Western Europe and the recurring menace of regression toward the past disinte-
gration provide examples of both the necessity and difficulty of establishing new
forms of political power and integration. Probably, the federal state represents the
best way to conciliate the need for a supranational political power with the opera-
tion of local peculiarities and fecund differences of civilization.
The great impact of the imperatives discussed above on the forms of civilization
is evident. This raises the problem and shows the difficulty of reconciling the above
imperatives with various civilizations. One main cause of the difficulties that accom-
pany ‘globalization’ is, as we saw, the need to cement its functional imperatives in
underdeveloped and developing countries, where functional imperatives concerning
the previous age (market, entrepreneurship, etc.) have yet to be fully introduced or
completed.
More generally, the inevitable advent of the above functional imperatives
together with connected transformations constitutes a major challenge of our age
and raises serious difficulties. Acceptance would certainly be facilitated by a sci-
entific clarification of their necessity and substance and a related diffusing of the
sentiment that, willy-nilly, they are inescapable; as a consequence, the birth pangs
arising from the transition toward them would be greatly reduced in comparison to
their eventual establishment as organizational necessities by way of processes of
mere trial and error.
4.7.1 T
he Interaction Innovation-Adaptation in a Model
of Dynamic Competition
16
An extended treatment of the question of power may be found in Fusari 2008.
132 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
and involves both the medium and the long run. It may now be instructive to present
the formalization and estimation of a model of dynamic competition devoted to the
representation of the above interaction. The competition considered here concerns
entrepreneurial activity directed to the making of profits. This competition stimu-
lates both innovation and adaptation, and hence provides both the disequilibrating
push attached to innovation and the equilibrating one generated by the search for
and profiteering from the opportunities offered by disequilibria.17
The theoretical scheme that follows may be interpreted as arising from a combi-
nation of Schumpeter’s creative destruction18 and the neo-Austrian market pro-
cess.19 It is surprising that the two notions remain separate in the literature despite
their evident complementariness. The term ‘structural organization’, which our
model of social development considers as a counterpart of innovation, is intended
here as an effect and implication of the adaptive competition emphasized by neo-
Austrians, that is, the competition directed to exploit the disequilibrating effect of
innovations; while ‘radical uncertainty’ (i.e. the uncertainty that cannot be the
object of probability estimations) is intended as an expression of the need for struc-
tural organization that follows innovation. Therefore, a decrease in radical uncer-
tainty is taken as an indicator of progress in structural organization following an
innovation dash. Alternatively, this role of uncertainty can (and will) be replaced by
the standard deviation of profit rates across firms.20
There is interaction between both the searches for profits (i.e. innovation and
adaptation). When uncertainty and/or disequilibria grow, mainly as an effect of
innovations (devoted to make profits), adaptive (neo-Austrian) competition, i.e.
directed to discover and get the existing profit opportunities, prevails. This leads to
a reduction in uncertainty and market disequilibria, so that innovation is stimulated
both to recreate profit opportunities and because low uncertainty makes easier to
innovate. So innovation feeds radical uncertainty and the standard deviation of
profit rates across firms as a consequence of the increase in market disequilibria,
thus stimulating adaptive competition. But the reduction in that standard deviation
and uncertainty, as a consequence of adaptive competition, causes a rise in innova-
tion. And so on, with a cyclical behavior and alternation between innovation and
adaptation (innovation-structural organization).21
17
An extensive analysis of this aspect, along with some simulation experiments, may be found in:
(Fusari 2005) and (Ekstedt and Fusari 2010).
18
(Schumpeter 1934).
19
(Kirzner 1973, 1985).
20
For empirical applications, a measure of radical uncertainty can be expressed as the volatility of
expectations (see later). Also, the standard deviation of profit rates across firms seems to offer a
good variable for the analysis of dynamic competition and the business cycle since it expresses the
dimension of adaptive profit opportunities as connected to limited knowledge and market
disequilibria.
21
The interaction innovation-structural organization here discussed goes well beyond economics,
as previously seen.
4.7 A Simple Formalized Model and Its Estimation 133
The specification above suggests representing, at the aggregate level, the relation
between innovation and disequilibria-uncertainty, as expressed by the notion of
dynamic competition or, more in general, the motion innovation-structural organi-
zation, through a Lotka-Volterra predator-prey system, where predation is intended
only in formal, not physical, terms. Innovation acts as the prey and uncertainty as
the predator, according to the following differential system:
DPA = b1 PA − b 2 u* PA (4.1)
Du = −b3 u + b 4 PA * u (4.2)
where:
PA = Patent applications (intended as an indicator of innovation).
u = Radical uncertainty or, alternatively, the standard deviation of profit rates
across firms.
D = Derivative d/dt.
* = Symbol of multiplication
The notion of radical uncertainty used here is expressed by the volatility of firms’
opinions as resulting from the UE Business Tendency Surveys (see Fusari 2013)
and is given by the average of the volatility of: Delivery orders, Stock of finished
product and the Expectations on production.
The parameter b1 is a constant exponential rate of growth of innovation, express-
ing the autonomous push to innovate due to entrepreneurial aggressiveness; its
impact on innovation (DPA) is reduced by the degree of radical uncertainty (or the
standard deviation of profit rates) u that discourages (predates) innovation (PA)
according to parameter b2. The parameter b3 is an exponential rate of growth of the
radical uncertainty; the negative sign on b3 expresses the compressing effect on radi-
cal uncertainty (and/or the standard deviation of profit rates) coming from adaptive
competition (stimulated by u). For its part, b4 stimulates u according to the cross
product between predator and prey, where the prey is the dimension of innovation
(PA) that feeds uncertainty and/or the standard deviation of profit rates (predator).
Precisely, innovation is the field of pasture of radical uncertainty: in the absence of
innovation, the term with b4 would become null because of the adaptive search for
profit. When innovation intensifies, u (the predator) grows, thus causing the contrac-
tion in innovation (the prey), and hence the predator, with a cyclical alternation. The
system parameters give the dimension of the disequilibrating (b1 and b4) and equili-
brating (b2 and b3) push expressed by dynamic competition (this competition being
represented by the combination between innovative and adaptive competition).22
It may be useful to underline that the measures of dynamic competition based on the rapidity
22
of contraction of the standard deviation of profit rates across firms (as, for instance, in:
(Mueller 1990) and others, or (Odagiri 1994)) only consider adaptive competition or, more precisely,
134 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
The econometric estimation on social change (i.e. of the above equation system)
that will follow make sense for the reasons synthesized in Sect. 2.7 of Chap. 2, pre-
cisely because the model represents some basic mechanism of socio-economic
change at a very aggregate level, what justifies the assumption of a substantial
invariance of parameters over time.
The estimation below refers to four main European industrial countries: Italy, the
United Kingdom, France and Germany. The data on patent applications and grants
are used to express innovation and come, for Italy, from the Ufficio Italiano Brevetti,
and in the other cases from the USA Department of Commerce. The data on radical
uncertainty used by the estimation concerning Italy come from the UE-ISAE
Business Tendency Surveys. The data on the standard deviation of profit rates across
firms come from Mueller (1990) for France and Germany; while those for the United
Kingdom come from Odagiri (1994); they refer to some samples of manufacturing
firms and, respectively, to the periods 1961–1982, 1965–1982 and 1964–1977. It
may be objected that the considered periods are far from the present. But the estima-
tions only intend to provide an example of a simple econometric application of our
theory. At any rate, for Italy, the data on patent and uncertainty go from April 2000 to
December 2010; they have been aggregated in quarterly and deseasonalised.
The data for France give pre tax profit, those for the United Kingdom and
Germany give after tax profit. Their reliabilities are affected by their derivation from
some firms’ balance sheet based on dissimilar and not well-established procedure.
The results shown below must be judged in the light of the deficiencies of the
appropriate data series. Nevertheless, confirmation of the theory is encouraging. But
the improvement of quantitative analysis in the crucial fields of innovation and
dynamic competition is urgent and would need a great deal of statistical research.
A FIML estimator was used to preserve the tight interaction between Eqs. (4.1)
and (4.2) above, i.e. innovation and uncertainty-adaptation, being such interaction a
crucial point of this development on dynamic competition. The estimates are derived
by an asymptotically exact Gaussian estimator of a differential equation system
using discrete data and an estimation program provided by Clifford R. Wymer
(WYSEA). As there is no equivalent of a just-identified model for non-linear sys-
tems, there is no system-wide test such as the Carter-Nagar R2 or likelihood-ratio.
In order to give an idea of the efficiency of estimations, also the means and standard
deviations of the observed and estimated endogenous variables are reported.
parameter b3 of the above system. They ignore the other parameters and hence give a poor
approximation to the intensity of competition and economic dynamism, as dynamic competition
consists both in innovation and adaptation.
4.7 A Simple Formalized Model and Its Estimation 135
A system which differs from Volterra (pseudo Volterra form) in that the second
equation uses only PA instead of the term PA*u in the right hand side, has also been
estimated. As a matter of fact, it may be assumed that the “reproduction” hypothesis
typical of Volterra’s study on population plainly operates only in the equation of
innovation in that each innovation is strongly influenced by the state of knowledge
resulting from previous innovations. In the equation of u, however, it may operate
only backwards (−b3) as large disequilibria stimulate adaptation. This means that in
Eq. (4.2) the cross product term of Volterra, the encounter between predator and
prey, may be replaced by the prey (innovation) only.
Data on patent have been divided by thousand, for uniformity of their scale with
respect to u.
The model with the term PA in Eq. (4.2), instead of PA*u, does not converge.
136 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
4.7.3.3 France
The data series of the standard deviation of profit rates for France has two out-lying
observations in 1974 and 1977. The first has no justification and is probably due to
inaccuracy of the data; the second is largely determined by the revaluations, in
1977, of the assets of mergers that consistently depressed profit rates. We have
substituted to those anomalous data an interpolation with the contiguous data
(Tables 4.3 and 4.4).23
Table 4.4 Model with the term PA in Eq. (4.2), instead of PA*u
Estimate of parameters Asymptotic standard errors t values
b1 0.252 0.158 1.59
b2 0.037 0.252 1.48
b3 0.608 0.348 1.75
b4 1.320 0.722 1.83
Endogenous variables
Observed Estimated
Mean Standard deviation Mean Standard deviation
PA 3.0316 0.2261 3.0263 0.2418
u 6.2933 0.7637 6.3072 0.5024
23
The fact that only two observations were out liers, that the model is dynamic, and that there is no
reason to assume that the cause, if any, of these anomalies were the same, suggested that the use of
a dummy variable was inappropriate.
4.7 A Simple Formalized Model and Its Estimation 137
Table 4.6 Model with the term PA in Eq. (4.2), instead of PA*u
Estimate of parameters Asymptotic standard errors t values
b1 0.333 0.124 2.69
b2 0.096 0.039 2.43
b3 0.221 0.164 1.35
b4 0.095 0.066 1.43
Endogenous variables
Observed Estimated
Mean Standard deviation Mean Standard deviation
PA 7.7933 1.4829 7.7603 1.5898
u 3.1622 0.3524 3.1588 0.2810
For Italy, the values of parameters are much lower than in the other countries. This is
mainly due to the fact that in the recent period the rate of growth of patent applications
is substantially decreased and the rate of growth of uncertainty is increased, while in
the estimation periods concerning the other considered countries the rate of growth of
patent applications was high and the standard deviation of profit rates decreasing.
For Germany, the model in the Volterra form provides a worse estimate of the
equation of the standard deviation than the model that substitutes the term PA to
PA*u in (4.2); the contrary happens for France and the United Kingdom. It would
seem, therefore, that in the first country disequilibria do not generate disequilibria,
while a self-reinforcing tendency of disequilibria appears in the United Kingdom
and France, i.e. u contributes to stimulate its own growth through the term PA*u.
All parameters have the correct signs, have reasonable values and are signifi-
cantly different from zero around the 1 % level in the estimation of the model in the
Volterra form for Italy, the United Kingdom and France, and in the pseudo Volterra
form for Germany.
The model was also estimated utilizing data on patent grants instead of
patent applications but the results have not been presented as, in all cases, patent
applications gave better estimates. This is not surprising since patent applications
138 4 Social Development and Historical Processes
provide a better expression of the innovative propensity of firms, i.e. their intention
to innovate.
It may be interesting to compare the estimated parameters relative to various
countries, taking present that parameter b1 gives the innovative dash, parameter b3
the adaptive push, while parameters b1 and b4 represent the disequilibrating forces
and parameters b2 and b3 express the equilibrating ones.
Italy shows a relevant innovative dash and adaptive push (b1 and b3) meaning a
satisfactory degree of dynamic competition, while the disequilibrating and equili-
brating forces are almost equivalent.
The United Kingdom shows the highest innovative dash (b1) and also the highest
adaptive push (b3), i.e. the strongest dynamic competition. Germany shows a strong
innovative dash and a low adaptive push, while France presents an innovative dash
a little lower than Germany, but a much higher adaptive push. Relative to Germany,
France has a lower parameter on the term in Eq. (4.1) braking innovative dash and
a higher parameter on the term in Eq. (4.2) braking adaptive push. These offsetting
values of b1 and b3, and b2 and b4 tend to partly compensate the differences in the
innovative dash and the adaptive push, making the disequilibrating-equilibrating
process closer in those two countries. The United Kingdom shows such offsetting
behavior only with reference to the adaptive push (but the difference between b3 and
b4 is large), while the parameter b2, braking the innovative dash, appears higher than
France and a little lower than Germany, implying for this aspect a widening of the
disequilibrating forces relative to this country.
4.8 Conclusion
24
See Fusari, Human adventure, 2000.
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Chapter 5
On the Dynamics of Societies:
Is There a Universal Theory?
5.1 Premise
means rational, implied by the idealist hypothesis that reality goes toward final
ends, obscures the constructivist side, i.e. the phenomenon of structural rationalisa-
tion and organisation. In fact, Marx’s method forces him to ignore the issue of the
organisation of social systems that relates to the historical imagination.
Moreover, the Marxian theory, notwithstanding its dynamic nature, does not
properly analyse a main pole of historic-social development, namely innovation.
More precisely, the theory, though seeing the forces of production as a decisive fac-
tor of evolutionary motion, does not pay due attention to the factors that accelerate
or slow the evolution of those forces. In particular, it omits the fundamental impact
that existing social values have on innovative drive. Here there emerges again the
Marxian underestimation of choice-possibility and hence of the decisive influence
that value-ideological choices and the consequent civilisations have on human cre-
ativity and innovation. Marx takes innovation for granted, because he was analysing
capitalism, which is indeed driven to innovate by strict competitive needs. But capi-
talism is only one organisational form; innovative drive has been repeatedly
repressed in the course of history by various forms of civilisation. When the econ-
omy took centre stage in the social process, this suffocation came to an end. But the
Marxian hypothesis of the centrality of the economy necessarily refers to a particu-
lar historical period; it cannot constitute an interpretative tool for all of history.
The above methodological shortcomings prevent Marx from developing the
organic-functional aspect and appropriately treating the conflictual aspect. Indeed,
the observational idea that reality means necessity makes the distinction between
the two aspects senseless. We clarified the great importance of that distinction
above, as well as showing that social conflict is strongly interacting with functional
aspects, as expressed by the motion from innovation to structural organisation. The
roots of social conflict are innovation and choice processes, which cause ruptures
and inconsistencies, sacrifice interests and stimulate appetites; all this will be rem-
edied by structural organisation, aimed at restoring the functional organic unity and
coherence of the social system. Eliminating social conflict would require the
absence of innovation and the total predomination of the organic and functional
aspect, as in caste societies or autocratic and bureaucratic centralised empires. But
social conflict aimed at overturning functional and ontological imperatives would
be a real disaster.
Communist utopia requires the suffocation of innovation and a stationary state.
Moreover, it is mistaken to think that historical motion needs revolutionary
explosions. A society flexible enough and open to creativity can carry out profound
transformations through the sedimentation of innovation over time; only rigidly
structured societies need tremendous upheavals to change, when they are forced to.
These considerations are confirmed and better clarified by the analysis of
Marxian historical stages. We have seen that the subdivision of the historical pro-
cess into stages of development needs a criterion of classification that is valid at
universal scale. The definition of that criterion requires the distinction between
necessity and choice-possibility, as it must be based on aspects of necessity (precisely,
functional imperatives) not choice-possibility, which concerns specific and non-
comparable aspects. More precisely, the classification of stages cannot be based on
144 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
The notion of stages of development is strictly associated with the idea of ‘progress’
and has been widely used in social studies, economics and history; it has also been
used in philosophical analyses and even theological speculation. The discovery of
some ‘laws of becoming’ that represent the basic lines of development of human
societies even right to the end of time and so enable us to foresee the future, has
always exerted great academic fascination. Gioacchino da Fiore, with his three
stages of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, was a precursor of the notion of
historical stages. The dialectical speculation of the idealists ratified the idea that
historical motion proceeds through progressive stages, towards the final ends.
Later Comte, the father of positivism, claimed to have determined a scientific
law of the motion of knowledge (and hence of society) articulated in stages of devel-
opment. Following Vico, he represented social dynamics and the ‘law of progress’
through three stages that he called: theological, metaphysical, and positive. But
nothing demonstrates that knowledge and historical process actually correspond to
Comte’s stages or warrants the conclusion that the manifest destiny of societies is
‘progress’. Many societies stagnated for millennia in a primitive stage or stationary
condition. In spite of the irradiating power of dynamic Western society, some peo-
ples stagnate even today in that condition. If a civilisation suffocates innovative
drive, progressive development is impossible. The components of the Comtian
stages, i.e. religion and instincts, heroism, philosophy and theology, art and science,
characterise human action in every era; but nothing says that development has to
follow a set chain, which posits a precise order of importance of those components.
In sum, Comte’s positivism is far from presenting a scientific theory of the stages of
development.
5.4 Evolutionary and Institutional Theories of the Social-Historical Process… 145
The most accurate and efficacious analyses of the stages of development (or growth)
have been put forward by economists, who are facilitated by the possibility of quan-
tifying economic variables and by the fact that the economy leads the motion of the
whole social system, at least from medieval time to present age. W.W. Rostow
insists on drawing the economic stages of growth and goes much beyond in his
fascinating and important book on economic growth. He lists five stages: traditional
society, the preconditions for take-off, economic take-off, the drive to maturity, and
the age of high mass consumption.
At the base of these distinctions, aimed quintessentially at pointing out the
modalities for promoting economic development, lies the capacity of productive
system to absorb technology and to generate autonomous economic growth. But
notwithstanding the use, for the classification of the above stages, of some impor-
tant non-economic factors and the care in highlighting linkages between economic
and non-economic sectors, economists’ theorisation on development stages lacks
the breadth for a true theory of social-historical development. Moreover, the clas-
sification in stages is not based on rigorous criteria of distinction between historical
periods, e.g. our notion of functional imperatives; the classification does not make a
precise distinction between necessity and choice-possibility. Choice-possibility is
often included among the distinctive criteria of each phase, intermingled with
necessity. At most, the distinctions between stages are centred on particular aspects
of the general conditions of development that, while important, are always only a
partial representation of those conditions.
experiences of demagogic regimes (Nazism, Stalinism) induce him to fear that the
contrary is more likely.
Hayek’s insistence on the role of the market and decentralised decision-making
is important, as it puts some basic functional imperatives of modern dynamic societ-
ies into focus. But the inability to distinguish necessity from choice-possibility,
functional imperatives from civilisations, leads him much further, to see liberal
institutions (which express one particular kind of civilisation) as the optimal organ-
isational form that will lead to the ‘Great Society’. This position undervalues the
role played by the variety of organisational, ethical and relational forms in the
becoming of social systems. Hayek dislikes the analysis of the constraints that civil-
isations may set on the evolutionary process or on innovation. He pays little atten-
tion to the role, in modern economies, of innovative drive and competition based on
innovation. The uncertainty, conflicts and indeterminacy of events that shape his
theoretical system derive from the interactions among individual actions much more
than from innovative drive. The substantial absence, in Hayek’s theory, of the
important endogenous disequilibrating mechanism represented by competition
based on innovation confers a strong equilibrating tendency on the process of adap-
tation resulting from individual actions and interests. The main cause of his exces-
sive faith in spontaneous order is his disregard for innovation. A major weakness in
Hayek’s work is his pessimism about the possibility of constructing a science of the
organisation of social systems, and his consequent hostility towards voluntarism.
3. Douglass North’s interpretation of social-historical processes, though limited to
the economy, deserves attention for the central role that he attributes to institutions.
Unlike Hayek’s analysis, North’s does not concern any specific institution but the
evolution of institutions over time. Moreover, evolution is not analysed by the
observational but the constructivist method, i.e. from the standpoint of organisa-
tional rationality and efficiency.
North states that institutions express the link between past, present and future
and mark, through their evolution, the historical process; they are the key to under-
standing the relations between economic and political systems and those relations’
implications for economic development. This author takes the notion of ‘transaction
costs’ as the basic instrument for the interpretation of evolution. The size of transac-
tion costs (determined by the amount of information that, in the presence of uncer-
tainty, is necessary to value the contents of changes and the reliability of agents, the
need to protect agreements and to enforce them, and a risk premium), he argues,
decisively influences the volume of transactions and, in the end, the success of eco-
nomic action. North observes that in the world of perfect knowledge presupposed
by the Walrasian general equilibrium approach, institutions are unnecessary. If
information and the guarantee of rights were cost-free, organisation would have no
role. Moreover, in North’s schema more efficient institutions, those that reduce
transaction costs most substantially, tend to eliminate the less efficient. This and the
variation in the course of history of transaction costs explain economic, political and
social evolution.
North’s analysis repeatedly touches on our concept of functional imperative. His
use of transaction costs to explain the transition to later stages of economic
148 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
development and to identify their main contents resembles our notion of historical
phase. Unfortunately the absence of a rigorous methodological base undermines the
coherence and the explanatory power of his approach. In particular North and all
theorists of transaction costs fail to see the crucial importance, for rigorously speci-
fying their analytical approach, of the distinction between civilisation and func-
tional imperative, necessity and choice-possibility. His analytical categories are
permeated by the persistent mixing of those aspects; that is, they combine institu-
tions that express precise civilisations (for instance, property rights) with aspects of
market process expressing mere functional necessities. This makes his analysis in
part an apology and devalues its theoretical breadth and explanatory power.
Those limits clearly emerge in North’s interpretation of the different pace of
evolution in the United States and Latin America, an interpretation based on the
institutional differences inherited from English and Spanish colonisation. But he
is unable to see that the failure of the attempts by some Latin American countries
to accelerate development was due largely to their inability to identify the func-
tional imperatives necessary to success. In effect, the reform projects and the
institutional evolution of Latin America generally violated the functional impera-
tives of the more advanced stages of development that they desired. This impeded
the building of forms of civilisation consistent with those imperatives, and even
today keeps the continent imprisoned in its colonial past; in fact, the deep roots of
tradition and interests make emancipation through trial and error difficult and
improbable indeed.
The role that North attributes to historical continuity is accentuated by these
methodological failings, which reduce the constructivist breadth of his analysis.
The path dependence of the evolutionary process is not so strict, nor institutional
change so necessarily gradual, as North thinks. He does not see that increasing
returns (due to externalities and learning processes), by enforcing continuation
along current development paths, turn with time into decreasing returns owing to
the advent of new functional imperatives typical of more advanced stages of devel-
opment. At that point, a strong drive to abandon the old paths will emerge, in the
same way that the imprisonment in old techniques ends as soon as alternative and
more efficient technologies are discovered.
The rationality principle plays an important role, whether from the observational or
constructivist standpoint, in all the theories of social process that we have analysed.
We now consider two of the most important interpretations that deny the explana-
tory role of that principle, those of Vilfredo Pareto and Oswald Spengler.
1. Pareto’s cyclical theory of social-historical process is peculiar. It is a product
of the author’s attention to non-logical action and, more precisely, a result of his
5.5 The Anti-rationalist Interpretations of Social-Historical Processes… 149
notions of residue and derivation.1 The concept of residue serves as a substitute for
postulates in deductive analysis; it concerns human instincts and feelings. The
notion of derivations concerns sophisms, appeals to sentiment and more or less logi-
cal reasoning starting from residues and directed to persuading oneself and others
of the appropriateness of some propositions. Pareto distinguishes residues into two
groups: class I residues, or the ‘instinct for combinations’, concerning the propen-
sity to use reason, astuteness, the ability to practise compromises and innovation;
class II residues, or persistence of aggregates, concerning the preservation of
existing assets through the appeal to faith or the use of material force. His interpre-
tation of social-historical processes is essentially a theory of the circulation and
variable distribution, in society and over time and space, of residues, that is of
instinctive forces: combinatory instincts are said to generate change and instability,
while the instincts of persistence of aggregates have a stabilising role; more pre-
cisely, they tend to trap society in the pre-existing organisational forms and fossilise
it. Pareto maintains that the prevalence of one class of residues will trigger a
movement in favour of the other class. This alternation, chiefly within the political
élite, is presumed to provoke cyclical oscillations of social processes. Moreover, the
possible excess number, within the political élite, of people lacking the residues
indispensable to the exercise of power and, within the lower strata, of people able to
govern, supposedly provokes revolutionary ruptures. An incessant interchange of
élites, so as to produce the right proportions of the two classes of residues, would be
required to avoid the rupture of equilibrium and to achieve social prosperity.
This theory has the merit of utilising some analytical categories that are generally
ignored. But it also has limits and inconsistencies, largely due to the dominant role
that Pareto assigns to individual actions in the analysis of social process. The con-
sideration that human behaviour includes various irrational elements induces Pareto,
as sociologist, to ignore the rationality principle in the interpretation of history and
in the development of social theory. The author does not give due importance to the
fact that the social process is not a strict consequence of individual actions but, on
the contrary, exerts a decisive influence upon them. He does not see, therefore, that
the comprehension of social processes does not need an explanation in terms of
men’s propensities, which are often instinctive, unfathomable, the source of numer-
ous unexpected events. That comprehension can, more efficaciously, be founded on
the analysis of social systems as constituted by organisational forms that fulfil pre-
cise functions and express meaningful systemic coherence.
His rejection in principle of the postulate of organisational rationality prevents
Pareto from perceiving the importance of the distinction between necessity and
choice-possibility in the study of social phenomena, and makes his analysis
inconsistent with structural organisation and rationalisation. Further, his analysis
does not attribute an important role to innovative drive. Instead, Pareto insists on
1
This is just the opposite of Paretian economics, which is based on the abstract rationality criterion.
As we said in Chap. 3; an impressive analytical dualism distinguishes the investigation of this
author. He jumps from a rationalism strongly abstracting from reality in economics, to a true
disregard of rationality in sociology.
150 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
the great temporal invariability of instincts or residues and on the low level of
social change notwithstanding appearances.
Moreover, he does not consider the decisive role of civilisations in causing both
the persistence of aggregates and the propensity to innovate or, more in general, in
determining the role played by the character of the class II residues. Had he given
due consideration to the role of civilisations, he could have seen that the cyclical
alternation between the residues of class I and II – or, in terms of our interpretation,
between innovative drive and structural organisation – cannot be considered to be
universal but instead requires the presence of a decentralised and competitive civili-
sation. Its operation needs a civilisation of the Western type; other (Oriental) types
of civilisation have implied the undisputed domination of the residues of persistence
of aggregates and the consequent stagnation of society.
Pareto’s theory is unable to register the importance, for social motion, of the
notion of functional imperative and hence of the interaction among innovation,
functional imperatives and new forms of civilisation, which flanks the more general
cyclical interaction between innovative drive and structural organisation. Worse
still, each one of the two poles activating the Paretian cycle, i.e. class I and class II
residues, present a mixture of elements pertaining to innovative drive and structural
organisation. For instance, religious faith, which is an important component of the
persistence of aggregates, has also produced significant explosions of innovation in
the course of history, while scepticism, astuteness and calculation, which are
instincts for combination and thus in Pareto’s framework causes of instability, are
decisive factors of the stabilising motion constituted by structural organisation.
These misconceptions prevent rigorous analysis of conflict and of organic func-
tional aspects and their relations. What is more, they decisively undermine the
explanation of the evolutionary motion of society. Pareto’s interpretation of history
based on the role of class I and class II residues, mainly his account of Roman and
Italian history and the Reformation, is ingenuous and easy to criticise. Significantly,
his interpretation is more convincing in situations where the two classes of instincts
coincide with the poles of innovative drive and structural organisation as, for
instance, in the history of Athens and Sparta. It is easy to see that the completely
different historical destiny of Western and Eastern societies cannot be considered a
mere question of instincts; the divergence is determined by the forms of civilisation.
Prosperity depends on the interaction and co-ordination of the poles of innovative
drive and structural organisation and rationalisation, much more than on the appro-
priate combination of class I and class II residues.
2. Spengler emphasises the role of irrational behaviour in history more strongly
than Pareto. He says that unlike nature, which needs a causal criterion of analysis
aimed at discovering laws of motion, society can only be studied using the sense of
history and predestination. Consistently with this position, he denies the possibility
of explaining social action and social phenomena by any theory and accordingly
substitutes intuition for reasoning. In masterly fashion, in support of his irrationalism
he evokes the impact on historical vicissitudes of ambitions, passions, superstitions,
coincidences and, above all, the complex and variegated phenomena of civilisation,
which obscure and deny the interpretative role of the rationality principle.
5.6 The Central Role of Creative Processes in Toynbee and Ortega y Gasset 151
The breadth and descriptive vigour of Spengler’s notion of civilisation and the
central role he assigns to it in social and historical inquiry deserve great attention.
He considers civilisations as organic entities that are born, grow, age and die, and
indicates in their evolution, which involves every aspect of life, the profound sense
of historical becoming. Spengler sharply observes that every civilisation expresses
an overriding value-ideological option. This observation highlights the parabolic
destiny of civilisations, the tendency to develop and flourish as long as the overrid-
ing option can fully express its intrinsic possibilities, and afterward to decay, to
become stiff, sterile and, in sum, cold and artificial.
These considerations are irrefutable and of great interest; they give a masterly
account of many crucial aspects of social-historical processes. But Spengler’s
superb sense of civilisations is quite insufficient for the interpretation of history and
instead is the source of serious errors and misunderstandings. He fails to consider
the notion of ontological imperatives and their presence or absence in any given
civilisation. Besides, civilisation is not everything. One of Spengler’s main errors is
that he ignores the notion of social system. We know that this notion also includes
some important aspects that are absent in the notion of civilisation, such as func-
tional imperatives and the non-institutionalised components that innovation brings
on the scene. The sedimentation of innovations causes changes in the general condi-
tions of development and hence in the functional imperatives that will determine the
advent of new civilisations. This interaction between civilisations and functional
imperatives, which allows the distinction of historical stages, together with the suc-
cession of innovative drive and structural organisation, should form the backbone of
the interpretation of history; but they are absent in Spengler’s analysis.
The shortcomings of interpretations based solely on the notion of civilisation may
appear negligible when we are studying stationary societies, above all the Oriental
societies characterised by strongly rooted and pervasive civilisations covering the
whole social system and coinciding with it. But those shortcomings become highly
relevant when we seek to study modern dynamic societies, where the boundaries of
social systems are much broader than those of the civilisation. This second kind of
society does not follow the parabola and destiny of civilisations; on the contrary, it
shows a strong tendency towards regeneration and incessant renewal that may be
able to avoid the grey, cold and artificial terminal stage of civilisations.
Nothing better epitomizes the limitations of Spengler’s interpretation than the
provocative title of his work: The Decline of the West.
paints a superb fresco of universal history animated by the rise and fall of a large
variety of social systems, but at the same time it severely undermines the analytical
rigour and interpretative capacity of his study of history; what is worse, this broad
concept leads to a very questionable distinction among civilisations.
Toynbee’s theory of social-historical processes is characterised by the important
role of creativity and innovation. Popularisations describe it as a theory of challenge-
response, but this is a diminished representation. In effect, Toynbee does emphasise
the disturbing role and the challenge implicit in the new situations caused by endog-
enous or external events, followed by a response that lends impulse to the process of
social differentiation and to new forms of civilisation. But this differentiation, unlike
Darwinian selection, is not deterministic. In Toynbee, response always implies cre-
ativity and may consequently differ in content. There will be development if the
challenge is followed by a high-level response, one that is very creative and generates
further change, which in turn generates another creative response, and so on.
Toynbee’s thesis that development is triggered by creative phenomena and driven
by imitation (mimesis), which determines its diffusion throughout society, is unex-
ceptionable. He adds that the diffusion of mimesis may cause anaemia of creative
drive, which can be obstructed by infatuation with the past and the force of tradition,
the intoxication of victory, the tendency to rest on one’s laurels, or the disorders
provoked by the clash between new and old conditions. Toynbee uses ‘fall’ to indi-
cate the collapse of development as a consequence of the anaemia of creativity. This
collapse pushes society into a sort of vegetative state or, more frequently, into ‘dis-
integration’ in three stages: a period of disorder, the advent of a universal State, and
an interregnum that, through the contribution of creative minorities, opens the door
to a new civilisation.
The most interesting aspect of this interpretation is the link between creativity
and development. Unfortunately, Toynbee neglects a crucial aspect of the action of
civilisations, that is, the constraints that they may impose on creativity. Evidently,
the effort to trace the course back up from challenge (crisis) to a new civilisation
obliged him to disregard the way in which the nature of a civilisation affects the
challenge itself, i.e. the innovative process. We know that the content of challenge
and of response is largely determined by the character of the civilisation in which
they arise. Toynbee’s historical references were intended to trace the succession
challenge-civilisation (for instance, the powerful hydraulic works in ancient Ceylon
activated by the idea that not one drop of water should be wasted, or the Spartan and
Osman-Ottoman civilisations, which in Toynbee’s view arose as responses to very
severe challenges), but they can be readily reversed. In fact, these instances clearly
show the decisive imprint of civilisations (or their more creative and original
aspects) on the characteristics of the challenge and response.
The limitations and errors of Toynbee’s theory emerge more clearly in his notions
of fall, disintegration, period of disorder, universal empire, which complete his
interpretation and which he manages to apply to any and all societies, sometimes
thanks to great exaggerations that Ortega y Gasset pointed out. Toynbee’s notion of
‘fall’ indicates the exhaustion of development that follows the anaemia of creative
skills; this, he says, provokes a period of disorder, oppression and protracted disin-
tegration, with a series of ups and downs, followed by the establishment of a
5.6 The Central Role of Creative Processes in Toynbee and Ortega y Gasset 153
universal State and, in the end, its dissolution. But we know that every period of
development is followed by a phase of structuring and that the alternation of periods
of disorder and relative order is part of the nature of social systems; in sum, creative
drive causes contradictions and conflicts (i.e. disorder), but these problems are
attenuated during the stage of structural organisation that regenerates consistency.
The historical cases considered by Toynbee demonstrate the important explana-
tory role that attaches to the succession between innovative drive and structural
organisation. But in his interpretation the two aspects are combined in a confusing
way: the notions of fall and disintegration also include structural organisation and
therefore periods of magnificence during which the fruits of turbulent periods of
innovative drive were reaped. This confusion emerges clearly in Toynbee’s periodi-
sation, as in his indication of the period between 431 and 31 B.C. as the period of
the fall of Hellenic society, notwithstanding the great innovative drive of Hellenistic
civilisation and the Roman republic; or the inclusion of the Roman Empire of
Principate (of the first three centuries after Christ) in the phase of disintegration.
In effect, Toynbee’s interpretation too suffers from the lack of sufficiently deep
analysis of the distinction between necessity and choice-possibility, which conceals
the importance of the succession between innovation and structural organisation
and, what is more, the need for the concept of functional imperative to accompany
that of civilisation. The result is that Toynbee conceives of civilisation as synony-
mous with social system. These misunderstandings preclude the enunciation of the
basic long-run mechanism of social-historical process constituted by the interac-
tion between civilisations (with their differing degrees of importance attributed to
ontological imperatives) and functional imperatives; that is: the advent, with the
modification of the general conditions of development consequent to the sedimenta-
tion of innovations, of new functional imperatives that require new, compatible
forms of civilisation. Moreover, failing to consider functional imperatives prevents
rigorous distinction of the stages of universal history, so Toynbee’s historical peri-
ods become arbitrary and sometimes eccentric.
2. Ortega y Gasset’s analysis of society and the interpretation of history strongly and
coherently insist on the crucial importance of creative phenomena, on non-repetitive
motion and the consequent precariousness of human existence. Ortega criticises
Toynbee’s description of primitive societies as static and as such different from
subsequent civilisations. The critique embodies a reformulated challenge-response
approach that is a good starting point for a discussion of some aspects of Ortega y
Gasset’s thought that are particularly relevant to our argument here. He observes
that challenge almost never comes from outside but from inside Man, in the human
imagination, in the persistent disequilibria between wish and reality, in men’s need
to act. Moreover, he stresses that these characteristics of human nature constitute the
dynamic principle of history, the motor of social change. Man does not have a
“nature” and is not a thing but rather a drama: “To be free means to be lacking in
constitutive identity …The only stable thing in a free being is a constitutive
instability”.2 The essence of human life is change. For these reasons, physical
2
See Ortega y Gasset (1983), p. 220.
154 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
reason,3 based on the idea of the invariability of things, has almost nothing to say
about Man and human society. In the turmoil of social phenomena, only historical
reality is given.
An important part of Ortega’s conception of social-historical processes is his
theory of crisis. Man’s action creates ‘culture’ and this allows him to solve problems
and provides the reference points that are indispensable to reduce the uncertainty of
life and avoid disorientation. The consolidation of culture produces authenticity,
levelling, conventions and ideas that are more and more complex; creative skills are
suffocated by tradition and the widespread acceptance of commonplaces. To become
himself once again “man must periodically shake from his shoulders his culture and
remain naked”,4 substitute insolence toward culture for cultural bigotry. This causes
a crisis of identity: Man is deprived of the world and does not know what to do or
think. Man considers the traditional rules false and rejects old beliefs, but he does
not have new ones. He feels lost and desperate. Extremism and false heroism spread.
But gradually new seeds blossom, a period of calm emerges, a new culture comes to
fill the void; and so the process starts over again.
This interpretation of social-historical process, which produces a brilliant
analysis of the advent of the modern age, hinges on Ortega y Gasset’s reflections on
Man, but a particular kind of man: Western man. His reflection on society and its
structures, by contrast, is marginal. This omission and one-sidedness prevent him
from offering a more systematic and calibrated theory of history than Toynbee,
whom he criticises so severely. The insistence on creativity allows Ortega y Gasset
to give a good interpretation of the advent of civilisations. But his theory on their
decadence and crisis is unsatisfactory.
During the long phases of structural organisation, the successive generations
resemble one another and civilisation can become deeply rooted, thus postponing
Ortega y Gasset’s crisis indefinitely. Civilisation domesticates Man, inclines him to
the spirit of conformity and to a fondness for the repetition of processes. Many
human societies, and not only the primitive, have experienced interminable stagna-
tion. Ortega y Gasset insists on human versatility and on the role of beliefs. But his
interpretation of history, which is inspired by an existential and vital attitude and by
a Western concept of Man, underestimate the importance of civilisation, of tradition
and of the natural conditions in affecting the path; in short, he downplays the deci-
sive role played by forces external to Man in promoting crisis and recovery.
We have seen that civilisations, even the most pervasive and tendentially station-
ary, are ultimately subject to disintegration and collapse if the general conditions of
development change, either for domestic reasons or through outside intervention. In
the dynamics of crises, Man plays a secondary role from Ortega y Gasset. The
3
More precisely, Ortega y Gasset here speaks of mathematical and physical reason; he denies the
possibility of applying mathematics in the study of social phenomena. But this denial must be
rejected. He is thinking of the Newtonian mathematics of stationary motion. But mathematics
allows great versatility. There is no denying the usefulness of game theory and non-linear mathe-
matics for the study of important social phenomena.
4
(Ortega y Gasset 1983), p. 77.
5.7 Value-Ideological and Political Aspects in the Interpretation… 155
The analysis of the quasi-stationary societies of the past and their comparison with
modern dynamic society is crucial to a theory of social-historical development. Max
Weber was a precursor of such comparative analysis, but (following his analysis of
156 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
directed to achieve general principles. Moreover, we have noted the crucial role of
the distinction between necessity and choice-possibility and, in particular, the inter-
action between civilisations (intended as an aggregate of value-ideological and
institutional aspects) and functional imperatives. But Weber’s analysis of method
completely ignores these concepts.
2. Pellicani’s study on the genesis of capitalism starts with the examination of the
factors that prevented “Eastern” societies from becoming modern and dynamic. The
comparative analysis of Western and Eastern societies provides a wealth of invalu-
able material for the interpretation of historical process. His attention to the factors
that impede development highlights the social climate and institutional conditions
indispensable to the flowering of dynamic society.
Luciano Pellicani emphasises the notions of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ society. In par-
ticular, he insists on the decisive obstacle to creativity and the free exploration of
‘the worlds of the possible’ constituted by the so called ‘mega-engine,’ a holder of
absolute political power, the “monopoly of violence and of material and spiritual
production”.5 He shows that the advent of the mega-engine is the product of a vari-
ety of historical circumstances.
Probably, the explanatory power and degree of generalisation of this interpreta-
tive model would be greater if purely political factors were discarded in favour of
the more general notion of civilisation. In fact, the essay makes many references to
civilisations, but the main focus remains political. This may cause misunderstand-
ings: for instance, it could lead to the conclusion that the destruction of the Soviet
mega-engine will, by itself, result in the economic recovery of Russia; but this
neglects the fact that the recovery needs competition and entrepreneurship, which in
Russia are subject to deeply rooted hostility inherited from the Byzantine Empire
and Eastern civilisations.
In the ancient Mediterranean world and Rome, political rationality prevailed
over economic; nevertheless, the mega-engine did not originate there, as it needs
appropriate forms of civilisation that those societies lacked. But even where the
mega-engine was not present, capitalism did not necessarily arise. The economy of
Mediterranean societies, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire from Augustus
to Antonini were suffocated by ideological factors, such as the disparagement of
manual labour and productive activity, the aversion to change and the circular vision
of historic time, or the role of slavery, not by mega-engine.
In the history of India and the Islamic world, political disintegration prevailed
over centralisation, but this did not father capitalism. Some crucial characteristics of
these civilisations, such as the Indian idea of karma and the theocratic inclination
deriving from the Koran, ran counter to it. The building of Oriental mega-engines
was facilitated by some of those societies’ typical beliefs and visions. Pellicani
explicitly says that “society is a cultural reality before it is a political and economi-
cal reality”.6 In effect, among the main propulsive factors of modern dynamic
5
See Pellicani (1988), p. 118.
6
Ibidem, p. 350.
158 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
societies, apart from political conditions we must count the central role of the
individual and the linear conception of historical time, against the circular view of
the ancient world. This crucial aspect is hidden by the insistent focus on political
factors.
True, this insistent focus has the merit of openness to constructivist vision.
But the absence of a deeper inquiry on method to distinguish between necessity
and choice-possibility and to bring out the role of ontological imperatives pre-
vents Pellicani from exploiting this openness. He does not delve into why mod-
ern dynamic society took the specific capitalist form. Actually, it is unquestionable
that the advent of the modern world through spontaneous processes needed
capitalism. However, the distinction between necessity and choice-possibility
allows us to see that dynamic society could also be built on different and (we
think) more vital ideological foundations, which it may be useful to explore.
Moreover, the distinction between necessity and choice-possibility reveals that
if humanity had had a clear cognition of the ‘necessities’ (clarified in our inquiry
on method) of modern dynamic society, it probably would have avoided a good
part of the tormented trial and error that the spontaneous advent of those ‘neces-
sities’ has implied. In fact in the becoming of social systems, the unintentional
and the undetermined concern the creative aspect, not necessarily structural
organisation.
Underestimating the importance of organisational rationality in the func-
tioning of social systems may cause errors of perspective. An instance is
Pellicani’s conclusion, in which he fears the corrosion of “the ideological base
that supports and feeds social solidarity”.7 This corrosion is determined by the
process of secularisation. It may seem that this concern is confirmed by the
destabilising effects of accelerating innovation, which shake the foundations of
modern society. But the situation does not appear desperate if we give the
proper weight to the aspect of necessity, mainly the important factors of stabili-
sation represented by functional imperatives, which if known can generate
broad consensus. Let us remember that in the motion of social systems innova-
tive drive is flanked by structural organisation. Reason and hence science will
sooner or later attain their proper role even in the management of the social
system. This will attenuate the difficulties of the trial and error process.
Hypercritical Western society includes a powerful antidote to the destabilising
effects caused by the incessant search for new solutions and opportunities, by
conflicts of interest and the desecration of values; namely, the parallel and no
less strong propensity to rationalism, which puts function over conflict, con-
demns perfidious interests and tends to eliminate disorder and embezzlement.
In the section on Eliade we shall see that the reference to rationalism solves the
problem of the terror of history, against which observational methodologies
positing that reality is necessity are impotent.
7
Ibidem, p 353.
5.8 Recent Interpretations of Social Development Stimulated by Globalisation 159
8
(Fukuyama 1992).
160 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
9
(Huntington 1997), p. 14.
5.8 Recent Interpretations of Social Development Stimulated by Globalisation 161
10
(Ietto-Gillies 2012).
5.9 Mircea Eliade and the Terror of History 163
11
(Mircea Eliade, Borla 1968), p. 189.
12
(Mircea Eliade 1996), p. 422.
164 5 On the Dynamics of Societies: Is There a Universal Theory?
5.10 Conclusion
We hope that this analysis of some outstanding theories of social and historical
processes has drawn a historical perspective that serves to illuminate some primary
lacunas in the current thinking on these matters and which clarifies the way that our
proposal on method may contribute to mitigating and overcoming these drawbacks.
We have seen that the variety of interpretations is many and that each one sets out
fecund insights. But the fragmentation of theoretical contributions expresses very
partial and often contradictory views. This makes evident the importance of some
comprehensive categories and interpretative tools that are able to provide a general
theory and interpretation, the establishment of which will mark some definite
advance with respect to the few general historical interpretations the one sidedness
of which has stimulated the great theoretical dispersion that this chapter has at least
partially made evident.
Substantial differences distinguish our theory of the social-historical process
from those theories elaborated by authors of various different schools of thought.
These differences are primarily due to a different methodological base but also,
albeit to a lesser degree, to the attention that we have dedicated to ensure the inclu-
sion in the theoretical approach of various aspects of reality selected in such a way
that they are able to set out a number of explanatory factors.
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Vallecchi.
Part II
Some Applications
This second part of the book is in the main concerned with outlining some applications
of our methodological proposal in various fields of the social sciences, primarily
with reference to the basic notions of ontological and functional imperatives and
civilization. We start from the lowest stage of social development as represented
by primitive societies, and hence from anthropology. Subsequent chapters of this
second part of the book present applications in other important fields of the social
sciences, thereby attempting to both consider and deal with some growing complexities
of social organizations as well as further additional problems that arise, in the course
of history, from variations in the general conditions of development.
The following discussions necessarily entail some repetition with regard to reference
to notions and other methodological aspects treated in the first part of the book.
We hope that the repetitions, rather than an irritant to the reader they instead serve
to better illuminate the argument of the book and verify its explanatory usefulness.
Some repetitions are also motivated by our intention to establish the chapters of this
second part as independent entities, that is, to give those chapters some intelligibility
independent of the first part.
Chapter 6
About Anthropology
6.1 Introduction
Both the simplicity and the large variety of primitive societies should facilitate an
easy understanding of some of the content and application of our theoretical proce-
dure. In particular, the analysis of primitive societies establishes and illustrates
the methodological importance of the organizational view in social science. Indeed,
the marked immobility of these societies also allows some profitable use of the
observational view; at any rate, the study of primitiveness plainly shows that the
problem of the organization of social relations and of the adequacy of any such
organization in relation to conditions de facto has dominated the course of human
history from its beginning.
Of course, the conditions of nature exert an important influence on primitive
societies; such conditions bearing strongly on the scarcity of goods and issues of
mere subsistence. We shall see, however, that the influence of civilization on the
behaviour of primitive societies largely prevails. This is not to deny that natural
conditions influence such civilization forms; but, for the most part, these forms
appear as superimposed upon the role of nature and to result from creative processes
that can impress upon civilizations what, sometimes, are highly eccentric behaviours.
This important role of creativeness is underlined by the great variety of primitive
civilizations, some of which we will briefly describe in the first section of this chapter.
The whole life of those primitive peoples considered below appears to be directed
and absorbed by their civilization. The activity of such peoples goes well beyond the
mere production of subsistence; their existence shows a surprising availability of
free time. In particular, the study of primitive societies makes evident the ability
of civilization to suffocate, but also sometimes to make possible the expression of
the evolutionary potential of humanity by obstructing or facilitating the operation
of ontological imperatives and hence the advent of new functional imperatives. Thus
we find impressive and clear evidence that civilizations have largely determined
the historical destiny of peoples and of the seemingly paradoxical fact that, over
the course of history, creativity has often repressed the subsequent flourishing of
creativity. The chapter also points out the advent, in primitive times, of some functional
imperatives and explores some meaningful kinds of power, from society-power to
command-power and beyond.
1
(Benedict 1974), p. 103.
6.2 Primitive Civilizations 171
2
(Benedict 1974), p. 194.
172 6 About Anthropology
Some brief reference to primitive civilizations located on the opposite side of the
Earth may be of interest. For the Dobu civilization located in New Guinea and
surrounding islands is very peculiar. Dobu is part of a volcanic archipelago, in the
3
(Washburn 1997), p. 79.
6.2 Primitive Civilizations 173
north-west of Melanesia. Its inhabitants have neither chiefs nor political organization.
This civilization privileges reciprocal hostility and perfidy. A strong individualist
competition is played out for the ownership of magic formula; people lacking such
formulae are considered disinherited and excluded from society. In fact, magic has
a central importance in Dobu: every activity is accompanied by enchantments and
counter-enchantments. Human existence here is full of battles in which antagonists
must be defeated, often by way of horrifying enchantments. Benedict has written:
“The whole of existence is a mortal fight …. in Dobu conflict is secret and disloyal.
A man is considered clever and successful for having cheated another man”.4
Islanders make business trips in the open sea, inside the so called ‘Kula ring’, without
bringing goods with them but only presents to solicit change. They obtain goods
through a clever courtship and the promise to counter transfer other goods, the
availability of which the buyer will try to prove through other cheats. Ability to
cheat is considered a merit and the only limitation of fraud is the danger of losing
the trust of potential commercial partners.
At the base of Dobu organization is found a solid parental group, called susu and
constituted by female descendants of the mother and her brothers, while a brother’s
sons belong to their mothers’ villages. Marriages must take place between people of
different villages, but care is taken to ensure that marriages occur between people
of various villages in order to avoid too many close ties between any two particular
villages. Matrimonial formalities are permeated by hostility. Wife and husband live
in the same house, but for 1 year in the wife’s village and the subsequent year in that
of her husband. In the year in which the husband lives in the village of his wife he
is disregarded and suffers the hegemony of his consort.
The ethical values and the civilization of Dobu evidently possess a strong power
to prevent the realization of Man evolutionary potential, for their values largely
disregard ontological imperatives.
Not far from Dobu is to be found the Trobriand archipelago, made famous by the
work of Bronislaw Malinowski.5 The organizational forms and value-ideological
system of this society are completely different from those of Dobu: a mild, joyful
and generous disposition characterizes the population, together with an efficient
organization of work and respect for chiefs. The Trobriand people enjoy much better
natural conditions than do those of Dobu: fertile soil, abundance of fish and hence
food. It would seem, then, that differing natural conditions are responsible for the
great differences in the character of individuals, social organization and ethical values
with respect to Dobu. This is only partially true, as a glance at the Eskimo shows.
The Eskimo live in a tremendously hostile natural environment, where the risk of
death from hunger, snow storm or drift ice is great. Nevertheless, the population has
been described as “extremely lively, cheerful, optimistic and hospitable”.6 They live
in colonies formed by 10–20 families and have no chiefs; but in each colony the
cleverest hunter acted as a guide and advisor at the beginning of hunting; such a
4
(Benedict 1974), p. 146.
5
(Malinowski 1977).
6
(Mead 1982), p. 65.
174 6 About Anthropology
guide could not be an irascible and overbearing person and people who did not
agree with him were free to act differently. The first anthropologists who visited the
Eskimo saw that war was unknown among them. Taboos where numerous and
played a dominant and disciplinary role in the people’s life; in fact, it was of the
uttermost importance that the various taboos were not violated.
Very different was the case of Bali, a little island near Java and famous worldwide
for its dances and dance bands. This civilization was hinged on the idea of pacifism
and cooperation and the rejection of compulsion and conflicts. To avoid wars, strips
of ‘no-man’s land’ separated the little kingdoms on the island. A similar principle
was applied to the relations among fighting individuals.
The Balinese usually worked in groups that were generally much more numerous
than was strictly necessary. There was no hurry to do things, but those who were not
active were fined; albeit with a light fine. If a person wanted to found an association
for conducting some activity he was able to do so easily.
These values were exceptionally conducive to a quiet and equilibrated existence,
but not to stimulating development.
These primitive civilizations, however briefly considered, confirm the general
idea that, for the most part, civilization is a result of creative processes and that the
corresponding grand options, once established, tend to consolidate and preserve
themselves and strongly condition the whole life of a people, prevent further
development and, as a rule, suffocate creativity. However, among the variety of
civilizations we have found ethical values and organizational forms that might have
stimulated development; but unfortunately they were mixed with values and organi-
zational forms hostile to change. Primitive societies tend toward stationary motion.
Change may occur in a cumulative direction only in the presence of some peculiar
and fortunate conditions; the first stage of civilization tends to obstruct further
development, and to do so with a force in general proportional to degree of elaboration
and solidification.
Of course, natural conditions play an important role in influencing the genesis
and generation of civilizations, especially if nature is dominant and therefore
models life and behaviour. In this respect, an important example is provided by
nomadic societies and a brief discussion of Asian nomads can provide clarification.
Such societies are distinguished by their great efficiency in carrying out what are
typical activities – an efficiency that is in fact a condition of survival in an extremely
difficult natural habitat. These peoples are also afflicted by an irremediable stationary
state, mainly because of the dominance of an invariant nature upon organizational
structures and ways of life. Arnold Toynbee has written: “The nomadic horde, once
propelled upon its annual cycle, continues to gravitate toward it, and could behave
in this way endlessly if some exogenous factor… does not determine the end of its
existence”.7
Transhumant sheep breeding, from summer pastures in the North to winter
pastures in the Aral-Caspian basin, has always been the dominating activity of
7
(Toynbee 1950), p. 230.
6.3 Kinship, Labour Division, the Authority Principle and Social Hierarchies 175
Asian nomads, together with horse breeding, the horse being the most efficient
means of transport in those difficult lands. The availability of winter quarters
(provided with water and protected by wind) is decisive for survival and so constitutes
an important condition for demographic increase and the scarcity of which has often
generated harsh conflicts.
Parental relationships play a central role and facilitate a strong cohesion of clans,
while clientele relations are weak, as Lamercier-Quelquejeir and Lattimore underline.8
In the historical periods during which nomads were unified by some commander,
the world was shaken by the unstoppable advance of invincible armies of mounted
archers, whose physiognomy was shaped by their nomadic life to such an extent that
Ammiano Marcellino described them as resembling monsters.
Malinowski stated that, “in the terms of our functional analysis, no invention or
revolution, no social or intellectual change happens except when new needs are
created”.9 In the light of the above discussion of primitive civilizations, such a
statement appears only partially correct; for Malinowski here seriously undervalues
the role of creative processes, a role proved by some odd and unnecessary yet
nevertheless strongly binding characteristics of civilizations.
We turn now from particular to general; specifically, from the optional side that
gives rise to civilizations to some backbones and more general aspects of the
organizational side as represented by functional and ontological imperatives.
At the beginning of human life on Earth the fundamental rules of existence were
dictated by biology. Initially, life in common was a consequence of sexual activity
that implied the bringing up of children. The long periods of time necessitated by
such a bringing up determined the nature of the initial social and parental groups.
Kinship, however, is a form of common life that goes far beyond the biological
aspect, and embraces a more comprehensive and elaborated system of social
relations. Claude Levi-Strauss has written: “The primordial character of human
kinship is the … relation among what Radcliffe-Brown calls ‘elementary families’…
There is no other interpretation that can explain the universal character of the prohibition
of incest”.10 Levi-Strauss adds: “the marriage rules that can be observed in human
societies represent some ways of allowing women’s circulation inside social groups,
that is, of substituting a sociological system of acquisition of kinship for a system of
blood relations of a biological nature”.11
8
(Lemercier-Quelquejeir 1971); and (Lattimore 1970).
9
(Malinowski 1981), p. 49.
10
(Levi-Strauss 1992), pp. 65–66.
11
Levi-Strauss, ibidem, p. 75.
176 6 About Anthropology
Anthropology surveys a large variety of parental and lineage forms and seeks to
explain the causes determining such a variety: demography, natural environment,
prevailing activities, settlement forms and particular beliefs. Our previous analysis
of primitive civilizations has provided a small glimpse of such variety. But the
attempts of anthropologists to define a nomenclature of parental orders have been
unsuccessful. However, parental relations, along with their associated precepts,
prohibitions and forms of solidarity, represent the basic connective tissue of all
primitive societies and, as such, a main functional imperative in the primitive stage
of development. By contrast, the association forms that arise due to territorial
contiguity, age and profession play but little role, even if they are inclined to grow
with increasing social complexity.
Life in common gave rise to the division of labour, which constitutes a long lasting
functional and ontological imperative of primitive (and subsequent) societies,
crucial for the understanding of the development of all civilizations that have
appeared on the Earth. In the first instance, labour division was determined by
biological factors such as sex and age; but whatever its original cause, its appearance
implied the advent of functional roles.
The deepening and intensifying of social organization gave rise to both an
increasing importance and growing complexity of labour division and role distinctions.
As a consequence, another fundamental need appeared on the horizon of social life:
the necessity of defining behavioural rules related to the collective body, together
with the necessity of warranting their execution. This implied the beginning of the
authority principle and the connected birth of social hierarchies, these representing
other important functional imperatives. In particular, the combination of the
division of labour with the authority principle implied the advent of social ranks
(or status), i.e. the attribution of power to somebody and its denial to others; this
caused the first appearance of domination-power.
Various kinds of competition of personal skills were practiced in order to gain
access to the higher ranks; for example, acts of bravery during wars, exhibitions of
divinatory skills, and the ownership of women or precious goods. Such processes
accentuated social discrimination and authoritarian forms. Primitive societies knew
various kinds of chiefs, such as the patriarch, the chief of land, of clan or water, and
the chief of a village or tribe. As we shall see, such primitive societies did not know
a true power of coercion. Nevertheless, quite soon chiefs began to be protected by
taboos, to boast divine descent, and to be exempted from work. Sometimes the
excuse that their special relations with a deity allowed them to control rain and soil
fertility allowed them to assume control of the land. Some forms of hereditary
possession of social positions and functions appeared, thus promoting initial forms
of social classes. The growing structuring of communities caused an expansion of
privileges, mainly hereditary rights, which allowed social classes to take root. The
solidification of privileges reached its extreme in caste orders.
The tendency to prevail over other peoples has for the most represented a primary
engine of human activity, even if it has been powered by different strengths in
different societies and civilizations; the achievement of wealth has always given a
main stimulus to such a tendency. It is nevertheless evident that such an impetus to
6.4 Power in Primitive Societies 177
prevail over other peoples can only, by itself, produce some rather circumscribed
effects; if it is to become effective it needs to be grafted onto objective organiza-
tional necessities that are maturing within the social body.
These brief considerations underline the advent of some elementary functional
imperatives demanded by the general conditions typical of the primitive stage of
development. But sometimes the introduction of further functional imperatives
was obstructed by the severity of natural conditions that were hostile to further
development and, more frequently, by the character of primitive civilizations,
particularly the more developed ones, which were often adverse to important
ontological imperatives (most notably, individual autonomy, tolerance, pluralism
and the free confrontation of ideas and achievements). So, we see once again that
the destiny of societies is strongly marked by their civilizations.
We must, therefore, come to consider the factors that have obstructed or allowed
a gradual departure from existing civilizations and their stationary propensity. This
obliges us to dedicate some attention to the forms of power and their vicissitude,
these constituting a true backbone of the organizational features of society.
12
See Clastres (1984).
178 6 About Anthropology
privileges, often depending on the real and presumed degree of kinship with a
common ancestor; but these privileges do not imply command-power.
In treating segmentary lineages, M. D. Sahlins writes: “As soon as the objectives
inducing the formation of a confederation are achieved, the confederation de facto
dissolves and the emerged leaders sink into social oblivion or, at most, preserve only
a local influence. The typical leader of a tribal society is only the glorified equivalent
of the influential elder in a hunter-gatherer society… He captures fidelity through
liberality as well as through timorous acquiescence toward magic; through wisdom
and his ability as speaker, he obtains the disposition of others to accept his opinion,
and so on… But as soon as the confederation dissolves, i.e., fairly soon, he preserves
few supporters”.13 Writing of the Baluchi of Iran, P. C. Salzman observes that
the sardar is “a leader who depends on his own prestige and his stature, which
complements his very limited authority”.14
The binding agents of primitive societies are represented by parental relations,
by religious beliefs, by tradition and by social pressure; but these binding agents
never include command-powers. Power is inherent to society with its habits and
traditions; it is not superimposed upon society. Indeed, tribal organizations with the
potential to generate command-power and to evolve toward more advanced stages
of development do exist; but, in general, primitive societies exhibit an impressive
concern to preserve, through various expedients, a fundamental and characteristic
absence of command-power.
Within primitive cultures it is very often the case that individuals trying to excel
are considered dangerous and marginalized. This is the case, for example, with the
Zuñi, who exhibit a bitter hostility to anyone who attempts to place themselves
above and upon others. In those very different primitive cultures that are based upon
individual success, challenge and the abuse of power, the appearance of command-
power and wealth concentration are repressed by the firm association between the
honour of the chief and his eccentric destruction of his wealth, as during the potlac.
The hereditary nature of the position of chief, which is very frequently found among
primitives, is aimed at avoiding conflicts over succession and the emergence, during
such conflicts, of men clever in acquiring true power, i.e. capacity to command. If it
is necessary to attribute command-power to a chief, as happens for example during
war operations, care is taken to curtail any possible extension of command-power
beyond the end of operations, practices analogous to the office of dictator in the first
Roman republic. Military prestige backs up and enforces the persuasiveness of a
peacemaker, but if such a captain of war attempts to use this prestige to promote
further military operations in order to preserve his command-power and satisfy
his ambition, it is likely that his social group will disapprove, refuse his requests,
and isolate him, as indeed happened to Geronimo and other ambitious North
American Indian chiefs. Paul Bohannan says of the Tiv of Northern Nigeria that
13
See M D Sahlins, The segmentary lineage: an organization for the predatory expansion. In:
U Fabietti 1991 (ed), p. 93.
14
(Salzman 1971), p. 417.
6.4 Power in Primitive Societies 179
they periodically remove possible despots.15 In sum, the chief must do what the
tribe expects of him otherwise the tribe will abandon him and choose another chief.
The power of chiefs is, and must remain, at the service of society, that is, an expres-
sion of the ‘power of society’.
The role of chief is essential among primitives, as indeed it is in each human
society. Given the lack of command-power of such a chief compensatory attractions
must be offered in order to attract people to the office. Such compensation takes the
form of various privileges, first of all the right to have many women. Thus we see
that, in primitive societies, the privileges of the chiefs do not derive from their
grasping of a power of domination over society, but on the contrary are rather the
reward for their lack of domination-power. The astonishing coherence and strong
perseverance of primitive societies in denying command-power to chiefs shows
that, from the beginning of civilization, men have understood that being submitted
to commanders is a disagreeable condition; and perhaps they have prophetically
foreseen just what great misfortunes the advent of domination would bring in
its wave; thus, they have consistently and persistently avoided such a destiny as far
as has been objectively possible.
Nevertheless, primitives are not exempted from subjection to power. They are
subjected to the ‘power of society’, and this indeed appears to be very strong and
even suffocating. The relation of primitive peoples with power is not, therefore,
quite as idyllic as may appear at first sight. The intentions of the author (Clastres)
notwithstanding, the analysis of Clastres belies such an idyllic vision; a point on
which we must insist because it is of great importance for understanding the meaning
and the logic of power, as well as its relations with social change and development.
E. Durkheim is illuminating when he writes on the ‘power of society’. “In order
for the individual to be obliged to adapt his actions to some norms, it is necessary
that they are the issue of a moral authority that imposes them upon him; to do that,
an authority that dominates him is needed, i.e. an authority having the ascendancy
necessary to subdue his will….”. And Durkheim adds later that society “prescribes,
for believers, dogmas to believe and rites to observe, and this is just because rites
and dogmas are its own product and work”.16 So, primitive society is permeated by
power, notwithstanding the absence of command-power. Indeed, such a society’s
power is obliged to be strong precisely because of the absence of command-power,
and it is usually practiced with a force above and beyond that actually required for
maintaining public order. The tortures inflicted upon adolescents during initiation
rites are intended, not only to strengthen their character, but also to imprint the
indelible and omnipresent mark of society upon these neophyte members. Initiatory
tortures thus express the hard and brutal reality of this ‘social-power’; they are
intended to obliterate individual desire for power and to underline a belonging to
the rules, institutions and traditions of society. All of this expresses a subjection no less
strong than that implied by command-power, even if set free from the unpleasant
15
(Bohannan 1958).
16
E Durkheim, Definition of religious phenomena. In: Durkheim 1979 (ed), p. 37.
180 6 About Anthropology
The analysis of primitive societies, which are distinguished not only by the absence
of command-power but also a strong opposition to it, seems to be indispensable, or,
at least, of great value for understanding the birth and the meaning of command-
power, its tendency to and possibility of becoming domination-power. It is, of
course, of great importance to accurately investigate just how to avoid command-
power transforming into domination-power, as has usually happened over the course
of history. It is important, furthermore, to study the ways of conciliating power and
those people who are subjected to it, but without claiming to substitute for it the
‘power of society’ that we have seen to be more tyrannical, and certainly much more
suffocating than command-power.
The evolution of power toward and into command-power needs and implies
emerging out of the stage of primitiveness; thus, such an evolution requires innova-
tion that gives rise to development. Particular aspects of tribal societies can facilitate
such an evolution. For instance, stratifications and so-called conical clans promote
the concentration of wealth and hence of power to the advantage of privileged strata;
such concentration may cause internal disputes and conflict, the destruction of clan
organization and a transition towards social forms marked by command-power. But
it must be pointed out that, whereas equality and social harmony always tend to
perpetuate primitiveness, the presence of conflicts and disequilibria do not always
stimulate evolution; for they can also trap a society within a stationary state. This is
the case, for example, with the Yanoama of the Amazon forest. This was a society
with an extremely simple organization, in many aspects belonging to the hunter-
gatherer stage; such an organization had scarce need of cooperation, being based
as it was on nuclear families that regulated the production, distribution and
consumption of goods internally. But Yanoama society came to be characterized by a
mechanism of conflict that choked any possibility of evolution. Being made up of
families interested in raising male hunters and warriors, and the number of children
that could be raised being limited by scarce resources, the Yanoama practiced
female infanticide. This together with the tendency of the bravest warriors and
hunters to obtain more women caused an endemic scarcity of women that gave rise
violent internal and external conflicts. So a dead-end, which was both a cause and a
consequence of an inclination toward warlike activities, suffocated and prevented
development.
But primitive society does not always succeed in preventing that development
that threatens to thwart the ‘power of society’ to the advantage of a few of its members.
182 6 About Anthropology
Exogenous factors can cause qualitative jumps. It is significant that P. Clastres, his
insistence on the absence in primitive societies of the conditions governing the
advent of state-power notwithstanding, admits the advent of command-power
(a preliminary of state-power) in primitive societies characterized by structural
change. For example, when he discusses Tupi-Guarani communities, which are formed
by various large families that together give to these communities a considerable
size, he emphasizes that the authority of the chief of each family is dominated by the
authority of a main chief acting as a supreme coordinator and expressing the unity
of the group, so as to avoid explosive internal divergences and contradictions caused
by demographic increase. It emerges, in this case, that mere demographic increase
may spark the evolution of power toward some rudimentary monarchic power
flanked by a council of elders deputed to approve the main chief’s decisions. Clearly
if in such a case demographic increase is sufficient to generate command-power,
such power is even more likely to be generated by more profound changes in social
structure.
In fact, both more relevant and more frequent than the development of the Tupi-
Guarani communities is the advent of command-power as an effect of the internal
evolution of society. The presence of stratification in clan organization, typically
represented by privileges connected to kinship and frequently found in primitive
Eurasian and Polynesian societies, pushes these organizations toward a concentration
of power and wealth. Furthermore, and as J. Bodin has written, “after the violence,
force, ambition and desire for revenge of armed and opposing family chiefs, their
wars and struggles reduced losers to the status of the servants of winners and, among
winners, he who had been elected chief and leader and, under his guide, the victory
was gained, preserves his authority both of his supporters as loyal subjects and the
others as slaves”.17 This is, however, only one aspect of the question. Something
more fundamental is at the base of the whole process.
To propel society free from the sandbank of primitiveness, the action of innovators
is needed. But innovators, if they are to be able to impose transformations, require
obedience; that is, they need a command-power able to defeat the repressive ‘power
of society’ and the strength of tradition and to suppress village autonomies. This is
even more necessary if the newly devised conditions imply a transition from the
economy of free time typical of primitive societies to one of exploitation in which
people work more so as to produce a surplus that can be extracted and put to various
uses by the ruling classes. Thus it is that evolution out of the primitive state requires
that command-power grows in order that the supremacy of chiefs may be defended.
17
(Bodin 1981), p. 138.
6.6 The Consolidation of Command-Power and the Birth of State-Power 183
More generally, the increasing division of labour, and hence also of social
segmentation and complexity, cause a growing need for the authority of chiefs in
order to avoid social disintegration and chaos. This requirement is accentuated by
the fact that the increase of wealth multiplies temptations and reduces traditional
habit of respecting rules and roles, as well as by the fact that the propensity of chiefs
to exploit subjected people feeds a growing intolerance towards them. In sum,
habits, value interiorization and superstition are no longer sufficient to achieve
social control. The necessity of fulfilling decisions concerning society, as expressed
by the ‘power of society’, is replaced by the necessity of imposing those decisions,
i.e. the necessity of supplementing authority. The development and concentration
of wealth make possible the strengthening of command-power. The aptitude to
command becomes an important factor of success and its use determines a further
concentration of wealth and power and strengthens the tendency to transfer to
heirs the position of power achieved. This causes a growing superimposition of
privilege over merit. Reinforcement of privilege is fostered by the hereditary
practice of command-power, which may grant skills to professional commanders
that are denied to others.
We have seen that in primitive societies, where subsistence is difficult, merit, as
expressed by individual skills, is a primary condition for the awarding of a function.
But later the scope and range of privilege tends to expand. We shall see that in
quasi-stationary societies privilege largely prevails over merit; the latter regaining
its primary position only in the dynamic stage of society.
Command-power does not, per se, imply state power. In fact, the appearance of
the first arises through gradual transgressions with respect to the existing order, and
not by way of some immediate building of a new order. Only when command-power
starts to become a persistent and dominating characteristic of the social order can
state-power be considered on the road; it represents a new important functional
imperative that opens the door to a new stage of development. A decisive sign of the
advent of state-power is the establishment of some degree of territorial organization:
administrative districts, towns, systems of communication, together with the correlated
interlacements of administrative bodies and functions.
A central question is if (and/or why) command-power and state-power must
necessarily be based on abuse; or, more precisely, if such power must assume the
substance of domination-power or whether it can act instead merely as a function
power and hence constitute service-power. This distinction will be developed in the
next chapter. Clastres maintains that primitive societies have perceived the affinity
of command-power with nature since such power for them resembles an external
condition that places limits upon the cultural universe; he then asserts that primitive
peoples accordingly have assigned to society, as the depositary of culture, the means
of suffocating command-power. His argument here seems somewhat forced, prob-
ably a result of Clastres’ exaggerated appreciation of the exclusion of state-power
in primitive societies. But command-power has no affinity with nature; it is rather
an expression of social relations. A main purpose of the present book is, however,
to show that power-domination is not unavoidable; it is, on the contrary, a result
of great mystification that, indeed, has hitherto acted as the traveling companions of
tears and blood.
184 6 About Anthropology
Society represents both an opportunity and a burden for the individual. We have
just seen that the Guayaki have no choice but to resort to song in order to try to
forget some of the constrictions and frustrations that their primitive society imposes
upon them. Non-primitive peoples can do better, but have subjugated themselves to
hard and unnecessary forms of domination-power. During the civilizing processes,
humanity has forged unnecessary chains; afterwards individuals sing and dream in
attempts to cheat the suffering that follows from these binds and fetters. It would
appear that humanity has always taken care to forge chains and so cause itself ever
growing troubles.
6.7 Conclusion
The purpose of this chapter has been to demonstrate the potential profitability of our
proposal on method with regard to anthropological studies. The analytic categories
of ontological imperatives, functional imperatives and civilization could play an
important role in anthropology and clarify, through their implications and interactions,
some aspects of anthropology that the traditional analysis of primitive societies has
not adequately investigated and illuminated.
We have considered the great variety of habits, feelings, beliefs and organizational
forms that mark the life of primitive populations. Such variety ranges from extreme
individualism and a critical attitude to a complete identification of the individual
with the social group and a strong inclination toward cooperation; from extreme
bellicosity feeding a permanent state of war to a strong pacifist propensity and even
a complete ignorance of war; from a life garnered by arrogance, haughtiness and
boasting to a total submissiveness; from a diffuse and systematic unfairness,
suspiciousness and wickedness, to an extreme gentleness and frankness. These
differences constitute some of the primary defects and values that also affect modern
societies, and thus exhibit a surprising persistence in the human story throughout
history. The differences appear to be determined by natural conditions to only a
small extent. They are, for the most part, the result of long-lasting processes of
elaboration and integration of some peculiar and very unilateral value options that
have often caused a suffocation of further development, a suffocation that appears
more complete and enduring if the elaboration and integration process is advanced.
We have seen that human societies show, from their beginning, the advent of
organizational forms or, more precisely, of functional imperatives indispensable
to their existence; while civilizations usually neglect important ontological impera-
tives, a denial obstructing development and hence the advent of more advanced
functional imperatives. We have also seen the difficulty of, and also some ways
of escaping from the stationary motion typical of primitiveness, and that one of the
primary (and probably obligatory) means of achieving such a result is by way of the
transition from the power of society to command-power, followed by state-power.
The next chapters will consider social science with reference to more advanced
stages of development.
References 185
References
7.1 Introduction
considers the possibility of greatly increasing social justice while, at the same time,
stimulating (rather than damaging) organizational and productive efficiency. The
final section will show that to prune from ideas of political reform and action certain
well-rooted misunderstandings, and so provide it with adequate soil and nutrition, a
deep revision is needed in the ways in which we interpret historical-social pro-
cesses. As such, this final section of the chapter (as well as some part of Sect. 7.5)
may be read also as an extension of the discussion of the two last chapters of Part I.
Every society needs a supreme power that impresses upon it a unifying logic.
B. Constant’s inquiry into the problem of constitutional order looked to the powers
of a constitutional sovereign as the solution. The power of the last resort pertains, by
definition, to the political sphere, this being the place where sovereignty resides. It
is therefore of paramount importance that political power be theoretically justified
and legitimized. The necessity for such a power is self-evident, and various forms
of its legitimization have been proposed throughout history, for instance, right of
birth or right of conquest or divine right. Unfortunately, these various kinds of legit-
imization strategies invariably amount to mere assessments and lack scientific foun-
dations. The situation is made worse by growing social change. In ancient,
quasi-stationary societies, a sound practical justification of power was provided by
tradition. But in the turbulent seas of the modern world, justification of power on the
basis of tradition has lost credibility and a prevailing idea is now that sovereignty
resides in the people. This last idea, which is at the basis of the notion of democracy,
has in effect substituted a new ideology of power for the old ones. As a matter of
fact, the basis of modern democracies in the division of powers and universal suf-
frage do not provide a solution to the problem of the legitimization of sovereignty
since they do not offer an objective and unquestionable foundation to political
power. With some clarifying brutality, Hans Kelsen asserted: “Only a theoretical
myopia or a political aim could pass the principle of the division of powers off as a
democratic one”.1 And a few pages later adds, quoting Nietzsche, “State is the most
gelid of monsters. It icily lies, and from its mouth springs this lie: me, the State, is
people” The great value of (Western) democracy is the possibility that it provides
for overthrowing power without bloodshed and, more generally, by periodically
replacing the ruling class, preventing what Toynbee called the “intoxication of
power”. Liberal doctrines have indeed provided some intellectual arguments that
strongly support the liberation of humanity; but the notions of state of right and the
sovereignty of law do very little to actually clarify the substance of power. Indeed,
1
(Kelsen 1994), p. 23.
7.2 The Question of Sovereignty. The Impotence of Democracy Against the Dark… 189
as a matter of fact, the sovereignty of law may cover the worst despotism; while, for
its part, the division of powers can simply represent a division of the power to abuse.
Universal suffrage does not in itself make the people sovereign; on the contrary,
it constitutes one of the weakest legitimizations of power that has ever appeared in
history. Universal suffrage provides but a contradictory and untruthful legitimiza-
tion in that it asserts at once both the sovereignty of the people and the need for the
people to submit to political power. As A. de Tocqueville wrote: “I have always
thought that this kind of slavery can also be established under popular sovereignty…
In this system, the citizen abandons his submission for a moment in order to elect
his chiefs, and then immediately returns to be dependent”.2 The distinction between
the effective practice of political power and the notion of popular sovereignty, and
hence the emptiness (at best) of the notion of popular sovereignty was emphatically
underlined by G. Mosca: “In all existing and previous societies, starting from the
less advanced and stagnating ones of the beginning of civilisation, up to the most
cultured and strongest ones, there exist two classes of people: the ruling class and
the people governed”.3 At almost the same time, V. Pareto enunciated an identical
idea in his theory of elites.
The phenomenon of the ruling class represents an irrefutable truth and, in some
sense, a logical necessity that causes great embarrassment to the idea of democracy.
Rousseau believed that we might overcome this problem by way of his notions of
direct democracy and the ‘general will’; but direct democracy cannot be practiced
in modern complex societies, the potential aid of our revolutionary communication
technologies notwithstanding; and in any case, and as we shall see, Rousseau had no
analytical tool that would allow him to define an objective and scientific content
within the notion of the ‘general will’.
A quick analysis of Karl Schmitt position on sovereignty can help to clarify the
issue. As is well known, Schmitt insisted that the question of sovereignty is marked
by the problem of what the subject is entitled to decide in “exceptional conditions”:
“Juridical order, as any other order, is founded on a decision, not a norm”; and fur-
thermore, “the problem of sovereignty consists in defining he who decides on the
competences that the constitution does not regulate, that is he who is entitled to
decide when juridical order gives no indication on the question of competences”.4
Schmitt sneers at the doctrine of the sovereignty of law and Kelsen’s formalism that
identifies the State with juridical order, and asserts: “the term state of right does not
provide any solution to our problem. Completely different and contradictory institu-
tions can be referred to the state of right”.5
In the next chapter, we shall see that Kelsen’s formalism hides the postulate of
the absolute and arbitrary character of power. Schmitt brings to light this arbitrary
character of power and, indeed, points to it as the founding feature of sovereignty.
In our opinion, the importance of his reasoning consists in the fact that he brings
2
(de Tocqueville 1992), pp. 730 and 734.
3
(Mosca 1994), p. 50.
4
(Schmitt 1972), pp. 37 and 39.
5
(Schmitt 1972), p. 42.
190 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
into focus a major problem of modern societies, which are obliged by growing
social change to meet a continuum of states of exception. Schmitt derives from
this situation the necessity of an indefinite and hence unlimited and watchful
sovereign power.
We can see, therefore, that the most realistic students of politics are fully
cognizant of the absolutist drift of sovereignty. S. Zamagni underlines the conjunc-
tion of democracy and the market as a means of avoiding the drift toward both stat-
ism and hyper-individualism. But the market (mainly its capitalist substance) and
democracy are per se impotent against domination power with its degenerations. Is
it not the case that the French revolution, having written into its flags the slogans
liberté and fraternité, resulted in the end in true forms of domination power that,
among other things, denied reciprocity and fraternity. The idea of democracy has
prevailed in the Western world due to its particular suitability to an open society.
But it must be recognized that it leaves unsolved the main theoretical problems
attached to the idea of sovereignty and power, in particular the practice of domina-
tion-power. The only way of overcoming this embarrassing confusion concerning
power and provide an objective, scientific solution to a very substantial part of the
question of ‘how to control controllers’ seems to be represented by the discovery of
some “objective necessities” concerning the organization of social systems, such as
the ontological and functional imperatives previously discussed, which allow deci-
sion power to be bridled, define agents’ responsibility and, therefore, reduce as
much as possible the arbitrary power to the limit of the discretion of which the
performance of each function cannot do without. In sum, the most effective remedy
to the degeneration of power seems to consist in the building of a science of the
organization of social systems; but, as we know, this requires a method capable of
permitting such construction. In the absence such a science, any suggestion that
democratic rules might be able to solve the problem of power and its excesses will
be theoretically unconvincing and substantially impossible. The value of those rules
is not in question. But we must honestly recognize that they are unable to avoid
what they should prevent, that is, the abuse of power, and that they do not provide a
legitimization of sovereignty. In the absence of a clear and stringent distinction
between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’ in the organization of social systems,
democracy may easily degenerate into a total confusion. In sum, to be made effec-
tive, democracy needs – more than any other kind of government –knowledge of the
objective functional necessities and pillars that are indispensable to human societ-
ies, and a clear notion of choice-possibility.
One of the main frustrations of Western countries, which emphasize their own
rationality and democracy and yet find themselves weak in the arena of international
action, resides in their practical inability to achieve a tendency toward suppression
of domination-power in domestic policy and promote its suppression in their rela-
tions with other countries. And at the root of this problem is a theoretical failure to
provide a rational explanation and legitimization of sovereignty. We must frankly
admit that the sovereignty based on divine right was a more serious notion than the
modern pretension of founding it on reason and science, which in fact amounts to
founding sovereignty on a big lie – a proclaimed popular sovereignty that involves
7.2 The Question of Sovereignty. The Impotence of Democracy Against the Dark… 191
the everyday and continual abuse of people by the real holders of power. Popular
sovereignty needs a science able to provide, through civic education, the knowledge
that is indispensable to providing a dyke that may withstand the inevitable tides of
abuse of power; in other words, popular sovereignty requires a social science that
provides real content to the notion of the ‘general will’.
Clearly, the ‘general will’, that is, the general interest, is primarily expressed by
what we call ‘necessity’ in the organization and administration of social systems
and, more specifically, by functional and ontological imperatives. Just such catego-
ries, if scientifically specified, provide substantial limitations to power as well as
some important reference points with regard to popular judgment as to the use and
abuse of political power; moreover, these categories give to sovereignty an unam-
biguous and objective substance and, as we shall see, provide a clear content to
responsibility. As will become clear later on, these scientific notions are in fact
indispensable in defining the notion of service-power (or function-power) that may
be opposed to that domination-power that, with more or less tragic consequences,
has always characterized human history.
Let us insist that, even more than in the past, today the question of power does
not admit of levities. Indeed, in modern dynamic, open and global society, state
abuse and injustice tends to assume ever growing and ever more acute dimensions
as a consequence of the multiplication of “states of exception” due to social change,
the fragmentation of command nodes and the growing overlapping of political and
economical power. The division of power that Montesquieu indicated as the remedy
to absolutism may appear, in effect, a mere division of domination-power, that is,
simply a division of the power to abuse and deceive that generates and makes even
more acute the abuses of the ruling class. B. Constant understood all this very well.
He writes: “executive, legislative and judicial powers must cooperate, each for its
own competence, with general process, but if they intersect, collide and clash, it is
necessary a neutral institution (the constitutional sovereign, as we saw) that ensures
their regular behaviour”.6 But what should we say about neutrality? History teaches
us that the availability of a strong power has always been an incitement to abuse.
Medieval Italian communes invented the podestà, an institutional figure endowed
with an almost absolute power, to remedy the acute disputes troubling civil life. To
warrant the podestà’s neutrality, the communes established that this figure must
come from outside the commune, could not be nominated for a second mandate and
other precautionary prescriptions. But, in practice, the podestà opened the door to
seigniorial domination. Juridical absolutism based on principles of faith, Ortega’s
appeal to the normative role of tradition, the invariableness of right and habits, even
if old-fashioned (as we shall see in the next chapter), can be considered nevertheless
more reliable than the exertion of domination-power in our modern democracies.
In conclusion, political power, unlike other forms of power, involves sover-
eignty, and therefore must be well founded and legitimized. Yet under the pres-
ent state of social thought the judgment of the people – the rhetoric of democracy
notwithstanding – does not command sovereignty, and this is because contemporary
6
(Constant 1999), p. 41.
192 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
social thought is unable to demonstrate when power becomes abuse and hence
is unable to prevent such a degeneration. In this condition, popular suffrage only
expresses a summary and usually badly informed statement of appreciation, or
the lack thereof, with regard to the political rulers. Indeed, in the absence of a
science of the organization of social systems that might provide this sought after
content and effectiveness with regard to the ‘general will’ (primarily by way of
the specification of ‘necessity’), the diffuse manipulation of the electorate is
possible. For the transition from domination-power, based on mere force and
deceit, to service and responsibility-power, as practiced under the shield of pop-
ular sovereignty, some scientific (mainly methodological) knowledge of the
kind set out in the first part of this book is needed. Such knowledge would
enable the people to exercise judgment and so place under their control the use
of power by the ruling class.
A power marked by the strong limitation of abuse, such limitation itself based
upon some clear and well-defined functional criteria of responsibility, would allow
the overcoming of the exclusivity typical of national states and of sovereignty
(and analyzed first by Bodin).7 It is important here to emphasize that a decisional
power that is well defined in terms of role and responsibility is consistent with a
flexible notion of sovereignty, that is, sovereignty open to novelties and local pecu-
liarities and hence suitable to a modern world increasingly characterized by states
of exception. Individuals with the skill to decide and subject to a plain responsibility
for decision taken should be entitled to decide. This idea of sovereignty, not being
troubled by exclusivism, is open to universalism and is therefore fully appropriate
to a global society with an acute need for a flexible and open sovereignty endowed
with a universalistic spirit.
At present, only the economy possesses a tool that is automatic, inflexible
and capable of the objective attribution of responsibility: the market. This is the
why J. K. Galbraith, in reference to the economic system, was able to set out with-
out difficulty various reasons in favour of the doctrine of equilibrating power.8 This
happy feature of the market favors the role and strength of economic power; and it
is a feature the prestige of which would only increase if the deficiencies of the capi-
talist market were eliminated through the transformation of the market into a mere
mechanism of imputation of costs and efficiency, as discussed in chapter 8 of
Ekstedt and Fusari, ‘Economic Theory and Social Change’9 (2010).
From the presumption that domination-power is inevitable Schmitt coherently
established the identification of political action with the opposition friend-enemy. In
fact, domination-power implies, in one way or another, submission and opposition
between the rulers and the dominated class, with the latter eager to undermine the
rulers and holding itself entitled to the use of any means useful in order to end its
7
Bodin defines sovereignty as the absolute and perpetual power pertaining to national state, and
adds: “What the prince likes to allow, order or forbid becomes law, edict, ordinance”. See J. Bodin,
Anthology of political writings, pp. 141 and 148.
8
(Galbraith 1968).
9
See Ekstedt and Fusari, Routledge, 2010.
7.3 Freedom and Responsibility 193
Even if the formal freedom of humanity is wide, human beings are subject to some
strong limitations and constraints that are imposed by the reality that surrounds and
the human nature within. Man’s substantial degree of freedom is determined by:
(a) his creative skills, which allow the reduction of the conditioning power of the
given reality; (b) his possible discretion, i.e., his capacity to decide and act in a
variety of ways in the given condition of existence. But discretion tends to become
‘licence’, that is, it tends to stimulate the inclination of men to oppress one another.
The remedy against license is the taking ‘responsibility’ for the results of actions
and decisions. Therefore, it must correspond to discretion the taking the responsi-
bility for what one does. Of course, without freedom of decision responsibility
cannot exist; only free people can be considered responsible for their actions and
decisions.
Worth and demerit, reward and punishment, in sum responsibility, are indispens-
able to the educational power of freedom, in particular with reference to the learning
and maturation of the agent. In the absence of the binary of freedom-responsibility,
individual autonomy is blind and deaf and humanity finds it difficult to learn and to
improve. This is immediately evident. But it is also generic; more precisely, it passes
194 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
over the content of the notion of responsibility. Such content may range across a
wide number of alternative possibilities, according to the variety of civilizations.
History presents us with a lot of responsibility criteria and some of them are
considered disgusting in the modern age, indeed, a surprising variety of forms and
values: the responsibility of the peaceful, measured and ceremonious Zuñi and of
the warlike Indians of meadow-lands, the responsibility of an Ottoman ruling class
constituted by slaves (capiqullari) and of the members of Assassins’ sect or other
criminal organizations, the responsibility of Colcosian farmers and capitalist
entrepreneurs.
J. S. Mill writes: “The only aspect of our behaviour of which we must take
responsibility toward society is that involving other people.… the individual must
be allowed, without nuisances, to put into effect his opinions at his own risk”.10
J. Locke adds: “With reference to domestic businesses, goods and the body health,
everyone is fully entitled to decide directly what is convenient to do”.11 These
statements are intended to stimulate as much as possible the widening of the sphere
of individual autonomy, but they do not express much more than this aim: a very
important aim indeed, since individual autonomy implies an automatic attribution
of responsibility for actions and decisions concerning personal interest and convic-
tions. Tocqueville writes in this regard: “Providence has endowed every individual
with the judgment required to treat what refers to his interest”.12 But individual
autonomy does not exhaust the problems we are considering. Human action is
always conditioned by institutions and civilizations, which of course imply some
precise forms of responsibility. Mill’s assertion expresses a central aspect of liberal
doctrine. But even in a liberal order the question of responsibility goes well beyond
the sphere of individual action. A much more involved kind of responsibility is con-
nected to the exertion of political, economical and military power.
Liberal doctrines have substantially eluded these more extensive elements. But,
as previously seen, the sovereignty of law, the notion of the ‘state of right’ and that
of the division of powers do not in themselves solve the problem of responsibility:
holders of power, if not constrained by well-defined responsibilities, may freely
commit abuses. The notion of ‘natural rights’ is hardly adequate to define responsi-
bility since it ignores history, the stratification over time of the reality built by
humanity. We can see, therefore, that the problems connected to the notions of
responsibility and freedom are far from exhausted by the statement that the frontier
of personal autonomy is marked by the condition that it does not damage other
people. Some well-defined criteria of responsibility are required to answer the ques-
tion of what it actually means to damage other people and when does this in fact
happen. In providing an answer, ‘reason’, the other factor indispensable for human
freedom, provides a crucial aid. Reason is required to enable decision with respon-
sibility, but responsibility requires that agents deciding against reason are obliged
to suffer the consequences of their foolishness. But what kind of reason? Of course,
10
(Mill 1999), pp. 13 and 65.
11
(Locke 1999), p. 21.
12
(de Tocqueville 1992), p. 393.
7.3 Freedom and Responsibility 195
13
Of course, the problem (and mystery) of free will is a completely different thing. Schopenhauer
dedicated a great deal of work to showing the inexistence of free will, i.e. “the possibility of acting
in deliberately contradictory ways”. He wrote: “a free will needs to be not caused by any motive
and by nothing”. See Schopenhauer (2001), p. 49. But this causality can only be referred to the
field of ‘necessity’, which can and must be subjected to reason and science. It cannot be referred
to the field of “choice-possibility-creativeness”, which gives rise to the immense variety of historical
processes. We think that a man may choose to be a criminal or an honest person, notwithstanding
that many social, environmental, domestic, genetic, etc. influences may push him in one direction
or another. At any rate civil freedom, the object of our analysis, is a completely different thing from
free will.
196 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
14
Boudon’s attempt to reconcile the observational method and ethics is in vain; that is, his attempt
to show the objectivity of values on the basis of the spontaneity option implied by Weber’s idea of
‘diffuse rationality’ according to which spontaneous processes lead to the prevalence of “right
values” is not convincing. In fact, spontaneity denies doing and reduces the ethical aspect to being
and existing, which contradicts the very notion of ethical value.
7.3 Freedom and Responsibility 197
A more complete treatment of these topics would require us to engage with one of
the most difficult and, in some sense mysterious of problems: that of evil in the
world. It is in light of such evil that Weber pretends to justify an unconstrained
political ethics and the inevitability of domination-power, proclaiming to politi-
cians: “You must resist evil with violence otherwise you are responsible for its
prevalence”.16 And Weber further declares to those who counsel that only good can
generate good and only evil can generate evil that “the whole historical process of
the world and a frank and sincere analysis of daily experience say exactly the
opposite”.17 Aware that observed experience might belie this claim, Weber turns to
“the very ancient problem of theodicy, which consists in the following question:
how can it be that a power considered both omnipotent and good has created the
irrational world of undeserved pain, of unpunished fault and of incorrigible stupid-
ity; and might it be that this power is not omnipotent, or is not good”.18 The conse-
quence of this last raised possibility would be the embodiment of evil in the
structural mechanisms of the world; and once this possibility is recognized the next
step is to attempt to combat evil using its same weapons. It is just such an idea of
evil as embodied in the world, however, that has provided the alibi and the justification
15
For a better treatment of these aspects, see chapter 8 in: (Ekstedt and Fusari 2010).
16
(Weber 1997), p. 101.
17
(Weber, ibidem), p. 106.
18
(Weber, Ibidem), p. 106.
7.3 Freedom and Responsibility 199
for the worst violence and abuses of history; and, besides, just this idea has perhaps
provided the single most efficacious way of nourishing the evil that does afflict
the world.
We have no theological knowledge; but we deeply distrust the darkening of
reason and the wickedness that have been practiced in the course of history in the
name of faith. It is absolutely vital that we consider facts with great scruple, since
the individual mind can incur many errors, and we believe accordingly that the
strength of reason derives from ‘collective mind that arises from the outcome of
the cooperation of many minds as expressed by scientific knowledge’.19 With the
caution demanded both by the difficulties of the topic and the scientific poverty of
social thought, the analysis of facts nevertheless leads us to suspect that the age-old
problem of theodicy contains some mistakes. The “evil” that Weber deplores is a
product of men and, even more, of human institutions. Unpunished faults are largely
due to institutional forms. Sorrow hides in the most unsuspected places and hits
both poor and rich, rulers and ordinary citizens, usually with a strength which is
proportional to the eminence of rank. It seems to be typical of the human condition
that sorrow is distributed among men with a substantial impartiality and certainly
with indifferent inexorableness. At any rate, the fact that humanity requires sorrow
and sacrifice to learn, mature and evolve makes sorrow inevitable. With reference to
our apparent incorrigible stupidity, it must be recognized that humanity is capable
of expressing, in the field of social relations, a rationality much higher than has ever
been shown in past centuries or even in the present age. The problem consists in
finding the ways that allow us to best-utilize reason; and, as we know, this in turn
depends, at least for the most part, on the appropriateness of the method of investi-
gating the considered phenomena.
More subtle is the question of undeserved sorrow. Humanity’s sufferings are a
consequence of human limitations and imperfection. It may be thought that the
divine goodness should have amended its creatures by this immense cosmic sorrow.
But the amendment would have required the creation of perfect beings; that is, the
Creator would have reproduced himself, which seems to be senseless. Therefore,
only imperfect beings could be created and, if that is so, the best thing to do seems
to be to endow them of the skill to improve. It seems to us that a changeable imper-
fection is preferable to a higher state of perfection that is condemned to the tedium
of an invariant impotence. Humanity possesses reason, a precious tool of our evolution
and, in order that we are persuaded to use it intensively, we have been condemned
to pay for our irrational behaviour; a price in general proportional to the dimensions
of irrationality, both on the level of the individual and, even more, on that affecting
the organization and administration of human societies. In sum, reason implies the
principle of responsibility, both in the direct and automatic way expressed by the
19
The cooperation of human minds and the cumulativeness of knowledge need a method the
general lines of which are shared by the community of students and that is appropriate to the char-
acter of the considered reality. The consciousness of this necessity has suggested to us that we
concentrate on method, denounce the serious and inauspicious implications of the methodological
confusion afflicting social thought, and insist on finding remedies to it.
200 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
negative consequences that irrational behaviour inflicts upon the agent, and as stated
by institutions. We have seen that the responsibility for our actions is indispensable
to our learning and maturing through experience; such a responsibility is a corollary
of the freedom of choice, this being conceivable only if there is responsibility for
our actions – for otherwise there is not freedom but licence, that is, abuse and
oppression. It follows that pain and sorrow are inevitable attributions of human
nature. Imperfection is an unfortunate condition. But humanity has the means –
primarily, our reason – to mitigate such a situation and achieve a progressive
improvement. The persistence of this tournament of stupidities that is expressed by
human history wrongly induces us to believe that the world has been created
by some wicked being who is amused by our incorrigible senselessness.
The true question in the study of social systems is how to organize them in the
most suitable ways for them to facilitate the realization of human evolutionary
potentialities. Unfortunately, history teaches us that the usual state of affairs is one
in which people violate the indispensable conditions (mainly ontological and func-
tional imperatives) of the realization of these potentialities. It is, however, totally
mistaken and unnatural to consider these violations as inevitable, and to mistake the
depravity of men for the evil of the world. What we should really be asking our-
selves, is how it might be possible to build institutions able to warrant a true and
correct application of the principle of responsibility, and how we might identify a
method of social thought that allows us to profoundly profit from the potential that
reason holds, in the organization and administration of human societies. In social
relations, mere observation and acceptance is senseless. All our reflections point to
the facts that the misfortunes of humanity are a consequence of our natural imper-
fection but also that humanity could – and should – operate at a much higher level
than has ever before been the case.
Weber writes: “After having conquered power, the followers of a leader fighting
for a faith usually degenerate into a very banal group of prebend hunters”.20 The
main problem of social thought and social organization is to reduce as much as pos-
sible the dimensions of that group, to avoid the overflow of their appetites, to resist
the bad pedagogy induced by domination-power and fed by the deceits that the
scientific impotence of social thought makes possible. It is not inevitable that “the
genius and demon of politics live with the God of love in an intimate tension that
may erupt in every moment in an irremediable conflict”.21 Humanity is born with a
kind of ‘original pity’, represented by the imperfections and limits of human nature.
Notwithstanding those limits, humanity has some degree of freedom, represented
by creative skills and the possibility of discretionary choice. Moreover, we are
endowed with the instruments that allow us to evolve and decide accurately: reason.
The right use of this reason requires responsibility, that is, the attribution of worth
and demerits, of rewards and punishments. To take profit from experience and hence
achieve learning and maturation, sorrow and suffering are needed. Therefore, it
must not be considered surprising if the path of humanity and society is full of pain.
20
See Weber, Ibidem, p. 111.
21
See Weber, Ibidem, p. 112.
7.3 Freedom and Responsibility 201
Every person has his part in that universal pain and it is difficult to say that this is
distributed with injustice, even if injustice may appear undeniable as we survey a
world in which some pains are more evident than others and in which our sufferings
seem greater than those of other people, since we perceive them directly and have
no objective measure of those of others. It seems, however, that nature has endowed
everybody with the necessary skill to improve his or her condition, with the excep-
tion of the foolish; but probably they do not suffer more than other people. One can
ask oneself what is the function of the foolish; it is perhaps to strengthen, through
their presence, the importance of human reason and to press science to find reme-
dies to social and personal foolishness.
Unfortunately, the natural mechanisms considered above are opposed by a lot of
obstructions and falsifications that arise as the result of human institutions and of
individual wiles that suffocate human potentialities, accentuate humanity’s tor-
ments and make them a vehicle of degradation rather than of improvement.
Rousseau’s statement that “Man was born free and everywhere is in chains”22 is
wrong if considered in the light of his questionable theory of the good savage that,
“after dinner is at peace with the entire world and is the friend of all other beings”.23
But it is a good description of reality for all that, since humanity always and every-
where has erected social systems based on domination-power. In our opinion, it is
almost senseless to discuss whether Man is by nature good or bad; as an imperfect
being, he is both. But, let us repeat, humans have the means to improve themselves
and it is a task of science to supply them with the requisite knowledge and institutions
of that improvement. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. The persistent
impotence of scientific social thought, fuelled by methodological observationism,
favours the role of those human instincts that scandalized Rousseau when he
deplored “man’s blindness that, to nourish his foolish pride and a vain admiration
for himself, induces him to fervently run after all miseries that he is able to get”.24
Rousseau’s denunciation of the evils of the world is strong and stringent; unfortu-
nately, it is not accompanied by any outline of efficient ways to remedy or attenuate
the situation that need a method appropriate to the character of social reality, in
primis, a method combining being and doing. His analyses bear the hallmark of an
abstract and Enlightenment doing that excludes the conditioning due to historical
sedimentation that determines the general conditions of development; in a word,
Rousseau only considers ‘natural laws’.
At the basis of domination there is a deformation of the responsibility principle,
a principle that, after all, is clearly expressed by nature, for instance, by the compe-
tition for survival and even predator-prey relations. Of course, human institutions
should flank competition with solidarity and help the needy to proceed. But it seems
that the responsibility principle cannot do without competition. Sclerosis, abuse,
iniquity and hence the suffocation of freedom prevail where competition is lacking.
But harsh competition should be avoided and complemented with reciprocity and
22
(Rousseau 1962a), p. 4.
23
(Rousseau 1962b), p. 226.
24
Ibidem, p. 224.
202 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
The reform of social systems is innate to the becoming of social reality; primarily,
it is inherent to political action. But a powerful and invisible enemy opposes reformism,
any reformism, whichever its inspiration. This is an enemy that lies outside
the political sphere, the economical sphere and people’s preferences. It resides in
the scientific and cultural world and represents one of the most invasive and pos-
sessive forms of human thought. We mean the scientific method that forges the way
of seeing, thinking, investigating and judging. To be able to defeat this enemy it is
imperative that reformist thinking operates with great vigour in the intellectual
sphere well before it moves into the fields of political and material relations.
As we have seen, the cumulative growth of human knowledge has been promoted
by the identification of accurate procedures and rules of inquiry; but social studies
have been unable, till now, to achieve such identification. Efforts to do so have been
opposed strongly by a double and very serious methodological misunderstanding
that has significant repercussions on daily life and leads to the denial of reformist
possibilities, for reasons that we shall soon see. The aim of the present section is to
point out once again the deepest and most insidious traits of such double method-
ological misunderstanding, the errors that it causes in our ways of thinking and our
attempts to face the problems of human societies and the discredit and damage that
all this has upon the cause of reformist action.
25
As described in chapter 8 of Ekstedt and Fusari (2010).
7.4 The Anti-reformist, Relativist and Hyper-reformist Prejudices Implied… 203
such rules will also allow for the specification, in a residual way, of those elements
that are the object of choice.
It is immediately evident that the undervaluation and obscuring of the distinction
between necessity and choice-possibility is the main cause of the entanglements,
illusions and abuses afflicting the administration of human societies. For instance,
and as we have seen, an absence of rigour in the above distinction allows the
presentation as necessities elements concerning choice-possibility that actually
constitute the interests of the dominating class and vice-versa. The absence of a
clear distinction between necessity and choice-possibility in the organization of
social systems represents the main cause of the failures of various kinds of reform-
ism. It is significant that one exception here has been that centered on the building
of a welfare state the program of which has hinged upon a main ‘necessity’ of
modern dynamic societies: the principle of effective demand. The success of action
directed at the transformation or rebuilding of human societies depends on two
basic conditions: (a) an understanding of the organizational necessities concerning
the various stages of development; (b) an accurate choice, among those necessities,
of the nearest to proclaimed ideological convictions. A political program that
accurately specifies both (a) and (b), if proposed and pursued with tenacity and
resolution, can easily prevail against opponents that defend forms of civilization
and power inconsistent with the existing general conditions of development. By
contrast, if the proposed program leaves the defense of those organizational neces-
sities to its opponents, it will certainly be defeated. Finally, if political confronta-
tion takes place between positions that ignore or violate important organizational
necessities, a succession of senseless and inconclusive political conflicts will afflict
society: at first, conservatives will prevail; but in the course of time society will
proceed, by trial and error and with great difficulties, toward the organizational
necessities of the existing stage of development. These necessities will be flanked
by consistent ethic-ideological options that will mature in part casually and in part
under the influence of past habits.
Some clarification on the matter may result from an analysis of the teaching of
R. Boundon. This author’s research makes very evident, both by way of combina-
tion and by contrast, the two methodological misunderstandings previously dis-
cussed, i.e. observation and incommensurabilism, the way in which they feed each
other and paralyze reformist action. Indeed, Boudon derives from the combination
between observationism and incommensurabilism an apparently decorous objectiv-
ism. But the observational trap forces Boudon to adopt, as the only possible defense
of his combination of objectivist-rationalist and incommensurability positions, the
Weberian idea of ‘diffuse rationality’ according to which, in the very long run,
social problems adjust in the best way. This idea does not oppose anything to rela-
tivism; indeed, it leaves us at the mercy of spontaneous processes since it does not
provide any instrument that we might use to govern them. In sum, the observational
behaviour propels Boudon into a kind of liberal-democratic hyper-fence-sitting as
his alternative to the inconclusive positions of his relativist opponents.
It is completely evident that the world, if it is not to disappear, must find a way
to survive; but let us repeat, the goal is to avoid this survival taking the path of those
7.5 Inequalities and Social Justice 205
torments and those monstrosities that history and specifically our troubled age have
too often witnessed (feeding Eliade’s terror of history).
Indeed, the doctrine of cultural and cognitive relativism results in a methodological
black hole that threatens to envelop the galaxy of social thought in an apparently
inextricable confusion. The confusion has been stimulated by epistemological
reflection, primarily by that subtle and yet, at the same time, stupid question as to
the “precise demarcation between science and non science”, mainly rekindled by
T. Kuhn’s notion of paradigm. Such a question has promoted (and made respect-
able) a pretentious and sometimes pedantic incommensurability, according to which
everybody pretends that reason goes his own way, which is to say, everyone rejects
common and shared methodological rules. Surprisingly, even an iron objectivist and
anti-relativist such as Boudon, fully agree (following Weber) with the postulate of
incommensurability – which he accepts when he assimilates scientific procedure to
enchantment. This obliges him, in order to escape cultural and cognitive relativism,
to appeal to good sense that, in the very long run everything will adjust to every-
thing. But although good sense sometimes works well, sometimes it does not, at any
rate, it is a completely different thing from science. The incommensurability preju-
dice must be extraordinarily deep rooted, we may observe here, if it so contaminates
and plagiarizes even the most fervent objectivists. Indeed, the incommensurability
professed by a large part of social thought implies such a prejudice, both when it
leads to Boudon’s spontaneity and when it leads to a relativism that pretends to
justify everything. We shall examine all of this somewhat more fully in Chap. 9.
So, and once again, we can see that the main problem of historical and social
thought appears to be represented by the urgent need to define some general and
shared methodological rules deduced from the basic characters of social reality and
allowing for the judgment of the profitability of proposed theories. Of course, such
rules have an inherent reformist character in that they conceive of social reality as
inclined to change. The trap in which many students of society are caught is that of
the observational method. In effect, the only way of building an objective social
thought upon an observational foundation seems to be represented by Boudon and
Weber’s cognitive method (see Chap. 9). But this cognitive method leads us into
observational misunderstanding and fails to supply any plausible answer to the rela-
tivist mistake. It is, therefore, plainly subjected to the anti-reformist prejudice
implied by the current methods of social thought and, indeed, provides one of the
best expressions of that prejudice.
1. We can begin this section in a simple and readily intelligible manner with a
meditation upon the following statement: ‘Men are different and equal each other,
different in skills and dispositions, equal in dignity’. At first glance, the two terms
of this statement may appear to be in opposition. On the contrary, however, they are
strictly and positively linked to each other. But equivocation and mystification
206 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
concerning this connection have had a profound impact upon both the character and
the development of social systems and, more generally, of historical processes.
The above statement on diversity expresses mere facts, a characteristic of human
nature with extremely important implications. As we have seen, mankind’s skills
would be very poor indeed if men, already afflicted by nature with heavy limita-
tions, were all identical with one another; the many differences in human capacities
and inclinations constitutes an immense reservoir of innovative and expressive
skills, the main evolutionary power fueling social and economic development and,
in particular, a basic propulsive force of the modern world, provided, that is, that the
expression of individual skills and attitudes is stimulated.
By contrast, the above statement concerning equality in dignity is not a mere
statement of fact but expresses rather an ethical principle however endowed
with a special status: this principle constitutes a necessary condition to the full
realization of individuality. This positive connection between a moral principle
concerning equality and an objective fact concerning human diversity means
that the statement above about equality cannot be considered in a relativist sense
and as a matter of choice, but is rather an ethical principle having an objective
character.
The existence of human unlikeness, and hence of our related evolutionary poten-
tial, have some other important ethical implications: human society needs tolerance,
social justice, free thinking, action and expression. These requirements also remove
the ethical principles mentioned above from the sphere of ethical relativism, impart-
ing to them an objective substance.
Equivocations on those principles, most notably misconceptions as to the
relation between freedom-innovation and social justice, are largely present in the
various branches of economics and are, for the most part, linked to the question of
income distribution and the relationships between production and the financial sys-
tem. An often disregarded fact is that, in the presence of heavy inequalities in per-
sonal wealth and income distribution, equality in dignity is jeopardized to a
considerable degree, thus obstructing the improvement and use of individual skills
and, especially if production is dominated by big finance and its accompanying
speculations, squeezing innovation, and hence economic and social development. It
is necessary, and also urgent, that diversity and equality principles are reconciled as
much as possible through careful management.
We shall see that it is mistaken to think that social justice obstructs productive
efficiency; if appropriately pursued (in particular, without suffocating or exaggerat-
ing the role of material incentives and in the presence of a non-pervasive financial
system), social justice stimulates efficiency; and it does so for reasons going well
beyond the possible need to stimulate deficient effective demand.
Rousseau’s discourse on inequality set out, at the starting of the Enlightenment,
a provocative and over-simplified thesis that, as we saw in Sect. 7.3, underlined the
radical break between savage man in the state of nature and socialized man who is
pushed by civilization towards great infamies. There is some truth in Rousseau’s
denunciation of the corrupting effects of civilizations and it is easy to find many
confirmations in the course of history. But it is useless to draw from this a
7.5 Inequalities and Social Justice 207
conclusion that damns the very idea of civilization. The true problem is to find ways
to make civilization a friend of humanity instead of a cause of affliction. A brief
historical excursus on the subject, embracing different social systems, is indispensable
if we are to correctly organize our thoughts on this theme.26
2. In the course of time, the binary of equality-diversity has generated acute con-
trasts among people and has taken various forms in the context of the relation
individuality-organization-homologation; an impressive variety indeed, mainly in
primitive societies. In the most advanced civilizations of ancient times, the relation
equality-diversity was squeezed in its first term by the strength of organization and
homologization; in fact, those civilizations were the outcome of great centralized
empires (Eastern, American and central African empires), all condemned to a sta-
tionary state both by the suffocation of criticism by organization and command
élites and by a perfidious form of equality manifested by mass poverty. But two
exceptions appeared that have had a great future:
(a) Ancient Greece, with its privileging of heterodoxy and free enquiry, its enflamed
disputes in the agora that helped to push Greek thinking in ways that led it to
anticipate with great versatility important contributions in an impressive variety
of topics – contributions resumed (sometimes unconsciously) in the subsequent
development of human thinking. The Greek world was distinguished by the
prominent role of the individual, but excluded considerations of personal dig-
nity, which was denied to slaves and also, in some sense, to all foreigners, who
were considered barbarians.
(b) The ancient Israelites, to whom a religious message appeared characterized by
great consideration for the individual and a strong statement as to the equal
dignity of all human beings as children of God – a message that was ultimately
sanctified in the absolute respect for the person.
Some centuries later, the wedding of the prominent organizational skills of
ancient Rome with the Greek cultural inheritance gave birth, in the Principate of
the Roman Empire under Augustus and till the third century after Christ, to an
outstanding political and administrative organization directed by an efficient
bureaucracy of small dimensions, complemented by the municipal self-government
of the decurions and defended by few legions. This administrative order, unequalled
in ancient time and unfortunately not replicated everywhere in the world, did not
generate a dynamic economy for various reasons: the transgression of the principle
of equal dignity of men and the associated slavery, extensive massive estates, and
the dominating stationary idea of circular time emphasized by Stoic philosophy.
The malaise and contradictions caused, in the presence of such an administrative
structure, by a long lasting stationary state pushed the agile and light organization
of the Principate towards dissolution. The disintegration of the Empire was
prevented, during the tormented third century after Christ, by the efficient bureau-
cratic and military order. This allowed the exceptional organizational skills of the
26
What is written here is considered much more widely and with many examples in Fusari (2000).
208 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
27
In the most efficient centralized society of the past, the Celestial Empire of ancient China, the
Mandarines’ bureaucracy selected civil servants by way of severe examinations intended to estab-
lish the knowledge, culture and forma mentis appropriate to the administration of a stationary
empire, in which entrepreneurship was suffocated.
7.5 Inequalities and Social Justice 209
inequalities in wealth were the outcome of differences in trading skills, and different
propensities to innovate and embark upon adventure. This fed the dynamism of
production. But the large and increasing inequalities in income distribution
generated by capitalism over time, which plainly violate the principle of solidarity
among men, served by a financial establishment that in the end has subdued produc-
tion, have started to generate more and more destabilizing effects and to suffocate
the role of the individual and hence the potential associated with the wide qualita-
tive differences in skills with which nature has abundantly endowed humanity.
The equalitarian reactions of the last century have drawn the world from the
frying-pan into the fire as a consequence of a protracted obscuring of diversities and
of the resurrection of bureaucratic centralized orders. In the end, eastern European
socialist countries, defeated by the competition of the decentralized capitalist
Western world, have started to converge upon a kind of capitalism far worse than
that of the West in terms of inequalities in private wealth, corruption and inefficiencies.
These failures of the equalitarian reaction have discredited social justice. Nowadays,
some important questions arise: How to properly warrant the ontological imperative
of individuality, as required by our initial assertion as to the relation between diver-
sity and equality? Are the huge and growing inequalities in the distribution of mate-
rial wealth and power caused by capitalism inevitable and indispensable; or is the
contrary true? In order to preserve and cultivate the rhythms of innovation and
development that capitalism has fed till now, is it necessary to marry decentraliza-
tion and free initiative to a much more fair income distribution and to the principle
of solidarity and bring great finance back to the service of production? Is that pos-
sible? These are the central questions and we have previously attempted to show
that they represent functional imperatives of the present age. Thomas Nagel has
written: “It would be wrong to break the relation between talent and admiration. But
the breaking between talent and income, if this is possible, would be beautiful. It is
not true that people endowed with useful talents deserve more material benefits than
those deprived of those talents”. And some pages later: “It may exist some different
way to use economic incentives in such a way that their working does not cause
wide economic inequalities; but nobody has ever dreamed something like that”.28
Our analysis shows that such a dream is not only possible to accomplish; we show
that its accomplishment becomes more and more indispensable.
Equality and diversity have been analyzed in a variety of ways by social theory.
The analysis of A. Touraine on the subject deserves some consideration, being com-
pletely different from our own. This author emphasizes the conjunction of individu-
als’ similarities and differences, on the basis of the interactions among subjects and
the action of popular movements, the democracy of interacting groups and subjec-
tive action, the confrontation among a multiplicity of behaviours as opposed to the
unity of thinking based on reason. Touraine concludes: “In this way a transforma-
tion of sociology can be proposed; for a long time this has studied the functioning
and change of the social system; it has become the study of the conditions where
each (personal or collective) social agent lives and acts, a subject at the same time
28
See, Nagel (1991) pp. 143 and 160.
210 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
different from and equal to all others”.29 The scientific indeterminacy of this
analysis, which forgets and sets aside a number of problems concerning the
governance of social system in the context of a destructive attack to rationalization,
is evident. Indeed, in suggesting a free hand to contradictions and unrestrained
conflict, as opposed to a constructive and scientific analysis of the organization and
functioning of social systems, Touraine’s analysis in effect advocates a great confu-
sion in the life of society.
1. Social action, no less than social studies, needs a general theory capable of
understanding historical motion and, hence, the direction toward which social sys-
tems are moving and which political action must try to help forward. Historicism
has in various ways tried to satisfy such a need. K. Popper severely criticized the
holistic character of historicist thought; but this is the character of some branches of
historicism only. For instance, the main feature of German historicism is not holism
but the idea, no less paralyzing for sure, of the uniqueness and absolute non-
comparability of historical events. However, one basic conviction is indeed shared
by the various kinds of historicism: the idea that the understanding of what hap-
pened in the past requires the accurate and precise observation of historical facts
and the control of the proposed interpretation through them. We have seen that such
an idea is referable indeed to the majority of social thinkers, including such a great
opponent of historicism as Popper. There is more.
Historicism not only maintains that scholars must try to understand the tenden-
cies at work in order to allow practical men to act as the midwives of history. But
historicism also asserts that it is impossible to say in advance something about the
concrete contents that social process will reveal; such contents will result from
intertwining of clashes, conflicts and casualties. As a consequence, the content of
social reality is expeditiously considered as an expression of the ‘fancy of history’.
It is evident that this reasoning, sneered at by agitators and militants, substantially
expresses a particular version of the idea of spontaneous order, and that this is as a
consequence of an observational character of social thinking that was well expressed
by Marx when he stated that Darwin’s work should constitute an illuminating exam-
ple for students of society.
Coherently with the above positions, historicism refuses reformist analyses and
proposals. That is to say, historicism denies the existence of alternative possibilities
with respect to what has happened, the fulfillment of which would have improved
the current situation (what happened had to happen). It professes a sarcastic adver-
sity toward the use of ‘if’ in historical analysis and its possible help in improving the
understanding of events. But the importance of alternative hypotheses for deriving
29
(Touraine 1997) p. 82.
7.6 Political Thought in the Light of the Interpretations of History… 211
30
(Carr 1966), p. 60.
31
Ibidem, pp. 104 and 105.
32
(See Fusari 2000).
212 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
Empire toward the Dominate, amounted to a lost opportunity, albeit a ‘weak’ one,
since it did not represent a violation of the organizational necessities required by the
existing general conditions of development: in order not to lose such an opportunity,
an economy and civilization were demanded that were possible, but did not exist at
that moment.33 This distinction between lost opportunity and weak lost opportunity
should be carefully considered by students.
It is important to underline that historical supposition and analysis (and the
notion of lost opportunity) need the scientific distinction between historical
‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’ in the organization and direction of social sys-
tems. Of course, historical necessity must not be identified with the events that
really happened, but rather with institutions and other elements toward which his-
tory is forced to gravitate (usually through torturous trial and error), due to reasons
of organizational efficiency and under the impact of the general conditions of devel-
opment. For instance, the freedom of commerce and territorial displacement and
some other aspects of the legislation concerning medieval communes, as well as
fairs, markets and some new financial instruments, and so on, constituted organiza-
tional necessities for the medieval economy. Historical supposition, if referred to
such necessities, allows to clarify important historical mistakes (lost opportunities
in a strict sense) and to develop a science of society aimed at avoiding them. On this
basis, it is also possible to usefully consider, mainly in the field of civilizations,
aspects of ‘choice-possibility’, i.e. what could have been done differently. This
allows us to see what we have called ‘weak’ lost opportunities, i.e. opportunities
connected to choice-possibility expressing, for instance, what we denominated pro-
fetical utopia. Various kinds of civilization are consistent with the general condi-
tions of development that distinguish each historical era; the choice in that regard
can strongly influence further development. The aristocratic and stoic civilization of
the Roman Empire of the first two centuries A.D. was consistent with the general
conditions of development of that time, but it suffocated evolutionary motion in
spite of the appropriateness of the administrative structure of that Empire to the
promotion of such a motion. To avoid these ‘weak’ lost opportunities it is necessary
to succeed in the building of civilizations able to stimulate the evolutionary potenti-
alities of humanity (where ‘evolutionary potentialities’ must be understood, not in
any simple Darwinian way, but as contemplating ontological imperatives).
2. Recently, the use of ‘if’ in social-historical analyses has been accepted by some
academic scholars in light of the line of reasoning that, after all, every human deci-
sion is a choice among a plurality of alternative possibilities. But this line of reason-
ing, notwithstanding its apparent banality, may generate some serious analytical
misunderstanding. In particular, the ‘abuse’ of suppositions has caused a diffused
prejudice against them. Reference to a book on virtual history edited by R. Cowley34
may help to clarify this important point. Cowley writes: “Nothing is more suitable
to virtual history than military history, since in this field chance and fortuitous
33
On this matters and events, see (Fusari 2000).
34
R Cowley, (ed.) La storia fatta con i se (2001).
7.6 Political Thought in the Light of the Interpretations of History… 213
events, human weaknesses and decisions may make the difference”.35 Unfortunately,
attention to chance and particular decisions has given rise, in the book, to analytical
levity and the formulation of a lot of heedless alternative hypotheses.
It seems to us that the only instructive application of ‘if’ to be found in Cowley’s
book is made in reference to possible changes in the history of civilizations. For
instance, the eventual conquest of Jerusalem by the Assyrian army would have
erased Jewish civilization from the beginning. Or, again, a different outcome at the
battle of Salamis might have changed the course of subsequent world history; but,
in this second case, attention should then have been directed to the exceptional vital-
ity of the Greek people and the resulting limitations of the attempt to control them
by a bureaucratic and centralised empire (which is not at all what is discussed in
Cowley’s book). In fact, it seems evident that the Persians never would have suc-
ceeded in suffocating the Greek spirit. This is confirmed, in another context, by the
vicissitudes of medieval merchants and the immense difficulties they were able to
overcome in order to achieve domination of the Mediterranean, despite Byzantine
and Arab power.
The uses of ‘if’ with reference to the vicissitude of Alexander the Great are
symptomatic. Toynbee hypothesized that the conqueror had lived longer and so let
his fancy roam over the building of an empire of human rights and universal frater-
nity: a benevolent monarchy that would have promoted technological and cultural
development, an age of peace and a government of the world that would have lasted
down to our own time. Soon after, other scholars made the opposite hypothesis of a
‘hangman Alexander’, devoted to military campaigns that would have caused untold
misery and obstructed the development of Hellenistic civilization. For its part,
Cowley’s book hypothesizes that Alexander died at the battle of Granic, right at the
commencement of his campaign, and through some further hypotheses it is deduced
that this early death would have resulted in some consequences for Greek and
Roman civilizations, the relations between Romans and Persians people, and so on.
We are in the presence here, clearly, of some “free suppositions”: beginning from a
reasonable hypothesis and proceeding to add a few others, a multiplicity of possible
results and paths in reciprocal opposition are derived.
Again, the hypothesis that the Romans were not defeated in the Teutoburg forest
and so conquered the whole of Germany, and the deduction that this would have
prevented the growth of nationalism in the nineteenth century, are simply gratu-
itous; they forget that the Roman general Germanicus was later unable to conquer
the Germans. In effect, the Roman Empire had reached the frontier of its expansive
possibilities, having been unsuccessful in building a civilization able to initiate
cumulative endogenous development. Emperor Hadrian well understood this fact,
and wisely stabilised the limes of the Empire.
Cowley’s book continues by supposing that at the battle of Adrianopolis the
emperor Valente defeated the Goths (which opposite, in fact, occurred). The work-
ing out of such a supposition fails to comprehend that, whatever the result of this
particular battle, the destiny of Roman Empire would not have changed: the
35
Ibidem, p. 9.
214 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
weakness of the economic and social structure of the Western Empire and the stag-
nation of the moribund late western imperial society would in any case have ensured
the decline and fall of the empire.
Let us consider some other hypotheses of Cowley’s book. It is fairly obvious that
the conquest of Europe by the Arabs would have attenuated the darkness of the
centuries that followed the fall of Roman Empire. Moreover, such a conquest would
have generated a completely different evolution of the Islamic world with respect to
that development of Arab civilization as a result of expansion towards the East. But
it is overly simplistic to maintain that the Arab advance toward Europe was broken
by Poitiers defeat; it was stopped rather by the deep divisions typical to the Arab
world and civilization, which in fact contributed to this particular defeat, as well as
by increasing Arab interest in eastern expansion. For its part, Ottoman Islam did not
have the capacity to conquer a dynamic Europe, either under Suleiman the
Magnificent (a fact that is quite independent of the actual rain and mud advocated
by Cowley) or during the second siege of Vienna, by which time the stagnating
Ottoman Empire had reached an advanced stage of decline.
The eventual success of Spain’s Invincible Army against England would have
not propelled history onto a different course. The Spanish empire of Philip II, which
was suffocated by bureaucracy, would have not been able to enforce the submission
of a dynamic Northern Europe (as the birth of the Netherlands by way of the defeat
of the great Habsburg empire shows): medieval merchants and communes,
Renaissance and protestant reformers had not worked in vain. It also seems evident
that the hypothetical victory of the Invincible Army would not have paved the way
for the Spanish colonization of Northern America, and hence precluded the birth of
the Union of American States. The Spanish empire, which survived with difficulty
through “incestuous weddings”, had not the strength to prevent that birth.
The book edited by Cowley also makes numerous gratuitous hypotheses con-
cerning the American Revolution: if general Washington had hesitated, or had
failed, or in the absence of that fog, if a soldier had pressed trigger, and so on and so
forth. Indeed, it was not easy to repress the libertarian impetus of Americans, a
people of emigrants, many of whom had fled from European absolutism. Finally, it
is plausible to suppose that, notwithstanding German failure in the battle of England,
Hitler had succeeded in defeating the USSR. But such a result would most probably
not lead to the deviation of history; rather, we would have witnessed a confrontation
between the English-speaking world and totalitarian Nazism, instead of Communism.
Hitler’s heirs would have been defeated (in the place of those of Stalin, hypotheti-
cally put off-side by military defeat), since totalitarian institutions are not suitable
to modern dynamic societies.
Chance undoubtedly plays a role in human vicissitudes, but it does so for indi-
vidual events rather than grand historical movements; and, as such, its effects tend
to disappear by diffusion and averaging out. An earnest scholar cannot accept, in the
name of ‘if’, a careless fancy driving in all directions and thereby, rather than gen-
erating light, causing only muddle and confusion. Historical suppositions require
great caution and constitute a very delicate and compelling kind of historical analy-
sis. If they are used with reference to individual events (for instance, to military
7.7 Conclusion 215
events) instead of institutional and civilization forms and other important aspects, it
is necessary to accurately investigate the way the hypotheses reflect the existing
general conditions of development and civilization forms and the way they influ-
ence (and are influenced by) them. The hypothetical alternative historical develop-
ments expressed in the book edited by Cowley are rendered irrelevant by the absence
of such deepening consideration. The method of alternative hypotheses has been
completely discredited by ‘free suppositions’. The problem of the ‘lost opportu-
nity’ makes sense only if it is based on a solid and coherent method of analysis, able
to make evident the distinction between necessity and possibility and which, with
regard to the field of possibility, attributes a primary role to civilizations; moreover,
it is crucial to not ignore the constraints deriving from the general conditions of
development.
7.7 Conclusion
Political science and action have much to do with the question of power, its theoretical
explanation and legitimization. We have seen that various kinds of legitimization of
power have been proclaimed across history. Such exercises in legitimization mainly
have an ideological but not an objective substance. Democracy and universal suf-
frage appear to have an ideological content, even if functional to modern dynamic
societies, just as some other kinds of ideologies of power were appropriate to the
primitive or quasi-stationary societies of the past.
The objective explanation of power, that is, aimed at the scientific justification of
sovereignty, as well as treatment of the separation to the greatest degree possible of
function from domination, are far from being satisfactorily performed by political
science. The division of powers recommended by Montesquieu has proved largely
to be a division of domination-powers. In this regard, we have seen the failure, in
more or less explicit terms, of the most important political thinkers, starting from
Rousseau’s direct democracy and his notion of the ‘general will’, which express at
the best a weak idea and justification of sovereignty; through the more explicitly
observational view and attitude of G. Mosca and V. Pareto that led them to underline
the division, in political orders, between the nominal attribution of sovereignty and
its effective practice by the ruling class or elite; to Schmitt’s derisive attitude toward
the doctrine of the sovereignty of law and his declaration of the physiological arbi-
trariness of power.
We have seen that M. Weber’s analysis of politics and political power provides one
of the best examples of the theoretical confusion that reigns in this field. Weber’s well-
known distinction between the ethics of conviction and of responsibility clearly shows
some of the main methodological reasons for the confusion that derives from the rela-
tivist position on ethics and the related ideas of incommensurability and spontaneity
of vision. The most coherent study of political power, from a mere observational view,
has been provided by Niccolò Machiavelli, with his stimulating account of the
216 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
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218 7 Problems of Political Theory and Action
8.1 Introduction
The field of law clearly illustrates the great difference between natural and social
reality as primarily expressed by the fact that natural reality concerns being, while
social reality (as the product of humanity) mainly concerns doing. Law is the branch
of social thought that most explicitly concerns doing. But it cannot disregard being,
since such disregard would condemn the law to unrealism.
We have seen that inquiry into society does not possess a method that is able to
conjugate being and doing and to derive, from this conjugation, a science of the
organization of social systems. We shall see in this chapter that such a science is, in
particular, indispensable in the justification of normative activity, the clarification of
the foundations of law, the circumscribing and objectifying of the contents of
compulsion, and the attempt to separate, as much as possible, command-power
from free will and deceit. Moreover, we shall see that the distinction between
‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’ and the objective character of some fundamen-
tal values play a great importance also in the field of law.
Some of these aspects are present, with various combinations, in the main schools
of juridical thought: the doctrine of natural law, juridical positivism, the sociology
of law, and contractual theory. Unfortunately, juridical thought does not incline
toward convergence in this matter and, in fact, appears very fragmented: contraposi-
tions and differences tend to grow with some exceptions, for instance, Bobbio’s
analysis aimed at smoothing the distance between juridical positivism and the doc-
trine of natural law; an analysis that, however, reduces the clearness yielded by the
usual divergencies in the matter.1 Therefore, an attempt to clarify the situation seems
indispensable. To do that, we emphasize the main terms of the controversies and
show that a clarification requires some general and shared methodological rules. In
fact, a primary obstacle to clarification and to the discovery of convergence is the
methodological chaos that afflicts social thought.
1
(Bobbio 2011).
Our introductory remarks make evident that juridical order is perhaps the human
construction that points with the most clearness to the need for a science of the
organization of social systems. In the absence of this science, the foundation of law
will remain vague and equivocal; all that would be self-evident would be the need
for some system of compulsory laws in order to prevent chaos. But what a kind of
laws? What juridical order should be preferred? It is important that we provide
definite answers because failure to do so would make the law an open space to free
will, abuse and deceit.
In the field of law, the “barbarity” that is inflicted upon humanity by the absence
of a scientific method of inquiry into human society is particularly evident. Over
the course of time, people have tried to mask such barbarity through various and
sometimes quite acute and astute mystifications; but all such attempts have been
defective in that they have tried to cheat reason; they have lacked, that is to say, a
scientific and objective foundation. For the most part, attempts to justify juridical
systems have been based on the idea of order and justice; but the modern age has
gradually shifted the emphasis toward justice. This shift has generated growing
contradictions; in fact, while the idea of order expresses an evident necessity, the
notion of justice is practically impossible to define if we lack the capacity to scien-
tifically justify and explain some crucial ethical values.
The strongest attempts to eliminate the ambiguities have appealed to a transcen-
dent view: the prescriptions of faith. But, in the government of society, humanity is
not satisfied by such prescriptions if they contradict and violate the suggestions of
reason. Sooner or later, the work of reason succeeds in corroding even the most
venerated of those prescriptions of faith that contradict reason. And it is fortunate
8.2 The Speculation of the Doctrine of Natural Law… 221
that this happens, given that reason is a powerful tool that humanity possesses with
regard to our evolution and self-improvement. One of the most admirable aspects of
human life is represented by the fact that, to date, nothing has succeeded in suffocat-
ing reason; more precisely, suffocation has only occurred for limited periods of
time, notwithstanding the use of strong repressive means and astute deceits aimed at
justifying such suffocation or, alternatively, distortion of reason. If those mystifica-
tions had solidified, and sometimes this has indeed happened, the human condition
would have become vegetative. But creative and rational skills have, in the end,
prevailed. The work of the plurality of minds has always found the road of reason,
has gradually (sometimes with jumps and accelerations) revealed the main deceits
and errors, and has thus imparted a new energy to the evolutionary potentialities of
humanity. But, even today, it needs a great effort to find the road of reason (that is,
of science), mainly in the field of law.
The development of modern justice has been significantly marked by the specu-
lations of the doctrine of natural law and the arguments that have been opposed to
them, primarily with regard to the question of ethical values. The pretension that
law may be given a naturalist objectivity has generated various ambiguities and
misunderstandings. There exists an abyss between naturalist and juridical objectiv-
ity. In the generation of social reality, there is no automatic connection between
premises and consequences akin to the relation of cause and effect in the natural
world. This argument has been advanced in various forms by opponents of the doc-
trine of natural law. But the reproach is exaggerated, since the analyses performed
by such a doctrine are based much more on the questions of justice and doing than
on being i.e. natural laws. Unfortunately, the doctrine of natural law has not suc-
ceeded in establishing a scientific method of inquiry appropriate to the reality that it
considers. From the one side, jus naturalism has made too much use of the notion of
“natural laws” in its attempt to ground the objectivity of important values. This has
resulted in the error of identifying as “natural laws”, that is, laws that are valid for-
ever and everywhere, some rules typical of particular forms of civilization, and
consequently anthropologists and cultural relativists have made easy work of criti-
cizing jus naturalist doctrines. From the other side, an excessive inclination toward
“natural law” has led to the overlooking of the fact that, for the most part, social
reality is the work of humanity and that its analysis, in particular that of the general
conditions of development, allows us to deduce some laws no less objective than
natural ones, even if liable to change over historical ages, as our notion of functional
imperative clarifies.
These misunderstandings have induced scholars to express from one side some
untenable statements on objectivity of law and, from the other side, to omit some
important objective elements. Errors are very numerous: Aristotle’s statement on
the natural character of slavery is an important example; another is the central role
that Stoic ethics attributed to natural law on the basis of the idea of the repetition of
human vicissitudes; no less arbitrary was the naturalistic justification of the
Leviathan by Hobbes. Locke (and many of his followers) identified private property
as essential to freedom; but the Code of Nature of Morelly opposed this and asserted
the natural character of communism. All of these various assertions have been
222 8 The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism…
proved false, both by anthropology and by the comparative analyses of many of the
societies that have appeared over the course of history. At the same time, the objec-
tivity of a number of functional imperatives has been ignored, since they do not have
the features of natural rights.
It must be taken on board, however, that the doctrine of natural law contains an
important idea: the combination of being and doing, of reality and prescription. But
the way of methodologically expressing the combination remains unsolved. The
cause of the failure cannot be attributed to the ancient students of societies; it is due
rather to the naturalistic blindness of modern social thinkers. Indeed, notwithstand-
ing the fact that the naturalistic perspective seems appropriate in relation to the
quasi-stationary societies of the ancient world, ancient students of society were in
fact far less enthused with the naturalistic view than our modern scholars, who are
dazzled by the success of the natural sciences. This bedazzled view of the modern
scholar has proved a major obstacle to the elaboration of a proper analysis of doing.
The progressive acceleration, in the modern age, of technological progress and
hence social change has made the tension between the repetitive character of nature
and the growing evolutionary motion of human societies ever more clear, and
nowhere more so than in juridical studies. As is well known, the doctrine of natural
law tries to set out some principles that are valid forever. But this attempt may only
be referred to ontological imperatives and the effects of natural conditions on social
systems. In jus naturalist speculation, a number of notions and central problems in
the life of society are absent; for instance: the distinction between ‘necessity’ and
‘choice-possibility’, social change, an accurate deepening of the crucial method-
ological problem of combining being and doing, the historical objectivity of func-
tional imperatives.
These omissions and misunderstandings have determined various reactions to
the natural law doctrine. One such reaction has been an insistence on the historic
character of social events; but some more subtle and scientifically insidious reac-
tions have also been articulated; in particular, the supposed scientific obscurity of
ethical values, a doctrine that has given rise to ‘cultural and cognitive relativism’
and has supplied fuel to the reaction against the doctrine of natural law put forward
by ‘juridical positivism’, which readily demonstrated the numerous gaps of jus nat-
uralist thought. Unfortunately, the juridical positivist lesson is even more mislead-
ing and no less afflicted by gaps in its reasoning.
The most famous and acute exponent of juridical positivism is Hans Kelsen. His
juridical work is versatile. We do not consider here Kelsen’s investigation of demo-
cratic values, which, it must be said, does not represent the most original part of this
author’s intellectual production. Kelsen’s contraposition of juridical positivism to
the doctrine of natural law is much more important for our purpose. In fact, notwith-
standing Kelsen’s exaggerations – and perhaps through them – his contraposition
will prove helpful in the understanding of these two lines of research. A good
instance of this is Kelsen’s insistence on the non-compulsory content of natural law
and the anarchistic character of right without the state, which he opposes to positive
right as part of the state: “All the attempts of separating right and state, of defining
state and right as two different entities, the whole dualism between right and state in
8.2 The Speculation of the Doctrine of Natural Law… 223
its various performances, have, in their most profound sense and final ends, a jus
naturalist origin”.2 In effect, the ambiguity of the jus naturalist lesson on command-
power is evident, and Kelsen expresses a useful exaggeration by stating that “all the
tendencies directed to deprive right of the compulsory moment lead to the erasing
of the difference between positive and natural law”.3 This argument is intended to
underline the claim that non-compulsion is a basic characteristic of the doctrine of
natural law, a characteristic that Kelsen sees as a sort of degeneration. Another
exaggeration, coherent with that just considered, is Kelsen’s statement that, accord-
ing to natural law, the consequences are pushed by an internal necessity and as a
causal, i.e. natural, necessity; that is, as a necessary not a guiding duty.
The important point to be emphasized is that the underlining of the ambiguities
of natural law considered above express, by contrast, the following most disquieting
aspect of juridical positivism, protected and strengthened by the inspiration of this
school of thought of cultural relativism: the correct insistence, in principle, of jurid-
ical positivism on command-power, compulsion and, in sum, on the compulsory
character of institutional order, represents in effect a complete openness to free
will, abuse and oppression. Law is considered as the product of human will and, as
such, to have nothing to do with the question of justice. The positive juridical sys-
tem is, simply considered, a “system of compulsory laws”; this mere guiding char-
acter of law is opposed to the value-ideological aspect, and the exclusion of the last
is considered a merit. It may be useful to note that this derisive attitude to ethical
values, typical of positivism, is a consequence of the idea of the subjectivity and
non-scientific character of ethical values, which has become both a venerated and a
tragic symbol of the modern age.
Yet the roots of this relativist misunderstanding go deep into the past; as we shall
soon see, they are present in the same Enlightenment social thought, notwithstand-
ing its thirst for justice and objectivity. Here it is sufficient to underline that a basic
character of juridical positivism is the exclusion from its logical structure of values
and its identification with mere compulsion, thereby abstracting from the content of
command. Command is considered as a mere act of free will, that is, a will simply
legitimated by the possessors of the means to impose commands. Here we can see a
jump from jus naturalist ingenuous illusions on the non-necessity of compulsion to
a kind of dark worship of compulsion, to a notion of law only based on force, to the
denial of the possibility of finding objective foundations of law and the scientific
character of juridical production; the scientific nature of this is referred only to
mere logical formalism concerning the coherence of the juridical system.
It must be said that the most worthy part of Kelsen’s inquiry is the formal aspect,
that is, that which concerns the coherent organization of the juridical order. But we
know that the formal abstract method of rationality is appropriate to logical-formal
sciences, not to social ones. Kelsen is an inflexible follower of the Weberian doc-
trine that excludes ethical values from scientific inquiry and takes advantage of
2
(Kelsen 1994), p. 126.
3
Ibidem, p. 124.
224 8 The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism…
formalism to apply this doctrine, cleverly hiding the important place of free will
within his juridical building.
Juridical positivism is indeed one of the most dangerous absurdities that the
doctrine of cultural relativism has produced; it opposes the justification of free will
to the impotent and sweet ingenuousness of the doctrine of natural law. Both schools
of thought are completely mistaken on the problem of command-power. The separa-
tion of doing from being and the denial of the objectivity of some important ethical
values are senseless. Under this aspect, jus naturalism is better founded than posi-
tivism; yet the jus naturalist inclination to erase command-power (on which juridi-
cal positivism insists) cannot be shared.
The difficulties of Kelsen’s formalism become quite evident when we turn to his
notion of the ‘fundamental rule’ that would authorize the production of laws and
install the supreme juridical authority. That rule is taken as a merely nominalistic
postulate, “without foundation and possibility of foundation”. According to Kelsen:
“Every attempt to overcome the hypothetic-relative foundation of positive right,
that is, to come from a fundamental rule of a hypothetical nature, to an absolute one
justifying the validity of positive right, means the intrusion of metaphysics in the
field of science”.4 But such an intrusion is not necessary indeed. It is possible to
establish an objective foundation of right on our scientific notions of functional and
ontological imperatives and, more in general, on what we call social and cultural
objectivism. This allows avoiding the fiction of fundamental rule that, in conjunc-
tion with the emphasis on command-power, entails the celebration of mere force, the
legitimization on purely formal bases (i.e. hypothetical and nominalistic ones) of
free will and, hence, even of the worst tyrannies – which, in fact, proliferated during
Kelsen’s century.
Positivist reference to the compulsion of law justifies the openness of the juridi-
cal order to free will and tyranny, e.g. the “law of the courts of justice”, that is, the
application of laws to concrete cases. Of course, it is impossible to do without
judges; but if we intend their work as juridical positivism does, that is as a mere
form of imperium, it becomes a source of abuses. Kelsen writes: if a judge “has
stated that something had been stipulated by a contract while only some non com-
pelling negotiations had been performed…it has been created law, that is, positive
law”.5 The positivist notion of law, as based on command-power intended as a
mere act of imperium and as an ostentatious show of mere force, hence as an act of
free will, eludes the important problem of how to limit as much as possible the free
will of the judging power.
N. Bobbio has attempted to reduce the distance between juridical positivism and
jus naturalism in various ways; he maintains that juridical positivism does not nec-
essarily imply ethical relativism, but he recognizes that, for the most part, juridical
positivists are indeed ethical relativists. A criticism leveled by L. Ferrajoli usefully
clarifies the question. Ferrajoli writes: “The old dilemma and conflict between jus
naturalism and juridical positivism, between justice and validity, reason and will has
4
(Kelsen 1963), p. 403.
5
(Kelsen 1994), p. 140.
8.3 Contractualism and the Ambiguities of Enlightenment Thought 225
6
Preface to (Bobbio 2011), p. XVIII.
226 8 The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism…
words, if we find some objective elements on which the generality of citizens are
interested in finding agreement. Unfortunately, Rousseau’s notion of ‘general will’
is shot through with ambiguities, at least if we limit ourselves to an appeal to jus
naturalist objectivity this being, as just seen, inherently ambiguous and even contra-
dictory. It is not the case that the strongest and clearest justification of despotism
was given by the jus naturalist Hobbes, who expressed a notion of power similar to
that of juridical positivism without the expedient with which positivist despotism
tries to mask itself; in fact, Hobbes does not need the positivist stratagem repre-
sented by the ‘fundamental rule’, he simply appeals to Leviathan. To avoid these jus
naturalist ambiguities and, in particular, get an objectively found ‘general will’, we
require the notion of ‘necessity’ in the organization of social systems and, more
particularly, the notions of functional imperatives and ontological imperatives.
Enlightenment thought, notwithstanding its sensitivity to justice, natural law and
ethics, added, to the gaps in the doctrine of natural law, some further and decisive
misunderstandings that threw up more obstacles in the path toward a better specifi-
cation of the contractualist approach. In particular, Enlightenment thought,
enthralled as it was by the success of observational method in natural sciences, did
not prepare efficacious remedies to the exclusion, implied by that method, of both
ethical values and doing from scientific inquiry us relativism maintains; it disre-
garded the systematic combination of being and doing. Kant himself had no doubts
on the separation of being from doing, as is shown by his pretension to deduce ethi-
cal prescriptions from aprioristic assumptions that abstract from reality.
Montaigne’s Essays had anticipated modern relativism, aiming to stimulate tol-
erance in an age of religious wars. He underlined that a culture (a nation) considers
an issue from a view point… another culture from another view point (qui est vérité
en deça et mensogne au-dela’). Much earlier, the speculation of the Sceptics had
expressed more radically similar principles, which nevertheless remained only a
secondary aspect of Greek philosophy and an expression of its predilection for sen-
sational. The modern notion of relativism has been of concern, in an equivocal way,
also to Enlightenment thought. The Enlightenment was quite ambiguous in regard
to social thought: it exalted reason but was methodologically unable to properly use
it; in addition, it refused to admit the historical character of social process. Such a
cultural climate provided the nineteenth-century historicist reaction to Enlightenment
with abundant ammunition, thereby fostering the consolidation of the hegemony
and weapons of cultural relativism.
All of these factors constituted a bar to any substantial scientific progress with
respect to the ‘juridical absolutism’ of ancient closed societies, that is, the legitimi-
zation of juridical authority through faith and the idea of the shared nature of
power. Recent resurrections of contractualism, for instance in Rawls’ inquiry,7
have refined its contents but, in the end, have not solved, except with regard to
marginal aspects, the problem of the objectivity of the social contract. In fact,
Rawls does not specify the objective elements implied by his famous principles of
justice; rather, he mixes them with civilization-choices, and this in spite of the fact
7
(Rawls 1971).
8.4 Some Meaningful Perplexities Concerning the Foundations and Role of Law… 227
that these do not represent properly objective elements; all of which has lent
support to R. Nozick’s criticisms of Rawls’ contractualism, particularly of his so
called ‘difference principle’.8 As is well known, such a principle conjugates pro-
ductive efficiency and distributive justice. But, in the absence of any notion of
functional imperative and a subsequent demonstration that the principle of differ-
ence corresponds to such a notion, Nozick’s justification of the complaints of peo-
ple damaged by redistributive policies is irreproachable. Every ethical formulation
can be reversed if it is not proved as a functional or ontological imperative.
The foundations of law have never appeared as fragile as in the present age. This
fragility tends to grow with the consciousness and evidence of the methodological
confusion afflicting social thought and the growing mutability of the present world,
which have greatly weakened ancient convictions and previously firm reference
points.
In a university lecture, Natalino Irti underlined the nihilist implications of the
present state of juridical knowledge. He deplored the disappearance of “the tradi-
tional sense of law” and the increasingly contingent character of law, which has
been deprived of solid foundations and, as so reduced, has become more and more
arbitrary. Irti insisted on the growing randomness of the activity of ruling, the mul-
tiplication of the sources of law, the frenzy of juridical production, and he advised
that “the maximum degree of formalism of procedure corresponds the maximum
degree of nihilism of contents”.9 Irti argues that, to find a remedy for the weakness
of juridical construction and the annihilation of its foundations, we need to substi-
tute tradition for the dominance of the present and the future. But the proposed
remedy is impossible; its implementation would require us to return to the well-
rooted customs, habits and expectations of ancient stationary societies.
Some decades ago, and under the influence of the growing turbulence of modern
societies, Ortega y Gasset expressed an almost identical position.10 He based his
reflections and suggestions on the exigency of stability of law, which he saw as
opposed, both to the current inclination toward a continuous reform of juridical
order, and to the uncertainty caused by right without duration. Ortega underlines
that right should be an absolutely certain and solid reference point for humanity. It
must not be shaken and undermined by ideological controversies over ethical values
and should be, as in Roman times, inflexible, inescapable, stable as right; not right
8
(Nozick 2000).
9
(Irti 2005).
10
(Ortega y Gasset 1994).
228 8 The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism…
legitimated as just. The ‘legitimacy’ of law should derive from its consolidation and
absorption within the collective conscience. According to Ortega y Gasset, the idea
of justice and the consequent reformist aspirations of the modern world deeply
wound the role and mission of law.
But again, this idea of right might have been suitable for the quasi-stationary
societies of the past, but is not appropriate to modern dynamic societies.11 It is con-
sistent with the role that Ortega attributes to historic reality, but contrasts with the
central role that he attributes to non-repetitive motion. If the legitimacy of law is
considered to depend on general consent and on the strength of tradition, it must be
concluded, on the basis of Ortega’s theory of crisis, that such legitimacy is doomed
to dramatically cease as the very moment that it is about to be realized. In fact,
according to Ortega, humanity (modern humanity) does not tolerate the totalizing
and suffocating action of tradition and civilization; he shakes them off as soon as
they become too pervading. This means that in Ortega’s world illegitimacy would
tend to dominate the scene. Such contradiction may be eliminated only by stating,
with the help of social sciences, a different formulation of the notions of power and
legitimacy. These sciences, as we know, allow the definition of two forms of power:
‘function (or service) power’ and ‘domination-power’. The first refers to the fulfil-
ment of some functions and roles that correspond to strict exigencies of organiza-
tional rationality. The occasional command that primitive societies attributed in
emergency situations to persons with special capacities represents a function-power.
While Ortega’s legitimacy, i.e. the practice of power as such, as a mere result of
tradition and an expression of the existing civilization, is a domination-power, inde-
pendently of the degree of consent that it enjoys. In fact, and as Ortega well knows,
human masses suffer submission to civilizations much more readily and frequently
than they build them; the dominating classes may manipulate collective sentiments
to a considerable degree. Ortega knows well that consent may be a result of being
accustomed to given situations and that the attitudes of humanity can be widely
transformed. But when he discusses power, Ortega forgets all that and founds the
notion of legitimacy on habit and consent.
A clear and general consent may be based only on ‘necessity’, on what is imposed
by mere exigencies of organizational rationality, on functional imperatives; what
remains (i.e. the aspect of choice) concerns the field of conflict and implies contrasts
and mediations. The notion that expresses ‘necessity’ with particular strength, that
is, the notion of functional imperatives (those general principles of social organiza-
tion and obliged tracks of the motion process) and the notion of ontological impera-
tives, imply some basic and necessary structures of juridical order that are endowed
with authentic legitimacy and long duration, on which a clear, general and con-
scious consent may grow and social harmony coagulate.
Nobody can reasonably think of freezing modern dynamic societies in the name
of the immutability of right and Ortega’s legitimacy. The Sharja was a very advanced
law more than 1,000 years ago; today it is, in some aspects, a paralyzing inheritance
for the Islamic world. Only a conception of right founded, so to speak, on the
11
In fact, Ortega’s notion of right was derived from his study of the Roman imperial state.
8.4 Some Meaningful Perplexities Concerning the Foundations and Role of Law… 229
teaching of social science can marry clearness, stability and the inexorability of law
to the inevitable evolution of juridical norms. The frenetic and crazy reformism that
Ortega dreads and that he attributes to the idea of justice is a product of lacunas in
the social sciences, in particular the inability of distinguishing necessity from
choice-possibility.
Ortega’s rejection of Roman imperial power, considered an “atrocious tinsel of
improvised public power deprived of consecration and absolutely illegitimate”,12 is
a coherent response to his absorption of juridical reasoning into historical observa-
tion and tradition. The judgment would be different if one thinks that Roman Empire
of Augustus was the result of the advent of (inevitable) functional exigencies and
that Augustus’ institutional work represented an unrivalled example of the organi-
zational structuring of a state menaced by disintegration. During the long period of
the Augustus’s rule, such a character of imperial organization warranted acceptation
and a diffused consent that, among other things, permitted a significant reduction in
the presence of the army across the provinces of the Empire. This is much more than
Ortega’s legitimacy: it is the best consecration that power can receive. Augustus’s
organization was much more than some ‘atrocious tinsel’; from the first, it received
a great functional consecration by its success. When it started to achieve, during the
long phase of organizational restructuring, a kind of legitimacy in Ortega’s sense, it
lost its life blood and, subsequently, precipitated an irremediable crisis in the third
century A.C.
In the celebration of the 40 years of the work “Leggi d’Italia”, G. Zagrebelsky
has delineated an analysis centred on the contraposition ‘legality-legitimacy’, that
is, an opposition between law as a mere expression of command-power (which
might be the most despotic of powers) and right as expression of the common
feeling and culture of society. Zagrebelsky uses Creon and Antigon’s dramatis
personae, in the well known tragedy by Sophocles, to delineate his thesis: Creon,
armed with his despotic power, denies burial to Polinice on the grounds that he was
a traitor, while Antigon, challenging power in the name of tradition, attempts the
burial of her brother, Polinice. Zagrebelsky maintains that the antidote to the tyr-
anny of laws as expression of power would consist in the inspiration of constitutions
to tradition and common feeling. This reasoning shows a resemblance to the notion
of common law and to Ferrero’s solution to the problem of power, that is, the placing
of the foundation of power on “some rules accepted without discussion by people
that must obey”. But Zagrebelsky’s reasoning is not convincing. In the history of
humanity, nothing has been more accepted and taken for granted than the order of
caste and the slavery found in despotic Eastern empires and civilizations. Moreover,
unlike in Antigon’s time, in modern societies even the most profound feelings may
strongly differ between brothers and sisters; and such feelings, in addition, may be
significantly manipulated by mass media. In these conditions, the notion of law
based on common feelings is ephemeral and totally deprived of any scientific char-
acter. The only possible solution of the problem that Zagrebelsky delineates seems
to consist in the notion of ontological imperatives and in the organizational and
12
(Ortega y Gasset, ibidem, 1994), p. 244.
230 8 The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism…
ideological forms and relations imposed by the level of the general conditions of
development (functional imperatives). In fact, if these imperatives are well known,
the production of laws is obliged to respect them, otherwise there is abuse. This
opens the door to the previously discussed notion of service-power, as opposed to
the phenomenon of domination-power.
At this point, it remains to briefly delineate some aspects and procedure useful for
the building of a theory aimed at explaining the foundations of right and to outline
some fundamental aspects of juridical production. Our proposed method of social
thought would seem to offer a useful tool for this purpose. The developments that
will follow are strictly connected to the previous critical analysis. We shall try to
link the aspects of some of the main theories of right and, with the help of some
further development, will attempt to yield a general theoretical structure that allows
us to make some progress with respect to the present situation.
Three aspects of juridical thought appear to have a great importance: the combi-
nation of both being and doing that, even if in a non-equilibrated form, an honest
interpretation of the doctrine of natural law must recognize in this doctrine; the
notion of command-power emphasized by juridical positivism; the notions of the
social contract and the general will. There exist important links between jus natural-
ism and contractualism with reference to the combination of being and doing and
also to the objectivity of juridical phenomena; but, as previously seen, discussions
of these themes are marred by many inconsistencies which, in turn, are generated by
methodological lacunas. However the above schools, when they come to the prob-
lem of command-power, show remarkable divergences and reveal some basic ana-
lytical gaps.
We have referred in Chap. 1 to the scission of being and doing implied by the
supposed ‘Hume principle’, which has been derived from the method of natural
sciences far too readily been adopted by social thought. This scission has pene-
trated natural law. But it would be exaggerated to think that jus naturalist thought
has fully and unambiguously accepted the scission. In fact, doing preserves an
important role in jus naturalist thought, as its elimination is inconsistent with the
treatment of juridical problems. So the insisted reference of jus naturalism to
nature automatically implies the conjugation of being and doing. But, as previ-
ously seen, this conjunction has been specified in the absence of a method able to
clarify its terms, to make coherent the effort of giving objectivity to norms and
allowing a rigorous distinction between objective and subjective elements, neces-
sity and choice-possibility.
Chapter 2 has shown the two analytical tools that are able to carry out the combi-
nation of being and doing, that is: ‘realistic postulates’ and the criterion of ‘organiza-
tional rationality’. Realistic postulates concern being and, through value-ideological
8.5 Juridical Objectivism. On the Scientific Explanation and Justification… 231
options, also some aspects of doing, while organizational rationality concerns doing
and social construction. Well, the procedure used for deducing, from realistic postu-
lates, the organizational forms of the social system, offers a useful way to scientifi-
cally investigate the foundation and content of juridical building.
More precisely, and primarily by way of the rules that are directed to the capture
of profitable and meaningful realistic postulates, our method of combining being
and doing allows some useful development of the objective or subjective character
of juridical production. That is, it allows us to refer this production to the side of
‘necessity’ or, instead, ‘choice-possibility’ in the organization of social systems,
and hence also to perform a scientific analysis of values.
Another important notion that allows us to explain juridical production and
important objective aspects of such production is that of ‘ontological imperatives’.
Hypothetical realistic postulates, by contrast, will imply a juridical production hav-
ing subjective character; that is, concerning choice-possibility and hence implying
conflict, political mediation and procedures of popular consultation with the con-
nected problems. But the dimensions of conflicts are reduced by the fact that the
most important choices, that is, the grand options, are well rooted. However, the
change imposed upon them by the advent of new general conditions of development
may be a traumatic event; yet this trauma can be reduced by shortening as much as
possible the distance of the new grand options from the old ones.
The crucial point is that the pillars of the social system (primarily, functional and
ontological imperatives) can be objectively codified by following the suggestions of
reason and science. This is also true with reference to the coherence of the whole
juridical system and the logical consequences of the accomplished choices, just as
is suggested by Kelsen’s formalism. It is important to understand and take seriously
that the objective aspects underlined above have, for a large part, an evolutionary
and historical character; that is, they do not represent natural laws. This means that
the doctrine of natural law offers an incomplete and often misleading treatment of
the objectivity of norms.
The above development also offers some possibility of making contractualism
objective. The idea of the social contract is not a purely abstract one. In fact, it is
possible, according to our method, to express in objective terms the content of the
social contract. This enables us to give substance to Rousseau’s notion of ‘general
will’, and hence to express it in a form corresponding to the interest of all citizens.
Ontological and functional imperatives indicate organizational forms of general
interest and, hence, the meeting of the general will. With reference to them, there is
no need for citizen to vote the terms of the contract, these being specified by reason
and science.
The reconciliation of individual freedom and social order, the great obstacle that
Rousseau intended to surmount, is indeed a false problem. The notion of absolute
individual freedom does not make sense; individual freedom is important and also a
necessary part in the promoting of human evolutionary potential; as such, it neces-
sitates being regulated and subjected to responsibility. Human freedom is always
limited by the limitations that afflict human nature. As a matter of fact, there is no
need of the idea of the social contract in order to justify the juridical system; the
232 8 The Foundations of Law: Juridical Objectivism Versus Jus Naturalism…
only thing needed is the objectivity of law, that is, organizational principles based
on science. Nevertheless, the contractualist idea, if founded on an objective basis,
can be a useful fiction that provides better foundations to the explanation of the
reason of law and command-power that is an alternative to, for example, the nomi-
nalistic hypothetical idea of ‘fundamental norm’ as set out by juridical positivism.
This leads to consider the other great problem typical of juridical order, which is
emphasized by juridical positivism: compulsion and the related command-power.
This school of thought has the merit of strongly underlining the difference between
social and natural reality. But it accentuates doing to the detriment of being. It is
evident that juridical order cannot do without command-power and compulsion
(also, with reference to “necessary” rules). In fact, what is objectively true, or useful
to society, may not be useful to the individual, who is mainly sensitive to the accom-
plishment of his particular interests. It is this that determines the need for
compulsion.
But the problem of command-power is not exhausted by the justification of com-
pulsion. The free will implicit in command-power is a troubling and difficult ele-
ment in the analysis of power. The (positivist) idea of power as mere domination is
unacceptable. It is important, let us repeat, to distinguish power as mere free will,
which can be defined in terms of domination-power, and power overtopped by clear
responsibilities and practiced as service, i.e. power in the fulfilment of some precise
functions. The possibility of freeing humanity from oppression depends upon our
scientific ability to delineate such a distinction in relation to command-power, so as
to reduce as much as possible the area of free will to the advantage of that of service.
Our methodological proposal offers precisely the possibility of delineating that dis-
tinction and the responsibility for the functions carried out. This reduces free will to
the discretion requested by the efficient fulfilment of functions. What contradicts
‘necessity’ and agreement on choice goes beyond service (functional)-power and
represents domination-power.
The contractualist idea makes sense only if it is intended as a way to express
agreement on what reason suggests. But the true foundation of right consists in the
prescription of a science of the organization of social systems. This may be called
juridical objectivism and it seems to represent the frontier of right. In the absence
of such objectivism, humanity will continue to live in a world of abuse and what
might be called a forge of degradation, in which we are all too often forced to
deceive in order to avoid being deceived and to accept abuses of power in order to
survive. It must not be forgotten that the predominance of abuse in the government
of human societies represents one of the main obstacles to the ethical improvement
of human beings.
We may further clarify these propositions by considering the application of jurid-
ical norms by the courts of justice. The administration of injustice in the name of
justice is one of the major wounds and hypocrisies of our age. The defense of society
from the free will of judges is one of the main problems of modern democracies.
Judges are men among men and hence are not automatically inclined to rectitude.
The problem is to force them to judge with rectitude, in a world in which growing
social change offers the possibility of interpreting norms and situations in a variety
References 233
of ways. The pretension of solving the problem of the sovereignty of law and
warranting the objectiveness of juridical order through the division of powers and
the independence of magistracy is mistaken. The independence of judges is indis-
pensable to avoid that they are forced to judge according to the will of overriding
powers. But the abuses perpetrated by independent men are not better than those
carried out owing to the instigation of an overriding power. Unfortunately, a conse-
quence of cultural relativism and the acceptance of free will is the acceptance of the
free will of judges and the conviction that is but a physiological fact.
In modern dynamic societies, the free will of judges has a very large room to oper-
ate, and tends to grow not only with social change but also as a consequence of
electoral democracy, since both these two elements stimulate a dispersion of juridical
production. The consequent legislative chaos is reinforced by the connected jurispru-
dential chaos, thus providing magistrates with the possibility of deciding as they
want, simply by taking, in the matter considered, at one time one law or jurispruden-
tial interpretation and at another time a completely different one. The challenge of
rectifying such degeneration should be a main goal of juridical objectivism.
8.6 Conclusion
Irti, Ortega and Zagrebelsky’s perplexities concerning the degeneration of right, the
notion of justice and juridical nihilism are fully justified. The uncontrolled power of
judges, constituting a major aspect of the practice of power, constitutes a great factor
of discomfort. Unfortunately, modern dynamic societies, which are continuously
overturned by social change, cannot remedy such degeneration by way of reference
to tradition, habit and common law, i.e. following an observational view. If we are to
be able to oppose this degeneration, it is indispensable that juridical objectivism is a
substitute both for juridical positivism, with its relativistic content, and for the doc-
trine of natural law, with its naturalistic content. It is important to form a clear and if
possible also a scientific notion of the institutional pillars that society needs, so that
it becomes possible to make an objective, coherent and stringent juridical produc-
tion. Juridical objectivism represents the road that will lead humanity to specify the
limitations of power, to break the free will of judges and politicians, to clearly define
responsibilities, to impede legislative and jurisprudential chaos and to substitute, as
much as is possible, objectivity for subjectivity in juridical production.
References
9.1 Introduction
This chapter is concerned with some of the more outstanding discussions of method
that have been advanced within sociology. In particular, it dedicates much space
to Boudon’s attempt to extract an objective theory of ethical values from Weber’s
relativist teaching; an attempt that brings to light some pertinent drawbacks and
contradictions of sociological thought.
We share Boudon’s firm belief in the necessity of correcting the doctrine of ethical
relativism; but it seems to us that he attempts to achieve this goal by means of inade-
quate methodological tools that, in fact, lead to an exaggeration on ethical values in an
opposite manner to ethical relativism.1 We also agree with both Boudon and Weber as
to the great importance of rational processes and the role of the individual; but we shall
see, however, that in the absence of a fundamental revision in the method of social
thought, rationalization remains an ambiguous and generic notion. Subsequent to this
discussion we shall attempt to clarify just how the method that we propose actually
helps the treatment of some major questions that are typical of sociological thought.
A key limitation mars Boudon’s effort to specify objective values. This limitation
arises because he attempts to specify objective values on the basis of the observation of
existing reality, thereby expelling ‘doing’ from the analysis; expelling, that is to say, the
guiding aspect and hence the true substance of the ethical side of reality. In what follows
we dedicate much space to Boudon’s theory of the fundamental mechanisms of social
evolution,2 which provides an important example of the fact that even some of the most
acute treatments of social thought are condemned, by methodological shortcomings, to
a substantial vagueness. We shall attempt to make evident that our method allows
for the clarification of some limitations of Boudon and Weber’s theory on ethics and,
furthermore, contributes to opening the road to a more fecund analytical perspective.
1
(Boudon 2004a), pp. 7–40.
2
(Boudon 2005b), and (2004b).
3
(Boudon 2004a), p. 21.
4
Ibidem, p. 23.
5
It may be useful to note that this cognitivism is something different from causal cognition that
according R Viale is concerning “perceptions of causality that are not affected by previous
experience” but are a priori with respect to this, probably as an effect of the evolution of human
mind by selection (Viale 1999).
6
The term observational is here not limited to positivism and neo-positivism; for instance,
evolutionary thought also has an observational standard.
9.2 Reasons for Dissent from Boudon-Weber’s Cognitive Method… 237
7
As we know, the importance Pareto attributes to meta-rational or irrational behaviour pushed him
(in his Treatise on general sociology) to propose the notions of residuals and derivations for the
analysis of social phenomena.
238 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
position by the role of postulates. The theories deduced will remain valid so long as
the realistic postulates continue to operate, and the fecundity of the theories depends
on the fecundity of those postulates.
We have seen in Chap. 2 that some fundamental and enduringly realistic
postulates can be selected on the basis of the general conditions of development
typical of each historic age. From these postulates and on the basis of the principle
of rationality and the efficiency of social systems, some general principles concern-
ing the organization of human societies can be deduced, i.e. some organizational
forms that, for reasons of organizational efficiency and coherence, are required
by the historic age under consideration. However, these forms may not be fulfilled
in the considered age. But the violation of rationality and efficiency implied by their
absence will negatively affect the society in question, to the advantage of societies
that better approximate the existence of such forms. This will imply gravitation
toward those organizational forms, sometimes through very torturous processes
of trial and error (Weber’s ‘diffuse rationality’). The fault of Weber’s method is that
it limits itself to ‘ascertaining’ the fact of such a troublesome rationalization
process, instead of trying to precede it through a scientific identification of those
organizational forms.
The observational approach confines itself to the examination of what happens,
rather than to the attempt to reduce as much as possible, through a priori analyses,
the dimensions of the errors accompanying trials. Such a reduction is a main
concern of our method which, therefore, is more stringent from a rationalist point of
view and, as a consequence, is able to challenge Weber’s strong observational
method of the excluded middle, the non-exclusion of which Boudon repeatedly
appeals for, as a consequence of the weak rationality typical of his spontaneity-
observational method. The rational standard of the method we propose does not
imply the ‘rational idiot’ (who Boudon mocks) since our method does not have a
behavioural character. In sum, our method is strongly based on reality (that is, on
realist postulates) but, at the same time, it makes an effort to amplify the role of
reason with respect to the method of social observation.
Of course, the limitation of human skill obliges us in any case to have recourse
to trial and error procedure, even in science, the primary effort of social science to
reduce such obligations notwithstanding.
We can see that the rational standard of our proposed method lies between that
of the logical-formal and that of the natural sciences.
It may be useful to see the way our proposal concerning method allows us to solve
some problems in the face of which, despite his reliance upon the observational
procedure, Boudon is subjected to embarrassing scientific limitations and even
forced to accept cognitive relativism, his objectivist struggle notwithstanding.
9.3 Further Clarifications on Some Methodological Aspects Considered by Boudon 239
We shall consider, to begin with, the content of two e mails that Boudon addressed
to us. He writes:
I have only a little objection to the paradigm you propose. If I well understand, this would
attribute to knowledge a power that it neither seems to have in reality, nor to have ever
claimed to have. Knowledge is obliged to advance progressively, step by step. It collides
with a lot of interests and other historical forces. Tocqueville represents this well when he
evokes the “future as an illuminated and honest judge, but always arriving too late”; in the
long run, a settling takes place that helps achieve good sense. We may facilitate this process
through our criticism, but it is mistaken to hope to achieve such an aim directly. The magic
spirit of Australian primitives does not operate differently from that of modern Western
scholars; but it ignores the laws of the transformation of energy that Western thought
discovered after many centuries. At any rate, I completely agree with your diagnosis on
social sciences.
And later:
It has been proved after the 18th century that the division of powers is a good thing.
Nevertheless it remains unaccomplished in France. It is an essential task of the social
sciences to explain the reason why the truth is not recognised and in this way to increase the
possibility that it is. The most important sociologists, for instance Tocqueville and Weber,
have fully understood this point. The problem of “useless knowledge” is central in
Tocqueville (a point that I discuss in my book entitled “Tocqueville today”).
We can see that Boudon limits himself to one small, yet evidently significant,
unexplained objection to my ‘paradigm’: “this would attribute to knowledge a
power that it neither seems to have in reality, nor to have ever claimed”. If I understand
properly, its meaning is that I have an illusory idea of the power of reason that goes
beyond the claims of Enlightenment philosophy. But the contrary is true.
I agree that knowledge can only proceed “progressively, step by step”, that it
“collides with a lot of interests and other historical forces” and that we can contribute,
through criticism, to facilitating this process; but “it is mistaken to hope to achieve
such an aim directly”. However, I think that some appropriate methodological rules
can contribute very much to both understanding and facilitating social processes.
More particularly, some rules distinguishing ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-possibility’ in
the organisation of social systems seem indispensable. Of course, choice-possibility
implies conflicts and mediations. But the many tragic vicissitudes of the contemporary
and non-contemporary world would have been avoided if social science had
clarified that modern societies need decentralisation and the market, the division of
powers and democracy.
I agree that “in the long run,” (very long, indeed) “a decanting takes place that
goes toward good sense”. But it is my opinion that social science tramples on its
own role if it limits itself to waiting and merely observing the settlement. I think that
reason must help good sense. History shows some impressive failures of good sense
and some very injurious mystifications with regard to social problems. Humanity,
therefore, cannot limit itself to waiting for a future that is an “illuminated and honest
judge” of our foolishness. It is our duty (and interest) to learn the way to reduce
the number and dimensions of our mistakes or even foolishnesses. The notion of
‘diffuse rationality’, underneath Boudon’s ‘decanting’, has a Darwinian standard.
240 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
Let us remember B. Russell’s objection to the use in ethics of the evolutionary idea
of the survival of the fittest: “natural process is irrelevant in deciding on what is
good or evil”.8
Boudon says that “the magic spirit of Australian primitives does not operate
differently from that of scholars”. But there is a difference between the two: scien-
tific procedure must follow some methodological rules showing the reliability of the
proposed theories (commensurability). Western scientific discoveries are the result
of Bacon and Galileo’s method: enchantment and naturalistic essentialism would
never have discovered “the laws of the transformation of energy”. The true problem
of social science concerns the measure of the explanatory power of theories, which
is necessary for their evaluation and to the cumulativeness of knowledge. Worse
than enchantment is the large volume of production by modern students of
incommensurable social theories (and the worst of it is that they are intended to
be incommensurable); it has reduced social thought to a Tower of Babel. This point
will be more extensively treated soon.
The division of powers is obstructed by important equivocations as to the notion
of power. Boudon says that “it is an essential task of the social sciences to explain
the reason why the truth is not recognised and in this way to increase the possibility
that it is”. Well, such an explanation needs commensurability (a weak criterion of
demarcation between science and non-science).
The phenomenon of “useless knowledge” is also present in the sciences of nature
and will never be completely defeated. But in social thought it assumes very acute
and diffuse forms, owing to the extreme methodological confusion afflicting it.
Boudon limits himself to trust in the “settlement” that would take place in the very
long run through good sense. But good sense is not science. Boudon’s position
implies the complete acceptance of the phenomenon of useless knowledge and the
resurrection of older true proposals (if they are not completely lost) only in the very
long run, through tormented vicissitudes and sometimes when the evolution of the
general conditions of development has negated the usefulness of those proposals.
Durkheim, Tocqueville and Weber are very important sociologists, but they lived
in a time that will be remembered as the prehistory of sociological thought. I think
that, instead of insisting on their contributions, it would behove us to meditate on
the analytical lacunas in their thought. At any rate, confrontation among scholars is
useless and substantially impossible if they elude the question of commensurability.
We can see, therefore, that Boudon’s fence-sitting objectivism escapes, through
the evocation of common sense and the diffuse rationality operating in the very long
run, the definition of methodological rules that warrant the scientific and cumulative
character of social thought. Boudon underlines the failure of epistemology in defining
a ‘demarcation’ line between science and non-science. This is a question that
concern mainly knowledge of nature; such difficulties do not arise in logical-formal
sciences: there is no doubt that 2 + 2 = 4. The ‘demarcation’ difficulty is not considerable
in the method we propose, this being half way between natural and logical-formal
sciences; the difficulty mainly refers to the way of selecting realistic postulates.
8
(Russell 1981), p. 36.
9.3 Further Clarifications on Some Methodological Aspects Considered by Boudon 241
With reference to the long run, Boudon settles the demarcation problem by
invoking ‘diffuse rationality’. But the demarcation problem, to which epistemologists
dedicate great attention, does not actually represent a real problem. Much more
important, from a scientific point of view, is that commensurability that warrants the
cumulativeness of knowledge. Cumulativeness needs a reliable principle of selec-
tion, i.e., the weak demarcation standard as implied by commensurability. If we are
not able to express an opinion as to the degree of validity of theories then everyone
will have a warrant to reason in their own way, and this will obstruct the progress of
science. The limitations of the observational method when is applied to social reality
(and hence also the limitations of observational cognitivism) appear evident with
reference to the question of commensurability. Let us examine this more closely.
The natural sciences have achieved commensurability due to the repetitiveness
of phenomena, which allows the submitting of theoretical hypotheses to verification
based on facts. Such a possibility provides the foundation of the methodological
rules that allowed studies of nature to overcome Aristotle’s essentialism and the
alchemist’s magical mixtures. However, the hypothesis of repetitiveness is not
appropriate to social reality except in the case of stationary societies; and in this
case only if we omit questions concerning the reason why they have been organised
in the way we observe and on their possible transformation into something different.
In fact, stationary societies are repetitive; but observation is unable to provide
explanations in the presence of qualitative jumps between past and present. Probably
this is the reason why Boudon accepts incommensurability when, quoting Durkheim,
he assimilates scientific knowledge to magic. In some sense, the social sciences
are today stagnating at a stage akin to that of magic, just as Durkheim believed. The
result amounts to a dramatic expression of our social condition when seen from a
scientific point of view: from one side, we live in an era of high technological (and
hence social) change; from the other side, a substantial methodological ineptitude
to meet social change persists.
The success of the idea of incommensurability has stimulated the birth of a number
of schools of thought each unable to communicate with each other and hence unable
to express synergies; a sterile pluralism, indeed: inductivism, deductivism, critical
realism, hermeneutics, abstract rationalism, Marxists of various schools, constructivists,
believers in spontaneous order, followers of biological evolutionism, institutionalism
of various tendencies, cameralism, feminism, and the irrationalism of the followers
of residuals and derivations; to say nothing of free users of ‘if’, the followers of the
rule of thumb and the supporters of the thesis that every method is acceptable
provided that it works, what means all and nothing. In short, there is a lack of a
common basic methodological denominator that would permit a dialogue among
and between different proposals and intuitions, which is the indispensable condition
for making the variety of opinions fecund. Of course, beings endowed with limited
skills and hence condemned to proceed by trial and error need the plurality of
contributions; but pluralism, in the absence of commensurability, is synonymous
with confusion.
Boudon’s criticism of cultural and cognitive relativism, as based on the long run
gravitation by way of trial and error towards organizational ‘necessities’, calls to
242 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
mind the observation of an important economist (J. M. Keynes) that in the long run
we are all dead. The a priori deduction of those ‘necessities’ from realistic postu-
lates is therefore important. But such a possibility is obscured by the observational
perspective, primarily in the form of the dominant ‘weak observation method’. The
ex-ante understanding of the virtues and possible necessity of some organizational
forms, rather than their appreciation only after their appearance and their consoli-
dation by good luck, is important. In sum, it is important that observational reason
and a priori reason proceed together.
The method we propose clarifies aspects devoid of a behavioural character. At
the same time, it helps our understanding of the behaviour and role of the agent; for
instance, it helps us understand if, in a given situation, some behaviours are – or are
not – rational, and it further aids us in establishing their degree of reciprocal coherence.
It allows a better development of Boudon’s question of the reason why: “people
appreciate some situations, consider others as bad, right or wrong and as congruent
with what should or should not be done”.9 Weber-Boudon’s cognitivism probably
expresses the most advanced configuration, within sociology, of the observational
method; but it is limited to helping us achieve wisdom only after the event, i.e. with
hindsight. Our proposed method is intended to indicate the way to move forward
through reason prior to the advent of accomplished fact, thereby facilitating the
work of scholars and the roads taken by societies. The scientific proof of the ‘necessity’
of some institutions, ethical values, etc. facilitates their foundation, the opposition of
contrary interests notwithstanding, thus avoiding the damages of spontaneous
processes affected by reciprocal deceits, oppression and conflicts.
In order to further clarify this matter, it may be helpful to provide some examples,
mainly concerning ethics, this being a field in which the virtues and also the distinctive-
ness of our method with respect to the cognitive one are particularly evident. The
examples will be in line with Boudon’s anti-relativist and objectivist struggle.
9.4 Examples
Democracy (the limitations of which we have discussed in Chap. 7), and the ethical
values connected with it, are an outcome of the general conditions of development
of modern societies. This is because these general conditions embody the mecha-
nisms of cumulative development and, in order to preserve them, modern society
needs: (a) both decentralization of decision-making and competition, these being
indispensable for promoting innovation and providing the flexibility, knowledge
and swiftness of response that the changeable nature of society demands; (b) pluralism
and tolerance, both of which are indispensable to the growth of knowledge; (c) the
contribution of each individual, which is indispensable if society is to profit from
individual creativity and skills, which are randomly assigned by the ‘natural lottery’
of talents. Moreover, the present general conditions of development oblige society
9
(Boudon 2004b), p. 58.
9.4 Examples 243
to accommodate the social and political ascent of the masses. The serious troubles
and failures experienced by totalitarian and fundamentalist regimes reinforce our
conviction as to the importance of democratic institutions.
As previously seen, in the quasi-stationary ancient world, the most important and
sophisticated civilizations were those of the centralised empires. In fact, bureaucratic
and autocratic regimes based on the obedience principle were, in those quasi-
stationary conditions, the organizational forms most suitable for ensuring the coor-
dination of processes, actions and decisions. Moreover, the condition of the mass
of the people as a ‘protected herd’ and the benevolent power of the ruler as ‘Son of
Heaven’ (who was taken to be responsible for the people’s wellbeing to the point at
which natural disasters were interpreted as a revocation of his celestial mandate to
govern) were preferable to the intense struggles for survival that afflicted the Greek
polis and the Medieval Italian communes. Before the birth of modern dynamic
society, nobody could reasonably conjecture that institutional decentralization was
indispensable for promoting the advent of such a novelty; but once modern society
was born it became possible to scientifically understand, on the basis of the corre-
sponding general conditions of development, such institutional necessity. Indeed,
if such understanding had been profound and widespread, history would not have
witnessed the tragedy of social regimes in the modern age that denied institutional
decentralization, division of powers and democracy. This shows the great importance
of a priori reason in the place of the ex post reason typical of the observational method.
It is important to note the evidence, suggested by the above reasoning, that democ-
racy and the division of powers are not universal ethical values (that only recently
have been discovered) but are a result of the general conditions of development of the
modern age. Boudon’s chain of strong arguments is premised upon, but also points to,
values that appear in his chain of reasoning as universal but are in fact dependent on
the level of the general conditions of development. In fact, these values can be deduced
(from the level of those general conditions) in a much more stringent way than
Boudon’s chain of arguments allows, and they cannot be referred to antecedent his-
torical ages. For the rule according to which “Contingency presided over its (value)
genesis; rationality over its selection”10 does not apply in all times and places. Such a
rule, and also the chain of good reasons, which we find in Boudon-Weber’s cognitive
method, can be referred only to some ethical values and, furthermore, in this case the
referred rule and chain of arguments are not enough. More in particular, the possibility
of revision of ethical choices stimulated by new general conditions of development
can, at least, amplify the fecundity of the chains of argument and can allow a better
integration between Boudon’s part d’autonomie and his part d’eteronomie. The sub-
stantial evolution of the general conditions of development stimulated by the ‘open
society’ has brought humanity to a ‘global society’, implying the decay of ancient
ethical values – for instance those implied by the notion of ‘nation state’ – and requires
10
R Boudon, The poverty of relativism, The Bardwell Press, Oxford and Cambridge, p. 60. Boudon
previously writes (p. 53): “In the scientific domain it is possible to say that a proposition or theory
is objectively valid from the point at which, as a consequence of a solid chain of argument, it is
imperative that, potentially, it will be universally accepted”.
244 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
a deep revision of the notion of ‘sovereignty’. The evolution across history of the
general conditions of development has caused important changes in ethical values
through the implications of such evolution on forms of power and civilization: from
tribal societies toward various degree of state power.
The future progress of biology, mainly the possibility of genetic manipulations,
will certainly have enormous ethical implications in the years to come; for instance,
with regard to the notion of the individual, on distributive justice and on various
other deterrents aimed at obstructing the arising, through those genetic manipulations,
of some novel but very real forms of slavery.
We can see, therefore, that it is possible to make deductions concerning ethical
values from the characteristics of the general conditions of development. Finally,
Boudon’s idea of the ‘irreversibility’ of values and institutions is clearly contradicted
by history. Indeed, an impressive example of ‘reversibility’ is given by the regression
from the very advanced administrative and institutional order of the Roman Empire
of the Principate (from Augustus to Antonini) to the bureaucratic and centralized
order of the late Roman Empire, which latter represented one of the many ancient
empires that was appropriate to a stationary world.
11
(Durkheim 1960), p. 146.
9.5 Individualism and the Evolution of Human Societies 245
Let us begin with a deepening of our criticism of the first pillar of Boudon’s
analysis of evolution. Boudon underlines that the “individual has always defended
his identity and vital interests” and that “such a feeling is the background on which
the history of institution and history in general develops… Individual dignity and
the respect of his vital interests is the ultimate criterion of the legitimacy of every
norm, both of a micro nature and concerning society”.12 This statement, which
Boudon strengthens with many examples, is indisputable; nevertheless it is often
ignored by scholars. Human societies, being aggregations of individuals, must meet
individual feelings and interests. But the problem is that individuals’ vital interests
and their feeling of dignity vary with different civilizations being forged by these.
Boudon does not deny this indisputable fact, but he nevertheless puts it aside when
he states that individuals cannot be considered a mere outcome of social context.
We concur with such a statement. But it is indisputable that individuals’ dignity,
vital interest and feelings are strongly shaped by social context and the form of
civilization in which they live. If this is true, the explanation of the variety of the
context – primarily, the nature of the civilization in question – plays a crucial role.
Hindu feeling, for example, hinged as it is on resignation, expresses both a sentiment
of dignity and a set of interests completely different from the feelings and interests
of Chinese or Western individuals. No less divergence is found in the difference
in the sentiment of dignity, feelings and interests distinguishing the individuals of
classical Greece, Byzantium and the primitive inhabitants of the Amazonian Basin.
Ascertaining that institutional and normative evolution is influenced by people’s
feelings and interests, whatever they may be, provides some explanatory contribution;
but the great variety of the feelings and interests present in different social conditions,
if unexplained, make those contributions vague. A theory of the evolution of norms,
institutions, ethics, etc. needs a more stringent method than the usual one if it is to
remedy such explanatory vagueness. Boudon’s analysis seems to not adequately con-
sider the fact that society, being the work of men, can be built in various ways. What
follows from this is the importance of checking such factors as: the degree of freedom
in social construction; how and why this variety of feelings and interests arises; the
limitations within which it may operate and influence further development. The omis-
sion of such an analysis obscures the erroneousness of the second half of Boudon’s
quotation from Durkheim that individuality “develops incessantly across history”.
It is one thing to underline the presence and permanence of some phenomena
in every society; it is another thing to state that such phenomena develop without
coming to a halt. A superficial observation of historical processes and, as we shall
see soon, logical good sense tell us, respectively, that such an incessant development
has not happened and is not warranted. Here it is enough to remind ourselves that
the second half of Durkheim’s statement ignores the fundamental distinction (pres-
ent across the whole of human history) between the ‘closed society’ that places the
individual at the margin and the ‘open society’ that, on the contrary, places the value
of the individual at its centre. We will soon clarify these issues further.
12
(Boudon 2004b), p. 60.
246 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
Let us now reflect more deeply on Weber’s notion of rationality, which constitutes
the second pillar of Boudon’s theory of social evolution.
Weber’s insistence on the relevance of rationalization processes in influencing
the evolution of social systems deserves attention; indeed, such relevance is confirmed
by Boudon through some interesting examples. But Weber’s notion of rationality
is ambiguous and is open to irrational constructions. We shall consider, to begin
with, some limitations of this notion and, soon after, its ambiguity and inadequacy
for social analysis. One limitation is represented by Weber’s treatment of ethical
values, which denies the possibility of objective values and hence insists on their
non-comparability, a point of view largely shared by contemporary scholars.
Really, Boudon seems to forget the substantial contribution to cultural relativism
made by Weber’s position on ethical values. More precisely, Boudon does acknowl-
edge some elements of Weber’s relativistic orientation when he insists on the non-
demonstrability of the value of research programs, both those of the natural sciences
(which concern the representation of reality) and those of sociology, which latter
consist in “the definition of institutions, rules, etc. aimed at respecting at the best
the dignity and vital interests of everyone”.13 But it seems evident that the program
of the sciences – any science – is aimed at providing the best possible explanation
of reality; so that the value of the program is provided by its rational power since
human societies, even if affected by irrationality, are nevertheless strongly propelled
to act with rationality for reasons of efficiency and competitiveness.
Boudon’s treatment of the selection of ideas and their irreversibility is important.
But an accurate inspection shows that his analysis on this matter may be untrustworthy,
mainly in light of his presumptions as to the irreversibility of selected ideas. The
idea of karma, which probably expresses the most rational notion of the ultramontane
world invented by humanity, has appeared for many centuries (and even nowadays)
as irreversible. The same is true for the grand options typical of the various civilizations
that always show a high degree of permanence. But they represent options and,
as such, are reversible. We have seen that the changes in the general conditions of
development will force them, sooner or later, to depart from the scene. With
reference to the rationalization processes and the selection of ideas that Boudon
emphasizes, it must be underlined that the tendency to rationalise is one thing and
the skill to rationalise is another: the latter requires an appropriate methodological
tool. History teaches us that a selection toward efficient organizational forms takes
place in any case. But, in the absence of methodological rules allowing an explicit
rationalization, the selection may initiate (let us repeat) very long and painful
processes of trial and error.
13
(Boudon 2004b), p. 62.
9.6 Rationality, Objectivity of Ethical Values and Social Evolution… 247
We have seen before that the observational rationality, that is, the rationality that
is limited to being, with its underlining hypotheses that the real means the rational,
is not suitable to social reality, the analysis of which must give due importance to
doing. Coherently with such an exclusion of doing, Weber insists on the subjective
character of ethical values. Boudon is less coherent in this matter; he accepts the
observational method but rejects cultural relativism. In particular, his theory of
social evolution is based on the objectivity of the value of individuality. But the
exclusion of doing denies per se a scientific analysis of ethical values i.e. it denies
their objectivity. As we know, Boudon’s objectivism of values as based on being
employs Weber’s notion of ‘diffuse rationality’, not a notion of rationality that con-
cerns the organization of social systems that as such need the combination of being
and doing. The idea that reality tends spontaneously toward a rational organization
(as in Darwinian teaching) implies that the organizational structures and values
observed across history have a rational foundation. Therefore, according to Boudon,
the ethical values that prevail over time are the right ones. Well, such a spontaneous
conception eludes the true problem of social thought, i.e. how to accurately build
social relations and structures. Boudon’s idea that reality = rationality = necessity
resembles dialectic idealism.
Tocqueville’s objective analyses of ethical values was aimed at explaining the
ethical and religious differences between the North American states, England and
France; and the implications of those differences have a merely observational
substance. They take note only of existent values but do not consider the guiding
aspect. Tocqueville offers some brilliant examples of comparative analyses but they
do not allow us to distinguish grain from chaff. If we want to profit, in the organization
of social systems, from those comparative analyses, a methodology more appropriate
than the observational one is needed; in particular, it is necessary to advance the
notions of functional imperative and ontological imperative.
The observational idea of diffuse rationality implies that Confucianism, placing
as it does the community of blood and the intangibility of tradition before the
individual, should have been accepted even by the hyper-voluntaristic lord of Shang
if he were living in the Ming era; and the long-lasting caste-based regime should be
considered as expressing indisputable values.
Boudon differentiates between scientific theories (that he seems to refer exclusively
to the science of nature), political theories, juridical theories, etc. This seems to
attribute a different degree of explanatory value to natural science than to social
thought. But this attribution is the result of some methodological misconception.
The fact that social reality is a product of humanity leads us to ask the question:
what considerations must humanity take in building it? The question of the
evolution of social systems is intertwined with the problem of their construction.
We know that an important route to the understanding of social reality, its evolution
and its construction is represented by the opposition between ‘necessity’ and ‘choice-
possibility’. Boudon does not ignore the distinction. He writes: “the idea that customs
vary among cultures does not imply the inexistence of universal values or that some
norms are surely to be preferred to others… some norms look arbitrary, while others
do not; some express the peculiarity of the societies in question, others are the result
248 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
14
(Boudon 2004b), p. 69.
9.6 Rationality, Objectivity of Ethical Values and Social Evolution… 249
9.7 Conclusion
The method of the social sciences outlined in this book attempts to reconcile reality
and rationality, just as Boudon also intends; but the method outlined in this book
seeks to achieve this shared goal without accepting that such a reconciliation will
happen automatically in the long run. To achieve such a purpose, we employ a procedure
intended to imply a much stronger and stringent rationality than that associated with
the observational cognitive method, a more accurate selection of the relevant aspects
of reality and a more articulated analysis of reality. The proposed procedure is centred
on the attribution to humanity of a constructivist substantial skill, i.e. in deliberately
influencing the becoming of societies, as opposed to the cognitive method which
is obliged, for reasons of coherence, to limit itself to the consideration of spontane-
ous behaviours.
The one-sided doctrine of the absolute subjectivity and non-comparability of all
ethical values is an incitement to fundamentalism, notwithstanding its proclaimed
openness to tolerance and diversities. As a matter of fact, the related ideas of the
non-comparability of ethical values and of incommensurability are transforming the
management of society and the building of social thought into something worse
than magic. These ideas promote, in the present world characterized as it is by a
large theoretical production and a wide market of theories, an acidic and obstinate
struggle among impenetrable professions of different faith. That fruitful confronta-
tion and cooperation among people, which appears more and more necessary in
global society, is impossible if even scientific knowledge, typically concerning
reason and hence probably expressing the most effective force in producing agreement
among men, is proclaimed to be founded on mere points of view, some specific a priori
assumption; and this, indeed, is a diffuse proclamation of modern heterodoxy.
As long as humanity also fails to profit from the role and services of reason in
sociological theory, Western civilizations will not be able to provide convincing
answers to their enemies; will not be able to produce an alternative vision to that
embraced in the blind determination of kamikaze fanatics who sacrifice themselves
in the hope of a mythical happiness and regeneration, disgusted by a world in which the
government of societies is largely infested by abuse of power, injustice and deceit.
A scientific analysis of the evolution of human societies and their institutions
requires some fundamental methodological categories that allow us to make, as
previously seen, a theoretical effort more stringent than that facilitated by Boudon-
Weber’s cognitive method. The explanatory potential of all theories of social
evolution is strongly damaged by their omission of the distinction between ‘necessity’
and ‘choice-possibility’ in the life and organization of social systems and by disregard
for features of human nature inherent in the notion of ontological imperatives.
It is important to admit that the protection of human dignity and of the vital interests
of the individual – which Boudon underlines – represents a very general organizational
necessity of social systems. But this tells us very little if the dignity and interests
in question are simply taken such as they have been forged by some specific
civilization, without ascertaining if the civilization considered satisfies ontological
References 251
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15
See Boudon (2004b), p. 69.
252 9 Some Insight on Sociological Thought: Rationality, Relativism…
10.1 Introduction
Social reality is strongly influenced by religious feelings and beliefs. Such influence
is inescapable given the fact that religious feeling is profoundly rooted in human
beings itself primarily because humanity does not accepts its finite nature. There is
more. A severe layman such as Voltaire wrote: “Everywhere an organized society
exists, religion is necessary; laws watch over known crimes, religion watch over
secret crimes”.1 Of course, the influence of religion on social reality also affects
social theory. We analyse here some important connections between the Christian
message and the growing complications, in modern societies, of the methodological
problems of social thought. These links concern, first of all, ethical values.
The situation is made both complex and delicate by the acceleration of social
change and the intensification of the processes of globalisation. In fact, change
brings new values onto the scene and hence highlights the problem of their relation
with tradition and cultural diversities. At the same time, the encounter, in a global
world, of different civilisations, strengthens the impact of those diversities and
threatens to intensify the collision of different visions, rather than dialogue between
them and the discovery of shared, reciprocal interests. The relativist idea of the
subjectivity of values denies the possibility of a scientific analysis of such problems,
but the opponents of relativism do not offer better solutions. Some objective
developments regarding ethics are urgent in order to enunciate basic and strongly
shared values that allow humanity to take its bearing within a healthy jungle of
diversities and social changes and to shatter the efflorescence of cynicism, astute-
ness and frustration that are generated by ethical confusion.
We shall compare this cultural climate to the substance and to the role of religious
absolutism on ethical values, and we shall see that the position on the matter of the
Christian message is peculiar. Recently, the debate on cultural relativism has been
challenged by Jean Paul the Second’s request that the Christian roots of Europe be
1
(Voltaire 1995), p. 137.
mentioned in the preface of the EU constitutional treaty, while pope Benedict the
Sixteenth has repeatedly criticised the Godless reasoning of the Enlightenment and
the reasonless God of fundamentalists. We shall consider this debate in the light of
the method of social thought and attempt to avoid any embarrassing equivocations
in the subject that may arise.
Section 10.2 of this chapter will be mainly dedicated to the most important
contribution that religion has offered to the advent of modern world, as represented
by some basic principles typical of the Christian message. In light of our notion
of ethical objectivism, Sect. 10.3 deepens some basic considerations concerning
ethical values as expressed by ethical relativism and ethical absolutism, and explores
their implications. Section 10.4 is dedicated to the most important and involved
aspect of ethical problems as represented by civilizations, their substance and impli-
cations. Section 10.5 gives examples of some important ethical values and the need
for global ethical principles in the modern global world. In Sect. 10.6, some further
discussion concerning Christian teachings will be set out and, in Sect. 10.7, the
analyses on ethics of some eminent modern social students and philosophers will be
discussed. Finally, the positions on ethical values of three contemporary scholars
will be examined: a strenuous opponent of cultural relativism and two defenders of
relativism from partially different perspectives.
10.2.1 Generalities
Probably the most meaningful and sophisticated features of the stationary societies
of ancient times were their ethical systems.2 Investigation of those ethical systems
shows that they were largely directed to the preservation and functioning of the
respective society. But some important ethical aspects had a more general breath.
For instance, the golden rule prescribing ‘not to do to others what you do not wish
them to do against you’, which is present in the most important ethical systems,
reflects, notwithstanding its indefiniteness, a fundamental need of social life; and
the same is true for the most part of the Ten Commandments. Some other important
ethical aspects of ancient societies were due to geographic conditions. For instance,
the natural environment had a large influence upon the values and the world vision
of nomads and seafaring people. All these ethical forms can be scientifically explained
as organizational necessities of society and, hence, have an objective character.
By contrast, some other ethical aspects have an optional character; they are an
2
The coherence, elaborateness and the important role of Confucian and Zuñi ethics in their respective
societies are impressive.
10.2 Ethics in Stationary Societies and Dynamic-Evolutionary Societies… 255
In the course of history, such an interruption has occurred, and this interruption
warrants special consideration because it stands at the origin of some of the major
difficulties of modern social thought. The break with the stationary state has been
caused by the birth of a peculiar vision of the world along with some collateral
principles, which collectively may be called the seeds of dynamical process.
These seeds consist of the following: a notion of historical time shared by all
Abraham’s spiritual descendants; four principles of Christian and, in some respects,
Jewish origin that are indispensable to providing substance for that peculiar vision,
have strongly influenced the history of Europe and America and, today, operate
at world scale.
The vision consists in the Christian-Jewish notion of linear time, which replaced
the circular notion bearing the imprint of nature and which was characteristic of the
ancient classic world.3 This new vision has engendered a feeling of progression and
projection toward the future, that is to say, it has engendered an evolutionary and
3
Mircea Eliade wrote: “The main difference between the man of archaic-traditional societies and
the man of modern societies, strongly marked by Judaic-Christian thinking, is that the first feels
sympathy with the cosmos and cosmic cadences, while the second only feels sympathy with history”.
(Eliade 1949 [1968]), p. 5.
256 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
substantial idea of historical time, which is animated by ethical tension and refuses
to merely accept being in place of doing.4
We have seen the methodological importance of the opposition between acceptance
and refusal of de facto reality, that is, of the opposition between the mere consider-
ation of being and the combination of being with doing, and we have discussed
the distinction between the methods of the natural and the social sciences and
formulated an alternative methodological proposal. Here it is sufficient to remember
that the notion of linear time charges humanity with a difficult evolutionary mission,
just the opposite of the purely adaptive action that circular motion requires.
Evolutionary motion requires the evolutionary potential of humanity. Four basic
principles that we encounter in the Christian message have permitted the realisation
of that evolutionary potential:
(a) The resolute proclamation of the dignity and autonomy of the individual, of the
singularity of the human person and of the absolute inviolability of personal
conscience, and the insistence on human creativity. This principle is expressed
with an extreme clearness in the statement that all men are the children of God.
B. Forte writes: “The archaic world and also Greek culture did not know the
infinite dignity of the person as a unique and singular historical subject”.5 The
most important aspect of this proclamation of the equal dignity of all men is that
it constitutes a formidable safeguard of the immense variety of individual qualities
and skills and hence of the possibility that somebody can contribute his personal
knowledge and acquisitions, with the result that humanity collectively profits
from the great human patrimony of diversified skills. As we saw in Chap. 7, in the
context of our discussion of equalities and inequalities, the evolutionary push
deriving from the safeguard of individuality, personal diversities and creative
skills is very strong, as is confirmed by the fact that, if all men had identical
skills the resulting human evolutionary potential would be extremely modest.
Unfortunately, a superficial and diffuse idea of equality has often induced the
forgetting of the importance of the diversification of skills and of creativity;
which in turn has provoked serious misunderstandings in the interpretation and
organization of human societies.
(b) The principle of personal responsibility: in the absence of which, the individual
is not pushed to express his virtues and skills, since he does not derive interior
satisfaction from his activity.
(c) The distinction between questions concerning God and questions concerning
Caesar, between Church (or religion) and state. The absorption of the Church
4
It is not our intention to investigate the causes of the advent of the linear-progressive vision of
time. It is sufficient to quote J. Moltman on the God of goal and promise of nomadic peoples
and on the epiphanic religions of agricultural people. Moltman writes: “The Israelite tribes that
established themselves on the earth preserved the God of promise typical of nomadic people and
the corresponding notion of the world, conjoining it with their recent experience as farmers and
making an effort to practice and dominate their new experiences in the light of the God of promise”,
that is, in the light of a progressive notion of time. (Moltman 1976), p. 97.
5
(Forte 1991), p. 12.
10.2 Ethics in Stationary Societies and Dynamic-Evolutionary Societies… 257
(or religion) into the state, a state of affairs called autocracy, suffocates both the
above principles: (a) concerning the role of the individual, and (b) concerning
personal responsibility. It stimulates the tendency to suppress the vivifying
power of individual diversity and creativity and to equalise all; the bureaucratic-
autocratic capabilities of decision are appropriate to the administration of
uniformity and the stationary state and, therefore, tend to preserve these aspects,
as we saw at the beginning of this work. For its part, the absorption of the state
in the Church (or the social process in religion), which can be defined as theoc-
racy, suffocates the development of institutions and ethical values required
by the evolution of mankind. This suffocation is mainly due to the fact that the
commandments of faith are declared immutable over time and space and there-
fore are likely to obstruct creative verve and contradict the operation on human
things of the rationality principle (see (d) below). The suffocation of human
evolutionary potential, caused by the violation of the present principle (c), tends
to restore stationary motion, that is, it implicitly inclines humanity toward
circular vision.
(d) The rationality principle. The linear-progressive vision of time and the implied
evolutionary mission of humanity have a great need of rationality, and this for
at least three reasons: rationality is indispensable for understanding and governing
social change, such change being much more difficult to govern than stationary
and vegetative states of society; inventive rationality nourishes evolutionary
process; and finally, the alternative to scientific reason is cheating, collusion
and the abuse of power, all of which work to suffocate the evolutionary potential
of humanity. Thus, when it came to rationality, the Church Fathers avidly
borrowed from the teachings of Greek thought, and the opening of the Gospel
of John says: “In the beginning there was the Word”. But this present principle
(d) does not refer to cosmic reason and absolute rationality, i.e. “the Word”. It
concerns rather human rationality, which is limited and fallible, able to assess
partial, not absolute, truth; in other words, it concerns that reason that is necessary
to humanity’s evolutionary course on the earth and to wisely govern our world,
thus avoiding the subjection to evolutionary spontaneity that, let us repeat,
growing social change would make more and more painful.
In our terms, the important principles above are fundamental ontological imperatives.
It is a widely held conviction that the advent of the linear vision of historical
processes, in substitution for the circular one typical of the ancient world, and the
Christian conception of the individual, marked the decline of the ancient classical
world. But such a watershed is much weaker than people believe. The fall of the
ancient world is marked much more by the advent of Christianity than by the
dynamical seeds expressed by the Christian message. In fact, the behaviour of
Christianity has often been antithetical with respect to those seeds; the misadven-
tures of those dynamical seeds have originated the main contradictions, deviations,
bewilderments and sufferings of the Christian world – torments which are not yet
terminated today. In the Roman Christian Empire and, even more, in its Byzantine
form, a strong permeation between state, Church and society took place, based on a
258 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
centralised order and a civilisation founded upon and for the great part animated by
obedience (occasions of disobedience were notable – for instance, the sentiment of
autonomy and independence of Studion monastery and the monks of Mont Athos
and some rebellions that troubled the Byzantine capital – but were few and far
between). Such a social and organisational environment suffocated the dynamical
seeds of Christianity, being conducive rather to stationary motion; as a consequence,
an abyss with respect to Western history and sentiment emerged, culminating in the
separation of the two Churches. It may be interesting to provide some insight into
the process of separation.
The decline and fall of the imperial order in the Western half of the Roman
Empire gave rise to a society much more open to the dynamical seeds previously
considered: feudal decentralisation and the revaluation of human work by
Benedictine monks; maritime republics; the personal initiative and responsibility of
merchants; the flowering of medieval communes; the defeat of autocratic imperial
pretensions and the weakness of the theocratic temptations of the Church.6 In
particular, the image of the suffering, humiliated and mocked Christ expressed
human limitations, uncertainty and anguishes, as well as eschatological tension and
the hope for the advent of a new order and reign of justice. All this is typical of the
Western Church, which was much more open to innovation, research and evolution-
ary motion than was the glorification of religion and of imperial authority typical
of the Eastern Church.
The reappearance of cultural organisation in Charlemagne’s empire was followed
by the cultural flowering of the medieval period. Intellectual innovators populated
Western monasteries, animated by a strong trust in human reason to the point where
Thomas Aquinas attempted to explain by means of reason questions that belong
purely to the realm of faith. At the same time, commercial activities and the search
for profitable opportunities stimulated technical progress and the rationalisation
of economic relations. Principle (b) above, concerning personal responsibility,
which in the Mediterranean East had been suffocated by the centralised Byzantine
order, now set to work in the decentralised and pluralistic society of the West.
Nevertheless, this principle was still subject to serious limitations due to the role of
tradition, various kinds of protectionism, an exaggerated principle of charity, and
forgiveness of sins by the Church, often in return for payment. Protestant reform
provided, both directly and indirectly, a decisive remedy to these limitations: a strong
statement of the principle of individual responsibility and a widespread promotion
of this principle by way of actual religious practice.7
6
Ruffolo has represented well the astonishing recovery and the appearance of new perspectives
after the annihilation of society that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire. (Ruffolo
2004). L. Pellicani has, in addition, underlined the importance of feudal decentralisation and
disjunction. (Pellicani 1988).
7
We can see, therefore, that a deficiency in the understanding of principles (b) and (c) was a main
cause of the two main scissions of the Christian world: the Protestant Reformation and the separation
of Western and Eastern Churches.
10.3 Toward the Relativist and Absolutist Equivocations on Values… 259
This climate ensured a true and permanent rupture of circular motion; the
linear-progressive vision of history became part of current life and the age of so-
called ‘progress’ began. In reality, of course, some reference to the circular char-
acter of time continued to persist in studies of human societies and have preserved
an importance directly proportional to the stationary contents of such societies. For
instance, till a few decades ago traditional agriculture employed the major part of
the population of even industrial countries. Machiavelli was convinced of the rep-
etitions of history and, more recently, Nietzsche celebrated, albeit in an equivocal
form, the idea of eternal return.8 But the age of cumulative development and the
dynamic motion of human society did commence, and this pushed forward difficult
methodological problems with regard to social thought. Unfortunately, a tendency
markedly adverse to the solution of those methodological problems also began,
and not only as an effect of persistent stationary conditions. As we know, the suc-
cess of the method of the natural sciences in fact bears the primary responsibility
for this tendency.
So, the full establishment of the progressive motion of society made possible by the
success of the principles listed above under the headings (a), (b) and (c) has opened the
door to an age troubled by growing misunderstandings with regard to the principle of
rationality listed under the heading (d) above. Such misunderstandings are a main
cause of the lacerations of the contemporary world and concern the method of social
thought, in particular, the question of doing, the objective character of some key ethical
values, and the reconcilement of creativity with scientific analysis. Thus, a great cause
of the torments that have followed the success of the dynamical seeds of the Christian
message must be attributed to parallel misunderstandings regarding the principle of
rationality (d) that this book – centred as it is on the ways (and methodological
criteria) suitable to overcoming equivocations on the matter – is aimed at clarifying.
8
The reference to cycles is also frequent in our own time, but today it concerns evolutionary
and progressive cycles that are inevitably generated by the physiological opposition between
innovation and adaptation; on which, see (Fusari 2005).
260 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
thereby propelling social studies into a dead-end from which it is very urgent and,
at the same time, difficult to extract them.
It is important to remember that the application to social reality of the observational
method, as based on the acceptance of existing reality, implies the expulsion of any
guiding aspect; that is, it implies the exclusion of doing (and hence ethics) from
scientific analysis. The expulsion of ethical values from science is currently justified
on the basis of Hume’s supposed law, according to which the transition from being
to doing is erroneousness. But, as a matter of fact, and as we know, Hume did not
say this. Such issues have been developed and fully discussed in Chap. 2. Here we
limit ourselves to recalling the most well-known aspect of Weber’s analysis of values:
the rather elusive and surreptitious distinction between the ‘ethics of conviction’,
that is of pure doing – the principle of saints and also of heedless people, and the
‘ethics of responsibility’, which substantially concerns being. As we saw in Chap. 7,
this distinction set Weber free from the embarrassing presence of doing combined
with being, which was methodologically unacceptable from his merely observational
point of view. But the observational moral, i.e. of being (implying that what
happened had to happen) is pure cynicism. The equivocation on method that pushed
Weber toward his ethical dualism does not seem to be clearly understood by scholars.
For instance, it is significant that the theologian Hans Küng has expressed great
appreciation for the two Weberian notions of ethics, with the proviso that they be
considered conjointly,9 and thus fails to see that Weber’s duplicitous separation of
these notions generates some serious methodological difficulties concerning the
role of being and doing, in particular, the exigency of their methodological
combination. More precisely, Kung fails to see that Weber’s double ethics is a con-
sequence of (and implies) both the acceptance of instrumental rationality, that is,
concerning the acquisition of means and appropriate to natural science, and the
rejection of rationality with respect to ends and values.
The postulate (associated to instrumental rationality) that values have no scientific
character is not confined to ethical relativism but concerns also its antagonist that
we denominated ‘ethical absolutism’. For while at times the Weberian denial of the
scientific character of values has been used in a relativist sense, at other times it has
been used by post-medieval Church in an absolutist sense, that is, by stating values
objectivity on the basis of commandments of faith. Clearly, ethical absolutism
lays itself on the ground of the clash of civilisations: every people has its faith, its
convictions, and its roots and defends them from the threat of contamination posed
by other civilisations, and faiths and other visions of the world. ‘Ethical relativism’, by
contrast, prefers tolerance and the openness to diversity. But ethical absolutism has,
relatively to relativism, an advantage that favours it, primarily in critical situations:
it provides some clear reference points and precise indications for human beings
who, generically, have a yearning need for reference points owing to our cognitive
limits; cultural relativism, by contrast, does not supply us with any such substantial
indications. But absolutism is affected by a serious shortcoming in that it is hinged
on commandments of faith (proclaimed valid forever) that tend to block the evolution
9
(Küng 1990), p. 48.
262 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
of institutions and of values, notwithstanding the fact that dynamic societies cannot
do without such evolution. Ethical absolutism, therefore, may be consistent with
stationary societies and with circular vision, but cannot be consistent with linear-
progressive motion. In this respect, the inclination of the Christian faith toward
value absolutism is plainly in contradiction with the decisive push that the message
of Christian teaching – most notably, its denial of circular flow – has given to the
dynamic motion of the world.
The only way to avoid the dilemma of ethical relativism-absolutism is by way of
what we denominate ethical objectivism; that is, a method that is able to combine
being and doing and to scientifically show the objective substance of some important
ethical values. Therefore, ethical objectivism should attract and, in a sense, conciliate
both cultural relativists and absolutists, as it is able to differentiate the values that
cannot have a scientific explanation and hence can be the object of choice or faith,
from objective values required by de facto reality and constituting, therefore, some
clear and unquestionable reference points. Ethical objectivism thus facilitates,
through the use of reason, dialogue among cultures. It stimulates and facilitates
reciprocal comprehension by making evident some common necessities and through
the definition of moral principles toward which all people tend to converge (global
ethics). Besides, it legitimises and helps, through a clear definition of relative
values, cultural diversification and hence provides the fertiliser of variety and specificity.
Finally, it facilitates the recognition of the vital roots of civilisations and hence the
combination between new and old, tradition and social change.
This subject merits some quotations from a letter written by the new Pope
Francis, which spread far and wide. Originally published in the newspaper La
Repubblica, on September 11, 2013, the letter answered some questions raised by
E. Scalfari in the same newspaper mainly in response to the last encyclical Lumen
Fidei. In the letter we find the statement: “the problem, for a non believer in God,
concerns obedience to conscience. Pity, also for non-believers, is to act against
one’s conscience. In fact, listening to and obedience to the conscience implies a
decision with reference to what is perceived as good or bad. This decision
determines the goodness or weakness of our actions”. The letter continues: “I think
it is not appropriate to speak of ‘absolute’ truth, even for believers…. This does not
mean that the truth is variable and subjective. It always reaches us through the journey
of our life… and truth being intimately related to love, modesty and broadmindedness
are required if it is to be searched for, accepted and expressed. It is necessary,
therefore, to define well the terms of the question; perhaps, so that we may overcome
the bottlenecks that arise from some absolute contraposition, it is necessary also to
deeply revise the question”.
With such words, Pope Francis proclaims a substantial repudiation of ethical abso-
lutism; the repudiation promises important implications, both from a theoretical and
an empirical point of view. In fact, over the course of history, ethical absolutism has
taken service primarily in the cause of intolerance, helping to justify aggression and
promote oppression. But it would be a misfortune indeed if the repudiation of ethical
absolutism should provide the occasion for the unconstrained triumph of an ethical
relativism that asserts the personal and subjective character of truth. Pope Francis
rejects such an outcome. He implicitly insists upon the objectivity of truth when he
10.4 The Roots of Civilizations 263
asserts: “Everyone understands and expresses the truth on the basis of his interiority,
his culture and history, the situation where he lives”. But a great problem arises here.
Speaking of the moral sense of infamous people, L. Tolstoj writes (chapter 44 of
Resurrection): “their notion of good and evil is forged in justification of their actions”.
I agree that good faith and good will may well deserve God’s forgiveness. And yet it
is undeniable that human conscience is largely determined by dominating cultures and
civilizations, as we have discussed in previous chapters; unfortunately, such determi-
nation undermines the probability that in practice truth is intimately related to love.
Terrible oppressions, conflicts and revolutions have been performed in the name of
love: for instance, under the banner of political freedom, the standard of a supposedly
true religion, and the flag of a self-proclaimed superior civilization. On the other hand,
it is well known that the relativist indetermination on ethics facilitates (and, in some
sense, promotes) justification of the habit of the individual to shape his own conscience
on personal interests as underlined by Tolstoj. With great caution, Pope Francis recognizes
the need of “to deeply revise the question”.
Let us emphasize that the main remedy against the degeneration and abuse fostered
by both ethical absolutism and relativism, as also the path to securing the objectivity
of the ‘truth’ of fundamental ethical values, is represented by what we have called
‘ethical objectivism’, that is, the possibility of scientifically proving the objectivity
of fundamental ethical values. In other words, the deep revision of the question that
Pope Francis requests seems to require a revision of the methodology of social
science in precisely the direction that this book tries to indicate. We know that the
advance of science requires openness in the face of the variety of opinions and
results, as well as a great modesty of its students in acknowledgement of the limita-
tions of human reason; and this is just the way that the Pope intends both the search
for and the expression of the truth. For sure, Scalfari is right in opposing ethical
absolutism. But the “serious and fecund encounter of faith and reason” for which he
hopes requires ethical objectivism and, as an initial premise, a profound meditation
on the method of the social sciences. The relation between faith and reason will
receive systematic and wide-ranging treatment in Sect. 10.6.
It is our hope that the Pope’s letter will prove an important contribution in keeping
social thought free from remaining caught between the absolutist devil and the
relativist open sea; or vainly aspiring to elude both through the kind of spontaneous
evolutionary paradigm that we found in Boudon’s thought and which is also shared
by Hegelian idealism. In fact, this situation threatens to cause serious misunder-
standings and complications in our age of globalisation, problems and difficulties
much more serious than those provoked by the first remarkable appearance of modern
relativism at the beginning of the twentieth century.
No tree can live without roots. But it is wrong to consider roots only from a historical
perspective. It is necessary to consider them also in relation to the functioning of
existing social systems and with regard to their capacity to face present needs and to
264 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
G. Ruffolo has underlined the fact that ancient Rome “was initially a refuge
dump collecting people refused by neighbouring peoples”10 and that the social
eradication of these shepherds and brigands allowed them to make the best of their
surrounding situation and endowed them with an acute and uninhibited constructive
skill. For its part, the Christian religion, in order to defeat paganism, had to break
the roots of antiquity and overturn its world vision. Diocletian and Julian were
emperors who defended the old ways, the latter abjuring the Christian faith for
restoring pagan worship. We have seen above that the dynamical seeds of the
Christian message were, for a long time, condemned to remain unfruitful by the
traditional administrative and centralised Roman administration. The breaking of
traditional roots in the West allowed these seeds to blossom. The rise of the new
civilisation was also helped by the wisdom mainly of Pope Gregory the Great, who
took advantage of vital aspects of Classic civilisation. By contrast, in the Eastern
empire the robust roots of Roman and Byzantine tradition persisted in suffocating
development and that facilitated the transition toward Ottoman despotism and the
advent, in the Slavic world, of Tsarist and – ultimately – Soviet autocracies.
Another important example is offered by Arab-Islamic civilisation; which, flour-
ishing at first in a primitive desert world, poor in roots, could easily assimilate the
best of the important knowledge that it met during its conquests across regions very
rich in culture. But, after initial consolidation, the well-rooted Islamic civilisation
started to decline. The strong influence of roots became hurtful. The great expansion
of Arab-Islamic civilisation took place in a historical period during which it enjoyed
a strong rational superiority with respect to neighbours. But with the Medieval
Western renaissance, the situation reversed.11 Till today, it has been an advantage,
and sometimes also a necessity, the painful disintegration of the previous order in
order to allow the taking of a new and more promising road. As we saw in Chap. 4,
the modern world can do better. It is able to avoid the necessity of those disasters in
its renovations. It is a task of social thought to teach the way to combine new and
old institutions and values, change and tradition, to go ahead. In doing so, it is
essential to take account of the general conditions of development and the historical
and creative sedimentations that have occurred over the course of time as well as the
organisational exigencies that they have determined.
Some current and very important ethical problems concerning the family, demogra-
phy and biology may help to clarify both the utility of our notions of ontological and
functional imperatives and the meaning of cultural objectivism. It is convenient to
10
(Ruffolo 2004), p. 10.
11
All this is extensively clarified in (Fusari 2000).
266 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
start with the family, which represents an important expression of human nature.
Any attempt to abolish the family requires some unnatural acts of force that, in the
present dynamical world, would contribute to destroy both individuality and human
evolutionary potentiality. In this respect, the family represents an ontological imper-
ative. But in the course of history various kinds of family organisations have
appeared. We have seen in our chapter on anthropology how the extended family
and kinship networks played a pivotal role in primitive societies. For its part, the
patriarchal family has spanned a large part of human history. The family unit of
modern society, centred as it is on the individual and with the role of relatives much
reduced is, however, a completely different thing. It is senseless to place these
familiar forms, which are completely different from each other in terms of values
and functions, either under the single category of ‘natural law’ or, following cultural
relativism, by indicating the differences as an expression of the subjectivity of
values. The differences have, indeed, an objective character and are the expression
of different stages (and general conditions) of development; so that, to be able to
correctly consider these familiar forms, the concept of functional imperative is
needed, flanked by that of ontological imperative.
The demographic question is strictly linked to familiar forms and to their evolu-
tion in parallel with changes in the general conditions of development. Of course,
the biological function of reproduction represents a necessity for the survival of the
species, as men are but mortal beings. Therefore, the biological function expresses
a natural law. But the reproduction of the species and the care of babies assumes a
completely different content in each one of the forms of familiar organisation
typical of (and requested by) the various historical ages. A tragedy of the present
world is that the familiar forms of underdeveloped societies, their ethical values and
the progress of medical science stimulate the rate of demographic increase in such
a way as to decisively contribute to the perpetuation and aggravation of the starvation
of those societies and to obstruct their possible development; all of which suffocates
the evolutionary potential of their populations. An opposite situation afflicts modern
societies, where a throbbing acquisitive individualism, the attenuation of the spirit
and relations of solidarity, the difficulty of reconciling the role of the family with
certain industrial relations that are averse to it, make negative (i.e. less than zero) the
demographic rate of variation and damage the crucial role that the family must play
in the defence of the autonomy and development of the individual. This means
that so-called demographic policies cannot limit themselves to the imperative of
reproduction. They must be illuminated by the notion of functional imperative,
implying objective values that change with the stages of development, and illuminated
also by the notion of ontological imperative.
The delicate questions surrounding bioethics confirm the importance of the
distinction between ontological and functional imperatives. We do not pretend to
give solutions to problems on which science is very uncertain. However, it is
unquestionable that in this field also the evolution of knowledge and hence the
conditions of developments have generated some new values, and also some ethical
problems that hitherto did not exist. Up to a few years ago, religions were usually
hostile to the idea of the donation of organs, while today such donation is in general
10.5 Some Examples and an Important Misunderstanding of Global Ethics 267
12
See, for instance, the Chicago Declaration on global ethics of September 1993.
268 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
anomie and disintegration. Their solidity is warranted by the fact that they represent
ontological and functional imperatives, i.e. objective values.
In sum, global ethics cannot trust in individual feelings. To have a strong and
convincing basis, it must have objective contents; that is, it must be clarified that
obedience to some ethical principles is in the interest of all people. Global ethics
therefore needs cultural objectivism. Only cultural objectivism can, for example,
provide concreteness and substance to Kant’s imperative of acting following
principles that can be universal laws. For the principles of, say, tolerance, pluralism
and various values appropriate to the existing general conditions of development to
be accepted by all people, it is necessary to prove that they are functional imperatives
or ontological imperatives, or both. In the modern world, the strength of spiritual
forces is weakened and dissipated by the absence of scientific teachings on ethical
values. Such an absence is primarily to be attributed to an intellectual milieu
dominated by ethical relativism and absolutism; at least such is the case if sectarian
and disruptive fundamentalism has become rooted among the descendants of Pakistani
immigrants in the United Kingdom.
Cultural objectivism, moreover, seems to be indispensable to the solution of the
question of the admissibility of exceptions with respect to moral precepts. For
instance, if we ask ourselves in what situations it is permitted to tell a lie, we must
appeal to cultural objectivism for an answer. It is precisely the demonstration of the
‘necessity’ of some values that leads to the conclusion that it is permitted and even
obligatory to tell lies for their sake; for example, that it is heroic to tell lies while
suffering the torture of a despot and, in this way, to contribute to overthrowing the
tyranny that suffocates human evolutionary potential.
1. A contradiction within Christianity, and perhaps one of its main faults, consists in
an inability to meet the epistemological problems that the dynamical seeds of this
religion – primarily the momentum that they give to creativity – have generated for
social thought and, hence, for scientific rationality. Such a claim may appear strange;
in fact, in the Middle Ages Christianity was associated with a great development of
rational thought, from which it gained much prestige. Unfortunately, it was unable
to establish those procedures that would allow for the application of the rationality
principle to some important practical problems. In addition, a somewhat ambiguous
mixture of reason and faith resulted from the attempt to explain the prescriptions of
faith through reason. Thus, the appearance of the method of the natural sciences in
the seventeenth century came as a surprise for Christian theology, which now, in
contrast to its earlier openness to rationalism, began to strongly oppose the new
method and its astronomical discoveries in the name of some biblical statements.
Beginning in the Renaissance, a paradoxical equivocation has afflicted Christian
social thought, causing weighty practical consequences. The introduction to a
10.6 Further Considerations on Religious and Social Thought: Faith and Reason 269
Zamagni’s book13 by L. Bruni offers a reference point for clarifying this vicissitude.
Bruni underlines the importance of Medieval Christian teaching as a propulsive
factor in the efflorescence of Italian and European civil economy and civilization
from the twelfth through to the fifteenth centuries. Then he underlines the interruption
of such splendour in the age of Counter-Reformation and through the consolidation
of the capitalist economy and the new thinking in the wake of the Reformation.
However, Bruni omits the consideration of a great methodological misunderstanding
that strongly favoured and accompanied such development. What a misunderstanding?
It must be remembered that a pillar of medieval thinking on natural science was
the idea that the understanding of natural world requires to penetrate the reason why
the natural world has been created like it is, its essence; a famous controversy
between nominalists and realists arose and, at the beginning of the seventeenth
century was clearly stated that “As man is not the creator of the world, he can never
know why the world was made the way we perceive it. In exchange, there arose a
much more fruitful, rational procedure of inquiry, one that the nominalists had
already foreshadowed: carefully observe the phenomena that occur in nature and,
from this observation, seek to derive their laws of motion, if possible expressed in
mathematical form”.14 Christianity has in the end not only acknowledged the impor-
tance and profitability of the ‘observational method’ for enquiring natural reality;
has also accepted its extension to social sciences. Such an acknowledgement has
contributed to (and reinforced) some of the serious equivocations that the method of
natural sciences has transmitted to social thought. Precisely, it has implied a totally
erroneous retractation of Medieval Christian rational thinking on society; in fact,
being society a product of Man (not of God), it was appropriate the Medieval
constructivist view of inquiring the reason why it has been edified in the way we see
it. Such a retractation was an incredible outcome indeed: as religions are much
more interested in the functioning of human societies than in the orbit of planets,
they should be careful to establish or, at least, follow a reliable method in judging
such a functioning.
In effect, the fecund voluntarist and organizational inclination typical of Christian
social thought has not been erased. But that inclination has been more and more
corrupted, often in non-explicit ways, by the observational standard derived from
positivism. As a consequence, the separation between being and doing and hence
between positive and normative aspects, or an equivocal mixture of them, has also
afflicted Christian social thought. Being and doing, instead of together expressing a
unitary method, have only stood parallel to one another, standing in a similar rela-
tionship to that which in economics exists between economic theory and political
economy. In particular, Christian social thought accepted the postulate (of natural
science) that only instrumental rationality (i.e. concerning the acquisition of means)
is possible, thus rejecting the rationality with respect to ends and values: values
cannot be a matter of science.
13
(Zamagni 2012).
14
See A. Fusari, in: (Ekstedt and Fusari 2010), p. 10.
270 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
dynamical seeds of the Christian message. But in order to flourish, these revelations
and seeds must not trample on human reason. In sum, religions should incessantly
work so that, with regard to the problems of the human world, the commandments
of faith do not oppose the suggestions of reason; after all, it seems sensible to pre-
sume that God has made humanity intelligent enough to understand worldly things.
Moreover, religions should insist on our moral duty to use human reason profitably
as a fundamental support in promoting the role and the potentialities of the
individual and harmony and peace among people through ethical precepts valid on
a universal scale, as functional and ontological imperatives teach us. It should be
never forget that, as we have previously seen in this chapter, the commandment to
love one’s neighbour is, by itself, scarcely meaningful since everybody understands
love in his or her own way. Indeed, in the name of love, terrible atrocities have been
inflicted on men in the name of and with the support of religion. In order to avoid
such terrible occurrences, the feeling of love must be complemented by the teachings
of social thought, primarily that of cultural objectivism.
2. However, the relation between faith and reason is much more complex than it
might appear simply from the above reasoning. In particular, the prescription that
faith must not contradict reason needs some clarifications. It is evident that a large
part of the prescriptions of faith, as well also as artistic production and other, even
more profound elements of human life, cannot be explained through reason.
Moreover, some aspects of faith that have offered a significant contribution to human
evolution seem to have operated in opposition to reason. One example is the linear
notion of historical time, upon which we focused at the beginning of this chapter;
another is the Christian ideal of the individual and consequent opposition to slavery.
Such notions and sentiments appeared to strongly go against the dominant rationality
of the societies in which they were generated; most notably, the advent of the novel
seeds of Christian teachings concerning dynamic time and slavery chronically under-
mined the institutional order and much of the organizational necessities of the ancient
stationary societies in which they were first planted. Such historical evidence would
seem to contradict the principle that the prescriptions of faith should not trample on
reason. But such contradiction is only apparent. In fact, the principles referred had
the propulsive and progressive effects that we know, notwithstanding their contradic-
tions with the forms of rationality typical of those societies, because they expressed
a superior kind of rationality and ontological imperatives; the new principles, in other
words, were in accordance with human evolutionary potential and, furthermore,
removed some large obstacles that opposing its realisation. According to our method,
the teaching of the Christian Revelation concerning the individual, the connected
evangelic teaching on service-power and the distinction between God and Caesar
(ontological imperatives that in almost two millennia have also become functional
imperatives of the modern age) have a scientific character. Human evolutionary
potential has a great need for creative processes, and these latter are provided with
much nourishment by art and religion. But, in the absence of the work of reason,
creativity would simply cause chaos. In conclusion, it is imperative that reason, reli-
gion and art co-operate instead of being in reciprocal opposition.
272 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
The encyclical Fides et ratio issued by Pope John Paul the Second, insisted
strongly on the consonance between faith and reason, their consistency and co-
operation, and the ability of faith to lead toward higher forms of rationality. It is
written: “There is no reason for competition between reason and faith, the one is in
the other and each one has a proper field of realisation… Fundamental theology
must show the consistency between faith and its exigency to unfold through a
reason able to completely freely declare its assent”.15 And: “It is illusory to think
that faith, in the presence of a weak reason, may have a higher incisiveness; on the
contrary, it falls into the serious danger of being reduced to myth and superstition.
In the same way, a reason lacking of a mature faith is not pushed to pay attention to
the novelty and radicality of being”.16 And again: “They are tasks obliging reason
to admit that there is some truth and rationality outside the narrow limits inside
which it is inclined to shut itself”.17 Well, this is of course of some interest. But
unfortunately in the encyclical there is no mention of the problem of social thought,
notwithstanding the fact that the poor scientific condition of social thought greatly
offends reason and ethics. Christian doctrine has dedicated a great deal of work and
even some important encyclicals to social problems. However, this encyclical on
faith and reason, while insisting on the necessity of a harmonious relationship between
theology and philosophy, invites research to attempt the ascent of the Absolute and
acknowledges the great achievements of the natural sciences, nevertheless forgets
the great poverty of adequatio rei et intellectus in the field of social relations. More
precisely, the encyclical Fides et Ratio (and also other, social encyclicals) show a
lack of perception that, in social knowledge, the relation between faith, reason and
ethics is afflicted by a growing confusion that allows an almost free expression of
deceit, abuse of power and monstrosities in daily life; it allows, in sum, immorality.
We have just seen that a suitable method for the investigation of social reality
also holds out the possibility of gaining insight into the relations between reason
and revelation. But the encyclical in question does not consider the analytical
categories that are necessary for this task. It seems to us that the meaning of life
mainly consists in the evolutionary mission of humanity; that is, the sense of life is
to be found in the contribution that each person can and must provide, in every
social environment, according to particular individual personal skills and through
work and example, to improving and nourishing the soil of human relations; this
meaning, in other words, is such that each one of us may, at the end, close his or her
eyes and say truthfully “I have done (or tried to do) the best I could to ameliorate the
conditions of life and facilitate the evolutionary mission of those who will follow.”
But for such a personal contribution to take place and not be deviated by false prin-
ciples it is necessary that social thought establish a method appropriate to social
reality, thereby providing a scientific content to social theory. This is a great challenge
for the world in which we are living, and probably it deserves some special encyclical.
15
Encyclical by Jean Paul the Second, 1998, pp. 40 and 124.
16
Ibidem, pp. 94–95.
17
Ibidem, p. 141.
10.6 Further Considerations on Religious and Social Thought: Faith and Reason 273
18
(Ratzinger 2005), p. 61.
19
(Pera and Ratzinger 2004), p. 61.
20
Ibidem, p. 11.
21
Encyclical Spe Salvi by Benedetto 2008, p. 46.
274 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
22
Forte. Ibidem, p. 26.
10.7 Hume, Smith, Kant and Hegel on Ethics 275
23
David Hume (1997) An inquiry concerning the principles of moral. Laterza Rome, with English
text, p. 26.
24
Ibidem, p. 40.
25
Ibidem, p. 54.
26
Ibidem, p. 56.
27
Ibidem, p. 68.
276 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
The argument of the public utility of moral norms and institutions is in practice
fundamental if the study and explanation of these norms is to be founded on a
rational, even if not exhaustive, basis.
Hume later turns to consider the question of moral sentiments that bring into play
the factor of ‘sympathy’ towards virtuous actions of both the observer and actor.
He writes: “the merit, ascribed to the social virtues, appears still uniform, and arises
chiefly from that regard, which the natural sentiment of benevolence engages us
to pay to the interests of mankind and society…. We must, a priori, conclude it
impossible for such a creature as man to be totally indifferent to the well or ill-being
of his fellow-creature”; he clarifies this point when he explains: “The hypothesis
which we embrace is plain. It maintains that morality is determined by sentiment.
It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the
pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary”.28 Here Hume does not
cohere to his central idea, which bases the explanation and justification of moral
norms on their public utility. In fact ‘sympathy’, much more than the effect of a ‘natural’
sentiment of benevolence, is for the most part a result of man’s habits as established
in relation to certain ideas, behaviour and rules. Well rooted and diffuse prejudices
and impostures may promote intense and diffuse sentiments: humanity has carried
out and accepted tremendous oppressions and inhuman massacres whilst riding on
a wave of intense sentiments of approval. Hume’s reference to public utility as derived
from a rational investigation of social organization has the virtue of guarding moral
prescriptions against prejudices and credulity. So the most attractive aspect of the
Humean theory of morality appears to be the role attributed to reason. Hume writes:
“One principal foundation of moral praise being supposed to lie to the usefulness of
any quality or action; it is evident, that reason must enter for a considerable share
in all decisions of this kind; since nothing but that faculty can instruct us in the
tendency of qualities and actions, and point out their beneficial consequences
to society and to their possessors”.29 Unfortunately, Hume does not give full value to
reason in the search for generalizations on moral principles, as our notions of onto-
logical and functional imperatives attempt to do. Moreover, he does not maintain
and enforce an accurate distinction between objective and relative elements, a flaw
that is manifested primarily by the absence of any consideration for the notion
of civilization. Indeed, the empiricist view on morality does not go beyond the
following statement: “It appears to be matter of fact, that the circumstance of utility,
in all subjects, is a source of praise and approbation: That it is constantly appealed
to in all moral decisions concerning the merit and demerit of actions: That it is the
sole source of that high regard paid to justice, fidelity, honour, allegiance, and chastity:
That it is inseparable from all the other social virtues, humanity, generosity, charity,
affability, lenity mercy, and moderation: And, in a word, that it is a foundation of the
chief part of morals, which has a reference to mankind and our fellow creatures.”30
In our view, the great merit of Hume’s development on ethics is that it hinges on the
28
Ibidem, pp. 96 and 194.
29
Ibidem, p. 188.
30
Ibidem, p. 98.
10.7 Hume, Smith, Kant and Hegel on Ethics 277
31
(Smith 1910), p. 13.
32
(Smith 1976), p. 9
33
Ibidem, pp. 97 and 99.
278 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
“Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human
breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and per-
fection of the species…. and if the indignation of mankind run as light against them
as against actions; if the baseness of the thought which had given birth to us action,
seemed in the eyes of the world as much to call aloud for vengeance as the baseness
of the action, every court of judicature would become a real inquisition. There
would be no safety for the most innocent and circumspect conduct”.34 The connection
between ethics and functional needs here underlined is clearly a product of social
structure much more than it is a natural phenomenon. Again, with deference towards
nature, Smith says: “Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with
an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren”.35 But,
in accordance with the development of his thought, Smith should have written:
“Society (not nature), when she formed man, endowed him with…”.
1. In contrast to Hume and Smith, who base the discourse on ethics on the functioning
of social order, Kant restricts the field of morality to the inner dimension of men’s
attitudes and gives to his construction a strictly rationalistic foundation, which is
deprived of any bond with the empirical world and is rather deduced from a priori
principles: a notion of morality free of references to ends and empirical facts, free
of utilitarian purposes, and free from the influence of sentiments and interests; in
sum, a notion of morality that translated into an idea of pure duty. Such thinking
seems, at a first glance, the quintessence of morality. But Kant’s definitions and
constructions evaporate in the hands of the student who tries to identify their
substance and contents. Kant writes: “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the
world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualifications, except a
good will”; and later, “but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and
mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, consti-
tutes what is called character, is not good”.36 Kant underlines that: “A good will is
good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment
of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in
itself…. the supreme good and the condition of every other, (even of the desire of
happiness)”.37 So, good will is a value in itself; on the contrary, benevolence and
sympathy have not a genuine moral valence.
34
Ibidem, p. 105.
35
Ibidem, p. 116.
36
See (Kant 1982), p. 256.
37
Ibidem, pp. 256–257.
10.7 Hume, Smith, Kant and Hegel on Ethics 279
This separation of Kant’s morality from ends and inclinations marks a strong
distinction in relation to the empiricists’ analysis. The content of Kant’s pure reason
appears much nobler than what the most acute reason may express when applied
to the satisfaction of human needs. And, from an ethical point of view, Kant’s state-
ment “make good not as a consequence of inclination but as duty” is beautiful. But
what is this duty correlated to good will? Once duty is separated from any material
aspect the specification of some clear and operational way of identifying it is
required. Kant provides the following formulation, a decisive law expressing his
whole theory: “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my
maxim should become a universal law. Here, now, it is the simple conformity to law
in general, without assuming any particular law applicable to certain actions, that
serves the will as its principle and must so serve it, if duty is not to be a vain delusion
and a chimerical notion.”38 This principle should allow the identification of ‘good
will’, i.e. should act as a compass allowing reason “to distinguish, in every case that
occurs, what is good, what bad, conformably to duty or inconsistent with it”.39
Unfortunately, this magic rule, which Kant reiterates in various forms, appears
unable to give any practical help if one attempts to derive from it the content of
‘duty’ and ‘good will’. This drawback of Kantian moral philosophy has frequently
been underlined by scholars. The few Kantian examples of categorical imperatives
representing the motive of duty and good will do not satisfy the a priori and univer-
salizing character attributed to that law. For instance, the duty to not make false
promises clearly subtends a particular value premise: we can readily imagine a
society such as that which practices the Kula ring, where a skill at cheating is highly
appreciated. An observer of reality as acute as Mandeville asserted: “show me a
trader who has always revealed the shortcomings of his goods to those that try to
bargain on price. Where do you find one that sometimes has not tried to hide them
at the damage of the buyer?”40
Kant indicates that it is a categorical imperative to ‘respect pacts’. But the fact
that an assassin drawn by lot in a gang of villains (or in the ancient Assassins sect)
and obligated to kill a designated victim performs the execution does not seem of
moral merit. And the universality of the Kantian duty to not tell lies is contradicted
by the fact that nobody appreciates the denouncements of an informer, even if
obtained through torture. Again, it is impossible to attribute a universal character to
the duty of solidarity; in fact, the rich man does not fear the Kantian argument that
the universalization of an aversion to solidarity would deprive him of the possibility
of receiving help in case of need. Thomas Nagel has underlined a number of contra-
dictions and impasses to which Kant’s notion of categorical imperative leads. However,
while Nagel’s distinction between the personal view centered on the interests of
the individual, and the impersonal view concerning the interest of society is
illuminating, it seems to contain many contradictions. Nozick’s criticisms of Rawls’
38
Ibidem, p. 260.
39
Ibidem, p. 261.
40
See, B. Mandeville, The fable of bees, p. 37.
280 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
41
It does not seem appropriate to discriminate against animals because deprived of reason. We can
dissent from the empiricist Hume, who does not see differences in principle between the reason of
man and animals; but it cannot be denied that animals could experience, in the very long run, an
evolution similar to that undergone by the primordial men that Vico described as “wild, violent and
inhumane”.
10.7 Hume, Smith, Kant and Hegel on Ethics 281
42
See J. Bentham. Deontology and the science of moral, Paravia, Milan, p. 31.
282 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
as prerequisites for moral growth. Nietzsche’s superman says: “I do not take care of
my happiness. I am concerned about my work”.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the inquiry on ethics plainly shifted from
the objective to the subjective-relativist side, as we have already seen. Utilitarianism
provided some refinement to the notion of utility with respect to the thinking of
Bentham and Mill; but the accurate formalizations of economists were unable to
go beyond Pareto’s indifference curves showing the possibility of measuring utility,
the impartial spectator being a mere invention.
Rawls’ neo-contractualism constitutes one of the most advanced of recent
attempts to regain some objectivity on ethics, in the wake of the failure of jus naturalist
contractualism. We have shown in another book43 that the neo-contractualist view
and, in particular, the two Rawlsian principles of justice do not need the unacceptable
abstractions that Rawls’ perspective based on personal interests requires and that, to
be made stringent, they need our notions of functional and ontological imperatives.
We hope to have the opportunity to provide, before too long, some more extensive
reflections upon ethics.
43
(Ekstedt and Fusari 2010), pp. 82–84.
44
(Pera and Ratzinger 2004).
10.8 Pera’s Criticism and Antiseri and Giorello’s Defence of Relativism 283
they militate against our deepest intuitions on human rights and are contrary to our
fundamental values; that is, we reject them with practical not theoretical reasons”.45
Seventy five years ago Fascism and Nazism were not repugnant to the conscience of
the large majority of Italian and German people who, on the contrary, attributed to
these regimes a moral and technical superiority with respect to the so-called decadent
Western plutocracies. And yet, 50 years ago, hundreds of millions of communist
believers remained convinced as to the moral and material superiority of their social
system, and had faith that it would soon conquer the entire world.
The universality of some values can hardly be derived from ideology alone.
Conscience is modelled by civilisations as well as by ideologies. The universality of
values (or the superiority of some of them) can be derived neither from their diffusion,
which may depend on the expansive strength of each civilisation, nor from faith,
since even universal religions have some opponents. To prove the universality
(or superiority) of values, it is necessary to adduce some precise scientific justifications.
Some are immediately evident. For instance, important values are signs of the time,
children of the general conditions of development, of evolutionary process. Some
other values with a universal spirit are the consequence of profound characteristics
of human nature.
The bureaucratically centralised and rigidly obedient societies of the modern age
have been knocked down by their incompatibility with modern general conditions
of development. Such societies would have had long-lasting life in the stationary
ancient world, as the history of ancient bureaucratic and autocratic empires shows.
Let us to recall that, if Hitler had defeated Stalin, the Nazi system would most likely
have subsequently perished in confrontation with Britain and North America, as
experienced by Stalin’s heirs, for that system embodied certain values and organisa-
tional forms that suffocated human evolutionary potential and were therefore not
suitable to the dynamic society of our time. Pera disregards this kind of justification
of values. He observes the indecision latent to relativism, which causes moral weakness
and irresoluteness, and suggests: “Perhaps Western countries have lost the criterion
of justice and only preserve the category of error, or modify the criterion of justice
every time somebody deplores an error of ours, or get tired of justice”.46 But in order
to eliminate relativist indecision it is necessary to penetrate deeply the question of
values. Pera understand that it is not possible to explain (justify) ethical values
through the method of the natural sciences based on being; he does not use this method,
notwithstanding (or as a consequence of) his old conviction as to the uniqueness of
methodological procedure.47 But he does not possess a method able to combine
being and doing that, as such, is able to scientifically investigate values.
Difficulties become more evident in Pera’s rational discussion of values; for
example, in his criticism of the “relativism of contextualists and of deconstructivists”.
Against the first, he proposes that, “to judge if a culture A is better than a culture B, one
does not need a common meta-criterion; it is enough that the members of A and B
45
Ibidem, p. 123.
46
Ibidem, p. 5.
47
(Pera 1982).
284 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
48
(Pera and Ratzinger 2004), pp. 15 and 16.
49
Ibidem, p. 16.
10.8 Pera’s Criticism and Antiseri and Giorello’s Defence of Relativism 285
terms. The consequent landfall is represented by the appeal to faith and hence
cultural absolutism. Pera criticizes Derrida’s deconstructivism. Even if we do not
know the work of this scholar, it seems to us that he deserves criticism. But Pera
writes: “Why does Derrida never say that it is a choice of value – for dialogue,
tolerance, etc. – which in the end founds an intellectual political position?” We
know that tolerance and dialogue have an objective (ontological and functional)
foundation, rather than represent a value choice. Nobody will deny that the values
of the primitive inhabitants of the Amazon must profoundly differ from those of
modern man, and this implies an objective foundation of the difference.
Pera is satisfied to discover that, in the end, Derrida also appeals to faith when,
pushed by the contradictions of deconstructivism, he says: “I persist in thinking that it
is the faith in the possibility of this impossible thing… to determine all our deci-
sions”. And Pera comments: “Yes, the faith. In the end the true answer has come”.50
But indeed there exist relative values, (i.e. objects of choice) and objective values, (i.e.
imposed by de facto reality). It is a task of science to rigorously distinguish among them
and to teach the way to do so. Cultural absolutism, based on faith, cannot oppose any
objection to the Muslim invoking of the application of sharja. Faith is not matter of
discussion and mediation. But, just for this reason, science must proclaim the fact
without dissimulation when the commandments of faith trample on scientific reason.
For instance, it must clarify that it is contradictory to desire cumulative development
and pretend to marry this desire to the application of Islamic law, which models insti-
tutions and impedes them from adapting to (and favouring) the evolution of the gen-
eral conditions of development. Science must not be worried that the Muslim believer
will reject the assertion above. When the believer will have paid the price of his dis-
obedience to science, he will understand his error and begin to take into account the
prescriptions of science. The Jewish Pharises proved to be much more acute than cur-
rent cultural relativists and absolutists when they invented the oral Torah, which is
adjustable by way of interpretation, and which allowed the Jewish people to adapt,
during the Diaspora, to the societies that provided them with hospitality without los-
ing their identity. Sooner or later Islam will be forced to invent something analogous,
which will allow it to adapt itself to the necessities of development.
2. In a recent essay in defence of cultural relativism,51 Antiseri lists a number of
reasons in favour of individualism, tolerance and pluralism. Relativism is intended
as a notion liable to be confuted and improved, extended and revised, in opposition
to absolute truth. This author refers relativism to the plurality of contributions
to knowledge, that is to the fact that men, as thinking beings, are pushed by their
cognitive limits to think in a variety of ways. This argument seems obvious from a
scientific point of view. Furthermore, his defence of nihilism is reasonable and well
motivated given that Antiseri identifies nihilism as antithetical to absolute truth. But
all this goes beyond the question of cultural relativism, which represents a much
50
(Pera and Ratzinger 2004), pp. 19 and 22.
51
(Antiseri 2005).
286 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
52
Ibidem, p. IX.
53
Ibidem, p. 23.
10.8 Pera’s Criticism and Antiseri and Giorello’s Defence of Relativism 287
I read your deep essay and I send you my objections. 1) Scientific research (both in natural
and social sciences) always consists in some trials to solve problems; the method of solution
of problems always is the same. We have not contrary proofs. 2) I am not convinced by your
considerations on “Hume’s law”. 3) Choice, in the field of values (and hence the individual
freedom and responsibility), is (fortunately) inevitable. The values presented as universal,
if are not a result of personal choice, are conventions resulting from complex historical
processes and sometimes from tragedies. 5) Tolerance and dialogue have not an objective
foundation rationally proved. They are the result of choices often based on predilection
(which is not an objective attitude) of their consequences. 6) Behind the work of science
there is an irrational choice concerning scientific rationality. 7) All that, in brief, to confirm
the reasonable point of view that objective values are a logical impossibility and that, as a
consequence, relativism is inevitable. All totalitarians have been antirelativists. Their
presumption to owe some final truth rationally proved and exclusive values has caused
many millions of victims. These are the points on which we dissent. On the questions with
reference to which we agree, there is no need to discuss.
by definition for the simple reason that, in nature (with reference to which the
observational experimental method was born), doing is absent; only interaction
of man with nature occurs. More precisely, human intervention in natural reality
is interactive while in social reality it is constituent. Well, if we define a metho-
dological procedure that is appropriate to social reality, we immediately see that
doing appears on the scene in combination with being, as my proposal on method
shows. The denial of this requires, therefore, the demolition of my proposal
(which, from Antiseri, was not forthcoming).
Point 3: “In the field of values, choice is inevitable”. This is true only for some
values; precisely, relative values. I have previously provided many examples that
refute the general validity of that statement. Here I limit myself to recalling but
one: the market and the related values associated with the open society. A
dynamic society, which is inherently characterised by systematic endogenous
flows of uncertainty, cannot do without the market with associated values (which
need not necessarily have a capitalist character). He who intends to abolish
the market, must accept the subsequent regression toward a stationary state. The
objectivity of some important values simply consists in the fact that serious costs
are caused by the ignorance of that objectivity; the major part of the teachings of
science is of this kind.
Point 4: “values presented as universal… are the result of complex historical
processes and sometimes tragedies”. This is true. Many values are the result of
dolorous processes of convergence towards ethical ‘necessities’. More precisely,
the advancement of the general conditions of development determines the neces-
sity of new values that, if not scientifically known, will be approximated by
trial and error, through torments and tragedies. If that convergence through
approximation fails, society regresses. The commercial societies of the Middle
Ages “needed” communal freedoms, which were inconsistent with feudal
values. If the pretensions of feudal landlords, which were buttressed by impor-
tant theoretical authorities of that time, had not been defeated by the medieval
communes, the new and more advanced stage of development would not have
flourished and Western countries would have not surpassed the great bureau-
cratic and autocratic empires of the Eastern world.
Point 5: “tolerance and dialogue have not an objective foundation…they represent
choices based on preference for their consequences”. This is decisively wrong.
For the realisation of human evolutionary potential, it is necessary to give full
value to the great variety of human skills; this requires tolerance, pluralism and
dialogue. It is not a question of preferences. Of course, I do not deny that a
person may prefer to trample on evidence and science, and even to kill himself
and thereby erase his relations with science and evidence. But this does not erase
the role of evidence, of science and of the existence of objective values.
Point 6: “Behind the work of science there is an irrational choice concerning scientific
rationality.” The use of reason is not a choice. Reason is like eyes that men possess
and hence use. A man may blind himself, but this is a pathological behaviour, a
folly. The problem is to invent instruments that improve as much as possible the
10.8 Pera’s Criticism and Antiseri and Giorello’s Defence of Relativism 289
54
(Giorello 2005).
55
Ibidem, p. 53.
290 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
of thought: a cultural absolutism based on faith, and a cultural relativism that, owing
to its physiological inability to pronounce on real phenomena and provide reference
points, provides a strong support to absolutism. Standing behind both of these two
dead ends is a common misunderstanding: the idea, postulated but never proved, of
the impossibility of submitting values to scientific analysis, that is, the impossibility
of cultural objectivism; a presumed impossibility that, among other things, militates
against the growing need for a global ethics.
In response to my making such criticism, Giorello suggested to me a book edited
by G. Boniolo and entitled Secularity,56 which contains an essay by Giorello on
‘Relativism’. After reading this essay, I considered it my duty to mail to the author
the considerations set out below:
I find appropriate and stimulating the initial phrase that you take from Leopardi:
“who can know the limits of possibility?” But I have some objections to your
development and I try to assemble them in three groups.
(a) Your emphasis on possibility inspires you to propose an approach to knowledge
based on De Finetti’s notion of subjective probability, with the aim of underlining
and interpreting the fallibility and the limitations of human knowledge. I think
that this probabilistic approach is inadequate to represent the fallibility and
limitation of human cognitive skills. Indeed, the strongest and most pertinent
expression of the fallibility and limits of knowledge is that represented by the
idea of radical uncertainty (which may be expressed by the changes of opinions
or the differences between expectations and reality, both varying in different
cases).57 But radical uncertainty cannot be represented by (objective or subjective)
distributions of probability and, as I shall underline soon, has some relevant
methodological implications.
(b) I think it insufficient to concentrate attention on possibility. It seems to me that
the aspect of ‘necessity’ is very important and that social thought must put
forward this aspect together with and parallel to that of ‘choice-possibility’.
This is indispensable if we are to hope to understand the problems of human
societies. It is insufficient to limit ourselves to a mixture of both aspects in order
to be able to distinguish relativism from scepticism. It is necessary to distin-
guish rigorously the two aspects. The most delicate and controversial feature of
‘necessity’ and the most appropriate and pertinent to the debate on relativism is
represented by the question of objective ethical values. There exist some values
that are indispensable in a definite stage of development and some others that
are inconsistent with that stage. For instance, radical uncertainty, which more
and more characterises modern dynamic societies, implies the ‘necessity’ of
the decentralisation of decision-making and corresponding values (pluralism,
tolerance, etc.): a necessity that is not present in stationary society. These values
are, therefore, objective (that is necessary) in modern dynamic societies, and
56
(G Giorello, Relativism. In; G Boniolo 2006) ed.
57
See Fusari, chapter 5 in: Ekstedt and Fusari (2010), and Fusari and Reati (2013), and Fusari
(2013).
10.9 Conclusion 291
10.9 Conclusion
Both cultural relativists and defenders of the absolute characters of values, or cultural
absolutists, share the denial of the scientific character of ethical values. This denial
ensures the inability of relativists to express themselves on very important prob-
lems, while the reference of absolutists to the commandments of faith as universally
valid over time generates a tendency on their part toward immovableness, rigidity
and a number of acute cultural contrasts that are averse to the needs and the dynamics
of the global world. But in this regard we must recognize the profitability of articles
of faith that are largely shared and a today attention, also by some exponents of
religions, to put forward some important contributions to a global ethics.59
The denial of scientific content to ethical values is an aprioristic assumption,
which is not justified by empirical facts. It is based rather on some inappropriate
methods of analysis of social reality. Such an erroneous position obscures the
role of reason and the relation between reason and faith and is neither justified by
religious feelings nor by agnostic attitudes.
A crucial omission is shared by all the just-mentioned theoretical developments:
all postulate the limitation of the question of values to being or, vice versa, to doing,
58
G Giorello, Relativism, in G. Boniolo (ed) (2006), p. 234.
59
Pope Jean Paul II, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in 2001, said: “Mankind,
in the presence of the globalization process, cannot do without a common ethical code”. The
enduring dedication of Hans Küng to global ethics is well known, as is also the growing attention
of the United Nations to this matter.
292 10 Further Meditation on Ethics: Values in the Light of Religious…
thus erasing, for different reasons, the most important and peculiar need of social
thought, that is, the combination of being and doing, which is indispensable to the
scientific analysis of values. This prejudices studies on ethics. In particular, it
causes: (a) a cynicism (shared by positivism, evolutionism, Weberian thought,
idealism) arising from subjection to being; (b) a sectarian fundamentalism and
an abstract and deceptive Enlightenment based on the mere reference to doing;
(c) while in Kantian formulations, it gives rise to an aprioristic and evanescent
objectivism. Particularly notable among the problems that result are the obstruction
of the definition of a global ethics and the obstruction of the reconciliation of religious
sense and rationality, which both are urgently required in the modern world.
We have seen that cultural objectivism is possible; that is, it is possible to show
the objective character of some important values. The problem of the scientific
analysis of ethical values must not be undervalued. In fact, only the scientific analysis
of values allows some generalizations on ethics to which all people are interested in
assenting and which are valid at a world scale; in such a way, the scientific analysis
of values strengthens the role and operation of spiritual forces. In our present
changeable and indefinite societies, the need to provide a sense to life is particularly
strong. As we said, it is our conviction that such sentiment should be referred to the
evolutionary mission of humanity: each human being should be morally obliged and
satisfied to provide, on a low or on a large scale, and according to his capacities, a
contribution to the tilling of the soil on which future offspring will continue. Well,
the fecundity of such behaviour is strictly dependent on the use of reason also in the
field of ethical values.
The beginning of the last century experienced the hegemony of Weberian relativism
and associated forms of cultural irrationalism (which Weber tried to hide through
his insistent, but ambiguous, references to the rationality principle); and half a
century of extreme violence followed. We are today in the presence of a treble
ration of irrationalism, expressed by cultural relativism, cultural absolutism and
evolutionary spontaneity; an irrationalism which is particularly malevolent in a
rapidly changing world.
References
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Antiseri, D. (2005). Relativism, nihilism, individualism. Physiology and pathology of Europe.
Catanzaro: Rubbettino.
Antiseri, D., Infantino, L., & Boniolo, G. (1987). Autonomy and method of sociological judgement.
Rome: Armando.
Aquinas, T. (1996). The mortal vices. Milan: Rizzoli.
Aquinas, T. (1997). Political pamphlets. Bologna: PDUL Editions.
Aquinas, T. (1998). What makes actions good or bad. Summa theologiae, 1–2, 18–20. In Selected
writings (pp. 565–611). London: Penguin Classics.
Arrow, K. (1968). Social choice and individual values. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Baum, G. (1979). The social imperative. New York: Paulist Press.
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References 293
One of the primary shortcomings of our age is the absence of a scientific method
appropriate to the study, interpretation, organization and management of modern
societies. As a consequence, our age suffers a planetary disease that heavily affects
individual, social, international and power relations and wellbeing. This book has
intended to challenge such shortcoming and disease.
We have seen that two outstanding literary traditions have vitiated the develop-
ment of social thought: the merely observational view, borrowed from the natural
sciences, and the metaphysical emphasis on de facto reality as expressed by philo-
sophical idealism and historicism. These two methodological traditions have gener-
ated various well-known aphorisms: the fancy of history, the cunning of universal
reason, the invisible hand, the public benefit of private vices and, more recently,
diffuse rationality or, at best, the apparently scientific expectation that it is possible
to interact with social reality on the basis of the illusory discovery of its laws of
motion. This fetishist deference for reality considers as inevitable (and even indis-
pensable to regeneration and social ‘progress’) the incessant and almost incredible
monstrosities that populate human history; indeed, it stimulates them (and in fact,
the Marxian fancy of history has generated the gulag). This book has intended to
show the falsity of these diffuse and often revered aphorisms.
The opposite disregard of reality as postulated by the Enlightenment and
constructivism, which sometimes pretends to scientific legitimization by way of the
abstract rationality procedures of the formal-logic sciences, is no less dangerous.
In the second half of the last century the applications of the above methodological
bodies witnessed impressive refinements, as shown by the development of econo-
metrics and the formulation of complicated and pretentious mathematical models.
Today, the virtuosity and substantial explanatory impotence of these formal and
sophisticated techniques becomes ever more visible, mainly as an effect of the
phenomenon of social change.1
1
But the development and simulation, in another book (Ekstedt and Fusari, Routledge 2010, chapter 5)
of a large formalized interdependence model of the economy gives a proof that mathematics
must not be dismissed, as the abuse of abstract formalization and of econometrics might seem
A growing dissatisfaction with regard to this situation is at work. But so far the
reaction has produced, not some workable alternative but a widespread confusion
on method, as exemplified, for instance, by a large part of heterodox economics.
This book attempts to remedy this situation by providing a tool capable of sur-
mounting some of the main difficulties in the understanding of a social reality that
intensifying social change, and hence the non-repetitiveness of social phenomena,
makes ever more visible and disturbing and substantially impossible to meet if
seen in light of traditional methods, i.e. the method rooted in observation and the
merely formal-abstract method.
Our methodological approach leads us to frame some key general notions, such
as functional and ontological imperatives and civilization, and these are able to
provide, even with regard to ethics, fairly steady reference points in the interpreta-
tion and organization of the ever more intricate and volatile social reality and, hence,
to allow us to disentangle ourselves in non-repetitiveness. Really, while one side of
the notion of civilization implies stability, the other – mainly in terms of the grand
options implied – may stimulate or bring a halt to change. However, we have seen
that the three notions above are valuable, mainly through their interactions, for the
understanding and interpretation of social change and of social and historical
processes. More in general, our notion of ‘necessity-constraint’ takes care to provide
well defined steady points with regard to the organization of social systems. For its
part, choice-possibility and creativeness side offers the material to complete models
in regard to the workings of variability.
Applications to various branches of social thought demonstrate the profitableness
of our proposal on method.
Reference
Ekstedt, H., & Fusari, A. (2010). Economic theory and social change. Problems and revisions.
London/New York: Routledge.
to suggest; such a model shows that appropriate use of mathematics may generate valuable contri-
butions in the field of social science.
Name Index
A C
Abraham, 255 Carr, E., 211
Albert, H., 39–41 Carter-Nagar, 134
Alexander the Great, 213 Charlemagne, 208, 258
Antigon, 229 Church Fathers, 257
Antiseri, D., 282–291 Clastres, P., 177, 179, 180, 182, 183
Aquinas, T., 258, 273 Cleopatre, 211
Archibugi, F., 64 Clower, R.W., 104
Archimedes, 260 Coase, R., 103
Ardebili, M.H., 47, 105 Commons, J., 105
Arena, R., 23, 190 Comte, A., 144
Ariadne, 248 Confucian, 18, 254
Aristotle, 18, 221, 241 Constant, B., 188, 191, xxv, xxvi
Augustus emperor, 157, 207, Constantine the Great, 208
229, 244 Cowley, R., 212–215
Creon, 229
B
Bacon, F., 240 D
Barone, E., 95 Darwin, C., 81, 89, 210
Bellarmino, cardinal, 260 Davis, J.B., 89, 105, 106
Benedetto XVI, pope, 273 De Finetti, B., 41, 290, 291
Benedict, R., 170, 171, 173, Derrida, J., 285
254, 273 Dilthey, W., 13
Bentham, J., 281, 282 Diocletian emperor, 265
Bhaskar, R., 47 Dobusch L., 106
Blankenburg, S., 23 don Circostanza, 30, 96, 97
Bobbio, N., 219, 224, 225 Dosi, G., 79, 80
Bodin, J., 182, 192 Dow, S.C., 105
Bohannan, P., 178, 179 Durkheim, E., 54, 179, 237, 240, 241, 244,
Boniolo, G., 290, 291 245, 248, 249
Borgia, C., 197
Boudon, R., 196, 204, 205, 216,
235–251, 263, xxvi E
Bruni, L., 269 Edgeworth, F.Y, 26
Buddha, 270 Einstein, A., 286
Ekstedt, H., 17, 21, 51, 55, 71, 81, 90, 97, 98, J
101–103, 121, 130, 132, 192, 198, 202, Jason, 51
269, 282, 290, 295 Jean Paul II, pope, 253, 272, 291
Eliade, M., 158, 163–164, 205, 255, xxiv Johansen, L., 62
Emmer, R.E., 28 Julian emperor, 265
F K
Faber, M., 89, 90 Kant, I., 226, 248, 268, 275–282
Fabietti, U., 178 Kantorovich, L., 61, 64
Ferrajoli, L., 224 Kapeller, J., 39–41, 106
Ferrero, S., 229 Kelsen, H., 188, 189, 222–224, 231, xxv
Feyerabend, P., 74, 85, 91–93 Kerenskij, A., 211
Forte, B., 256, 274 Keynes, J.M., 27, 29, 242
Francis pope, 262–263 Keynes, J.N., 26, 27
Frederic II emperor, 211 Kirzner, I., 45, 85, 98, 132
Friedman, M., 25, 28–30 Knight, F., 103
Frisch, R., 62 Kuhn, T., 74–80, 105–107, 205
Fukuyama, F., 159, 160 Kung, H., 261, 291
G L
Galbraith, J.K., 6, 99, 192 Lakatos, I., 10, 75–80, 106, 107
Galileo, G., 11, 240, 260, 289 Lamarck, J.B., 89
Garegnani, P., 94 Lange, O., 95
Gengiz Kahn, 284 Langlois, R.N., 95
Germanicus (general), 213 Lattimore, O., 175
Geronimo, 178 Lawson, T., 81–84
Gioacchino da Fiore, 144 Lee, F., 83, 105, 106
Giorello, G., 282–291 Lemercier-Quelquejeir, 175
Gregory the Great pope, 265 Lenin, V.U., 6
Leontief, V., 62, 65, 95, 102
Leopardi, G., 290
H Lerner, A.P., 95
Hadrian emperor, 213 Leviathan, 14, 195, 221, 226
Hanson, N.R., 74 Levi-Strauss, C., 50, 175
Hardt, M., 161, 162 Loasby, B., 73
Hayek, F., 7, 14, 62, 84, 98, Locke, J., 194, 221
145–148, 244 Lotka, A.J., 133
Hegel, G.W.F., 14, 16, 126, 275–282 Löwith, K., 274
Hicks, J., 104 Lubich, C., 49
Hitler, A., 214, 283
Hobbes, T., 14, 221, 226
Hobson, J.A., 62 M
Hodgson, G.M., 62, 89 Machiavelli, N., 197, 215, 259, 277
Hume, D., 12, 14, 73, 230, 236, 261, Malinowski, B., 173, 175
275–282, 286, 287 Mandeville, B., 14, 16, 20, 21, 146, 277,
Huntington, S.P., 160 279, 281
Marcellino, Ammiano, 175
Marshall, A., 26
I Marx, K., 16, 66, 142–144, 159, 210
Ietto-Gillies, G., 130, 162 Mead, M., 173
Inglehart, R., 160 Metcalfe, J.S., 80, 90
Irti, N., 227, 233 Mill, J.S., 26, 91, 100, 101, 194, 282, 289
Ivan the Terrible, 197 Ming (Chinese dynasty), 247
Name Index 299
R V
Radcliffe-Braun, A.R., 175 Valente emperor, 213
Ratzinger, J., 273, 282, 284, 285 Veblen, T., 105
Rawls, J., 17, 226, 227, 279, 282 Viale, R., 236
Reati, A., 55, 80, 98, 102, 103, 121, 290 Vico, G.B., 15, 126, 144, 280
Rickert, H., 13 Voltaire, 253
Robbins, L., 26 Volterra, V., 133, 135–137
300 Name Index
A C
Absolutism, 156, 214, 226, 261, 262, 268, Calvinist, 277
273, 287, 290 ethics, 156
cultural, 264, 273, 282, 285, 290–292 Capitalism, competitive, 128
ethical, 254, 261–263, 270 conflictual-consumeristic, 29, 30, 128
juridical, 191, 226 mass consumption, 29, 65, 145
religious, 253 monopolistic, 29, 128
Agora, 207 post-consumeristic, 128
Arab-islamic, 214, 265 Caste, 229, 247, 280
empire, 119 order, 114, 119, 176
religion, 119 regime, 247
Aristocracy/slavery, 208 society, 121
Assyrian, 213 Challenge/response, 152, 153
Authority principle, 175–177 and creative response, 152
Autocracy, 6, 257 Change and tradition, 265
Tsarist and Soviet, 265 Chaos, 5, 183, 190, 220, 271
jurisprudential, 233
legislative, 233
B Chicago Declaration, 267
Banking system, 97, 130 Christian, 208, 267
Behaviour, rational, 74, 75, 237 church, 270
Being and doing, 12, 17, 26, 27, 32, 63, 67, dynamic seeds, 257–259, 264, 265, 268,
79, 80, 155, 196, 197, 201, 216, 219, 271, 274
222, 226, 230, 231, 247, 261, 262, 269, message, 156, 253–259, 264, 265, 271, 274
270, 274, 281, 283, 284, 286, 287, 292 Church, Catholic, 270, 274
Biology, 10, 82, 89, 90, 175, 244, 260, 265 Roman, 273, 277
Bolshevik, 6 Circular motion, 256, 259
Bureaucracy, 7, 207, 208, 214 Civil economy, 24, 269
bureaucratic class, 6 Civilization, 3, 4, 19, 21–24, 31, 32, 38, 41,
bureaucratic dead-end, 6 44, 46, 48–50, 52–55
bureaucratic order and empires, 14, 15, 271 Arab, 156, 214
centralized decision-making, 20 Arab-Islamic, 265
centralized systems, 53 autocratic, 116
Byzantine, theology, 21 bureaucratic-centralized, 116
Evolution, Darwinian, 16 G
evolutionary growth, 74 Genotype and phenotype, 89
evolutionary motion, 5, 55–57, 72, 84, Globalization, 19, 22, 131, 291
143, 146, 150, 212, 222, 255, 256, age of, 127, 128, 130
258, 260, 264 Global society, 20, 24, 124, 130, 187, 191,
evolutionary potential, 22, 40, 41, 48, 49, 192, 243, 250, 264, 267
100, 169, 173, 180, 200, 206, 212, 221, global economy, 51
231, 249, 255–257, 266–268, 271, 280, Golden age, 163
283, 288 Gulag (Soviet), 163
evolutionary process, 11, 12, 48, 89, 90,
145–148, 248, 257, 283
evolutionary social thought, 62, 90 H
evolutionary spontaneity, 257, 292 Harmony, 119, 138, 145, 146, 177
Exception, states of, 190–192 general, 146
Expectations, entrepreneurs’ expectations, 128 social, 146, 181, 228
Heretical (movements), 208
Heterodox economics, 93, 94, 104, 296
F Heterodoxy, 89, 105, 207, 250
Fall and disintegration, 153 Hierarchy, 18
Fallibilism, 76 social, 175–177
falsification, 15, 32, 37, 39, 41, 42, 73, 75, Hindu, 245, 277, 280
77, 106, 201, 237, 286 Historical, phase, 5, 50, 125–127, 144, 148
falsificationism, 15, 39, 42, 73, 75, 77, 106, stages, 143, 144, 151
237, 286 Historicism, 47, 163, 210, 295
Family, 50, 265, 266 fancy of history, 16, 161, 162, 210
extended, 266 German, 74, 86, 210
kinship networks, 266 pressure of history, 163
matriarchal, 170 Historiography, 77, 79
nuclear, 7, 181 virtual history, 212
patriarchal, 266 Holism, 210
Fancy of history, 16, 161, 162, 210, 295 Horde, 174
Federalism, 51 Hysteresis, 10, 14, 90
federal state, 131
Fetish, 170, 281, 295
Feudal period, 20 I
FIML estimator, 134 Idealism, dialectical, 247
Final ends, 71, 72, 143, 144, 223 philosophical, 16
Financial, activities, 130 Ideal-type, 156
capital, 21, 24, 258, 284 Incommensurability (principle), 8, 32, 37,
market, 22, 24, 128, 130, 162 46, 47, 74, 77, 78, 85, 86, 91, 106,
order, 101 107, 156, 203–205, 215, 216, 240,
power, 130 241, 250
system, 22, 101, 130, 142, 198, 206 prejudice, 203, 205
Fraternity, 25, 49, 51, 100, 130, 190, 202, Individual
213, 267 dignity and sacredness, 49, 100
Freedom and necessity, 58–59 role, 72, 100, 115, 116, 120, 155, 158, 172,
Free supposition, 213, 215 207–209, 235, 248, 249, 257, 270, 281,
Friend-enemy, 192, 193 286, 289
Functional coherence and efficiency, 4 Inequality, 4, 22, 88, 101, 102, 187, 205–210,
organic functional aspects, 143, 146, 150 216, 256
Function and conflict, 38, 58–59 Inflation, 24, 30, 66, 96, 102
Fundamentalism, 6, 250, 268, 287, 298 rate of, 101
Fundamental rule, 175, 224–226 Inflationary potential, 66
Subject Index 305
W
U Weak observational standard, 15, 237
Uncertainty, 6, 9, 13, 14, 22, 27, 49, 84, 98, Welfare state, 27, 51, 62, 100, 128,
102, 103, 132–134, 137, 146, 147, 154, 129, 204
163, 227, 258, 288 Will, free, 195, 219, 220, 223, 224,
probabilistic, 80, 97, 98 232, 233
radical, 6, 20–22, 24, 29, 80, 96, 98–100, general, 189, 191, 192, 215, 225,
102, 132–134, 290 226, 230, 231
subjective probability, 290 good, 263, 278, 279c