The inclusion of a classic text of theoretical sociology among a series of works on political thought may seem something of an anomaly. Much of the argument of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft concentrates on human beings as social animals in their various daily habitats, with only secondary or oblique reference to the over-arching structures of political power. Nevertheless, the case for scrutinising Tönnies's early master-work through the lens of political theory is a strong one. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft was composed during the 1880s, at a moment when it was still (just) possible for a European intellectual to aspire to familiarity with, if not total mastery of, all different aspects of the natural, social and humane sciences. Although Tönnies himself was to spend a lifetime promoting academic ‘sociology’, there is no evidence to suggest that either in 1887 or later he saw his work as being confined within a single disciplinary sphere. On the contrary, he conceived of both sociology and political theory as part of a cognitive continuum that embraced geometry at one extreme and narrative history at the other; and throughout his life he insisted that the true inventors and masters of theoretical sociology were Hobbes and Hume. Both disciplines were simply particular applications of ‘philosophy’, entailing problems of logic and epistemology comparable with those encountered in, say, linguistics, mathematical physics or the theory of law.

A translation of Ferdinand Tönnies

Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: an Essay on Communism and Socialism as Historical Social Systems (1887)

re-issued as

Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft: fundamental Concepts in Pure Sociology (1912, 1920, 1935)

In tune with the argument so far, the theory of Gemeinschaft is based on the idea that in the original or natural state there is a complete unity of human wills. This sense of unity is maintained even when people become separated. It takes various forms, depending on how far the relationship between differently situated individuals is predetermined and ‘given’. The common root of these relationships is the all-embracing character of the sub-conscious, ‘vegetative’ life that stems from birth: human wills, each one housed in a physical body, are related to one another by descent and kinship; they remain united, or become so out of necessity. This direct mutually affirmation is found in its most intense form in three types of relationships: namely, (1) that between a mother and her child; (2) that between a man and a woman as a couple, as this term is understood in its natural or biological sense; and (3) that between those who recognise each other as brothers and sisters, i.e. offspring at least of the same mother. While the seed of Gemeinschaft, or the bias of human minds towards it, is to be seen in any relationship of kinsfolk, these three are of special importance as containing the seeds which are strongest and most readily nurtured. Each of them is significant in it own special way.

If the theory that I am putting forward is going to retain the concept of natural law in its twofold sense, it must include the proposition that law can be understood as a collective expression of both natural will and rational will. The root of individual natural will, however, is to be found in the sub-conscious vegetative life, whereas individual rational will stems from the possibility of combining two conscious ideas of similar or competing utility. The root of the will of a Community thus lies hidden in the vegetative life, for family and kinship affairs are ‘vegetative’ in the sociological sense, in that they form the substantive basis of human life together. The root of Society's will, by contrast, is the meeting of individual minds, intersecting at the point of an exchange which is rational or right for both of them. Just as sympathy and mutual understanding are always derived from a more general principle, which we have termed concord, so we have learnt that isolated rational calculation needs the basic conception of the rational will of Society for its complete fulfilment. In the case of natural will, a real objective ‘esprit’ or common spirit arises out of the material life and constitutes its way of thinking and developing.

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These essays appeared in the Fortnightly Review at various times between the spring of 1865 and the first month of this year. I much wish that I were able to recast them, for such a series must have many defects when presented as a continuous book; but many occupations forbid me to hope that I could accomplish this within any moderate limits of time, and as the opinions here set forth (whatever may be their value) have at least cost me much time and thought, I venture to publish them in the only form I can.

The arguments of the first essay, if it had been re-written, might have been exceedingly illustrated by the present contest between the President and the Congress of the United States: but I leave it to stand as it was published a few days after Lincoln's death, when Mr Johnson was said to be a violent anti-Southerner, and no such quarrel was thought of. There is a just suspicion in the public mind of principles got up to account for events just occurring; and I prefer to leave what I wrote as it stood, when no such events were looked for.

As these essays once or twice allude to events passing when they were first published, it may be well to give the dates of their first appearance.

There is a great difficulty in the way of a writer who attempts to sketch a living constitution – a constitution that is in actual work and power. The difficulty is that the object is in constant change. An historical writer does not feel this difficulty: he deals only with the past; he can say definitely, the constitution worked in such and such a manner in the year at which he begins, and in a manner in such and such respects different in the year at which he ends; he begins with a definite point of time and ends with one also. But a contemporary writer who tries to paint what is before him is puzzled and perplexed; what he sees is changing daily. He must paint it as it stood at some one time, or else he will be putting side by side in his representations things which never were contemporaneous in reality. The difficulty is the greater because a writer who deals with a living government naturally compares it with the most important other living governments, and these are changing too; what he illustrates are altered in one way, and his sources of illustration are altered probably in a different way. This difficulty has been constantly in my way in preparing a second edition of this book. It describes the English Constitution as it stood in the years 1865 and 1866.

The House of Commons has enquired into most things, but has never had a committee on ‘the Queen’. There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and many toilsome and unnecessary hours.

The popular theory of the English Constitution involves two errors as to the sovereign. First, in its oldest form, at least, it considers him as an ‘Estate of the Realm’, a separate co-ordinate authority with the House of Lords and the House of Commons. This and much else the sovereign once was, but this he is no longer. That authority could only be exercised by a monarch with a legislative veto. He should be able to reject bills, if not as the House of Commons rejects them, at least as the House of Peers rejects them. But the Queen has no such veto. She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her. It is a fiction of the past to ascribe to her legislative power. She has long ceased to have any. Secondly, the ancient theory holds that the Queen is the executive. The American constitution was made upon a most careful argument, and most of that argument assumes the King to be the administrator of the English Constitution, and an unhereditary substitute for him – viz., a president – to be peremptorily necessary.

The context of The English Constitution

When Walter Bagehot's examination of the bases and mechanisms of British government began to appear in 1865, he was approaching the peak of his career. Not quite forty years old, but already firmly established in the editorial chair of The Economist, he was a recognised authority on financial questions, well known among the leaders of the Liberal party, and looking for an opportunity to enter Parliament. It was natural for him, as a member of the group which established the Fortnightly Review, to assist the launch of the new Liberal journal with his pen. His first article on the English constitution appeared in the first issue of the Fortnightly Review in May 1865, followed by eight further instalments, concluding in January 1867. The subject could hardly have been more topical. The 1860s was a period of intensive constitutional discussion. Standard works on the constitution, like those of Brougham, Grey, and Russell, went into new editions and were joined by fresh studies such as John Stuart Mill's Representative Government. Alongside the desire to exhibit the peculiar qualities of the institutions which were held responsible for the growth of Britain's political stability and economic prosperity there ran a current of anxiety about their capacity to meet three looming tests: accommodating the development of society at home; equipping the country to compete successfully with rising powers abroad; and providing a workable model for other countries, especially Britain's colonies.

In my last essay I showed that it was possible for a constitutional monarch to be, when occasion served, of first-rate use both at the outset and during the continuance of an administration; but that on matter of fact it was not likely that he would be useful. The requisite ideas, habits, and faculties far surpass the usual competence of an average man, educated in the common manner of sovereigns. The same arguments are entirely applicable at the close of an administration. But at that conjuncture the two most singular prerogatives of an English king – the power of creating new peers and the power of dissolving the Commons – come into play; and we cannot duly criticise the use or misuse of these powers till we know what the peers are and what the House of Commons is.

The use of the House of Lords – or, rather, of the order of the Lords in its dignified capacity – is very great. It does not attract so much reverence as the Queen, but it attracts very much. The office of an order of nobility is to impose on the common people – not necessarily to impose on them what is untrue, yet less what is hurtful; but still to impose on their quiescent imaginations what would not otherwise be there. The fancy of the mass of men is incredibly weak; it can see nothing without a visible symbol, and there is much that it can scarcely make out with a symbol.

The dignified aspect of the House of Commons is altogether secondary to its efficient use. It is dignified: in a government in which the most prominent parts are good because they are very stately, any prominent part, to be good at all, must be somewhat stately. The human imagination exacts keeping in government as much as in art; it will not be at all influenced by institutions which do not match with those by which it is principally influenced. The House of Commons needs to be impressive, and impressive it is: but its use resides not in its appearance, but in its reality. Its office is not to win power by awing mankind, but to use power in governing mankind.

The main function of the House of Commons is one which we know quite well, though our common constitutional speech does not recognise it. The House of Commons is an electoral chamber; it is the assembly which chooses our president. Washington and his fellow-politicians contrived an electoral college, to be composed (as was hoped) of the wisest people in the nation, which, after due deliberation, was to choose for President the wisest man in the nation. But that college is a sham; it has no independence and no life. No one knows, or cares to know, who its members are. They never discuss, and never deliberate. They were chosen to vote that Mr Lincoln be President, or that Mr Breckenridge be President; they do so vote, and they go home.

‘On all great subjects’, says Mr Mill, ‘much remains to be said’, and of none is this more true than of the English Constitution. The literature which has accumulated upon it is huge. But an observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper description. He will see in the life much which is not in the books; and he will not find in the rough practice many refinements of the literary theory.

It was natural – perhaps inevitable – that such an undergrowth of irrelevant ideas should gather round the British Constitution. Language is the tradition of nations; each generation describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. When a great entity like the British Constitution has continued in connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change, for many ages, every generation inherits a series of inapt words – of maxims once true, but of which the truth is ceasing, or has ceased. As a man's family go on muttering in his maturity incorrect phrases derived from a just observation of his early youth, so, in the full activity of an historical constitution, its subjects repeat phrases true in the time of their fathers, and inculcated by those fathers, but now true no longer. Or, if I may say so, an ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.

A volume might seem wanted to say anything worth saying on the history of the English Constitution, and a great and new volume might still be written on it, if a competent writer took it in hand. The subject has never been treated by any one combining the lights of the newest research and the lights of the most matured philosophy. Since the masterly book of Hallam was written, both political thought and historical knowledge have gained much, and we might have a treatise applying our strengthened calculus to our augmented facts. I do not pretend that I could write such a book, but there are a few salient particulars which may be fitly brought together, both because of their past interest and of their present importance.

There is a certain common polity, or germ of polity, which we find in all the rude nations that have attained civilisation. These nations seem to begin in what I may call a consultative and tentative absolutism. The king of early days, in vigorous nations, was not absolute as despots now are; there was then no standing army to repress rebellion, no organised espionage to spy out discontent, no skilled bureaucracy to smooth the ruts of obedient life. The early king was indeed consecrated by a religious sanction; he was essentially a man apart, a man above others, divinely anointed, or even God-begotten.