Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-k7p5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T08:17:44.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hacker's Liberal Democracy and Social Control: A Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Samuel Dubois Cook
Samuel Dubois Cook
Affiliation:
Atlanta University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The essence of Hacker's construction is the theory of the ruling class. Immediately, one thinks of Marx, Mosca, Michels, Pareto, and several Americans who have espoused, in one form or another, oligarchic doctrines. What most sharply distinguishes Hacker from most theorists of this persuasion is the absence of presuppositions of historical inevitability. Seeking only to describe sequences and relations of the past and present, he makes no claims of omniscience, of knowing what the social process must unfold. Neither is his theory normative.

Yet, apart from details and variations, there is a crucial framework of meaning which discloses Hacker's close affinity with the essence of conventional oligarchic doctrines: the few rule, the many simply obey; the governors, in substance if not in form, are free from compulsion to answer to the governed. Historically, and indeed currently, Hacker asserts, genuine power has been and is the exclusive or, at least, the primary possession of a privileged few. True, the composition and foundation of the governing class have changed, but this change, he continues, did not bring in its wake a widening or deepening of the structure of power in American culture. It merely means the substitution of one set of masters or controllers for another. After all, a monopoly of power is a monopoly, whether its source be deference or manipulation. Both, he avers, “permit a few men to rule many men.” Neither system of power allows the personnel and the general policies of government to be the product of voluntary and active consent. In both contexts, the ruled, not the rulers, are the object of control. “Both deference and manipulation are similar in that they are control.” Such, then, is Hacker's relation to the essence of oligarchic thought. What can be said of the validity of his formulation?

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1957 , pp. 1027 - 1039
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See in particular Spitz, David, Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought (New York 1949)Google Scholar, chs. 2 and 3. These chapters were of invaluable assistance in the preparation of this paper.

2 North, Cecil C., “Class Structure, Class Consciousness, and Party Alignment,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 2, pp. 305–71 (June, 1930)Google Scholar, and Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge, 1950)Google Scholar, chs. 2 and 3.

3 MacIver, R. M., Community (2nd ed., London, 1920), pp. 110–11 and 123–25Google Scholar, and Sorokin, Pitirim A., “What Is a Social Class?”, in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour M., eds., Class, Status and Power (Glencoe, 1953)Google Scholar.

4 MacIver, R. M. and Page, C. H., Society (New York, 1949), p. 350Google Scholar.

5 Centers, Richard, The Psychology of Social Classes (Princeton, 1949), p. 27Google Scholar. “Classes,” he observes, “are psycho-social groupings, something that is essentially subjective in character, dependent upon class consciousness (i.e., a feeling of group membership)….”

Cf. Giddings, F. L., Principles of Sociology (New York, 1916), pp. 17 and 124–31Google Scholar, and Kornhauser, Arthur W., “Analysis of ‘Class’ Structure of Contemporary American Society—Psychological Bases of Class Division,” in Hartman, George W. and Newcomb, Theodore, eds., Industrial Conflict: A Psychological Interpretation (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

6 Warner, W. Lloyd, Meeker, Marohia, and Eells, Kenneth, Social Class in America (Chicago, 1949)Google Scholar; chs. 1 and 2.

7 Centers, op. cit., esp. ch. 2; MacIver, R. M., The Web of Government (New York, 1947), pp. 115–23Google Scholar, and Sorokin, Pitirim A., Social Mobility (New York, 1927)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 2.

8 On the historic balance of power in American society, C. Wright Mills comments: “Nineteenth-century America was a middle class society, in which numerous small and relatively equally empowered organizations flourished.” The Power Elite (New York, 1956), p. 259Google Scholar.

9 Robert, S. and Lynd, Helen M., Middletown (New York, 1929)Google Scholar, and Middletown in Transition (New York, 1937)Google Scholar.

10 Warner, W. Lloyd and Bailey, Wilfrid C., Democracy in Jonesville (New York, 1949)Google Scholar and the “Yankee City Series” by Warner, and associates (New Haven, 1941, 1942, 1945, 1947)Google Scholar.

11 Davis, Allison, Burleigh, B. and Gardner, Mary R., Deep South (Chicago, 1941)Google Scholar.

12 See Parsons, Talcott, “Social Strains in America,” in Bell, Daniel, ed., The New American Right (New York, 1955), pp. 120–21Google Scholar, and Lenski, Gerhard, “American Social Classes: Statistical Strata or Social Groups,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 58, pp. 139–44 (September, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Cf. Lasswell, Harold D. et al. , The Comparative Study of Elites (Stanford, 1952)Google Scholar: “There are as many elites as there are values.” p. 6.

14 Seymour M. Lipset, “The Sources of the ‘Radical Right,’” in Bell, op. cit., p. 178.

15 Cf. Lasswell, op. cit., pp. 6–13, and Bell, “Interpretations of American Politics,” op. cit., p. 12.

16 Bierstedt, Robert, “An Analysis of Social Power,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 15, pp. 730–38 (December, 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and MacIver, The Web of Government, ch. 5.

17 “The accumulation of political power by any stratum is generally dependent upon some four factors: will and purpose, objective conditions or opportunities, the state of organization, and the political skill of leaders. Opportunity is limited by the group's structural positions, which is to say, its functional position as a stratum in the institutional structure.” Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright, Character and Social Structure (New York, 1953), p. 329Google Scholar. On the necessity of group cohesion, self-consciousness, and common objectives, see p. 330.

18 Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, chs. 2–5 and 8–10. Also see Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945)Google Scholar, and Merriam, Charles E., Four Party Leaders (New York, 1926)Google Scholar.

19 The Power Elite, p. 280.

20 See Holcombe, Arthur N., The Middle Classes in American Politics (Cambridge, 1940), pp. 85–86 and 182–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The New Party Politics (New York, 1933), pp. 11–35Google Scholar, and The Political Parties of Today (New York, 1924)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

21 See, for example, Gosnell, Harold F., Machine Politics (Chicago, 1937)Google Scholar; Salter, J. T., Boss Rule (New York, 1935)Google Scholar; Key, V. O. and Heard, Alexander, Southern Politics (New York, 1949)Google Scholar; and Neely, Twila E., “The Sources of Political Power,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, pp. 769–83 (March, 1928)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Of the twenty political bosses studied by Zink, Harold, ten are Catholic: City Bosses in the United States (Durham, 1930), p. 30Google Scholar.

23 Lasswell, H. D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven, 1950), p. 75Google Scholar.

24 The Power Elite, p. 280.

25 Bierstedt, op. cit., pp. 730–31.

26 Quoted ibid.

27 Landis, Paul H., Social Control (New York, 1956), p. 136Google Scholar; and Beth, Marian B., “The Elite and the Elites,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 47, pp. 746–55 (March, 1942)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Landis, op. cit., p. 136, and MacIver and Page, op. cit., p. 355.

29 MacIver and Page, p. 355.

30 H. A. Mess argues the reverse. In democratic and partly democratic countries, he asserts, “deference is given to those who possess power ….” “Valuations in Democratic States,” in Marshall, T. H., ed., Class Conflict and Social Stratification (Ledbury, 1938), p. 178Google Scholar.

31 Whether status is derived from power or power from status is an interesting problem. Hacker, of course, assumes that power is the consequence of status. However Gerth and Mills maintain that status, “in due course, follows power,” op. cit., p. 335. Because status and power are so intertwined in the nexus of the social process neither side can be conclusive. The issue is too complex to make either always the ground of the other.

32 Indeed, Sorokin asserts the universality of social stratification; it is, he holds, not only characteristic of every society but also of every organized social group. Social Mobility (New York, 1927)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

33 See Salomon, Albert, “Leadership in Democracy,” in Ascoli, Max and Lehmann, Fritz, eds., Political and Economic Democracy (New York, 1937), esp. pp. 243–44Google Scholar.

34 Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Self and the Dramas of History (New York, 1955), pp. 199–209Google Scholar, and Neumann, Franz, The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (Glencoe, 1957), pp. 8–11Google Scholar.

35 “The need for an acting centre makes even an egalitarian group hierarchical.” Tillich, Paul, Love, Power, and Justice (New York, 1954), p. 45Google Scholar.

36 Gerth and Mills, op. cit., p. 193.

37 Modern Democracies (New York, 1921), Vol. 2, pp. 542–51Google Scholar.

38 Power: A New Social Analysis (New York, 1938), pp. 17 and 159Google Scholar.

39 The Web of Government, pp. 197–98.

40 Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought, p. 74.

41 “Democracy,” Hans Speier notes, “is a form of government in which political life cannot be identified with a politically privileged class; a democracy has no political class.” “Social Stratification,” in Ascoli and Lehmann, op. cit., p. 259.

42 Bell, op. cit., pp. 7–8; Lipset, op. cit., p. 175; Lippmann, Walter, Public Opinion (New York, 1922)Google Scholar, and Salter, J. T., “The Politician and the Voter,” in Logan, Edward B., ed., The American Political Scene (rev. ed., New York, 1938)Google Scholar.

43 The Power Elite, pp. 277–78.

44 Spitz, op. cit., pp. 71–81 and Russell, op. cit., chs. 1 and 2.

45 Power: A New Social Analysis, p. 141.

46 See Mills, op. cit., chs. 6–12; Merriam, Charles E., Political Power (New York, 1934)Google Scholar, chs. 2 and 10; Russell, ch. 3; Gerth and Mills, pp. 328–30, and Reinhard Bendix, “Social Stratification and Political Power,” in Bendix and Lipset, op. cit.

47 Mills, C. Wright, The New Men of Power (New York, 1948)Google Scholar.

48 Spitz, op. cit., pp. 267–68.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.