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Political Changes characterizing the Modern Society R. Bendix, ‘Social Stratification and Political Community’ (1960) 1. Introduction
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Political Changes characterizing the Modern Society • R. Bendix, ‘Social Stratification and Political Community’ (1960) • 1. Introduction • What the article is not about (how do dimensions of social stratification relate to political power, or what kinds of socio-economic power could have an impact on government, or social differentiation relates to the establishment of the modern polity) • Concern is historical, theoretical, with comparative implications, and approach is Weberian through and through • Central issue is what does the modern political community look like; or how should we conceptualize the relations between state and society in modern society, and how did these relations come into being historically; finally, what relevance would the derived insights have for the understanding of non-Western, developing societies, and for our purpose, what issues are generated for modern social theories
Bendix, cont’d • 2. Perspectives in conceptualizing state – society relations • Society as object of government (traditional/patrimonial, the ruled and the land as belonging to the ruler’s household) - state-centred • Society determines the forms and changes of politics/government (society’s vested interests struggling for political dominance, or base determines superstructure, or, to use a Chinese example, class relations in society determines nature of communist party) - society-centred • State and society as interdependent and partially autonomous (unique to Western societies; such modernity generates a special duality or balance between state and society) • These three perspectives suggest (not entirely in pure form) three types and trajectories of political development
Bendix, cont’d • The historical development in Western societies • Pre-modern period I • Ruler ruled with mandate (in the name of….) • The ruled seen and treated as part of the big household of the ruler, who has his right and obligations • Ruler in conjunction with the local notables (e.g., other feudal lords); subservience, support, demands in return; bargaining; unstable power relations • Society under this rule is like a number of separate domains, each subservient to a lord/notable, and each domain is composed of distinct social ranks, each with distinct rights and obligations (legal, customary..); individual is born into social rank and its group • These social ranks are like ‘mutual-aid’ societies, where obligations are fulfilled in exchange for rights; reciprocity of rights and obligations thus established at these levels of society – social solidarity based on ‘natural’/hereditary and traditional/customary ties
Bendix, cont’d • Social solidarity in this type of society thus also has a high degree of fraternalization (fellow-beings); interests derived from this situation are thus not socio-economic or functional in nature. It is more a society stratified by rank than by class or status • The form of political participation in this society is thus restricted and passive; the lowest social ranks have little chance of interacting and influencing the centres of power; but it is a passive form of participation, because the centres of power recognize and ‘protect’ the different rights and obligations of the different ranks
Bendix, cont’d • Pre-modern period II • Absolutist kings assisted by officials superseded the earlier lords-notables political structure; centralization of authority and administration meant a gradual end to the distinct domains and their distinct rule • Granting of specific rights and prerogatives to the hereditary nobility meant that these privileged groups still retained power, and such power cohered the groups • But such power is different now, for it is not power to exercise their own government; it is not power that is based on a rank society that stretched from the privileged nobility to the common people • The rank society has given way to one where absolutist kings struggled with privileged nobility, with the rest of the society an increasingly loose and differentiated masses
Bendix, cont’d • Social solidarity in this type of society is greatest among the privileged groups (the aristocracy and its distinct lifestyles, etc.); status is now a more important basis of stratification and provides social integration at that level of the society. • As a ‘social estate’, the privileged groups are confronted with the large estate of peasants, who in the course of the 18th century were increasingly mobile and liberated from personal servitude or bondage to the soil. • The French Revolution swept away the aristocracy and the old regime. The birth of the modern industrial society marked a new structural relation between state and society.
Bendix, cont’d • Modern period • The first dominant trend in modern society is centralization of government functions that cover all areas of social life • This monopoly of central functions by state is assisted by two things: depersonalization of government (‘office’ as separate from personal interests, and a consensus at the national level about the legitimate powers of the state (taxation, military operations, law enforcement, adjudicator of disputes and rights, etc.) • This makes for a continuous exercise of central authority • Modernity is, in this political aspect, thus about the emergence of this centralized and continuous form of political authority, legitimated by rational exercise of bureaucratic (depersonalized) authority
Bendix, cont’d • The second dominant trend in modern society is differentiation, and its result, individualization • This process is also a process of increasingly equality (formal, initially) and individual freedom • But individualization has its problems: • tyranny of the future: all are equal, and all are powerless and indifferent; individually, each turns to the state for assistance, inviting state’s intervention (equality is aided by freedom, but equality could not safeguard freedom – Tocqueville’s paradox) • normlessness: uprooted from familiar community and larger social groups, individuals have no norms to regulate behaviour – Durkheim’s anomie • Secondary groups (which could provide members with moral and psychological anchorage) are weakened
Bendix, cont’d • Social solidarity (or the common upholding or agreement on reciprocity of rights and obligations) is thus strongest at the national level, i.e., with the sovereign state • Social solidarity is weak at levels below the state; the individual could be isolated and anomic; the groups he joins now are a product of common social or economic interests, i.e. functional, strategic, and often utilitarian; the collective pursuit of individual ends does not create a strong fraternity which previously was accepted as natural, life-long and non-utilitarian • On the surface, modernity thus saw a lopsided relation between state and society: state as stable, legitimate, continuous, and as bulwark of civic liberties; society as diverse and conflicting social forces (no consensus on who should get how much), each voicing and struggling for their own socio-economic interests
Bendix, cont’d • But the same process of individualization (equality and freedom) also led individuals-in-groups to turn to the state for greater representation (as all are equal citizens and have equal votes), and then for redistribution of national product, for new legislation, etc. • Modern society as a political community is thus a situation where the ‘society’, increasingly stratified along class and status lines, mobilized social forces to make demands on the state, with this impact assisted by equality in the legal and electoral process, and where the state, while accommodating or restricting these demands, still enjoyed a central, legitimate and continuous exercise of authority – emergence of the welfare state • State and society in the western experience of modernity are thus in an interdependent and partially autonomous relations.
An aside • Bendix’s arguments seem to imply that there is consensus about the rightful powers of the state, that the state is a locus of integrating forces, and that there is disensus in society, with such disensus being represented, organized and coordinated by functional groups (political parties, trade unions, perhaps consumer groups) and turned into diverse demands placed on the state. • We thus reserve our faith and trust for the sovereign state; we are fellow-beings because we are fellow citizens of a state. But among ourselves, in the realm of the market, we are competitors, struggling to have a bigger piece of the pie. (Even fellow-workers may not agree on the rightful claims of workers.) Are these the dominant value orientations of the modern man?
Bendix, cont’d • Implications of Bendix’s theoretical/historical survey • What relevance does the Western ‘model’ of political community (state – society relations) have for non-Western, developing societies? • The Western ‘model’ was the result of a long and often uneven development in societies which have their unique conditions and traditions. But the dominant trends of centralization and differentiation seem to be applicable to all developing societies • The Western experience was the result of a slow and long period of changes. The developing societies however are given these dominant features ‘cup-noodle’ fashion: compressed, history telescoped • The developing societies thus face tremendous difficulties in political modernization:
Bendix, cont’d • the need to carry out central functions often without resources and body of trained officials in place, or without the requisite education and political traditions among the people • the sweeping away of traditional tribal groups and their authority structures and cultural traditions (by say colonial rule) resulted in, after independence, the lack of traditional social solidarity; this means that all cleavages (economic, ethnic, tribal, religious…) are given political articulation (mobilized functional groups demanding representation and redistribution of product) simultaneously. The result is a heavy demand on the state, overtaxing the state’s abilities to respond and to deliver • the developing state is in a catch-22 situation: the state lacks resources to earn its legitimacy, but the only way for it to earn its legitimacy is to meet those demands from the society
Bendix, cont’d • Does the advance of individualization and decline of social solidarity mean that fraternity or fellow-feeling is increasingly difficult or restricted? Are social relationships now predominantly based on functional (thus short term, strategic and instrumental) interests? • What other identities are possible other than those as a citizen, voter, trade union member, and (in the private realm), father/mother, son/daughter? • This brings us to the need to theorize the nature and the possibility of community, social capital, trust, commitment, etc.
Bendix, concluded • Is the centralization of state power in modern society the only form of power that shapes (interdependent, and partially autonomous) the society? What happens to the individual states and their impact on society when they are all inter-connected in a globalized world? • The forms of power in modern society could take more multifarious and less invisible forms; they may not be as concrete or juridical as state power. • In the ‘no boundaries’ world, where ecological disaster does not know national boundaries, people relate to state’s power (and the power of a system of states) differently. Participatory (and solidarity-building) forces in the society may arise not solely as a demand on and response to the state. • This brings us to modern thinker’s ideas on globalization, international governance and what Giddens called ‘reflexive modernity’.
