'Compulsory Cooperation' is Pre-Modern Power
A Concept First Coined for the Ancient Combination of Coercions
Herbert Spencer wrote:
Societies may be grouped as militant and industrial; of which the one type in its developed form is organized on the principle of compulsory cooperation, while the other in its developed form is organized on the principle of voluntary cooperation. The one is characterized not only by a despotic central power, but also by unlimited political control of personal conduct; while the other is characterized not only by a democratic or representative central power, but also by limitation of political control over personal conduct …
Setting out with social units as … constituted physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and as thus possessed of certain early-acquired notions and correlative feelings, the Science of Sociology has to give an account of all the phenomena that result from their combined actions. The simplest of such combined actions are those by which the successive generations of units are produced, reared, and fitted for cooperation. The development of the family thus stands first in order …
Sociology has next to describe and explain the rise and development of that political organization which in several ways regulates affairs — which combines the actions of individuals for purposes of tribal or national offence and defence; and which restrains them in certain of their dealings with one another, as also in certain of their dealings with themselves.
It has to trace the relations of this coordinating and controlling apparatus, to the area occupied, to the amount and distribution of population, to the means of communication. It has to show the differences of form which this agency presents in the different social types, nomadic and settled, militant, and industrial. It has to describe the changing relations between this regulative structure which is unproductive, and those structures which carry on production. It has also to set forth the connexions between, and reciprocal influences of, the institutions carrying on civil government, and the other governmental institutions simultaneously developing — the ecclesiastical and the ceremonial. And then it has to take account of those modifications which persistent political restraints are ever working in the characters of the social units, as well as the modifications worked by the reactions of these changed characters on the political organization …
… [The] relation between the degree of power in the political head and the degree of militancy, has, indeed, been made familiar to us in the histories of ancient and modern civilized races. The connexion is implied in the Assyrian inscriptions as well as in the frescoes and papyri of Egypt. The case of Pausanias and other such cases, were regarded by the Spartans themselves as showing the tendency of generals to become despots — as showing, that is, the tendency of active operations against adjacent societies to generate centralized political power. How the imperativeness fostered by continuous command of armies thus passes into political imperativeness, has been again and again shown us in later histories …
… The militant type has sharply-marked social gradations as it has sharply-marked military gradations. Along with this natural government there goes a like form of supernatural government. I do not mean merely that in the ideal other-worlds of militant societies, the ranks and powers are conceived as like those of the real world around, though this also is to be noted; but I refer to the militant character of the religion. Ever in antagonism with other societies, the life, is, a life of enmity and the religion a religion of enmity. The duty of blood-revenge, most sacred of all with the savage, continues to be the dominant duty as the militant type of society evolves. The chief, baulked of his vengeance, dies enjoining his successors to avenge him; his ghost is propitiated by fulfilling his commands; the slaying of his enemies becomes the highest action; trophies are brought to his grave in token of fulfillment; and, as tradition grows, he becomes the god worshipped with bloody sacrifices. Everywhere we find evidence …
… Generally where the militant type is highly developed, the political head and the ecclesiastical head are identical — the king, chief descendant of his ancestor who has become a god, is also chief propitiator of him. It was so in ancient Peru; and in Acolhuacan (Mexico) the high-priest was the king's second son. The Egyptian wall-paintings show kings performing sacrifices; as do also the Assyrian. Babylonian records harmonize with Hebrew traditions in telling us of priest-kings …
… Thus the trait characterizing the militant structure throughout, is that its units are coerced into their various combined actions. As the soldier's will is so suspended that he becomes in everything the agent of his officer's will; so is the will of the citizen in all transactions, private and public, overruled by that of the government. The cooperation by which the life of the militant society is maintained, is a compulsory cooperation. The social structure adapted for dealing with surrounding hostile societies is under a centralized regulating system, to which all the parts are completely subject …
… Clearly where it has happened that a conquering race, continuing to govern a subject race, has developed the militant regulating system throughout the whole social structure, and for ages habituated its units to compulsory cooperation — where it has also happened that the correlative ecclesiastical system with its appropriate cult, has given to absolute subordination the religious sanction — and especially where, as in China, each individual is educated by the governing power and stamped with the appropriate ideas of duty which it is heresy to question; it becomes impossible for any considerable change to be wrought in the social structure by other influences. It is the law of all organization that as it becomes complete it becomes rigid. Only where incompleteness implies a remaining plasticity, is it possible for the type to develop from the original militant form to the form which industrial activity generates. Especially where the two races, contrasted in their natures, do not mix, social cooperation implies a compulsory regulating system: the militant form of structure which the dominant impose ramifies throughout. Ancient Peru furnished an extreme case; and the Ottoman empire may be instanced. Social constitutions of this kind, in which races having aptitudes for forming unlike structures co-exist, are in states of unstable equilibrium. Any considerable shock dissolves the organization; and in the absence of unity of tendency, re-establishment of it is difficult if not impossible. In cases where the conquering and conquered, though widely unlike, intermarry extensively, a kindred effect is produced in another way. The conflicting tendencies towards different social types, instead of existing in separate individuals, now exist in the same individual …
… There is the fact, too, that the despotism distinguishing a community organized for war, is essentially connected with despotism in the household; while, conversely, the freedom which characterizes public life in an industrial community, naturally characterizes also the accompanying private life. In the one case compulsory cooperation prevails in both; in the other case voluntary cooperation prevails in both. By the moral contrast we are shown another face of the same fact. Habitual antagonism with, and destruction of, foes, sears the sympathies; while daily exchange of products and services among citizens, puts no obstacle to increase of fellow-feeling. And the altruism which grows with peaceful cooperation, ameliorates at once the life without the household and the life within the household …
… If, still guiding ourselves by observing the course of past evolution, we ask what changes in the status of women may be anticipated, the answer must be that a further approach towards equality of position between the sexes will take place. With decline of militancy and rise of industrialism — with decrease of compulsory cooperation and increase of voluntary cooperation — with strengthening sense of personal rights and accompanying sympathetic regard for the personal rights of others; must go a diminution of the political and domestic disabilities of women, until there remain only such as differences of constitution entail …
… With developed structure of the fighting body comes permanence of it. While, as in early times, men are gathered together for small wars and then again dispersed, efficient organization of them is impracticable. It becomes practicable only among men who are constantly kept together by wars or preparations for wars; and bodies of such men growing up, replace the temporarily-summoned bodies. Lastly, we must not omit to note that while the army becomes otherwise distinguished, it becomes distinguished by retaining and elaborating the system of status; though in the rest of the community, as it advances, the system of contract is spreading and growing definite. Compulsory cooperation continues to be the principle of the military part, however widely the principle of voluntary cooperation comes into play throughout the civil part …
… But with the progress of industrialism and growth of a free population which gradually acquires political power, the humanly-derived law begins to sub-divide; and that part which originates in the consensus of individual interests, begins to dominate over the part which originates in the authority of the ruler. So long as the social type is one organized on the principle of compulsory cooperation, law, having to maintain this compulsory cooperation, must be primarily concerned in regulating status, maintaining inequality, enforcing authority; and can but secondarily consider the individual interests of those forming the mass. But in proportion as the principle of voluntary cooperation more and more characterizes the social type, fulfillment of contracts and implied assertion of equality in men's rights, become the fundamental requirements, and the consensus of individual interests the chief source of law: such authority as law otherwise derived continues to have, being recognized as secondary, and insisted upon only because maintenance of law for its own sake indirectly furthers the general welfare …
… Difficulties meet us when, turning to civilized societies, we seek in them for traits of the industrial type. Consolidated and organized as they have all been by wars actively carried on throughout the earlier periods of their existence, and mostly continued down to recent times; and having simultaneously been developing within themselves organizations for producing and distributing commodities, which have little by little become contrasted with those proper to militant activities; the two are everywhere presented so mingled that clear separation of the first from the last is, as said at the outset, scarcely practicable. Radically opposed, however, as is compulsory cooperation, the organizing principle of the militant type, to voluntary cooperation, the organizing principle of the industrial type, we may, by observing the decline of institutions exhibiting the one, recognize, by implication, the growth of institutions exhibiting the other. Hence if, in passing from the first states of civilized nations in which war is the business of life, to states in which hostilities are but occasional, we simultaneously pass to states in which the ownership of the individual by his society is not so constantly and strenuously enforced, in which the subjection of rank to rank is mitigated, in which political rule is no longer autocratic, in which the regulation of citizens' lives is diminished in range and rigour, while the protection of them is increased; we are, by implication, shown the traits of a developing industrial type. Comparisons of several kinds disclose results which unite in verifying this truth …
… Different parts of a society display the transformation, according as the society's activities are of one or other kind. Chronic war generates a compulsory cohesion, and produces an ever-greater heterogeneity and definiteness in that controlling organization by which unity of action is secured; while that part of the organization which carries on production and distribution, exhibits these traits of evolution in a relatively small degree. Conversely, when joint action of the society against other societies decreases, the traits of the structure developed for carrying it on begin to fade; while the traits of the structure for carrying on production and distribution become more decided: the increasing cohesion, heterogeneity, and definiteness, begin now to be shown throughout the industrial organization. Hence the phenomena become complicated by a simultaneous evolution of one part of the social organization and dissolution of another part — a mingling of changes well illustrated in our own society …
… The common cause for these simultaneous changes is, as above implied, the modification of nature caused by substitution of a life carried on under voluntary cooperation for a life carried on under compulsory cooperation — the transition from a social state in which obedience to authority is the supreme virtue, to a social state in which it is a virtue to resist authority when it transgresses prescribed limits. This modification of nature proceeds from that daily habit of insisting on self-claims while respecting the claims of others, which the system of contract involves. The attitude of mind fostered by this discipline does not favour unqualified submission, either to the political head and his laws or to the ecclesiastical head and his dogmas. While it tends ever to limit the coercive action of the civil ruler, it tends ever to challenge the authority of the priest; and the questioning habit having once commenced, sacerdotal inspiration comes to be doubted, and the power flowing from belief in it begins to wane …
… And this brings us to the general truth that within each embodied set of restraining agencies — the ceremonial as well as the political — there gradually evolves, a special kind of disembodied control, which eventually becomes independent. Political government, having for its original end subordination; and inflicting penalties on men who injure others not because of the intrinsic badness of their acts but because their acts break the ruler's commands; has ever been habituating men to obey regulations conducive to social order; until there has grown up a consciousness that these regulations have not simply an extrinsic authority derived from a ruler's will, but have an intrinsic authority derived from their utility. The once arbitrary, fitful, and often irrational, dictates of a king, grow into an established system of laws, which formulate the needful limitations to men's actions arising from one another's claims. And these limitations men more and more recognize and conform to, not only without thinking of the monarch's injunctions, but without thinking of the injunctions set forth in Acts of Parliament.
The Source:
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology: Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, of the Full and Fine 1895 Edition
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.