SOCIAL PARTICIPATION AND TOTALITARIAN WAR

Edwin Lemert

American Sociological Review 89, (5), 531-536

Total war requires planning of civilian as well as military activities. Yet our social control is unstable because of antiquated conceptions regarding individual participation. Citizens are more specialized in their interests and outlooks than traditional theory assumes, yet they are also more capable of individual resourcefulness, within the framework of a plan, than government practices encourage. Total war and also post-war society will demand greater use of this individual creativity, and also the adjustment of conflicting interests through group action and compromise rather than through unrealistic, emotional identification.

The confusion, contradictory tendencies and schisms in American culture have impressed many observers and writers. The Lynds in their first and second canvasses of Middletown repeatedly commented upon the confusion and bewilderment that seemed to pervade the entire life of the community.1 Later, Bain, in somewhat more systematic fashion and trenchant style described our monumental cultural confusions as the societal analogy of schizophrenia in the individual.2 Thurman Arnold, at his involved best, added the final and definitive note to our peculiar group habit of clinging to folkloristic conceptions not only mutually at odds, but frequently bearing only a nominal allegiance to objective reality.3
    While wars have been termed psychological reagents for internal societal conflicts, one is moved to question whether a swift and sound unity has been achieved in the United States simply by its entry into the war. The evidence for such skepticism is abundant: conflicting pronouncements on the same problem by various leaders, the unabated struggle of economic blocs, the equivocation and delay within our national legislature, rivalry and lack of co-ordination between various branches of the armed forces, and uneasy conjecture by laymen about the caliber of plans, material and skill of military and naval technicians.
    The dilapidation of the so-called "war effort" from one point of view can be attributed to the disorganization and chaos naturally attending the rapid shift of a nation to a complete war basis or to the often-mentioned slowness of democratic society in the prosecution of war. As such, they may be expected to disappear with passing time and maturing leadership. From another point of vantage these conflicts can be visualized as the acceleration of trends previously present in our culture to a degree where they seriously impair the efficiency of any collective effort. Time as a dimension of adjustment in this case will only serve to intensify the conflicts and perpetuate them at the expense of sound post-war reconstruction. Pending drastic changes, winning the war is likely to take the form of overwhelming the enemy through myriad diffuse pressures, as when an iceberg slowly rights itself in response to changes in the center of gravity, rather than in the form of a clean-cut military decision.
    One of the strangest paradoxes of this war is the spectacle of leaders blaming masses for inadequate participation and frenziedly exhorting them to greater effort while the masses accuse the same leaders of not providing necessary leadership. It is suggested here that this contradiction is in no small part a function of the evanescent and unstable nature of authority in our social system. It has grown out of the persistence of archaic postulates concerning the nature of public opinion and individual participation in society, in the face of accelerated developments in the fields of industrial and military technology. These postulates derive largely from our rural heritage and have tended to be revitalized in current propaganda by virtue of the fact that the war is being fought as a conservative war. We have been set to defend or fight for American traditions or for vaguely-phrased "freedoms."
    Deep in the American political tradition, explicit in our democratic ideology is the concept of the individual as the ultimate repository of political power. He is regarded not only as a direct rule-maker of the community, but also a rule-enforcer and an ever watchful guardian over executive and legislative power entrusted to public agents. The individual in the United States, like the State in Germany, is apotheosized as an omni-interested, omniscient, omnicompetent agent from whom all social control, formal or informal, originally emanates. It is a major inarticulate premise of our political thought that popular discussion can be not only truly public but that it finally precipitates into a mass opinion, into a consensus at the level of meaning and sentiment as well as at the level of action. Leadership in the minds of most people thus becomes a projection of this consensus onto dominant personalities within the community or government. Failures on the plane of leadership are seen as cumulative failures of individual civic participation. Deductively, no weaknesses are perceived in the system but rather in the way in which it is used. Thus the cure for democracy is more democracy.
    The concept of integrating the interests of the individual with those of society as represented by public agents of social control, through the mechanism of identification has made it extremely difficult for most people to grasp and admit the specialized character of their own and other people's social participation. As Walter Lippmann conclusively demonstrated in his Phantom Public and Public Opinion and R. Angell more recently in the Integration of American Society, the omniparticipating traditional citizen is largely a myth. Along with the more organic qualities of the local community he has been sacrificed upon the altar of speed, mobility and technological change. The limitations of time, income, occupational egocentrism and uni-sensory communication have left the contemporary citizen with but a partial or highly segmentalized interest and participation in so-called public issues. This interest is such that it can become meaningful only through canalization and instrumentation by associations known variously as interest or pressure groups. Indeed, it is questionable whether there exists any longer a public opinion in the sense in which many writers use the term. To quote from a student in the field of public admininistration:

    Citizens within their own associations meet and consider their own particular problems. They learn to sort out issues that are near them and which they can understand. Most so-called public questions are nothing more than the private problems of several groups in conflict. The conflict means that the government must act as arbitrator. The substantive nature of the problem is not changed when the dispute is placed upon the public stage. Considerations of national policy may render the problem more complex, but if the parties directly concerned are accustomed to meeting their own common problems within their private associations, the process of framing a compromise is greatly facilitated. This mere fact of organization is important for several reasons. An active and strong association brings about a harmony of viewpoint among its members. The interest of the group is clarified and developed. Group opinion is made articulate.4

    The lag in the recognition and acceptance of the specialized form of modern social participation and its objective manifestation has produced amazing confusions and guilt feelings, causing individuals to hesitate in the necessary promotion of proprietary interests in larger organizational units and to profess loyalties they do not have. It further leads associations to the very expedient for which they are criticized, disguising specialized interest behind mystical concepts of abstract social entities. Walter Lippmann phrased it well:

    There is the least anarchy in those areas of society where separate functions are most clearly defined and brought into orderly adjustment; there is the most anarchy in those twilight zones between nations, between employers and employees, between sections, classes, and races, where nothing is clearly defined, and each special interest is forever proclaiming itself the voice of the people and attempting to impose its purposes upon everybody as the purposes of  mankind.5

    The prevalence of the concept of identity between the masses of people and their governmental functionaries, the basing of leadership upon mystical notions of the people's "will" or "voice" or "conscience" is intrinsically related to the conception of public agents as passive servants of the people, or as humble Jacksonian folk taking a turn in office, without special morals or morale of their own. Administrative or executive action is transformed into a frantic pursuit of will-o'-the-wisp authority through a jungle of bureaus, not infrequently ending at the doors of Congress where legislators dance strangely to the sly tunes of ghostly constituents. Politicians and public leaders (even specialists to the extent that they are imperfectly emancipated from the dominance of the legislature) with an ear cocked for the "true" voice of the reified public, sway first one way and then another, depending upon the particular pressure groups in ascendancy and upon their skill in cloaking special interest with the guise of public welfare. The most important implication of these facts is that little in the way of consistent social control is possible; under these conditions social control is a post-crisis phenomenon, i.e., it operates by the percolation of gathering tensions and dissatisfaction from dislocated groups into the area of policy-formation. Legislators and executives pursue a line of compromise and partial adjustments. Authority is based upon transient majorities; this makes long-term or comprehensive programs of social control impossible without the growth of an insisted, unresponsive bureaucracy.
    It is against the background of modern war that the anachronistic and disintegrating influences of the traditional concept of individual social participation are thrown into sharpest focus. Consideration of a few of the salient features of  modern war will serve to bring forcefully to attention the weakness in our system of social control. Modern war differs qualitatively from former wars in being total or unlimited war. Three outstanding attributes of total war can be discerned: (1) the extreme mechanization of the armed forces, (2) the extension of siege warfare enveloping the nation as a whole in both offensive and defensive actions, (3) a close interdependence between the armed forces and industrial production.
    Mechanized warfare is noteworthy for the astronomical increases made in firepower, the algebraic multiplication of the soldier's destructive potentialities. The chief effect of these revolutionary accretions has been to destroy the functional efficiency of the hierarchical system of military organization brought to perfection on the plains of Europe by Moltke in the 19th century. Towards the end of the First World War German and Allied tactics began to lose their centuries-old automatism and rigidity, assuming something of the elasticity necessary to cope with the compounded firepower of the western front. Yet German military genius as well as Allied commanders were slow to seize upon the full significance of the new military technology, best evidenced, perhaps, by the struggle of Ludendorf in 1917 and 1918 to eliminate the so-called "paper" command, by which specifically formulated orders streamed down from officers to rank and file soldiery. It was the mechanization of the German army after this war that brought this initial departure to its fullest fruition in the concept of the blitzkrieg, incorporating tactical principles of infiltration, surreptition, swift striking power and the tenuous coordination of arms.
    Since the communication of specific orders is precluded by such a fluid strategy, command must perforce be decentralized, with coordination dependent upon the perception and decisions of thousands of small autonomous or semi-autonomous units working within the framework of a highly generalized plan. From a participational standpoint, success in this type of warfare is largely a function of carefully trained soldier-technicians, endowed with traits of resourcefulness, quick perception, sustained effort and general intelligence. This soldier must he capable of creative exploitation of situations as they arise and must possess a "volunteer" psychology. His prototype was forged in the machine-gun fire of the First World War; he was the "front" fighter, tough, apathetic, independent to the point of insubordination. Traits such as his cannot be simply commanded into existence, mainly because such soldiers operate far removed from the supervision of their officers. This is undeniably the basis for the careful attention being paid to the cultivation of morale in this war. Where Napoleon assayed the importance of morale in comparison with material at three to one, Major George Fielding Elliot now places the ratio at ten to one.
    The second and third characteristics of modern war: the envelopment of the entire nation in offensive and defensive warfare, and the close interdependence between the armed forces and industrial production, have necessitated systematic governmental planning. While most warfare of the past required military planning. it remained for the present conflict to extend large scale governmental planning into almost every area of the national life of belligerents. This has radically circumscribed the freedom of individuals as well as of voluntaristic associations. In many respects the whole nation must present a defense in depth to the enemy and thereby fall under a militaristic system of social control.
    There never has been a problem of democratic participation by common soldiers in the formation of strategic plans, which can be laid to the autocratic traditions in the armed forces and to the impracticality of waging war on a democratic basis. However, the intrusion of military necessity into civilian life poses for serious consideration what is to be the role of individual civilians and civilian associations in the formation and execution of national policy.
    It must be apparent from any realistic appraisal of the opinion-making process that the socio-economic corollaries of military planning cannot arise out of the informal discussion processes of traditional rural democracy. It is further doubtful whether plans can be the product of the interaction of pressure groups within the confines of a politically organized legislature. The reason for this is discovered in the fact that planning is the symbolic projection of socioeconomic change into the future, plus the promotion of programs frequently irrelevant or detrimental to the immediate needs of associations, and often beyond the understanding of the individual, who is not possessed of the technical knowledge upon which the plan is founded. Planning, moreover, is integral in form, at most the creation of one or a small number of minds. Consequently, it follows that the processes of compromise and accommodation which dominate political interaction are antithetical to the fundamental requirements of planning.
    In past wars the legislatures of democratic nations at war have been notably responsive to the requisitions by executive branches of the government. And it is significant that the democratic countries which have been in the present war longer than the United States have much more acquiescent legislative bodies, less dedicated to active policymaking than to the passive sanction of prefabricated plans of executive leaders. The great danger in a democracy such as ours is that in fighting a totalitarian war we may not only take over the technology of our enemies but also adopt methods of social control which will destroy initiative at the level of individuals and associations or by improper techniques change this initiative into apathy or random aggression. This may be a desperate reaction to the inability of the masses to appreciate the implications and meaning of total war, or it may result from borrowing the war expedients of Allied nations. To a lesser extent it may be the outcome of superficial study of techniques of social control employed in totalitarian countries.
    In some ways it is unfortunate that in our striving to clarify issues making the war meaningful to individuals and marking off the in-group from the out-group we have stressed such ideas as "freedom" and "individual rights." This has led many to impute categorically a complete lack of initiative and resourcefulness to German and Japanese masses. Yet a survey of German military literature discloses no such blindness to the problem of rank and file participation in war. In preparation for the present war there was a deliberate effort to train a thinking type of soldier. The quantitative rather than the qualitative difference between the German and the American attitude is best brought out by the statement of the German general who said that the "soldier should think, but think only when commanded to think."
    The exploits of Japanese jungle fighters should leave us under no illusions as to the synthesizing ability of these soldiers in unfamiliar situations. While less is known of the citizenry in the two countries, their effectiveness in maintaining industrial production and civilian defense speak plainly of the flexibility of adjustment on their part. Those who speak easily of demoralizing the Japanese by bombing their cities should recall the long history of experience with disaster possessed by the Japanese masses.
    There is reason to believe that leaders in the United States have not as yet acquired a full understanding of their proper function in a war-planned society. Just as the individual is incapable of the multidimensional thought indispensable to planning, so too is the policy-former incapable of the multi-distributive type of thought involved in carrying out plans in thousands of specific situations. While the army is training soldiers for initiative the same trend in civilian programs is somewhat less obvious. One is impelled to look askance at the dictatorship of detail which has appeared in governmental control. Such things as specifying the length of skirts, cuffless trousers, detailed methods of rationing by pounds and quarter pounds, and the recommendation in educational programs of detailed methods of food purchasing and budgeting in many ways seems to be an injudicious invasion by the federal government of areas of local initiative.6 From the viewpoint here adopted the proper function of the federal government would be to assign goals to individuals, groups, communities and regions, indicate the limitations of resources with which they have to work and then stimulate the play of initiative at these different levels of social organization.
    It is increasingly apparent that while the individual and specialized groups of which he is a member, under the stress of war, can participate little if any in the formation of national policy, nevertheless, their participation in the interpretation and instrumentation of this policy in their unique capacities takes on even greater importance than in any previous war. This is especially true of the industrial worker in the more highly mechanized industries where the shift to a newer electric power technology has elevated to key importance willing co-operation and general intelligence as traits required of the efficient worker. Hardly less important is the willingness of the masses not only to accept the sacrifices demanded by the war but also actively to exercise ingenuity in improvising material necessities and reorganizing community services to meet new needs. The widespread civilian attitude of regarding the war as a source of inconvenience and the defensive attitudes found in associations call for an energetic educational effort on the part of the community and national government.
    Another phase of wartime participation has to do with criticism of policy as imposed by national leaders. As has been shown, it is unsound to expect individuals or associations to undertake comprehensive criticism of national plans. Most such criticism as it gets public expression is in terms of interest. For this reason it should be seen as the success or failure of the larger war plan at its various points of impact upon society rather than as a disinterested evaluation of the whole. The summation, equation and balancing of reactions call for a multidimensional type of thinking beyond the scope and interest of most individuals and associations. However, the complete organization of individuals plus their vigorous participation in groups defining their interest is obviously the prerequisite to communication of criticism to planning authorities. The absence of group interaction articulating the dissatisfactions of individuals leads to the accumulation of emotional tensions and the symptomatic transference of aggression into areas where resistance and indifference are apt seriously to impede national programs, with leaders at loss to make appropriate adjustments.
    Of course, the logical verbalization of grievances by pressure groups cannot insure the removal of sources of frustration in all instances. At most in wartime it can obtain an equalization of sacrifice. Consequently, war is bound to build up innumerable tensions, hostilities and aggressions, with the net result that interaction is amplified and takes on orgiastic qualities. In the case of the soldier neat social directives exist for draining off these emotions in such things as killing and maiming the enemy, drinking, gambling and relative freedom to indulge in promiscuous sex relations. The problem is more difficult of solution in the case of the civilian population, particularly in democratic societies. In totalitarian societies there is little official hesitation in manipulating mass energies to the achievement of national goals. However, democratic misconceptions of the rational, polytechnically literate citizen have hampered efforts to deal logically with these psychological concomitants of frustration.
    Attempts to generate and direct mass enthusiasms in the United States, particularly on the part of governmental leaders, at best have been awkward and fumbling. There has been an almost naive approach to these huge irrational societal energies as if they could be turned on and off like water in a faucet, with a corresponding disregard for the repercussions these social movements have upon morale. Many of our early "drives" such as those to gather various scrap materials have achieved initial success only to bog down because of a failure to utilize the material in a sufficiently dramatic fashion. Piles of aluminum collected at no little individual time and cost scarcely stimulate further participation if no smelters want them, or if it turns out that they cannot be used for technical reasons. Scrap iron, steel or tin lying uncollected for long periods in public places is not conducive to attitudes of urgency on the part of the masses. In the final analysis mass movements based upon the deliberate amplification of irrational impulses may be a poor way of securing sustained action in certain directions. Thus huge bond sales at public rallies may be followed by an epidemic of bond cashing.

In conclusion it seems clear that totalitarian war calls for a careful re-examination and revaluation of the role played by the individual in public policy-formation and its execution. It is probable that the war is accentuating extant trends rather than ushering in a categorically different social and economic system. If this is true then it is probable that the problem of postwar governmental planning will have to be faced, together with the necessity of redefining fundamentally rural notions among our political concepts. Such redefinition must take place at both the level of ideology and organization. Individuals must be politically developed to see the importance of organization and participation in terms of interest. Administrative hostility to voluntary organization must give way to an appreciation of its indispensability in a dynamically planned society. At the same time the basis selected for organizing individuals' interests must be sufficiently broad to prevent purely defensive and unstable alignments of associations.
 

Note

    1 Lynd, R. S. and H. M., Middletown, New York, 1929; Middletown in Transition, New York, 1937.

    2 Baln, R., "Our Schizoid Culture," Sociology and Social Research, January-February 1935, pp. 266- 276.

    3 Folklore of Capitalism, New Haven, 1937.

    4 E. P. Herring, Public Administration and the Public Interest, 34, New York, 1936.

    5 W. Lippmann, The Phantom Public, 161, New York, 1927.

    6 Howard Bigelow suggests to the writer that a basic weakness of the war rationing program is the use of an average for the distribution of scarce goods. He points out that there is no such thing as an average family. Many small families are hard pressed to obtain sufficient rationed goods while many large families fail to use all of their allotments.    While arithmetic averages may he of limited value in planning distribution for large areas or large social units they hecome inapplicable at the point of consumption. The implicit recognition of dispersion and deviation by setting up ration boards on a local basis fails because they lack discretionary authority. The obvious alternative to a rationing system based upon averages is the illegal trading of ration stamps.

 

 

Phoenix