CYCLES
THE CYCLICAL CHARACTER OF SOCIAL PROCESS—THE CYCLES ORGANIC, NOT
MECHANICAL—THE GROWTH AND DECAY OF NATIONS—DOES HISTORY REPEAT
ITSELF?
It is a familiar observation that there is a cyclical character in all
the movements of history. Every form of organization has its growth, its
vicissitudes, and sooner or later, probably, its decline and
disappearance. The mob assembles and disperses, fashions come in and go
out, business prosperity rises, flourishes, and gives way to depression,
the Roman Empire, after centuries of greatness, declines and falls.
This is a trait of life in general, and the explanation does not pertain
especially to sociology. Still, if we assume that social process is made
up of functional forms or organisms working onward by a tentative
method, we can see that their history is naturally cyclical. Any
particular form represents an experiment, conscious or otherwise, and is
never absolutely successful but has constantly to be modified in order
to meet better the conditions under which it functions. If it does this
successfully it grows, but even in the growing it usually becomes more
complex and systematic and hence more difficult to change as regards its
general type. In the course of time the type itself is likely to lose
its fitness to the conditions, and so the whole structure crumbles and
is resolved into elements from which new structures are nourished. The
parties, the doctrines, the institutions of the past are for the most
part as dead as the men.
Where institutions, like Christianity, have survived for a millennium or
two, it is commonly not their organization that has endured, but a very
general idea or sentiment which has vitalized successive systems, each
of which has had its cycle of prosperity and decay.
It does not follow that a social cycle is in any way mechanical or
predetermined, any more than it follows that the individual life is so
because each of us sooner or later declines and dies.
The word “rhythm” which has been used in this connection by Herbert
Spencer and others is questionable as implying a mechanical character
that does not exist. When we are told that a movement is rhythmical we
generally infer, I think, that certain phases recur at stated times, and
can be predicted on this basis, like the ebb and flow of tides.
But if this is what the word means then the idea of rhythm in the social
process appears to be a fiction. I doubt if any examples of it can be
given, except such as are immediately dependent upon some external
phenomenon, like our going to bed at night, or else are artificially
established, such as the cessation of work every seventh day, or the
celebration of the Fourth of July.
The course of the fashions, or of the periods of prosperity and
depression in business, are fair examples of the kind of phenomena
supposed to be rhythmical; but it does not appear, upon examination,
that these movements are mechanical or can be predicted by simple rules
of any sort. Can any one foretell the fashions more than two or three
months ahead, or by any method save that of inquiring what has already
got a start in London or Paris? Studies of their genesis show that even
the most expert are unable to tell in advance what designs will “take.”
Many have the impression that business cycles follow a regular course,
which can be plotted beforehand on curves, and some, I believe, put
sufficient faith in such curves to invest their money accordingly, but I
doubt if they are especially successful. My impression is that the few
men who succeed in speculation do not trust to any law of rhythm, but
make an intensive study of the actual state of the market, guiding
themselves somewhat by past records, but not forgetting that the present
condition is, after all, unique, and must be understood by a special
intellectual synthesis. I take it that those who trust to mechanical
formulas are much in the same class as those who expect to get rich at
Monte Carlo by the use of an arithmetical “system.”
A scientific study of business cycles, such as that carried out with
large scope and exhaustive detail by Professor Wesley C. Mitchell, shows
that they are complex organic movements, belonging to a common general
type—as indicated by successive periods of confidence and depression, of
high and low prices, and so on—but differing greatly from one another,
altering fundamentally with the development of business methods, and
showing no such pendulum-like regularity in time as is often supposed.
“The notion that crises have a regular period of recurrence,” it seems,
“is plainly mistaken.” “These cycles differ widely in duration, in
intensity, in the relative prominence of their various phenomena, and in
the sequence of their phases.”[4] Professor Mitchell’s work is an
excellent example of what a scientific study of social process, in the
economic sphere, should be, and of the uses and limits of the
statistical method.
The same sort of objection holds good against the idea that social
organisms of any sort, and more especially nations, are subject to a
_definite_ law of growth and decay, which enables us to predict their
fate in advance. No doubt they must all “have their closes” sooner or
later, but the process is complex and in part within the sphere of will,
so that there is no exact way of predicting how it will work out. So far
as nations have decayed in the past it has been because their systems
became too rigid for change, or took on a form which demoralized the
people, or proved unable to resist conquest, or in some other way failed
to work effectually. These dangers are difficult to avoid, and it is not
surprising that most nations have succumbed to them, but sound
institutions intelligently adapted to change might avert them
indefinitely. It may even be said that there are nations which have
lived throughout historical time. The Jews, for example, have kept their
national consciousness and their fundamental ideas. Some modern nations,
as France and England, have endured many centuries and show no lack of
vigor.
Predictions based on a supposed law of this nature are constantly
proving false. At almost any time during the last three centuries
English writers could be found likening the condition of their country
to that of imperial Rome, and predicting a similar downfall; and
recently America has been threatened with a like fate. Many have judged
France and Spain to be hopelessly on the downward path, and have
elaborated theories of the causes of their decay, which have proved
somewhat supererogatory.
My own impression is that the freer and more intelligent forms of
national life arising under modern conditions are likely, when well
established, to have a much longer life than older forms, the reason
being that they are plastic and capable of rational adaptation. There
will be ups and downs, but the actual dissolution of a self-conscious
modern nation is hard to conceive.
The idea that history repeats itself is similar to that of social
rhythm. Certain principles of human nature and social process operate
throughout history, and their working may be traced in one age as in
another. Thus when one nation is believed to be trying to dominate
others it is human nature that the latter should combine against it; and
in this sense it may be said that the Entente of 1914 was a repetition
of the league against Napoleon. But such resemblances are accompanied by
essential differences, so that the situation as a whole is new, and you
cannot predict the course of events except on the basis of a fresh
synthesis. It is easy to discover resemblances, and to overestimate
their importance.
I take it that life as a whole is not a series of futile repetitions,
but an eternal growth, an onward and upward development, if you please,
involving the continual transformation or elimination of details. Just
as humanity lives on while individuals perish, so the social
organization endures while particular forms of it pass away.