CONFLICT AND CO-OPERATION
LIFE AS CONFLICT—CONFLICT AND ORGANIC GROWTH—CONFLICT INSTIGATES
CO-OPERATION—ORGANIZATION MAKES THE CONDITIONS OF CONFLICT—THE TWO
AS AN ORGANIC WHOLE—CONFLICT AND WASTE—CONFLICT AND PROGRESS
From the perennial discussion regarding the meaning of conflict in life
two facts clearly emerge: first, that conflict is inevitable, and,
second, that it is capable of a progress under which more humane,
rational, and co-operative forms supplant those which are less so. We
are born to struggle as the sparks fly upward, but not necessarily to
brutality and waste.
_Vivere militare est_; even the gentlest spirits have felt that life is
an eternal strife. Jesus came to bring not peace but a sword, and the
Christian life has always been likened to that of a soldier.
“Sure I must fight if I would reign,
Increase my courage, Lord!”
The thing is to fight a _good_ fight, one that leaves life better than
it found it. In the individual and in the race as a whole there is an
onward spirit that from birth to the grave is ever working against
opposition. A cloud of disease germs surrounds us which we beat off only
by the superior vigor of our own blood-corpuscles, and to which as our
organism weakens in age we inevitably succumb. It is much the same in
the psychological sphere. Every meeting with men is, in one way or
another, a demand on our energy, a form of conflict, and when we are
weakened and nervous we cannot withstand the eyes of mankind but seek to
avoid them by seclusion.
The love that pervades life, if it is affirmative and productive, works
itself out through struggle, and the best marriage is a kind of strife.
The sexes are as naturally antagonistic as they are complementary, and
it is precisely in their conflict that a passionate intimacy is found.
We require opposition to awaken and direct our faculties, and can hardly
exert ourselves without it. “What we agree with leaves us inactive,”
said Goethe, “but contradiction makes us productive.” Stanley, the
explorer of Africa, writes: “When a man returns home and finds for the
moment nothing to struggle against, the vast resolve which has sustained
him through a long and difficult enterprise dies away, burning as it
sinks in the heart; and thus the greatest successes are often
accompanied by a peculiar melancholy.”[5]
It is apparent that both conflict and co-operation have their places in
our process of organic growth. As forces become organized they
co-operate, but it is through a selective method, involving conflict,
that this is brought about. Such a method compares the available forces,
develops the ones most fitted to the situation, and compels others to
seek functions where, presumably, they can serve the organism better.
There seems to be no other way for life to move ahead. And a good kind
of co-operation is never static, but a _modus vivendi_ under which we go
on to new sorts of opposition and growth. People may be said to agree in
order that their conflict may be more intimate and fruitful, otherwise
there is no life in the relation.[6]
The two are easily seen to be inseparable in every-day practice. When,
for example, people have come together to promote social improvement,
the first thing to do is to elect officers. This may not involve a
conflict, but the principle is there, and the more earnestness there is,
the more likelihood of opposition. Then there must be a discussion of
principles and programme, with occasional ballots to see which view has
won. I remember reading of several rather serious conflicts within
societies for the promotion of peace, and churches and philanthropic
movements are not at all lacking in such incidents.
Co-operation within a whole is usually brought about by some conflict of
the whole with outside forces. Just as the individual is compelled to
self-control by the fact that he cannot win his way in life unless he
can make his energies work harmoniously, so in a group of any sort, from
a football-team to an empire, success demands coordination. The boys on
the playground learn not only that they must strive vigorously with
their fellows for their places on the team, but also that as soon as
their team meets another this kind of conflict must yield to a common
service of the whole. In no way do working people get more discipline in
fellowship and co-operation than in carrying through a strike. The more
intelligent students recognize some measure of conflict between capital
and labor as functional and probably lasting. Like the struggle of
political parties it is a normal process, through which issues are
defined and institutions developed.
And likewise with nations. Their enlargement and consolidation,
throughout history, including the remarkable development of internal
organization and external co-operation due to the great war, have almost
invariably been occasioned by the requirements of conflict. And if we
are to have a lasting world-federation it must preserve, while
controlling, the principle of national struggle.
A factor of co-operation, of organization, always presides over conflict
and fixes its conditions. There is never a state of utter chaos but
always a situation which is the outcome of the organic development of
the past, and to this the contestants of the hour must adjust themselves
in order to succeed. That this is the case when the situation includes
definite rules, as in athletic contests, is manifest. But the control of
the social organization over conflict goes far beyond such rules,
operating even more through a general situation in which certain modes
of conflict are conducive to success and others are not. In business the
customary practices and opinions must be observed as carefully as the
laws, if one would not find every man’s hand against him, and the same
is true in sports, in professional careers, in manual trades, in every
sphere whatsoever.
Even in war, which is the nearest approach to anarchy that we have on
any large scale, it is not the case that a presiding order is wholly
absent. Any nation which defies the rooted sentiment of mankind as to
what is fair in this form of conflict, regarding no law but that of
force, sets in operation against itself currents of distrust and
resentment that in the long run will overbear any temporary gain. The
most truculent states so far understand this that they try to give their
aggressions the appearance of justice.
The more one thinks of it the more he will see that conflict and
co-operation are not separable things, but phases of one process which
always involves something of both. Life, seen largely, is an onward
struggle in which now one of these phases and now another may be more
conspicuous, but from which neither can be absent.
You can resolve the social order into a great number of co-operative
wholes of various sorts, each of which includes conflicting elements
within itself upon which it is imposing some sort of harmony with a view
to conflict with other wholes. Thus the mind of a man is full of
wrangling impulses, but his struggle with the world requires that he act
as a unit. A labor-union is made up of competing and disputing members;
but they must manage to agree when it comes to a struggle with the
employer. And employer and employees, whatever their struggles, must and
do combine into a whole for the competition of their plant against
others. The competing plants, however, unite through boards of trade or
similar bodies to further the interests of their city against those of
other cities. And so the political factions of a nation may be at the
height of conflict, but if they are loyal they unite at once when war
breaks out with another country.
And war itself is not all conflict, but often generates a mutual
interest and respect, a “sympathy of concussion.” A scholar who perished
in the trenches of the German army in France wrote: “Precisely when one
has to face suffering as I do, it is then a bond of union enlaces me
with those who are over there—on the other side.... If I get out of
this—but I have little hope—my dearest duty will be to plunge into the
study of what those who have been our enemies think.” It is not
impossible to think of the battling nations as struggling onward toward
some common end which they cannot see. They slay one another, but they
put a common faith and loyalty into the conflict; and out of the latter
may come a clearer view of the common right. It is a moral experiment to
which each contributes and defends its own hypothesis, and if the
righteous cause wins, or the righteous elements in each cause, all will
profit by the result. So it was with the American Civil War, as we all
feel now. North and South say: “We differed as to what was right. It had
to be fought out. There might have been another way if our minds had
been otherwise, but as it was the way to unity lay through blood.”
Much has been said, from time to time, about our age being one of
combination, in the economic world at least, and of the decline of
competition. It would be more exact to say that both combination and
competition have been taking on new forms, but without any general
change in the relation between them. What happens, for example, when a
trust is formed to unite heretofore competing plants, is that
unification takes place along a new line for the purpose of aiding
certain interests in their conflict for aggrandizement. It is merely a
new alignment of forces, and has no tendency toward a general decline of
competition. Indeed every such trust not only fights outside
competitors, but deliberately fosters manifold competition within its
system, for the sake of exciting exertion and efficiency. The different
plants are still played off one against the other, as are also the
different departments, the different foremen in each department, and the
different workmen. By an elaborate system of accounting, every man and
every group is led to measure its work against that of other men and
other groups, and to struggle for superiority. And the great
combinations themselves have not been and will not be left at peace. If
they absorb all their competitors they will have to deal with the state,
which can never permit any form of power to go unchecked.
It is evident that the vigor of the struggle is proportionate to the
human energy that goes into it, and that we cannot expect tranquillity.
It does not follow, however, that the amount of conflict is a measure of
progress. The function of struggle is to work out new forms of
co-operation, and if it does not achieve this but goes on in a blind and
aimless way after the time for readjustment has arrived, it becomes mere
waste. Synthesis also takes energy, and very commonly a higher or more
rational form of energy than conflict. Critics of the present state of
things are wrong when they condemn competition altogether, but they are
right in condemning many present forms of it. Extravagant and fallacious
advertising, price-cutting conflicts, the exploitation of children and
squandering of natural resources, not to mention wars, indicate a
failure of the higher constructive functions. Indeed the irrational
continuance of such methods exhausts the energies that should put an end
to them, just as dissipation exhausts a man’s power of resistance, so
that the more he indulges himself the less able he is to stop.
Evidently progress is to be looked for not in the suppression of
conflict but in bringing it under rational control. To do this calls for
some sort of a social constitution, formal or informal, covering the
sphere of struggle, a whole that is greater than the conflicting
elements and capable of imposing regulation upon them. This regulation
must be based on principles broad enough to provide for pacific change
and adaptation, to meet new conditions. So far as we can achieve this we
may expect that struggle will rise to higher forms, war giving place to
judicial procedure, a selfish struggle for existence to emulation in
service, a wasteful and disorderly competition to one that is rational
and efficient. Our past development has been in this direction, and we
may hope to continue it.
But the current of events is ever bringing to pass unforeseen changes,
and if these are great and sudden they may again throw us into a
disorderly struggle, just as a panic in a theatre may convert an
assemblage of polite and considerate people into a ruthless mob.
Something of this kind has taken place in connection with the industrial
revolution, bringing on a confusion and demoralization from which we
have only partly emerged. Another case is where a conflict, for whose
orderly conduct the organization does not provide, having long developed
beneath the surface in the shape of antagonistic ideals and
institutions, breaks out disastrously at last, as did the Civil War in
the United States, or the great war in Europe. We can provide against
this only in the measure that we foresee and control the process in
which we live. If we can do this we may look for an era of deliberate
and assured progress, in which conflict is confined and utilized like
fire under the boiler.