¹ “The whole structure of modern society is associational …”, according to Elliott, William Yandell in The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics (New York, 1928), p. 434.Google Scholar The view expressed by Elliott is also asserted by Dewey, John in The Public and Its Problems (Chicago, 1946)Google Scholar. Dewey, however, denies the usefulness of the concept of “society,” as a basis for generalizations on the ground that it is devoid of meaning. To pose problems of relationship between the individual and “society” is as meaningless, he feels, as “to make a problem out of the relation of the letters of an alphabet to the alphabet” (p. 69).

² In the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts, there are, not counting student organizations and official groups in the town government, “well more than one hundred Clubs, Lodges, Leagues, Guilds, Tribes, Granges, Circles, Unions, Chapters, Councils, Societies, Associations, Auxiliaries, Brotherhoods, and Fellowships. Their specialties or special interests, to name a few, include cards, cameras, stamps, gardens, churches, teachers, speakers, voters, horses, business, service, golf, nature, eating, fishing, gunning, parents, grandparents, ancestors, needlework, temperance, travel, and kindergarten” (Doran, William L., University of Massachusetts Alumni Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, p. 4, Dec., 1948)Google Scholar.

³ See, for example, Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action; A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers (New York and London, 1937)Google Scholar; Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Parsons, Talcott (New York, 1947)Google Scholar, especially the concept of the “corporate group,” pp. 145 ff.; Pareto, Vilfredo, The Mind and Society, trans. Bongiorno, A. and Livingston, A., 4 vols. (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Mosca, Gaetano, The Ruling Class (New York and London, 1939)Google Scholar. The concepts of the elite and the mass which are developed by Pareto and Mosca are concepts of group action. For political applications of sociological methods, see the following, in addition to the works of Pareto and Mosca: Michels, Robert, Political Parties; A Sociological Study of the Oligarchic Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York, 1925)Google Scholar; McIver, Robert, The Modern State (Oxford, 1926)Google Scholar and The Web of Government (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; and Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society in An Age of Reconstruction (New York, 1948)Google Scholar. Some of these sociological insights into the structure and processes of politics are not new. For example, John Adams foreshadowed the view that society fundamentally divides into elite and mass when he said, “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men, superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the Constitution and course of nature, the foundations of the distinction” (Adams, Charles Francis, The Life and Works of John Adams, Boston, 1856, Vol. 4, p. 427Google Scholar).

⁴ Dewey, John, Human Nature and Conduct; An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York, 1922)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Dewey's The Public and Its Problems.

⁵ Horney, Karen, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York, 1937)Google Scholar and New Ways in Psychoanalysis (New York, 1939)Google Scholar. For example, Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Dr.Brill, A. A. (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, describes and explains the Oedipus complex without limiting it to any culture (pp. 160–162, 269–270). But what becomes of the Oedipus complex in a society like that of the Marquesas or the Trobriand Islands, where, anthropologists assert, it does not exist? Modern research suggests that this fundamental pattern in human behavior is a culture trait; for a discussion of the point, see Kardiner, Abram, The Individual and His Society (New York, 1947), pp. 479 ff.Google Scholar

⁶ Well known are the following works: Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York, 1922)Google Scholar; Benedict, Ruth, Patterns of Culture (Boston, 1934)Google Scholar and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston, 1946)Google Scholar; Kardiner, The Individual and His Society; and Linton, Ralph, The Cultural Background of Personality (New York, 1945)Google Scholar.

⁷ As in Timasheff, N. S., An Introduction to the Sociology of Law (Cambridge, 1939)Google Scholar.

⁸ This conception is fundamental to John Stuart Mill's famous essay, “On Liberty.” For a discussion of the relation between Mill's view and the prevailing doctrine of free speech in the United States Supreme Court, see Latham, Earl, “The Theory of the Judicial Doctrine of Freedom of Speech”, in the Journal of Politics, Vol. 12, pp. 637–651 (Nov., 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ For a brief but strong criticism of Hegel, see Russell, Bertrand, Philosophy and Politics (London, 1947), pp. 16–20Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Bentley, Arthur, The Process of Government (Chicago, 1908)Google Scholar; Herring, Pendleton, Group Representation Before Congress (Baltimore, 1929)Google Scholar, Public Administration and the Public Interest (New York and London, 1936)Google Scholar, and The Politics of Democracy (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Schattachneider, E. E., Politics, Pressures, and the Tariff (New York, 1935)Google Scholar and Party Government (New York, 1942)Google Scholar; Munro, William Bennett, The Invisible Government (New York, 1928)Google Scholar; Odegard, Peter, Pressure Politics (New York, 1928)Google Scholar; and Truman, David, The Governmental Process (New York, 1951)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Enactment of legislation: Bailey, Stephen K., Congress Makes a Law (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; Young, Roland, This is Congress (New York, 1943)Google Scholar. Party activity: Odegard, Peter and Helms, E. A., American Politics (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government; Key, V. O., Politics, Parlies and Pressures Groups (New York, 1946)Google Scholar. Formulation of policy: Chase, Stuart, Democracy Under Pressure (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; McCune, Wesley, The Farm Bloc (New York, 1943)Google Scholar. Public Administration: Leiserson, Avery, Administrative Regulation (Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar; Almond, Gabriel, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert, Congress and the Foreign Policy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; Herring, Pendleton, Public Administration and the Public Interest. Civil libertiesCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riesman, David, “Civil Liberties in a Period of Transition”, Public Policy, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1942), pp. 33 ff.Google Scholar; “Private Attorneys-General: Group Action in the Fight for Civil Liberties”, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 58, pp. 574 ff. (1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² These studies are illustrative: Whyte, William, Street Corner Society (Chicago, 1943)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd and Lunt, Paul S., The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven, 1941)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd and Low, J. O., The Strike, A Social Analysis (New Haven, 1947)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd and Srole, Leo, The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (New Haven, 1945)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd, The Status System of a Modern Community (New Haven, 1942)Google Scholar; Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific; Robert, S. and Lynd, Helen M., Middletown in Transition (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd, Democracy in Jonesville (New York, 1949)Google Scholar.

¹³ Studies dealing with this material are: Barnard, Chester I., Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, 1947)Google Scholar; Roethlisberger, F. J. and Dickson, W. J., Management and the Worker (Cambridge, 1939)Google Scholar; Roethlisberger, F. J., Management and Morale (Cambridge, 1942)Google Scholar; Mayo, Elton, The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization (Boston, 1945)Google Scholar; Mayo, Elton, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (New York, 1933)Google Scholar; Whitehead, T. North, Leadership in a Free Society (Cambridge, 1936)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Drucker, Peter, The Concept of the Corporation (New York, 1946)Google Scholar; Berle, A. A. and Means, Gardiner, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert, Administrative Behavior (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert, Smithburg, Donald, and Thompson, Victor, Public Administration (New York, 1950)Google Scholar; de Grazia, Sebastion, The Political Community (Chicago, 1948)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ For a study of the political structure and process of an institution of private government, see Garceau, Oliver, The Political Life of the American Medical Association (Cambridge, 1941)Google Scholar, and Danielian, A. R., The A.T. and T. (New York, 1939)Google Scholar. For general works on the subject of power as the focus of politics, see Russell, Bertrand, Power (New York, 1938)Google Scholar, and Merriam, Charles, Political Power (New York, 1934)Google Scholar. The distinction between private and public government is discussed in Merriam, Charles, Public and Private Government (New Haven, 1944)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ The Public and Its Problems, p. 73.

¹⁶ Although Bentley refers to the “idea of the state” as one of “the intellectual amusements of the past,” he does not reject it completely but indicates that it may have some place in a complete restatement of theoretical political science. In the Process of Government, he was not trying to make such a comprehensive restatement but trying to describe political activity, that is, political processes. (See p. 263.) In his later works, the subject is not referred to again. Dewey, on the other hand, is clear that state and government are not the same, that there is no archetypal state, that there could be no state without a government, that the state did not create the government, that the state is a “public,” articulated and operating through representative officers. (See The Public and Its Government, p. 67.) For Dewey, the state is the organization of singular individuals and their relations to the officials and functionaries established to protect the perceived consequences of conjoint behaviors. The perception of such consequences creates the “public,” which is the constituent power of the state. The state is not a structure but a relationship. It is an association.

¹⁷ It is useful to distinguish groups in three senses or phases of development: incipient, conscious, and organized. The indispensable ingredient of “groupness” is consciousness of common interest and active assistance, mutually sustained, to advance and promote this interest. Where the interest exists but is not recognized by the members of the putative association, the group may be said to be incipient. Thus, all dwellers in the Caribbean may actually possess certain interests in common—economic resources, strategic position, native populations in a colonial status, exposure to the hazards of weather, and so on—which may produce a consciousness of community, as similar predisposing factors produced the Indonesian Republic. A conscious group is one in which the community sense exists but which has not become organized. An organized group is a conscious group which has established an objective and formal apparatus to promote the common interest. Habitual cooperation of the members of a group is possible without any elaborate apparatus. Mannheim, , in Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, pp. 51 ff.Google Scholar, distinguishes between substantial and functional rationality. The first is conscious, contrived, directed action which makes use of deliberate means to produce known ends, efficiently sought. Functional rationality may be likened to what is here called habitual cooperation. Wherever the objective and formal apparatus of the organized group appears in its mature manifestations, it exhibits a very similar general form and pattern. Weber, Max, in Essays in Sociology, trans. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (New York, 1946), pp. 196 ff.Google Scholar, discusses the phenomenon of bureaucracy, which is not limited to the institutions and behavior of public government but is universal among organized group structures. The three principal characteristics of bureaucracy are a fixed distribution of functions, a fixed distribution of authority, and a predictable procedure. By these terms, it is clear that private organizations have their bureaucracies as well as Washington and Whitehall.

¹⁸ To name only a few of these writers, there are Mooney, James and Reiley, Alan, Principles of Organization (New York, 1939)Google Scholar; Fayol, Henri, Industrial and General Administration (London, 1930)Google Scholar; Gulick, Luther and Urwick, Lyndall, Papers on the Science of Administration (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; Urwick, Lyndall, The Elements of Administration (London, 1943)Google Scholar; Niles, Mary, Middle Management (New York, 1941)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches (Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1860)Google Scholar.

²⁰ The problem dealt with by John Wise involved a few thousands. The same kind of problem today involves millions. For example, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America contains twenty-seven different denominations and claims a membership of more than 29,000,000 people, a figure which the total population of the United States did not reach until just before the Civil War. The form of organization is a loose confederation of the following constituent bodies: National Baptist Convention, Northern Baptist Convention, Church of the Brethren, General Council of Congregational Christian Churches, Czech-Moravian Brethren, International Convention of Disciples of Christ, Evangelical and Reformed Church, Evangelical United Brethren Church, Five Years Meeting of the Friends of America, Religious Society of Friends of Philadelphia and Vicinity, the Methodist Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America, Moravian Church, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Protestant Episcopal Church, Reformed Church in America, Romanian Orthodox Church of America, Russian Orthodox Church of North America, Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church of North America, Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America, United Church of Canada, United Lutheran Church (Consultive), United Presbyterian Church. It is estimated, that there are also seven hundred local and state councils of churches in America, designed to advance interchurch cooperation locally.

²¹ In Functions of the Executive.

²² Galbraith, Kenneth, American Capitalism, The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston, 1952)Google Scholar.

²³ Fischer, John, “Unwritten Rules of American Politics”, Harpers Magazine, Vol. 197, pp. 27–36 (Nov., 1948)Google Scholar, expresses the thesis that Calhoun, who devised the doctrine of the concurrent majority, provides the key to an understanding of American politics today. Fischer asserts that the legislative system, especially as it functions in Congress through committees, is a modern-day institutionalization of Calhoun's concurrent majority, in which no important interest is forced to accept legislation unfavorable to it, at least in the particulars in which its interest is immediately invested. Economic interests and others also, through the groups in which they are organized, according to Fischer then exercise a minority veto on legislation which concerns them—like the minority veto that Calhoun sought to establish for the protection of the interests of the South.

This view, however, gives too much credit to Calhoun. Far from having the key to the mysteries of American politics, Calhoun was outside the mainstream of American political thought and tendency in his own time. He was closer to Andre Vishinsky than to any American politico of our day. In fact, Calhoun could have written Vishinsky's speech of November 24, 1948, to the United Nations General Assembly's Ad Hoc Political Committee in which he said, “The veto is a powerful political tool …. Perhaps we use it more, but that is because we are in the minority and the veto balances power. If we were in the majority we could make such grandiloquent gestures as offering to waive the veto on this or that” (New York Times, Nov. 25, 1948).

In the functions which the American legislature performs, it is clear that no minority exercises a veto on legislation that affects it. Certainly no veto power is recognized in law and none is exercised in practice. The assumption that there is a minority veto, as Fischer asserts, must show that minorities can always exercise it, as they do in the United Nations Security Council, and that no minority is without it. So far as the first is concerned, what veto did business men interpose against the enactment of the Wagner Act of 1935? How successful have the bankers been in applying a veto to the currency reforms of the last decade? How successful were the labor unions in opposing the enactment of the restrictive features of the Taft-Hartley Act? Where were the vetoes in these and many other instances that might be cited? The answer is that they did not exist. In addition, the hypothesis of a minority veto fails to account for the failure of substantial minorities to get a hearing, let alone exercise a veto. Among these are Negroes, small business men, share-croppers, Oakies, and so on.

²⁴ Much ingenuity and resourcefulness go into the production of an objective and homogeneous pattern of law. Cardozo, Benjamin, in The Nature of the Judicial Process (New Haven, 1925)Google Scholar, confessed that the function of the judge is creative and original in those many interstices of the law left vacant by the statutes and administrative decrees. Landis, James M., in The Administrative Process (New Haven, 1938)Google Scholar, presented a case for judicial self-restraint in the relations between the courts and the bureaucrats. In fact, the judiciary and the regulatory agencies of the quasi-judicial kind may be regarded as rival bureaucracies, with overlapping jurisdictions. The judges have been jealous for a half-century of the threat represented by the bureaucracy to their historic monopoly to say what the law is; and until recent years at least, they protected their security against this threat in their environment by dominating the danger, and nullifying it on appeal.

²⁵ Italics supplied. The case is Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), which involved an attempt by Congress to exercise the power which presidents supposed they possessed to remove officials at will. The jealousy which Congress has displayed towards the Chief Executive is both extensive and historic. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 was vetoed by Wilson when it first passed Congress because Congress had reserved to itself the authority to dismiss the Comptroller-General and Wilson believed this to be unconstitutional (Congressional Record, 66th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 59, pp. 8609–8610, June 4, 1920Google Scholar). Wilson's veto was anticipated by the observation he made in his book, Congressional Government (New York, 1925, 1st ed., 1885)Google Scholar: “It is not often easy to see the true constitutional bearing of strictly legislative action; but it is patent even to the least observant that in the matter of appointments to office, for instance, senators have often outrun their legal rights to give or withhold their assent to appointments, by insisting upon being first consulted concerning nominations as well, and have thus made their constitutional assent dependent upon an unconstitutional control of nominations” (pp. 48–49).

²⁶ See Morgan v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 115 F (2d) 990 (1940), certiorari denied, 312 U.S. 701 (1941), where the court held that the authority of the President to remove such directors for any cause he chose was not limited by this congressional reservation of power.

²⁷ See the discussion of this problem in the New York Times, Sept. 3, 1948, p. 5Google Scholar.

²⁸ See Binkley, Wilfred, The Powers of the President (New York, 1937)Google Scholar. Binkley's thesis is that the conservative groups have tended to support Congress and the popular and less conservative groups have tended to support the President. The Whigs and the Republicans in the main have preferred a strong Congress and a weak President, while the Democrats, in the New Freedom, New Deal, and Fair Deal versions, at least, have preferred a strong President and a weak, that is, subordinate but not docile, Congress. The alternation of strong and weak presidents, and contrariwise, strong presidents and strong Congresses, is the result of the shifts in the balance of power among the multifarious groups that constitute the society.

²⁹ Congressional Government, p. 36.

³⁰ 94 U.S. 113.

³¹ See Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Company, 320 U.S. 591, 64 S.Ct. 281, 88 L.Ed. 333 (1944).

³² Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land and Improvement Company, 12 Howard 272 (1856).

³³ Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, Task Force Report on Organization and Policy in the Field of Natural Resources (Washington, 1949)Google Scholar, Appendix 7, “The Kings River Project in the Basin of the Great Central Valley—A Case Study,” pp. 149–182.