Freedom Power Democ Plan V 4 by Karl Mannheim

Author:Karl Mannheim [Mannheim, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780415436656
Google: cZLrGAAACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-03-31T04:47:31+00:00

8

The Pattern of Democratic Behavior

I. The Concept of Integrative Behavior

We have seen that a new society demands new controls, and that these in their turn require new patterns of behavior and new personality types. If this is true, we must now substantiate our expectation by a full discussion of what constitutes this new behavior of a democratic type of personality. Exploration of the ideal pattern of democratic behavior and character will thus complete our previous discussion, which attempted first to clarify the democratic idea of co-ordination and then the psychological and technical possibilities of remaking human behavior. Having dealt with the means of creating the new man, our present approach would establish the idea,1 the vision of the type of behavior and the type of man that should guide all our educational and social efforts. A clear vision of the aims and content of education is all the more desirable as there is a tendency in democracies to discuss problems of organization rather than ideas, techniques rather than aims. There is no doubt that Democracy has lost the clear conception of the type of citizen it wants to create.

Obviously, elaboration of an ideal pattern does not mean that henceforth everyone in a democratic society will act accordingly, or that only the type of person whom we shall call democratic can exist or be desirable. The ideal only indicates the direction in which every educational effort in a democratic society ought to move. It is obvious that all people will not achieve the ideal and that every sphere of action is not likely to conform in the same way to the democratic pattern. In spite of these modifications, there is no doubt that every social system has ‘operative ideas’—as A. D. Lindsay called them—that is to say, patterns of thought and action that establish a mode of life, regardless of variations. Nobody can doubt that the totalitarian societies established such a modus vivendi, however much it may be rejected by our better judgment.

As a matter of fact, the easiest way to express the democratic pattern of life, action, and personality is to contrast it with the authoritarian or domineering pattern.

On a simple plane, what it is has always been obvious. As everybody will agree, it is part of our democratic creed to call ‘democratic’ behavior that implies the person’s readiness for cooperation, especially with his equals. Everyone also realizes that this equality means readiness to respect our neighbor’s personality, never using him as a tool or as a means to our own ends. Kant recognized this; recently it has been formulated as the principle of mutual deference,2 undoubtedly implying the idea of co-operation between equals. Similarly, an essential feature of democratic as contrasted with dominative behavior is minimal use of violence, pressure, or power; and if we have recourse to the latter, it will be under the control of peers with equal controlling influence.

Although people have long been more or less aware of these main features of democratic behavior, a recent

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