Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/43

Rh arrangements, or of invincible perversity in individuals, which must be charged to profit and loss.

Not pressing this point, however, no way is visible by which any portion of the 95 per cent, of our social population can advance toward all-around satisfaction without needing each other in the process. If the process needs all the persons, each of the persons must be entitled to a share in the process.

Practically the same thing might be stated in this way: The type of life that civilization has developed calls for a type of persons capable of the most intensive and many-sided co-operation. Ability to fit into an infinitely refined and complex system of co-operation is the mark of fitness for the present social environment. At the same time democracy has given to the individual both demand and capacity for a share in consumption of all the achievements of civilization. Unless this demand is measurably satisfied, the fitness of the individual for his part in co-operation is reduced toward the point of obstruction. That is: On the most cynical basis of calculation that could be adopted, the program of civilization is a system of inevitable co-operation. If control of that co-operation were in the hands of one despot, he would be obliged, in order to keep the system from breaking down, to run it in the interest of all the persons necessary for the co-operation. To do this, he would be obliged to run it on a plan which would admit all the persons necessary to the co-operation to progressive participation in all the advantages of the co-operation. The reason for this is in the fact that they are persons, not things.

This conclusion is no more demonstrative than its opposite, but it is more probable, more morally convincing. The plausibility of the special-privilege hypothesis grows out of failure to remember the facts which make the exceptional individuals possible. Without social partnership no man could improve himself enough to exhibit any marked differences from other men. The more extensive the social partnership, the greater the possibility of making particular talents distinguish their possessors from others. But that distinction comes from co-operation, and the co-operators are at least entitled to such terms of co-operation