Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/201

 credited to this sociological perception. He has no longer the feeling that he is a subject person. He regards himself only as servant of an objective economic technique, within which the element that as entrepreneur or leader is superior to himself works no longer as a personal superior, but simply as a technical necessity. Inasmuch as the laborer is no longer hired as an entire person, but rather a quantitatively defined service is stipulated, he is freed as a man from the relation of inferiority. He now belongs to the relationship only as a factor of the process of production, thus in so far coördinate with the leader.

The disadvantages of the relation of modern servants, as it exists in central Europe at least, are traceable to the fact that here really the whole human being enters into the relation of subordination, since his service is not restricted to definitely limited tasks. Only under such restrictions does relative coördination of superiority and inferiority enter. This is the case in a measure when the persons in domestic service have only a certain defined part of the household work to perform. In so far they are coördinate with the mistress of the household, with whom they coöperate in discharge of the necessary tasks of the household. On the other hand the former, and still existing relation, which engaged domestic servants as entire personalities, made them subservient to no such objective purpose, but rather to the mistress of the house as a person.

To what extent subordination to an ideal objective purpose creates a sort of equality among those who have positions of superiority and inferiority within this process, is shown further by the relation between officers and common soldiers. If this coördination is most prominent in war, where subordination is so especially rigid, it is for the reason that in war the patriotic purpose which is above all individual considerations operates more powerfully and more perceptibly. In peace, on the contrary, this patriotic purpose falls relatively into the background, and the material technique of service becomes prominent. This is consistent with the utilitarian importance of the direct relationship of superiority and subordination, while constant and