Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/169

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY.

CHAPTER IV.

COERCION AND PERSUASION.

We have seen that private property originates with the emergence of self-consciousness and scarcity. We are now to see that this is a social relation based on coercion. In distin- guishing coercion from persuasion we enter a field of subtle and elusive errors and frauds. Coercion operates through motives — so does persuasion. But where shall we draw the line between the two kinds of motives ? They are, indeed, everywhere blended and overlapped. Society and the social sciences have depended upon instinct and intuition to separate them in thought, and as a result they have been separated only as dictated by prejudice, class-feeling, sentiment, and self-interest. There is need of scientific distinction based on psychology and sociology.

Coercion, as has already been said, is not force. It holds force in reserve, and, in so far as actual force is necessary, the aim of coercion («. e., the services of the coerced) is defeated. Neither is it conquest. Conquest is only the physical exercise of force which precedes coercion.

Coercion, again, is not knowledge nor skill. Man overcomes nature, not by coercing her, but by "obeying her." That is to say, he understands her ways of working and then moves her different materials in such juxtaposition that their own inner forces of attraction, cohesion, gravitation, heat, etc., will work out the result he has in mind. This the economists call " the production of wealth," but it is properly only a limited section of production, that of the purely technical processes. It is an expression of man's knowledge and skill, constituent parts of self-consciousness, indeed, but different from coercion. In a related class is man's control over wild animals. He controls them by knowledge of their ways, by skill in daily dealing with them, and also by force ; but he does not command them and

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