Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/408

 394 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and right, to look upon escape as an outrage upon the rights of other classes, and to spurn with moral indignation the agitator who would stir them to protest. Great is the magic of prece- dent, and like the rebellious helots who cowered at the sight of their masters' whips, those who are used to dragging the social chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths whenever the bit is offered them. This is why the social arrangements of new countries become the revolutionary models for old societies. The colonist, no longer in the overawing presence of an ancient system, reverts to first principles. Squaring his institutions with his native sense of justice and fitness he frames a social system that becomes a wonder and a terror to the usurping classes among older peoples ; while, on the other hand, the Hindu culti- vator, the Russian moujik, the Galician peasant, or the English hind, hypnotized by the actual, consents to the institutions about him.

This moral ankylosis that afflicts those who grow up within a bad social system explains why the economist Roscher places among the conditions that favor communistic agitations "a vio- lent shaking or perplexing of public opinion in its relation to the feeling of right by revolutions, especially when they follow rapidly one on the heels of another, and take opposite directions." 1 For a series of sudden changes breaks that spell of custom which is so con- ducive to the peace of the parasitic class. When their minds have thus been depolarized the desires of the exploited people fly up like a released spring and the social classes jar angrily together. The social system is seen in its nakedness, and, unless enough physical force is found to uphold it, it is sure to be modified.

In order not to mistake social control for class control it is necessary to distinguish between a parasitic society and a society that is truly competitive. In respect to economic friction and the contrasts of worldly condition, a competitive society may present much the same appearance as a society composed of exploiters and exploited. Yet there is between them one great difference, a difference which has everything to do with the

1 Political Economy, Vol. I, sec. 78.