Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/835

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 805

reduction is made in the total expenditure of energy as com- pared with the process of continuing or beginning a struggle. All exchange is a compromise. We are told of certain social conditions in which it is accounted as knightly to rob and to fight for the sake of robbery ; while exchange and purchase are regarded in the same society as undignified and vulgar. The psychological explanation of this situation is to be found partly in the fact of the element of compromise in exchange, the factors of withdrawal and renunciation which make exchange the oppo- site pole to all struggle and conquest. Every exchange presup- poses that values and interest have assumed an objective character. The decisive element is accordingly no longer the mere sub- jective passion of desire, to which struggle only corresponds, but the value of the object, which is recognized by both interested parties, but which without essential modification may be repre- sented by various objects. Renunciation of the valued object in question, because one receives in another form the quantum of value contained in the same, is an admirable reason, wonderful also in its simplicity, whereby opposed interests are brought to accommodation without struggle. It certainly required a long historical development to make such means available, because it presupposes a psychological generalization of the universal valuation of the individual object, which at first is identified with the valuation; that is, it presupposes ability to rise above the prejudices of immediate desire. Compromise by representation ( Vertretbarkeit], of which exchange is a special case, signifies in principle, although realized only in part, the possibility of avoid- ing struggle, or of setting a limit to it before the mere force of the interested parties has decided the issue.

In distinction from the objective character of accommodation of struggle through compromise, we should notice that conciliation is a purely subjective method of avoiding struggle. I refer here, not to that sort of conciliation which is the consequence of a compromise or of any other adjournment of struggle, but rather to the reasons for this adjournment. The state of mind which makes conciliation possible ( Versohnlichkeif] is a primary attitude which, entirely apart from objective grounds, seeks to end strug-