No. 115 Social Problems Theory: An Affirmative Postmodern Agenda for the 21st Century T. R. Young The Red Feather Institute August, 1984 RED FEATHER INSTITUTE
A version of this paper was presented at the SSSP Meetings in San Antonio in 1984. |
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Social Problems Theory: Affirmative Postmodern Agenda for the 21st Century
INTRODUCTION TO POSTMODERN PROBLEMS APPROACHES.
All science in all disciplines is embedded in a network of values from the ways in which scientific concepts are fashioned, to the ways in which scientific problems are identified to the ways in which scientific knowledge is applied. Pure science is as much an impossibility as is the detachment of language, music, literature or dance from distinctly human interests of health, food, procreation, solidarity or social control. Social Problems research and findings are no exception. Whatever is identified as a problem depends upon the existing structure of social relations. Whatever is conceived to be a research question arises from some practical interest in reproducing those social relations. Whatever is defined as a solution is mediated by and tends to reinforce existing social relations of power, wealth, kinship as well as more diffuse social processes.If, then, postmodern sensibility argues that all social science is and must be value oriented, the operative question arises which values are to be served and who is to benefit. The answer varies in history but in the last four centuries feudal, slave, and capitalist élites have been the prime beneficiaries of theories and theorists who talk about social problems. The age of feudal lords, slave masters, commercial and industrial barons as well as bureaucratic élites is slowly fading...too slowly, too erratically. That there has been much progress for ten percent of the world's population should not be taken with too much celebration. There is much to do. Wealth continues to pour from the poorest countries in the world to the richest. Military and police force continue to retard social justice in rich as in poor countries. Health care and education continue in short supply across the world. Political agency continues to be misused in capitalist and socialist countries alike. Hunger stalks the land in an age of plenty.
Partisan Religions are, too often, narrow, mean spirited and diverting rather than encompassing, sharing, and redeeming of the bitter imperfections of life. Buddhism may be the definitive exception. Liberation theology in its many forms is, also, most congenial to the human estate. While there is a postmodern religious sensibility emerging out of the major religions and some of the minor ones, still location of agency in a supernatural being transfers responsibility for both good and evil from social arrangements which, as Durkheim noted long ago, the empirical base for claims of super-natural agency. Postmodern sensibility argues that there is only human agency masked as 'law,' 'god,' 'nature,' or 'functional imperative.'
AFFIRMATIVE POSTMODERN SENSIBILITIES.
Affirmative postmodern praxis must be linked to progressive policies which transform social relations to more democratic, supportive and peaceful social relations. There is no choice. Social scientists may be either the amoral agents of the powers elite or the morally informed catalysts of progressive social change. In this paper, I want to put forward several transformations in Social Problems necessary to progressive politics.
One Postmodern Approach. The first transformation in American Social Problems this paper proposes is an explicit use of a normative base from which to generate data and policy for social problems. The case for a morally informed social science hinges upon the magnitude of a wide variety of serious problems which beset ever larger portions of the world population. Current positions on the knowledge process argues, forcibly, for detachment, impartiality, emotional distance and careful control in research design to avoid bias. On its own terms, this is good sound advice. However there are larger, non-psychological considerations which forever contaminate the knowledge process. The very language itself greatly distorts attitudes and understandings as do basic assumptions about life and nature. These are, all and equally, human constructs which select part and only part of the incredible complexity of life and nature.
And there is something to be said for a dedicated and passionate quest for specific kinds of knowledge. In the case of medicine, a dedicated search for a solution to smallpox, polio, yellow fever and diabetes produced good results. In the case of mathematics and metallurgy, the quest for wealth by kings and nations fueled the knowledge process. In the case of computers, war and defense of a way of life pushed people to find ways to process large data sets. These accomplishments were not a result of a disinterested science. They were based upon differing sets of human values.
An affirmative postmodern approach to social problems theory asserts that there are trans-societal and trans-historical human needs which shape the very defining process from which a thing may be conceived as a problem. This approach asserts these fundamental human needs are specific enough to guide policy and general enough to permit the rich diversity of the thousands of ethnic cultures which have arisen out of the vast genius of countless generations of men and women across the wide sweep of history and land on the good earth.
An affirmative postmodern approach asserts, also, that there are the structural and interpersonal sources of social problems. Such normative approach suggests what is to be done about each social problem. Postmodern normative approaches are informed not only by what, objectively, is; but by what should be if fundamental, trans-societal human needs are to be served. Postmodern normative approaches to social problems sets forth in explicit terms the agenda it embodies and makes no false claims about impartiality, objectivity, or neutrality. There are no hidden agendas when a normative agenda is first announced in such a sociology.Postmodern normative orientations to social problem explicitly politicizes sociology, economics, psychology, medicine as well as those disciplines intimately associated with the social policy. Such politicization changes the function of social problem research from one of serving the technical needs of the established power elite to the more dignified task of facilitating open discussion on the pressing questions of an age. Indeed, the only solid reason for tenure and the protection afforded by the social honor of its award is that one acts on one's informed opinion and takes a moral stance even against power and privilege. To accept the rewards of a professorship, the protection of tenure and the intellectual challenge of such normative question and then to produce only ideas which are congenial to power and wealth; such a servile career betrays the role and degrades that high honor. Explicitly normative approaches set themselves against the structural functional school which, in part, asserts social problems arise from deviant individuals or from social disorganization. Deviance, pathology, crime and delinquency exist only in reference to some universalistic and totalizing effort to define one social life world as normal, natural and/or god-given. Postmodern social problems theory accepts that there are behaviors harmful to the human project but that one must resist claims that a given pathway to human being is natural while all others are either primitive or deviant. Capitalism, Communism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, Socialism and/or Feudalism are, equally, human constructs; as such they are neither natural nor are they the last, best product of social evolution.
Affirmative postmodern social problems theory sets itself against the constructionist school which asserts social problems arise from moral entrepreneurs. The assumption in an affirmative and normative social problems discipline holds that social problems exist; whether or not a people can recognize and articulate their own alienation, exploitation and oppression; whether or not a people have the political capacity to form a social movement or not. Against the constructionist school, a normative approach insists that social problems exist, they arise out of alienated social relations and they may be solved.
In this historical epoch five alienated relationships which produce social problems: they include class relations, racism, sexism, age and authoritarian relations. Many would add nationalism. The problems these relations produce are poverty, inequality, hunger, crime, alcoholism, despair, suicide, warfare as well as distorted sexuality. These are, ontologically, social problems whether protesters call them such or not.GROUNDING AFFIRMATIVE POSTMODERN PROBLEMS THEORY. If one, in principle, can accept an affirmative postmodern approach to social problems, the immediate question which presents itself is how to identify the basic values and how to set the norms which guide research, teaching and practice. In the next section, I present a set of human rights which, I will argue, serves the trans-historical and trans-societal needs of human beings. But first I want to say that the universe of social problems is presently set by the economic, managerial and political needs of élites in any given social formation.
Some of the more serious forms of social problems are set outside the universe of discourse for most who teach and research in social problems. A call to adapt a postmodern approach to the identification; to the definition; to the formulation of policy for a social problem is, in the same instant, a call to reject the private, elitist control over the specification of that which is a social problem as well as the reductionist policies derived therefrom. The first item on a affirmative postmodern agenda for emancipatory approaches to social problems is, then, to gain control over the process by which social problems are set as problematic within a society. The least questionable way to do this is to specify a grounding set of human rights against which to measure misery.
Human Rights. In this section, I want to try to specify a set of human rights upon which to ground a normative study of social problems or pursuit of that first item of a affirmative postmodern agenda. While the rights specified here may be subjected to critique for their adequacy, I argue that, in principle, it is possible to generate such a set and it is desirable to ground postmodern social problem work thereby: The guiding assumption I make in the set that appears below is that human beings do not exist or develop by themselves. There must be facilitating social resources and supportive social relations in order for something called a human being to develop and to remain human.
Data from anthropology, from the study of isolated children, from reports on concentration camps, prisons, and of military behavior all tend to suggest that the distinctly human component of behavior may not develop, may be suppressed, and may reappear once humane relations are restored. And I follow Marx who argued that alienated social relations subvert the human project while praxis relations promote it. By praxis, Marx meant that human beings create themselves as human beings in the act of producing material, ideological and political culture.TRANSCENDENT HUMAN VALUES. A praxis society requires that every presumptive human being has a secure and significant relationship to the means of producing culture. A postmodern approach to social problems requires a research agenda and political agenda such that:
1. The dignity of each human is augmented and the integrity of his or her community strengthened thereby. 2. The apparatus of social control and those special costs to society are reduced. 3. The necessary harmony between groups, societies and regions is facilitated without freezing inequity and oppression, North and South, East and West, through a false and oppression peace. 4. The necessary harmony between human society and the larger environment of the earth is enhanced. The earth is a great bio-system in which all parts are delicately balanced in terms of chemistry, energy, and information. All human life rests, finally, upon the integrity of this wondrous bio-system. 5. Some approximation of balance between the productive capacity of the earth and the rate of consumption is achieved without the gross inequalities of feudal, slave, or capitalist societies. 6. Incentive and reward structures are instituted as will recognize individual merit and special effort without distorting the allocation of fixed and variable capital to necessary institutions and without great differences in personal wealth. 7. Some limited tension, stress, anxiety and insecurity are necessary to stimulate the music, theater, poetry, science, philosophy and literature which explore the light and darkness of human venture. However, levels of stress and uncertainty which are disabling to the human project must be carefully avoided. 8. International relations and inter-societal relations are safeguarded as will encourage the diversity of culture and social institutions found among peoples of the earth. 9. Inter-generational relations are instituted as will balance the costs and burdens of social change on new generations with the richness of the cultural heritage from prior generations. If we do not plan for the future, we may get a future in which social problems become insoluble. 10. Resources are allocated as will inform and inspire each new cohort of young people to the social process. The society which ignores its children imperils not only their humanity but the future and humanity of the entire society.
Again, this set is, arguably, deficient in a number of ways. Such a critique creates an invitation to improve and expand the grounds for a postmodern sociology rather than deny a normative approach. Then, too, there are competing rights which call for some priority claims to be included in a affirmative postmodern agenda. It is possible to respond to some human needs immediately. There are enough resources in the world to feed, house, cloth and educate every one of the some five billion persons alive today. A system of production based upon human need--rather than the private profit of some sixty million persons located mostly in the twenty rich capitalist countries--must be instituted if we are to give practical attention to human rights.
The flow of wealth from poor countries to rich countries must be reversed. The flow of military goods must be replaced by the flow of knowledge and construction equipment. The flow of talent from the poor countries to the wealthy countries must be interdicted. A great many things must be changed, radically changed, if we are to be serious about human rights and the human project in terms more broad than the narrow, short-term, self interest of a class, a nation or an ethnic group. These are a minimal listing of basic imperatives from which a program for defining social problems and setting progressive social policy may be generated. Such a set is a requisite.
Conflict Relations. There are five great social structures out of which develop vast inequalities and against which all affirmative postmodern sociology must be directed.These are, first, the structures of class privilege in which something like eight percent of the world's population control and enjoy the vast resources of the world capitalist system together. For the rest of the world, there is an unseemly scramble to protect one's own position and family by serving whichever masters own the means of production. Some 30 percent in the 20 rich capitalist countries survive and earn this dubious honor. For the rest there is work, squalor, hunger and death at an early age. The privilege and freedoms in the rich capitalist countries today are bought at the price of the terrible unfreedom and increasing misery in the Third World. A radical sociology reveals and publishes the alienating features of this structure of class privilege as it expresses itself in community, national and international problems.
The second great structure is that of racial and ethnic privilege. Generally there is a flow of wealth from African, Asian and South American countries to the wealthy Euro-American countries. Within the Euro-American countries the structure of racist-ethnic privilege is duplicated on a smaller scale. All sorts of biological and social evolutionary theories give a gloss of genetic necessity for this pattern of inequality. The vast wars of colonial domination, the merciless use of superior weapons and inferior morality of the victors are not weighed in this theoretical explanation.
The ugly uses of religion to celebrate and sanctify such murderous colonial conquest in the world history must enter into explanations of present inequality. The role of finance capital in purchasing land and resources from the occupying conquerors should be entered into the textbooks in psychology, sociology and socio- biology. Whole generations of Euro-Americans grow up believing, falsely, the inevitability of racial inequality.
The third great, endemic structure of inequality is that of gender preference. All over the capitalist world order, women absorb the alienations of other forms of inequality to add to the primal inequality of gender. The status of women in the socialist countries is only marginally better--with perhaps some generational improvement; not yet clearly established. Once again biology, theology, and psychology converge in the politics of knowledge to subvert the emancipatory process--to exclude this structure of inequality from progressive social change.
A fourth great structure of inequality found in socialist, capitalist, feudal and tribal society is that of authority--not the authority of expertise but the authority of position whether earned or unearned. Sanctified by tradition and formal theory alike, this social pattern assigns to some persons the power to control others in shop, school, office, church, play and politics. In any social formation in which there is conflict over the kind of and use of wealth, knowledge, and art such authority relations will be superimposed upon the system of production and distribution. In capitalist societies, the conflict keys off of property claims and private accumulation: in socialist societies, the conflict derives from a claim that expropriation of surplus value is legitimate for purposes protecting the revolution at home and making the revolution abroad. Equality in political, economic, sexual, recreational and religious life is a major goal of a affirmative postmodern agenda.
exclusion of the very young and the aged from the processes by which labor creates, in the same moment, both being and culture. There may be good reason to exclude the some of the young from equal participation in some realms of social life. There may have been, arguably, in the past, good reason to exclude young people from the production of the various forms of human culture. I doubt it. Whatever the case, many young people and most old people are fully capable of creating material, ideological or political culture. It is a social problem of some magnitude to so exclude them. Young people are systematically excluded from the production of material culture, from secure and significant involvement in sexual, religious and political relations. They are locked into authoritarian relations in family, classroom, sports, and marketplace. They are treated as children and remain children long after they are capable of being fully human...and human they will be. The only question is the pathways they take to embody human desire and human passion.And finally there is the twinned structure of
The aged are discarded by an economic system which stresses low wages above the human need for the dignity of useful work. After a lifetime of building the richest society in all history, too many old people are discarded as social junk while that wealth benefits, at best, a third of the population. The affirmative postmodern sociologist has much to do in the way of teaching and organizing the senior citizen.
As do the socialist feminists, I urge a holistic and combined effort to transform the structures of inequality. Race, class and gender inequalities interact to reproduce each other. It does not advance the human project that Euro-Americans are prosperous, healthy and happy if we buy these advantages at the terrible price of oppression, poverty and illness in the Third World. It is little credit to a full humanity that a handful of leaders make and move great things on the shoulders of the masses. There is no theory, no science, no ideology, no politics which can argue legitimately that an infant in Euro-America has a greater claim to or holds a greater promise for the human project than does a Black or Yellow child born elsewhere on the earth.
What talent, what skills, what capacities are lost to the human process by the division of male and female roles one cannot know. One can only know that the loss is great and most likely unnecessary. And the demographics of all societies are changing. Power is slowly devolving toward the older citizen in all Euro-American countries. External exclusion of the aged from the life of labor--life-giving labor is not on the agenda of history. The affirmative postmodern sociologist must be on the right side of history. To be fully human is to create culture. Material resources are necessary to this agenda.
Class, race, gender and age exclusions are hostile to a human society. To deny millions of children the material resources to learn, act, and create in a human mode may serve the accumulation needs of an individual, a class, a generation, or a nation but the affirmative postmodern sociologist owes no allegiance, no loyalty, no debt to a nation, a class, or a generation. The radical project transcends the structures of power, privilege as well as those of geography and of one's own time. It is the largest of all possible agenda limited only by human rights of the sort set forth before. Inequality in social relations is the enemy; not people, not men, not individuals, not races or nations.
The generic social problem is social inequality and the social practices which coerce and reproduce them...the narrow ideologies of religion and patriotism which sanctify them. These are the enemy...our ancient enemy. A second item on a affirmative postmodern agenda for the 80's and 90's, then, is to more closely connect the origins of problems with the social context in which they appear. Theories which locate social problems in molecular genetics, in physiological chemistry, in childhood trauma or in fictitious gods, devils, or chance only deflect attention from the societal sources of human problems. A thoroughly affirmative postmodern social problems discipline locates social problems, first of all, in social relations rather than in personal, individual psychology, physiology, genetic or more remote factors.
I have said that there are basic human rights upon which to ground the discipline of social problems. I have argued that there are at least five great social relationships which hamper the human project. Now I want to consider social change. I will argue in the next section that some behavior involving rebellion and resistance to those structures above is narrowly individualistic and, in turn, may be viewed as social problems. But there is a great deal of conflict activity which is theoretically informed and emancipatory. The affirmative postmodern sociologist must distinguish between pretheoretical and theoretically grounded analysis. We must support progressive conflict.Social Problems: Pre-Theoretical Resistance and Rebellion. Crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, some mental disorders, prostitution and child abuse must be conceived and explained to students, lawmakers and concerned citizens alike as pretheoretical resistance and rebellion toward alienated social relations. Crime especially. Property crime in particular. Robbery, burglary, shoplifting, embezzlement, fraud and mugging are, implicitly, rejections of capitalist notions of ownership, of exchange for profit and of private contract. The thief, the bandit, the burglar and the swindler simply appropriates property for personal use. A depolicitized explanation of crime focuses in upon such physical characteristics as race, age, body structure, genes, blood sugar levels or other chemical findings.
Psychological factors such as greed, intelligence, mental disorder or character formation beg the question of why property crime. A more theoretical analysis suggests that any socioeconomic formation which systematically separates people from the means of distribution while promoting consumption and at the same time promoting individualism will increase the likelihood that property crime will occur. Capitalism does just these things. Some social formations stress early involvement in production; guarantee permanent connection to the distribution of social commodities and de-emphasize personal accumulation of wealth. They emphasize the production of goods oriented to need, the distribution of goods within social relations (rather than within pecuniary relations) as well as prosocialization. They are societies with low crime rates.
A affirmative postmodern approach places conflict behavior on a continuum from highly privatized, fragmented resistance and rebellion to highly informed, collective and syntactic revolution. An understanding of crime, gender violence, drug abuse, the dumping of chemicals, price fixing and other antisocial behavior as pretheoretical adjustments requires one connect such behavior to society and to history rather than to genes, body chemistry, childhood trauma, climate or educational level. The thug on the street can put racial, economic, ethnic and gender conflict into a crude language system and can seek to carve out a place in such a hostile ecosystem, for self and a narrow circle of friends and family.
Crimes of the bandit is a bit more theoretically informed. Taking the privileged as the target of predation, the bandit in Sicily, England, America or Africa correctly identifies the class enemy. "Dick and Jane" robbed the Phone company to the applause of an audience. Pretty Boy Floyd robbed banks and gave to the poor to the praise of Woody Guthrie. Such Robin Hood myths are common and commonly understood to be progressive. They present the criminal as preying on the privileged rather than upon the poor as is usually the case. Terrorism and underground warfare which entails selective theft and selective assault upon armies of occupation, upon repressive police state functionaries or upon outside advisors constitute an even more theoretically informed rebellion and resistance encompassing interests beyond self and one's friends to respond to the needs of an entire class, ethnic group, or nation. If successful, these criminals become presidents and prime ministers--if not, they become idolized in song and myth to inspire another generation to rebellion.
A third item on a affirmative postmodern agenda is to locate social change in a more theoretically grounded framework for the teacher in the university, for the student in the classroom and for the citizen on the street as well. Only when such behavior is understood theoretically is organized and appropriate rebellion possible. Pretheoretical understanding of theft, violence against children, warfare, divorce, or income tax evasion leads to pretheoretical policies.Bad theory makes for bad policy. To murder the murderer does not end class, race, gender, or authoritarian conflict. To steal from the thief does not reunite production and distribution for the masses. To imprison the thug does not remove the objective conditions under which thuggery arises. It creates a vast cycle of prisoners moving in and out of prison, in and out of crime, in and out of courts. It creates a vast police apparatus and a rationale for discarding the Bill of Rights. Pretheoretical understanding creates a whole cadre of psychiatrists, social workers, pharmacists, probation officers, counselors, lawyers, and psychologists to protect and sustain the wealthy and to manage the social junk created by such relations.
All such managers are unproductive workers drawing even more upon the system of production. Pretheoretical understanding turns millions of oppressed peoples to a fraudulent, diverting theology instead of a caring, sharing, liberating religion.
[NOTE: Since writing this article, Chaos theory and non-linearity of social dynamics have emerged to dramatically alter our understanding of the ways that social problems emerge and transform. I have begun to explicate and to apply Chaos theory to a wide variety of social problems. These are found in a companion line of work on the Chaos Theory Home Page at:www.tryoung.com/chaos
Together, postmodern work and work in chaos theory can be used to ground a postmodern philosophy of science which accepts human agency and human responsibility both for knowledge and for social problems which emerge out of institutional ways of doing religion, politics, economics, family and science itself.]
A Political Agenda for Radical Research and Teaching. The affirmative postmodern research agenda is always oriented to making a connection between oppressive social practices and the harmful consequences. This may be done by statistical analysis, by case history, by cross cultural comparative research especially between social formations with low indicators of poverty, crime and gender violence with those societies having high crime, and violence and poverty.
Affirmative postmodern research studies the rich and the powerful as much as street people and the dispossessed. Affirmative postmodern research studies and reports the political crime of the state as much as that of the Red Brigade, the Tupermaros, or the Weatherman. Affirmative postmodern research investigates drug abuse of the middle class as much as drug abuse of ghetto youth. Affirmative postmodern research identifies and provides an ethnography of all the various justice systems in a society rather than studying only the criminal justice system. There are four other major justice systems through which the rich and privileged are processed. The medical, the administrative, the peer group system as well as religious justice system all are used to mediate deviant behavior but operate very differently with very different results. These need to be put on equal footing for the researcher and made visible in the classroom and in other media.
By far the most important task of the affirmative postmodern professor of social problems is to create the basis for democratic socialism in the next 20 years. Until the conditions are improved, the possibilities for progressive change in the United States are small. As long as there is a large social base for capitalism and private accumulation, a surplus population with all the attendant poverty, hunger, ill health, squalor and crime will continue. As long as there is the profit motive, owners will continue to put workers in jeopardy of illness and accident. Owners will continue to dump industrial filth in the water, air and ground to the long range distress of the environment. Corporations will continue to subvert the political process and buy Congresses, courts and media alike. As long as there is capitalism, companies will desert communities, disemploy workers and import goods which subvert local industry. As long as there is capitalism we will continue to need to police the world capitalist system, oppose social justice in the third world and transfer funds from peaceful use to military use at home. These will continue in the U.S. as long as there is a social base for capitalism and for privilege. The interesting question becomes, then, what present factors will erode the social base for capitalism.
A subsidiary question is what political face the response to the collapse of capitalism will take. The affirmative postmodern social problems teacher must answer these questions time and time again. First the factors which erode the social base of American capitalism. There is the increased competition between the 20 rich capitalist countries. They will continue to automate and disemploy each other's workers. Second there is the progressive loss of foreign market to indigenous capitalists in the third world. As third world politicians strive for political legitimacy, they must protect emerging industry in their own countries from predatory banking practices of the rich countries. They must protect industry from more efficient producers in the rich industrial nations. They must subsidize export and keep local factories working or they will face one coup after another.
A whole wave of socialist revolutions have taken markets out of the capitalist world system and have limited the capacity of the world capitalist system to renew itself. Both socialist and nationalist revolutions must limit severely the rate of profit extracted by private capital from workers and peasants in the third world or face social problems of a wide variety. The world capitalist system based in the 20 rich capitalist countries must extract and repatriate profits from the third world or face fiscal crisis of even greater magnitude.
Then there are demands of workers in Euro-America for better wages, better working conditions, better health and retirement benefits as well as for job security. These demands will not go away. There are consumers who demand safe and lasting products. There is the demand for programs of social justice: social security, food programs, health care for the poor and aged, resources for public education and a thousand special kinds of help. A more unmanageable problem for capital is the slow exhaustion of raw materials, soil and energy resources. If capitalism needs a five percentage growth rate in the rich countries to survive and if populations in poor countries increase consumption of hard goods, the resources will run out that much sooner. While there are alternates to mineral resources and energy sources, the good earth cannot supply the requirements of a wasteful economic system for another 200 years.
All these factors and more combine to limit capitalism. When the third world no longer exports food and wealth to the first world, capitalism will have to target their own workers in the 20 rich countries for more and more exploitation. That will require the reinstitution of direct coercion of the very social base which now supports capital. In 1960, 1 out of 11 workers in the U.S. were college graduates. Today, 1 of 5 are college educated. In 20 years, a majority of workers in the U.S. will be college educated. Such a work force will not suffer lightly low wages, high prices, shoddy goods or the despoliation of the air, water and earth. Such a work force will be most unruly. Capitalism will find even fewer supporters, defenders and academic enthusiasts. The capitalist state will have to do something to manage these educated workers and consumers.
The second question, then, which arises is what tactics will be used in Euro-America to control unruly workers, citizens, students and the disemployed. The probable answer is fascism...a genteel fascism comprised of surveillance, social work, private coercion, the behavioral sciences, psychotechnology, chemotechnology, patriotism and a quietistic religion all linked to pacify the disaffected. The last agenda item I want to set forth is an analysis of political futures. The social problems professor must lay out in detailed form the various futures which are in front of us if we are to avoid fascism.
Five Futures. I see five futures possible as the social base for advanced monopoly capital decreases and as the conditions mentioned above work together to discredit capitalism. One future is an economic and military warfare between rich nations to preserve legitimacy of their own peoples. A second future is an uneasy coalition of the 20 rich countries to control and exploit the 120 poor capitalist countries...the Trilateral solution. A third future is a Soylant Green future where a few privileged people live in affluence in well-guarded enclaves while the streets are given over to the surplus population to prey on each other. A fourth future is a bureaucratic socialism of the sort we see in the Soviet Union. A dispirited and poorly working economy in which an uneasy social peace obtains. This is not likely for Euro-American countries but may spread in the third world. A fifth future is that of democratic socialism within and between countries.
Modern electronics technology can be used to mystify or it may be used to enhance participation in political, religious and economic life. Some things must be done face to face: healing, teaching, loving and playing--if these are different--but many things can be done through computer based interactive electronic systems. Right now the multinational corporations and the various military forces have a monopoly on the best technology and often use these for purposes harmful to a full humanity. One day, given adequate genius, courage and politics an authentic public sphere could be created in which social problems are collectively resolved. The future embodied in democratic socialism requires participation, equality and mutual aid. This future is not at all secure. For the next 20 or 30 years, we must make it visible, practical, and compelling. This is an affirmative postmodern agenda for S.S.S.P., for American sociology and for Euro-American academic life. We must warn against fascism and privatized solutions while insisting upon democratic socialism oriented to a human rights agenda.