The Future Catches Up: Arms Control, Peacekeeping, Political Behavior

By Ralph M. Goldman

Professor Goldman has contributed articles and books in divers fields of political science. This is a partial collection of his principal published and unpublished journal articles as well as brief references to his principal books.

Goldmans concern for the pathology of war is dealt with in several articles and books noted in this volume. From Warfare to Party Politics reveals the dynamics of a critical transition from civil war to nonviolent political party competition. His theory of conflict processes draws from sociology. His other books and articles relate to arms control, peacekeeping, and the institutional development of the United Nations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 20, 2002
• ISBN: 9780595736706

Ralph M. Goldman

Professor Goldman’s doctorate in political science is from the University of Chicago. His professional career has encompassed teaching, research, academic administration, and practical politics. He is author or co-author of more than a dozen books. He has served as dean for faculty research at San Francisco State University. His publications and career information may be found in Volume I of this collection.

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All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Ralph Morris Goldman

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Dedicated to my dear wife, Barbara Alban, and to

Laurel and Austin Prince, exemplary grandchildren.

Contents

Epigraph

Preface

Chapter 1 What About Universal Military Training?

Chapter 2 Dissent in the Modern World

Chapter 3 Psycho-Chemical Weapons and Disarmament

Chapter 4 The Political Context of Arms Control: A Systems Approach

Chapter 5 Vietnam: The War No One Can Afford To End

Chapter 6 A Transactional Theory of Political Integration and Arms Control*

Chapter 7 Why not a NATO for the Middle East?

Chapter 8 The Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on War and Peace

Chapter 9 Is It Time To Revive the UN Military Staff Committee?

Chapter 10 Arms Control and the Study of Political Institutions

Chapter 11 From Warfare to Party Politics: The Critical Transition to Civilian Control

Chapter 12 Physical Safety: An A Priori Human Right

Chapter 13 The United Nations in the Beginning; Conflict Process, Colligation, Cases

Chapter 14 Building Trust: An Introduction to Peacekeeping and Arms Control

Chapter 15 Process Concepts Embedded in Aristotle’s Theory of Revolution: An Interpretation

Chapter 16 Conflict, Cooperation and Choice: An Exploration of Conceptual Relationships

Chapter 17 A Theory of Conflict Processes and Organizational Offices

Chapter 18 Self-Identity in the Context of War and Peace

Chapter 19 Memoirs: Case Materials for Studying Political Behavior?

Chapter 20 Contemporary Perspectives on Politics

Chapter 21 Political Systems and Conflict Management

END NOTES

Epigraph

Akora Dua Kube

(An Old Man Plants a Coconut Tree)

An old, old man dug in his garden,

Working hard to plant a tree.

His grandson said: "I beg your pardon.

What you’re doing puzzles me."

"You’re ninety now. Have you no fears

Of dying while your tree takes root?

A coconut takes many years

Before it ripens and bears fruit."

"My boy, I’m thinking of tomorrow,

And you must learn to do the same.

This land of ours is what we borrow

From those to come, who bear our name."

"I leave a legacy behind me

From which,myself, I will not gain.

There should be no need to remind me

My labor may have been in vain."

If a man of ninety’s growing

Trees that he will never see,

The Youth should work to be sowing

The seeds of our prosperity."

—Daniel Koo NimoAmponsah

Preface

Volume III

While social conflict and war were at the top of my research agenda, they had to be studied in moments spared from teaching and administrative duties. As I learned and theorized about these subjects, I wrote a textbook (Arms Control and Peacekeeping, 1982); it was a form of self-teaching so famously attributed to professors. In a parallel effort, I concluded research on what I consider my major contribution to this field, From Warfare to Party Politics (1990).

The theory and case studies in From Warfare to Party Politic led me to anticipate that a transnational party system is likely to become the institutional alternative to international wars just as domestic party systems have for civil wars within nations. The theory and findings merit summary below.

Enduring party systems are usually established at the conclusion of a critical transition occurring among specific political institutions. A critical transition is that period during which nations end recurrent internal wars and move on to stable constitutional and, often, but not always, democratic political systems. The transition, which in earlier centuries required decades-long political transactions, occurs by a reordering of three core political institutions, namely, the military establishments, the representative assemblies, and the political parties.

The political currencies transacted are referred to as incumbencies, shares, and commodities. Currency transactions lead to certain developmental consequences among the three institutions. Warring or competing military forces become unified and nationalized as the result of battlefield victories, negotiated political alliances, and/or negotiated employment arrangements for the military. The representative institution, usually a legislative assembly, expands to the point of including all or nearly all constituencies successfully demanding to participate. A political party system, hitherto absent or weak, emerges and stabilizes in its work of mobilizing an electorate.

Consequently, a new hierarchy of influence among the three institutions is established. Prior to the critical transition, the military are senior in influence and resources whereas parties are either non-existent or at the bottom of the hierarchy. Following the critical transition, the parties are senior in influence. The military are subordinated to both party and representative institutions. How this is accomplished is reported in the histories of the case studies. The process changes elite concerns from tactics of warfare to tactics of party politics.

The study of critical transitions suggests that skilful negotiation, in which appropriate political currencies are exchanged, tends to make warfare obsolete and redirects political conflict into party competition.

Much of my work has been interdisciplinary, particularly drawing from history and sociology. My focus on war and social conflict generally prompted me to explore the origins and usage of concepts in my own field of political science (e.g., Aristotle’s theory of revolution) and elsewhere (e.g., conflict processes in sociology). These inquiries led me to develop a theory of conflict processes and organizational offices.

In this volume, I recognize Aristotle’s influence on my thinking about revolution and conflict processes. This led to a summer examining the literature of the relationships among conflict, cooperation, and decision making. A more formal draft of the theory appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and has been applied in several of my writings. The three conflict processes—socialization, formalization, and investiture—facilitated my selection of historical data in tracing the development of the Democratic and Republican national party chairmanships. I also applied this framework to my case studies of The United Nations in the Beginning.

In 1967, while dean for faculty research at San Francisco State University and because of my interest in social behavior, I participated in a project of the College of Education, the Sausalito Teacher Education Project (STEP). I prepared a report for the project and then set it aside for another day. That day came thirty-three years later when I prepared RolePlay. The book purports to improve social studies in elementary and secondary schools. Implicit in the book’s underlying theory is the view that human personality is the product of learned information in countless combinations and permutations. I specified the kinds of information involved: role-name information, instrumental information, prospect information, punitive information, and risk information. Thinking futuristically, I adapted the analysis to an unpublished article describing how this approach may be applied in artificial intelligence efforts to replicate human role structure.

In my text, Contemporary Perspectives on Politics, I tried to link, logically and psychologically, social science concepts and research findings that seem best to complement and build upon each other.

Chapter 1

What About Universal Military Training?

[I was inducted into the U.S. Army in the spring of 1942. This article was written during my first year as an officer, around August-September 1943. It was addressed to Professor Austin Wood of Brooklyn College, with whom I had a close friendship, for his comment. The paper reflects my interest in a subject that would be picked up by American politicians almost a decade later. It also foretells how some of my basic attitudes would affect my professional pursuits.]

I

Compulsory military training may seem an odd subject to bring up at this time [1943]. Men separated from their families and good jobs to become $50-a-month buck privates will knowingly scrutinize the word compulsory. Men whose lives depend on slit trenches and complex machines of war will thank God for the word training. Both categories of men already know the implications of compulsory military training in times of war.

But what are they, and those other Americans now at home, going to do with the idea of universal military training when the present war emergency passes?

The United States experienced its first peacetime draft when the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six to register for a year of military training. The world scene was heavy with gloom at that time. The Nazis were riding high on the European continent. England was gasping from the shock of near defeat. The Chinese nation’s heroic resistance was being severely tested. We Americans were upset; not a little scared. There was no question about the need to be looking to our muscles. Only the most hard-bitten of isolationists objected.

The draft was conducted in the take-a-chance spirit of which so many Americans are proud. A national lottery was held. Those men whose numbers were drawn soon began to serve their year as soldiers. The plan was specifically a conscription of manpower for the purpose of putting flesh on the bones of our military skeleton.

Pearl Harbor and total war made soldiers of us all. The training of 900,000 men, as set forth in the original Selective Service Act, has become training for 10,000,000 and more men and women. There is no debate now about universal military training.

When the war ends and we have won it; then what will the American people say about the very personal problem of compulsory military training? Will they be ready and willing to support a large Army and Navy? Too few of us have stopped to wonder.

It is time to open the debate. We must understand that universal military training is a concept entirely new to our way of thinking and living. It has to be tried. Are not the American people and their representatives now in the proper frame of mind to consider the establishment of a postwar compulsory military training program. Peace will bring reaction, changed attitudes, new political pressures. Now is the time to start talking.

II

A large postwar armed force is as inevitable as the sunrise. The lessons in international power politics that we are even now learning are too expensive to be easily forgotten. If ours is to remain a leader among nations, we can never return to our former status as a tenth rate military power. That is the unfortunate but inexorable law of world affaire. More specifically, here are three good reasons for looking forward to a big armed force.

First. there will be the immediate job of occupying and patrolling not only those nations we are struggling to defeat, but also those areas that lie along the path to that victory. The fundamental need for preserving civil order while Allied Military Government officials attempt to straighten out the mess that armies and war leave in their wake will call for extensive police activity. The occupation of Germany and Japan, where profound spiritual and ideological conflict will surely cause serious problems in mass psychology and control, will require the presence of a strong military force.

Who is going to do this job of occupation? Will it be the same fathers and family men who have been torn away from their homes because the national emergency came first above all other considerations? Will it to be those men who have actually sweated and suffered and defeated the enemy and who are anxious to get back to an environment where they can forget their hatred of Germans and Japanese? Or will those men who have seen little combat action be called upon the make an extra sacrifice and forget about their duration and six months contract?

It is highly possible that no one will be asked and no standards of selection will be set up. In such a case, duration and six months will become a question of duration of what? From the halls of Congress, the words fraud and political deceit will ring out at the War

Department, the Army, the Navy, and any other agency concerned. National morale will become an official headache.

With some forethought, however, a reasonable solution to the problem may be reached. It may be that the Armies of Occupation will be considered as postwar military establishments. It may be that the duration will be more clearly defined as cessation of active hostilities. It may be that universal military training will somehow be brought into the picture. War-weary personnel could be replaced by fresh trainees.

A brand new mission may be established; a democratic armed force needs a mission. This new mission could be to create and train a postwar military organization. Those men who are retained in the Services beyond the duration deadline will not only have the leftover tasks of occupation and policing, but will also become part of an undertaking almost as urgent as winning the war—that of guaranteeing the peace. A new, tangible goal will be better, immeasurably better, than no goal at all and will do much to temper the get-out-from-under psychology that seems inevitable.

Whichever method is used, the fact remains that the responsible leaders of a victorious nation are not going to send the Army and Navy home as soon as the enemy cries uncle. The task of salvage and military occupation will be too big. And the home front repercussions will be none too small, either.

What is the second factor involved in the proposition of maintaining a large Army and Navy? Simply that we are not as yet such flawless economic planners that we can guarantee jobs for those ten million men who will flow back into the American labor market when it’s all over. A little sketchy arithmetic and some guessing may help further explain the problem.

Let us imagine that peace has come and we now have ten million men and women anxious to get into civilian clothes and back to The Job. Let as assume that four million over-age, juvenile, and women workers voluntarily drop out of their wartime jobs in order to go home, to retire, or to go back to school. At the same time, reconversion of plants is taking place and plans for maximum employment are being put into operation. Four million soldiers, and more, will be in process of being discharged. Political pressure and limited congressional appropriations will lend force to the argument that: Surely, the Army and Navy do not need more than four million men. Even five million, for a short time after the cessation of hostilities, seems like an excessive number. The Army and Navy had only 1,800,000 in 1941, before Pearl Harbor. Etc. Etc. For sound reasons—perhaps—of morale and economy, the national tendency will be to get the men and women out of the Services. So, four million men and women discharged and back to jobs plus four million others remaining in the armed forces gives us a total of eight million. Two million individuals remain unaccounted for.

These figures merely illustrate the point in the broadest way. The thing for us to remember is that it will not take long for the number of men discharged to exceed by many hundreds of thousands the number of jobs immediately available. That difference will be the phosphorus in our national economic waters.

If a universal military training program is ready when this demobilization takes place, new men will be inducted, for a new job, at the same time that those men who have completed their term of service are being discharged. This timely employment of a long-range program will reduce the labor market by roughly one million men and at the same time will permit a large enough turnover of personnel to prevent deterioration of military morale. It will not be a matter of guns instead of jobs. It will be simply proper timing of an inevitable national policy.

The idea of a permanent world police force is fast taking hold and it is the third reason for maintaining a postwar big stick. Political groups in the United States and abroad almost unanimously agree upon this requirement of international organization. One after another our statesmen are echoing the words of the late Dr. Spykman of Yale:

The first step from anarchy to order is not the disappearance of force, but its use by the community instead of by the individual members…The replacement of the force of litigants by the force of the community is the first step toward international order.

The recent four-power Pact established at the Moscow conference of foreign ministers points directly toward this objective. And whether by a narrow Anglo-American alliance or by a world federation of states, an international government and its police force require trained men. We shall have to be prepared to contribute our share of manpower.

III

A big armed force, post-hostilities armed force to be exact, will therefore be necessary. It will operate as an occupation force, as temporary ballast for an upset domestic labor market, and as a component of an international police force. It will be big and something new in our American way. It will have to be accepted and supported by a nation already stooping low under its public debt. A sound universal military training program could do much toward making this need less disagreeable.

The program, of course, would require all males to re-register upon reaching a specified age, eighteen let us say, for one year of service. Recent estimates show that approximately 1,200,000 American males would be affected annually, a big turnover in any organization.

Just how universal military training would influence the composition of our post-hostilities force can best be seen by asking this question: Shall the United States possess a large military organization made up entirely of professional soldiers and sailors or shall we have a small, highly skilled nucleus force of professionals around whom we can build a strong trainee Army and Navy? The arguments seem to favor this second approach.

Argument Number One is one that concerned the Fathers of our Constitution, too. When too large a segment of our population is employed as military professionals, we have in our midst a serious threat to the democratic institutions of this country. A military caste and a military lobby, with little else to do in peacetime, could too easily busy itself by astutely using its voting and economic power as well as its closely-knit organization to take over. Conditions conducive to such eventualities must never be permitted to exist. Our military machine must be a weapon of democracy, a means only. Any war in which the American people take part must be a war to which the people themselves wholeheartedly subscribe and in which they are willing to do most of their own fighting. Military professionals, politically powerful, as they have been in so many European countries, can never claim to be the people. We have been fortunate in that we have been virile enough to fight a good battle in an emergency. The military professionals of present day America had to wait until the people were good and ready. And now the people—in uniform—are proving themselves, with political power still in their own hands.

Argument Number Two hits the nail more directly on the head. A large all-professional armed force, once trained, will have little work to do. Its real economic productivity will be entirely out of focus, hardly justifying such size. The organization will become rigid, top heavy, and lax. Personnel will suffer from inertia and few opportunities for advancement.

On the other hand, when postwar contraction of the Services has been completed, if the remaining professionals comprise from 50 to 66 percent of the total Army and Navy, a notable difference in the work situation will exist. Everybody will be very busy. The trainees going through the mill would be wasting little time, for that year of military life should be jampacked with new lessons and new experiences. The constant turnover of trainees will keep the professional group under the normal. pressure of instructing new groups periodically, will give them plenty of personnel with whom to experiment on new training methods and operational techniques, and with whom to conduct research on weapons and technical procedures. Many non-military sciences could benefit along lines that would have otherwise required war circumstances; e.g., medical treatment and personnel management.

In short, the military profession would remain just that and not become the easy life that peacetime armies reputedly become.

Argument Number Three for universal military training depends a great deal upon the nature and success of a world police force. Rotation of men on duty with the world police force, most likely at foreign posts, would be desirable. It can be more easily accomplished if there is an influx of new trainees into our armed forces at all times. An important by-product of this rotation policy would be the fact that a tour of duty abroad could do more than all the books and lectures in the world to make America’s youth fully aware of its responsibilities in international life.

Argument Number Four hits a very tender spot. How is Taxpayer John Doe going to view the dollars and cents figures in those huge postwar Army and Navy appropriation bills? What will be the cash-and-carry value of a big armed establishment to Mr. Doe?

Yes, the taxpayer is very likely to object to the salaries that will be required in order to keep a large body of men interested in the Army or the Navy as a profession. Not that John Doe is interested in imposing slave wages on his fellow-citizens. However, he will be contributing a substantial part of his own income to support an expensive, non-productive, all-professional organization, one with which he will have no personal ties. His economy-minded, vote-conscious congressman will certainly have a great deal to say on the matter.

On the other hand, would John Doe object very strongly if his tax money were paying professionals who would some day teach his own son! When John Doe sees a more physically fit, better educated, more mature son or nephew or cousin returning from an active year with the Army or the Navy, will he not be seeing the something he should be getting for his money?

In addition, the salary paid to John Doe’s trainee son will not have to be set at the high level needed to keep a better quality of professional happy. The professional sells his time over a prolonged period. Low pay will fill the armed forces with the country’s backwash. We don’t want that. Our forces should be nothing less than a cross-section of America’s youth. Compulsory military training will provide just that. And the citizen-trainee, giving himself up for a very short period of time for the nation’s welfare, will hardly count the money he’ll make. The military atmosphere will be healthier—and cheaper.

This difference in cost and results will be very important to Taxpayer John Doe and his Congressman. For them it will mean that every dollar in the military budget will be going two or three times as far. And Taxpayer John Doe and his Congressman will simply have to be satisfied.

IV

Once a universal military training program is adopted, there will be several a special problems arising to which we might now give some attention.

The minimum age at which men will become eligible for compulsory military training may become the subject of some discussion. Should it be seventeen years of age, or eighteen? Is the difference worth the discussion? Some will say that at eighteen young men are beginning to take their first decisive steps in life. If their military training is completed by that time, it will not interfere too seriously with the individual’s personal plans. Others will point out that at eighteen the youthful trainee usually has a more mature body for the training job at hand.

Another question may arise. In the interest of democratic procedure and in an effort to leave some choice to the individual, would it be advisable to permit the trainee to select his own time for induction, allowing him a span of several years after the minimum age is reached from which to choose? Thus, when John Doe, Jr., becomes seventeen, he will know that he can serve during any one year period between that date and, let us say, his twenty-second birthday.

When inducted for training, John Doe, Jr., should have the advantages of careful classification and duty assignment. Particular attention should be paid to his desires in the selection of a military specialty. Professional vocational guidance counsel should be made available for every citizen-trainee in order to help him make the most of his year of service. The wartime policy of the Army and Navy currently is: the needs of the Service first. In times of peace, modification of this policy should make room for broader educational objectives.

The year of military training should be one of intensive instruction at all levels and types of personnel. There should be three phases of training, similar to those now pursued under war conditions. Phase I should be a course in what is commonly called The School of the Basic Soldier. John Doe, Jr., learns whom to salute, which is his left hand, how to make up a field pack, and all the other fundamentals of being a soldier. He will learn how to keep clean, and why. He will receive all the medical attention the Army or the Nave can give him to put him at the peak of his physical efficiency. He may be introduced to new ideas of group action in fields ranging from KP to life insurance.

Phase II should train him for a specific military job. It might also be the right time to start him on his extra-military activities of formal scholastic study. In all cases, this is the point where vocational and educational guidance ought to play a big role. Tests, interviews, and expert advice should be employed so as to guide the trainee into the specialty or along those lines that will do him the most good, within the very broad peacetime limits of the needs of the Services.

The final phase should take the now hardened soldier and make him part of a combat team or put him to work at the job he has learned. Maneuvers, duty at some post in the United States or overseas, work on some military project, these activities should be Phase III. This phase might also be a continuation of training in some advanced specialty, as would be the case in several fields in the Navy or the Air Forces. The training program should be memorable and applicable to both military and civilian careers.

The possibilities for educational advancement under a sound program merits further emphasis. The daily training schedule in all types of military installations and units should provide time for at least six formal collegiate, scholastic, or vocational courses of study that can be completed over the twelve month period. These courses might round out the military work of the individual or might serve to keep him in contact with his civilian pursuits. It might open up entirely new fields of interest for some. For those men with little or no formal education, this plan might be the light that clears away the darkness of illiteracy.

Just as service in the armed forces would become a part of every male citizen’s education, in like manner should education become an integral part of his service. Educators should be able to make much of this idea if they bring their influence to bear early enough. The training of better-educated, fully literate, technically proficient citizens would soon manifest itself in the improved tone and standards of our democracy, not to mention an improved flow of taxes from a well-employed citizenry.

V

There are those who will fear that proposals for postwar military training at this time may upset delicate diplomatic negotiations or may give the rest of the world the impression that we do not possess the will for peace. This fear is unfounded. In the simplest language of modern power politics, the say-so of a non-military nation does not amount to a row of beans. As Lin Yutang sadly pointed out, the civilization with the most guns is the one that counts. Talk now of a postwar armed force for our nation will bolster our position at the international conference table. It would be additional proof that we realize we are on this planet to stay. For those statesmen at the peace negotiations who will be striving to keep war from again plaguing our world, the will for peace cannot exclude consideration of how are we going to deal with the next upstart, and with what? The United States will be one of the major contributors of the with what. It should be ready and willing.

When that great and long-awaited era of general disarmament begins, then and then only shall we easily and happily modify our military training program to conform with the wishes of a more sensible world.

Meanwhile, every American male should have an opportunity to know by direct experience what the implications and demands of military life are. If the training policy is a vigorous one—and it should be nothing less—the lessons of this war will not be easily forgotten. If hardship, discomfort, and vigorous mental and physical exertion are the keynote, our young men will be more apt to give early thought to the remote topics of international relationships and the prevention of future wars. The will for peace will take root in more fertile soil.

The educational opportunities made available by an intelligent, democratic military training program should not be shrugged off. It can be a great credit to our American way of doing things if we take a policy that is distasteful but essential and fashion it into a wholesome, highly beneficial program of national self-improvement. What other nation has done this with peacetime military training? It is a great challenge for America’s military leaders and teachers.

Now is the time for action and for frankness. When ten million men start coming home, it will be late, the cost will be greater, and the plan more difficult to put across.

Chapter 2

Dissent in the Modern World

[1964 was a tumultuous time in America. This unpublished article was an effort to understand the turbulent events of the times.]

Dissent as an Aspect of Group Decision Making The Methods of Manifesting Dissent and Consent Some Assumptions Underlying Each Method Historically Where Are We?

If we were asked to give an example of dissent today, we would probably turn to thoughts of Birmingham, civil-rights demonstrations, rioting on Cyprus, Soviet vetoes in the UN, Hungary in 1956—very violent in most cases and very disagreeable in all. A second thought might lead us to add, perhaps reluctantly, the Southern filibuster, Republican dissatisfaction with President Johnson, the real estate lobby’s effort to repeal the Rumford Act, and so on—all somewhat disagreeable activities and usually dismissed as politics. Finally, after some prodding, we might, perhaps sheepishly, admit that there was an element of dissent in the last family argument or the last personal squabble with the boss. Probably none of us would think of the arms race as a preparation for dissent, that is, dissent from an adversary’s actions or intentions in international relations. Few would think of a Quaker meeting as an occasion for dissent. Other illustrations could raise further doubt about the meaning of the term dissent and its place in human affairs.

The thesis here is that dissent is an aspect of group or collective decision making, that the achievement of group consensus is the necessary objective of dissenters, and that there are three basic and historic methods for manifesting dissent and consent, namely, the methods of words, violence, and numbers.

Each of these methods goes about discovering and measuring the ratio between dissent and consensus in the group in a different way. The users of each of these methods hold different assumptions about the nature of man, the best way to achieve consensus, the cost of each method, and so on. It will become evident, I hope, from this analysis that we have come a long way, historically speaking, in the management of consensus and dissent—but that a more self-analytical and deliberate way ahead must be paved if we are to avoid the high and unnecessary risks of the method of violence.

Dissent as an Aspect of Group Decision Making

To dissent is to disagree with others. To consent is to agree with others. Dissent and consent are both aspects of a relationship with others, with a group or a human collectivity of any kind, from social club to worldwide church, from family to nation, from neighborhood association to United Nations. The relationship of which dissent and consent are aspects is the group’s decision making process. Members of every form of human group go about disagreeing and agreeing with each other as part-and-parcel of a process of arriving at some group choice about something. Thus it is that dissent is only one side of the coin in a group’s or a community’s life—and consensus necessarily the other side.

Egocentric and Sociocentric Dissenters

But not all dissenters act as though they were involved in a group process. I call these egocentric dissenters to distinguish them from a sociocentric type. Let us identify some of these egocentric dissenters, in order to dismiss them as irrelevant to our present analysis. After that, we can assume that we are discussing only the sociocentric type.

The egocentric dissenter is like all dissenters in that he disagrees with others. The egocentric differs from others in that the main consequences of his dissent are found in his psychological mechanisms rather than in any social or political events. For example, there is the verbal egocentric. This is the fellow who shouts at others: You dirty so-and-so. You’re all wrong: You’re no good: Having shouted, this egocentric dissenter is satisfied and retires from the scene of action. There usually are no other group consequences. The main point of the dissent was to achieve a kind of verbal catharsis.

Sometimes this egocentric dissent takes on the appearance of the sociocentric because the subject of disagreement is a public matter or because more than one person participates in the dissent. The John Birch Society’s proposal to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren is of this type: a verbal dissent from the things represented by Warren, with the satisfactions of the proponents mainly psychological.

Then there are the violent egocentrics who are satisfied only by lashing out destructively at the objects of disagreement. We usually think of these violent types as ignorant or psychotic, but from their point of view, they are probably expressing disagreement or dissatisfaction in a particular way. These are the people who say: If I can’t have it my way, then no one can have it at all. They apparently conduct disagreements to destroy the object of disagreement rather than to arrive at any collective decision about it. Assassins are notoriously of this type, content with the destruction of their target. John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln after the Civil War ended; it was an act designed to avenge what Booth considered an affront to the chivalrous South, and he was psychologically content with the death of his hated target.

Another kind of egocentric dissenter engages in a reverse numbers tactic. They enjoy a demonstration of numerical inferiority or numerical isolation. Our ballots on election day are often populated by candidates who are numerical egocentrics, eager to show that they and their very tiny band of followers disagree publicly with something, or perhaps everything, that is going on in the election. Such numerical ego-centrics may also isolate themselves as a group from the rest of society, in effect, denying society their numbers. Usually such groups go off someplace to build a special utopia in which their prescribed type of harmony will presumably reign. Several novels have been built around this type of egocentric dissent: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithdale Romance; Mary McCarthy’s The Oasis; Harvey Swados’ False Coin. In every case, of course, the dissenters end up disagreeing vehemently among themselves.

Hawthorne wrote about Brook Farm, to which a group of idealists withdrew in protest against the false and cruel principles on which human society is based. The men and women at Brook Farm were going to demonstrate how brotherly love and cooperation could replace competition and conquest in human relations. But even utopians have different criteria for achievement. Brook Farm foundered upon the issue of whether the reformation of criminals is more important than women’s rights. In Mary McCarthy’s Utopia, the group tried to get away from the war-like and totalitarian tendencies of the world. Before long, Utopia was divided between purists and realists. The factions battle over whether to expel a certain member who uses a gun for target practice, an anomalous kind of deviancy. Another fight ensues over a peace ship project designed to remove from Europe all persons tired of war. The final battle in the story is over how to deal with three strangers caught stealing the community’s strawberry crop, and as this debate goes on, the strangers, of course, disappear.

Egocentric dissent, therefore, has primarily psychological consequences for the dissenter himself, and none for the group or the community except incidentally or accidentally. The egocentric dissent is conducted with little concern for how the collective decision will go as a result. Satisfactions are personal, private, psychological—not