As I established in Journal 27, man is rational because he is social. That is, the mind of man, distinctive because of its ability to imagine different worlds, choose between them, and act to bring about his chosen world, functions the way it does because it exists in a nexus of cooperating rational actors, society. Recall, however, that society is itself the outcome of reason. Man chooses to form and maintain societies because he wishes to take advantage of the higher productivity of the division of labor which accompanies such societies. The two parts of human beings, their reason and their society, develop together and reinforce each other. (I call society a part of human beings because it is a product of human will. “Its being lies within man, not in the outer world. It is projected from within outwards.”) It is important to understand this relationship: society is formed by the human mind, but we need to exist in a society in order to be fully human.
Fundamentally, man comes first, then society. All of society is designed purposefully to serve the ends of individual men. We may examine social institutions (other than the market) and rules of social conduct, therefore, with their rationalistic basis in mind. If society is a product of human will, then so are the ancillary social institutions and customs. We would expect these other aspects of society to be devoted to the same ultimate end as society itself and all other human actions: the survival and prospering of mankind. Laws, moral codes, familial patterns, languages, professions, and private property were all developed as the outcome of purposeful efforts by human beings to adjust themselves the requirements of social life and thereby allow themselves to take advantage of the higher productivity of the division of labor. These institutions were not created by a single mind, but they are the creations of rational planning by human beings, “whose thoughts and actions continually reaffirm and reshape them in the course of history.”
At the same time, “human action itself tends toward cooperation and association,” because of the higher productivity of the division of labor. This “Law of Association” gives rise to two related tendencies. First, the division of labor is progressively extended to greater numbers of individuals. “Originally confined to the narrowest circles of people, to immediate neighbors, the division of labor gradually becomes more general until it eventually includes all mankind.” Second, the division of labor is progressively intensified as the attainment of an increased variety of ends is sought through the social nexus, and thereby through more specialized production processes. “Social action embraces more and more aims; the area in which the individual provides for his own consumption becomes constantly narrower.” The tendency of the Law of Association and man’s recognition of its operation, therefore, is to create a world where all of mankind cooperates in super-specialized production processes.
However, because society is a product of the mind, the social relations must be daily reaffirmed through human thought and conduct. There is a tendency for society to grow and become stronger, but it does not grow and strengthen itself. This tendency can either be reinforced or reversed by the choices and actions of the individuals who compose the society. “There is no evidence that social evolution must move steadily upwards in a straight line….World history is the graveyard of dead civilizations.” Because society is a product of the human mind, it is a creation of man’s ideas. Indeed, all of human action is the selection of a future possible world and the attempted realization of that world through the utilization of presently-available means. “Any existing state of social affairs is the product of ideologies previously thought out.” It is possible, then, for a change in ideology to lead to a change in society, and, indeed, for certain ideologies to lead to the death of society.
This may seem confusing, at first, because the higher productivity of the division of labor implies that human action would naturally lead to cooperation and association. However, it must be remembered that every action, every choice, involves a renunciation of other possible actions. Life in society requires sacrifices, adjustments in one’s behavior, if society is to survive. There is no guarantee that every individual will make these sacrifices, and choose actions that sustain society rather than actions which will lead to society’s disintegration. This may not necessarily be malicious: “The individual does not plan and execute actions intended to construct society.” That is, man acts for himself. He commits to being a part of society to the extent that he believes he benefits from it, no more. The implications of his individual actions on society rarely crosses the individual’s mind, and, if they do, they are usually discounted as negligible.
Furthermore, ignorance may contribute to human action which will lead to the decline of society and civilization. Without intending to harm society, “the failure of participants in the division of labor to correctly comprehend the links between their individual actions and social outcomes invites the adoption of ideologies based on erroneous accounts of the nature of society and of social progress. Such falsely-grounded ideologies, in turn, may lead to conduct inconsistent with the continued maintenance of social relations.” Because ignorance alone may lead to the spontaneous disintegration of society, the only way to ensure social progress is to widely adopt certain principles and ideologies that will either eliminate man’s ignorance of the remoter consequences of his actions (see Jonah Goldstein’s EMC2 project) or ensure that his actions will generally align with the needs of society (see Alex Gugie’s EMC2 project).
Men form societies because of the market process that lies at the core of each society, and the increased productivity and economic action that it makes possible. But other social institutions are developed in these societies in order to help men adjust to life in societies, to fight the tendency in individuals to act in ways that are not in the interests of society-at-large. Moral codes are designed to influence the desires of individuals, laws are designed to incentivize certain courses of action over others, and power structures are designed to entrust the most important decisions to those most likely to make them wisely. However, these institutions, too, are the products of human thought and will. They are, indeed, conservative forces in society, but they do progress and change. They are, therefore, no guarantee of society’s longevity. Ultimately, the survival of society depends on the knowledge and choices of individuals. Man must consciously choose, each and every day, between actions and ideologies which will help or hurt society. The fortunes of humanity are bound up in such ideological struggles.
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