THE PHLLOSOPHLCAL AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PAUL GOODMAN'S EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D. MICHIGAN STATE umvaasm . MYRNA PICHON KEPHART 1974 . '3? (r 'QV" 4-: .4 .' '1 1 'i a “‘4 5" 4L5 4‘ 1t: '0 . ‘1 v." ‘1. ITTTTLTTNTTTTTTTTTTTTTT .. ; , my 914‘ I EPILECETTO?“ qt?" In”) L“... Li'fiyin." ii 354 U3 El? t {'1‘}. t}! t- .O c ‘2‘; Q fit {5' ?T,pw— * . 3“!“ -~ This is to certify that the thesis entitled PSYCHOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PAUL GOODMAN'S EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT presented by MYRNA KEPHART has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for (Social-Found. Phi.Ed) Nov . 15 1974 Date ’ ;_ 0-7639 ABSTRACT THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PAUL GOODMAN'S EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT BY Myrna Pichon Kephart As social philosopher, community planner, poet and educator, Paul Goodman is fundamentally a naturalist whose prime referrent for all social thought and action is the organic person. Goodman's dream, which he pursued until his sudden death in the summer of 1972, was to create a better socitey, a society dedicated to providing for the needs of man--his growth and ultimate happiness. Contempor- ary society, he insists, is not responsive to man's needs, but attempts instead to adjust man to fit the existing social structure. Goodman argues, however, that the systems, man, has basic needs which must be satisfied if he is to function positively, and many of these needs are incompatible with our twentieth-century institutional mode of organiza- tion. Goodman's chief criticism of contemporary society is that it is geared to protect and maximize the growth of institutions rather than people. Myrna Pichon Kephart The purpose of this study is to examine Goodman's theories of human nature, community, anarchy and education with a focus on one commonly encountered dilemma-~aliena- tion. Although Goodman does not specifically address himself to the topic of alienation in modern society, it is the writer's intent to demonstrate how his recommenda- tions and reform proposals, based upon his theoretical frame- work, would act to diminish its scope and negative social effects. Goodman's foremost assertion is that man is a self- regulating organism. His staunch belief in self regulation is most significant because he views it as the means to human growth and happiness. Because Goodman sees man as basically a social being, he adheres to the position that if free of external coersion and manipulation, man can and will form cooperative, productive social aliances. Only through voluntary forms of social organization can positive human responses such as cooperation, responsibility, experimenta- tion, etc., be developed to their fullest and negative responses, such as alienation be minimized. This insistance upon the necessity for freedom from authority is developed in the presentation of Goodman's theory of social organiza- tion, community anarchy. Goodman's preposals for educational reform well illustrate his theory of human nature and self regulation. Interest in the environment is, says Goodman, a natural, Myrna Pichon Kephart spontaneous occurrance, provided of course that primary needs such as food, sleep, and hunger have been met. The learner can, however, give full attention only to what he finds naturally interesting. Goodman's prime criticism of schooling is that it destroys this natural curiosity by imposing upon the student learning tasks in which he has no interest. Thus Goodman urges a variety of decentralized, autonomous learning units designed to appeal to a wide range of learning interests as well as no schooling at all for many. The best education for most older youth, suggests Goodman, might well be a variety of work experiences, such as farm work, carpentry, social work, and travel. Such experiences, freely chosen by the individual offer far more meaningful understandings and abilities than the traditional academic approach to reality. THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PAUL GOODMAN'S EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT BY Myrna Pichon Kephart A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY College of Education 1974 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My appreciation to members of my doctoral guidance committee: Dr. Marvin Grandstaff, chairman, Dr. Dale Alam, Dr. George Ferree, Dr. James McKee, and Dr. Keith Anderson. As many before me, I too must offer a special thank you to Dr. Marvin Grandstaff for arousing in me an interest in radical educational thought. It is through his influence that I have become more sensitive to the needs of the many youngsters with whom I work and play each year. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT . . 1 II. A THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE . . . . . . . 18 III. ANARCHISM: A SOLUTION To ALIENATION . . . 46 IV. COMMUNITY VERSUS INSTITUTION AS A MODE OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION . . . . . . . . 71 V. SCHOOLING: AN INSTITUTIONAL FORM OF DOM INAT ION O O O O O O O I O O O O 9 7 BIBLIOGMPHY O O O C O O O O O O C O O 12 6 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT Until his untimely death of August, 1972, Paul Goodman was recognized as a foremost leader of the movement for radical reform in modern American society. The first of his works to gain a widespread audience was the 1956 publication, Growing gp Absurd, which was followed by numerous other publications including books, articles, and critiques among which People or Personnel and Compulsory Mis-education are probably the best known. Though often discounted as an impractical idealist, Goodman continued to hammer away his thesis that the centralization of power and decision making in both public and private social and economic domains is contributing to man's unhappiness and ultimate destruction. Only forms of decentralized organiza- tion compatible with man's need for self-regulation can lead to his growth, happiness, and preservation. In an era marked by consolidation and accustomed to measuring success by sheer size alone, this radical view of decen- tralization has received little serious consideration. Goodman's greatest following has been among dis- enchanted students and educators, but they have been relatively unsuccessful in influencing the existing power structure. Despite this, numerous free schools, community schools, and "mini" classrooms have sprung up throughout the country, especially on the east coast. Many of these have been offsprings of Goodman's philosophy and that of later educational critics who share the same convictions. These include Edgar Friedenberg, John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, and Ivan Illich. Goodman differs from his contemporary colleagues in two significant ways: first, he has written in far more breadth, commenting on man's condition in a wide variety of settings, besides offering works in both prose and poetry. Goodman explains this diversity: As my books and essays have appeared, I have been severely criticized as an ignorant man who spreads himself thin on a wide variety of subjects, on sociology and psychology, urbanism and technology, education, literature, esthetics, and ethics. It is true that I don't know much, but it is false that I write about many subjects. I have only one, the human beings I know in their man-made scene. I do not observe that peeple are in fact subdivided in ways to be conveniently treated by the "wide variety" of separate disciplines. If you talk separately about their group behavior or their individual behavior, their environment or their characters, their practicality or their sensibility, you lose what you are talking about . . . . The separate disciplines are the best wisdon we have; I wish I knew them better. But there is a real difficulty with them that we might put as follows: In my opinion, it is impossible to be a good lawyer, teacher, statesman, physician, minister of religion, architect, historian, social worker, or psychologist, 1 Without being a good deal of all of them at once .. .. Second, his practical proposals such as dismantling large bureaucracies are theoretically grounded in his concept of human nature; that of a self-regulating organism. This is significant, for Goodman's work taken "en toto" forms an integrated body of knowledge which combines both the theoretical and the practical. The remarks of most con- temporary critics do not flow from such a unified system of man's psychology. Goodman's unorthodox posture came about because of his naturalist belief that the a priori question of any society should be "What social order best suits man?" The implications of this question drastically conflict with the status quo of modern society. It implies the supremacy of man's well being over other considerations such as nation- state, technology, wealth, and power, etc., and it also implies that we must seek an understanding of man's nature in order to know what characteriStics and peculiarities should be included in a social structure designed for man. Yet, typically, the questions asked in modern society have to do with quantity: increasing profits, the GNP, national power and prestige, etc. The emphasis is not on creating a 1Paul Goodman, Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1964), p. 13. better world for man according to objectively assessed needs. As Eric Fromm suggests, the normative question, "What should we do?" has been replaced with "What can we do?" The assumption is made that man can adjust to any- thing, therefore, the quest for man's nature is an unneces- sary venture. Sociologists and behaviorists attempt to explain and predict behavior, but they lack vision. Their purpose for study is usually to learn more about control measures and keeping man "peaceful"; they do not view them- selves as champions of the search for a better world. Goodman himself is criticized for not being more specific in his remarks about man's innate nature. He insists that a precise definition is not necessary and might even be dangerous if in fact it were interpreted too literally. He suggests rather that we look at behavior and from it discern what circumstances give grace, discrimina- tion, intellect, and feeling. It is not necessary to know what human nature is to know that some things are contrary to it. Since, however, the major part of Goodman's work rests on his concept of human nature, this study will pre- sent a detailed analysis of what that concept is. Statement of Problem It is the contention of many social critics such as Harrington, Fromm, Maslow, Kenniston, Wheelis, Roszak, and Clark that modern society is not meeting the needs of man. The news media and current literature have brought to the foreground a host of mounting social problems including juvenile delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, violent crime, urban unrest, and mental illness. In the belief that Paul GoOdman has much to contribute to solving these problems and to creating a better society, it is the writer's intent to present a review of his work as it relates to one growing social maladjustment, alienation. I have chosen alienation due to its prominence as a mounting social problem which renders serious potential damage to the well being and growth of the individual and society. Material for this study will come from a review of Goodman's work as well as that of many other philosophers, psychologists, and social critics. Analysis and comparison will be the method employed. By bringing together quota- tions from a wide variety of Goodman's works which date from 1946 to 1971, his concepts, theories, and practical proposals will be illuminated.2 The remainder of this chapter will present a discussion of the meaning of aliena- tion and an historical perspective of its origin as pree sented by Freud and interpreted by Herbert Marcuse in Bros and Civilization. 2It is worth noting that Goodman's twenty-five years of writing have remarkable continuity. Though the 50's mark a time of depression in Goodman's life and writing is often bitter and melancholy, there is no under- lying change in basic beliefs or assumptions. His life work stands as a whole. The Meaning of Alienation Alienation has come to have many meanings depend- ing upon the writer, the context, and the time period. The Lutheran concept means, "God has turned His face away; .3 At things have no meaning; I am estranged in the world. the end of the 19th century, alienation is used synono- mously with insane, the insane person having totally lost his sense of self. Hegel employs it as a general condition of rational man, with his objective sciences and institu- tions as opposed to subjective, irrational, and emotional man. Marx explains alienation as an objective condition-- the conversion of labor to commodity and consequent exploi- tation of the proletariat by the bourgeousie. Alienation is the objective condition of being cut off from the pro- ductive wellsprings of one's essential humanity. Comte and Durkheim use the acute and subjective form of aliena- tion, "anomie," to describe the weakening of social solidarity and contradiction in morms which lead to suicide and riot. This is similar to Ferdinand TOnnies' descrip- tion of modern society, "Gesellschaft," in which all social bonds have disappeared and the individual becomes alien or no longer belinging to the larger whole. Though the current use of "alienation" is a recent one, the concept itself is ancient and referred to in the 3Paul Goodman, New Reformation (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 49. Old Testament as "idolatry." Idolatry, or the worshipping of one's own creations, is the sense in which Fromm uses the word. Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total; it pervades the relationship of man to his work, to the things he consumes, to the state, to his fellow man, and to himself. Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. Yet this whole creation of his stands over and above him. He does not feel himself as a creator and center, but as the servant of a Golem, which his hands have built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more power- less he feels himself as a human being. He con- fronts himself with his own forces embodied in things he has created, alienated from himself. He is owned by his own creation, and has lost owner- ship of himself. He has built a golden calf, and says, "these are your gods who have brought you out of Egypt."4 I Fromm's use of the word as the worship of man-made creations is more restrictive than Goodman's. Goodman does not precisely define alienation, but the flavor of his meaning is apparent in his many references to it. From his comments we can deduct a conceptual definition: alienation is a loss of the self as the initiator of mean- ingful interaction with the environment; it is the impotence to act, to assume power, to effect change. Goodman believes that the loss of self is an inevitable outcome of the thwarting of man's most basic 4Eric Fromm, The Sane Society (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., Fawcett Premier Books, 1955), need, self-regulation. When the organism is denied the power, means, and Opportunities to self-regulate, aliena- tion is one frequent result. Though the alienated organism remains alive, it lacks meaningful goals and direction. Growth and well-being are impaired. The organism can no longer judge what is best for it and sig- nificantly, Goodman suggests that the damage may be irreversible. The behavioral form which alienation takes is varied. The organism may become apathetic; it may withdraw into a quiet life of submission; it may become aggressive and destructive with no apparent purpose; or it may align with existing power structures and become an instrument of big business, the state, etc. Goodman believes that modern society is feeding alienation by denying man the right to act as a free, self- regulating organism. Contemporary conditions of life have certainly deprived people, and especially young people, of a world meaningful for them in which they can act and realize themselves. Many writers and the dissenting students themselves have spelled out what is wrong. In both schools and corporations, people cannot pursue their own interests, use their power, exercise initiative.5 The Origin of Alienation Goodman discusses alienation in terms of contem- porary society, but Freud presents a theory of the 5Goodman, New Reformation, p. 49. conception of alienation based on the evolution of civiliza- tion.6 According to Freud, the history of man's civiliza- tion is a history of repression. The birth of civilization marked the death of man's unrestrained quest for instinc- tual gratification (Eros). Freud recognizes that restraint is necessary, since an uncontrolled Eros, one which pur- sues pleasure for its own sake, is destructive. The immediate satisfaction of instinctual needs and drives is not compatible with scarcity (Lebonsnot) nor with lasting preservation. Culture constrains not only his societal but also his biological existence, not only parts of the human being but his instinctual structure itself. However, such constraint is the very precondition of progress. Left free to pursue their natural objectives, the basic instincts of man would be incompatible with all lasting association and preservation; they would destroy even where they units. The uncontrolled Eros is just as fatal as his deadly counterpart, the death instinct. Their destructive force derives from the fact that they strive for a gratification which culture cannot grant; gratification as such and as an end in itself, at any moment. The instincts must there- fore be deflected from their goal, inhibited in their aim.7 The choice is made however; the "eternal primordial struggle for existence" triumphs over all else.8 Man's 6The development of Freud's theory will come pri- marily from Marcuse's interpretation as presented in Bros and Civilization. 7Herbert Marcuse, Bros and Civilization (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1962), p. 11. 8Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psycho- analysis (New York: Garden City Publishing Co., 1943), p. 273. lO insecure life under the reign of Eros (pleasure principle) gives way to the secure though unhappy life of the reality principle, that is putting aside pleasurable activities for those promising security and preservation. As the reality principle supersedes the pleasure principle, man learns to give up momentary, uncertain pleasure fer delayed, restrained but assured pleasure. Values change from seeking immediate satisfaction to delayed satisfaction, pleasure to restraint of pleasure, joy to work, receptiveness to productiveness, the absence of repression to security. A compromise is struck; a portion of possible happiness is given up for a portion of security.9 Energy once spent satisfying pleasure, namely sex, is now diverted to socially useful work. Thus work is a denial of pleasure.10 9Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1961), p. 62. loFreud does not believe that work has any signifi- cant value other than the preservation of society. It is not a source of satisfaction in and of itself. At best it offers a sublimation of libidinal energy. "The possi- bility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensible to the preservation and justification of existence in society" (Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 27). Goodman as well as Marcuse and Fromm disagree with Freud's view of work. Of course, many forms of work are repulsive and degrading, but work that is freely chosen, work that contributes to human welfare, and work that aids in develop- ing the individual is to be highly prized. Goodman 11 Interestingly, though Freud does describe work as undesirable and painful, he does not describe labor as describes the not uncommon dedication associated with meaningful work. "By 'man's work' I mean a very simple idea, so simple that it is clearer to ingenuous boys than to most adults. To produce necessary food and shelter is man's work. During most of economic history most men have done this drudging work, secure that it was justified and worthy of a man to do it, though often feeling that the social conditions under which they did it were not worthy of a man, thinking, 'It's better to die than to live so hard'--but they worked on. When the environment is for- bidding, as in the Swiss Alps or the Aran Islands, we regard such work with poetic awe. In emergencies it is heroic, as when the bakers of Paris maintained the supply of bread during the French Revolution, or the milkman did not miss a day's delivery when the bombs recently tore up London" (Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd [New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1956], pp. 17-18). The neo-Freudian Eric Fromm insists that meaning- ful work is necessary to the development of the individ- ual. "Unless man exploits others, he has to work in order to live. However primitive and simple his method of work may be, by the very fact of production, he has risen above the animal kingdom; rightly has he been defined as 'the animal that produces.‘ But work is not only an inescapable necessity for man. Work is also his liberator from nature, his creator as a social and inde- pendent being. In the process of work, that is, the molding and changing of nature outside of himself, man molds and changes himself. He emerges from nature by mastering her; he develops his powers of cooperation, of reason, his sense of beauty. He separates himself from nature, from the original unity with her, but at the same time unites himself with her again as her master and builder. The more his work develops, the more his individuality develOps. In molding nature and recreating her, he learns to make use of his powers, increasing his skill and creativeness. Whether we think of the beauti- ful paintings in the caves of Southern France, the ornaments on weapons among primitive people, the statues and temples of Greece, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the chairs and tables made by skilled craftsmen, or the cultivation of flowers, trees or corn by peasants--all are expressions of the creative transformation of nature by man's reason and skill" (Eric Fromm, The Sane Society [Greenwich: Fawcett Publications, A Fawcett Premier Book, 1955], p. 159). 12 alienating in its early stages of civilization. Marcuse explains that "under primitive conditions, alienation has not yet arisen because of the primitive character of the needs themselves, the rudimentary (personal or sexual) character of the division of labor, and the absence of an institutionalized hierarchical Specialization of func- tions."11 Alienation emerges in advanced civilization with the advent of two conditions: domination through the manipulation of labor and the specialization or fragmenta- tion of labor. A privileged group arises as scarcity is imposed upon individuals and groups, first by mere violence and subsequently by the rationalization of power. "No matter how useful this rationality was for the progress of the whole, it remained the rationality of domination, and the gradual conquest of scarcity was inextricably bound up with and shaped by the interest of domination."12 Marcuse continues: For a long way, the interests of domination and the interests of the whole coincide: the profitable utilization of the productive apparatus fulfills the needs and faculties of the individuals. For the vast majority of the population, the scope and mode of satisfaction are determined by their own labor; but their labor is work for an apparatus which they do not control, which operates as an independent power to which individuals must submit if they want to live. And it becomes the more alien the more specialized the division of labor 1Marcuse, Bros and Civilization, p. 138. 12Ibid., p. 33. 13 becomes. Men do not live their own lives but perform pre-established functions. While they work they do not fulfill their own needs and faculties but work in alienation. Work has become general, and so have the restrictions placed upon the libido: labor time, which is the largest part of the individual's life time, is painful time, for alienated labor is the absence of gratification, negation of the pleasure principle.13 Thus the initial form of alienation, the alienation of labor, is established; and according to Freud, will always thereafter be an ugly offspring of civilization. This is the case because domination is a necessity to the continua- tion of civilization (a condition necessary to control Eros), and alienation is an inevitable offshoot of domina- tion. The question is raised: "Why, for so many centu- ries, has man tolerated.danhwmmmfi” Marcuse explains that not only is the body an instrument of alienated labor, but the mind as well. The mind renounces free libidinal satisfaction as the restrictions take on more rationality and become more wideSpread and universal. Eventually restrictions begin to operate as external, objective law and are absorbed into the unconscious. It is because a society governed by domination and exploitation is trained to "its very roots" to deny the pursuit of pleasure that the increased free time, produced by a shorter work week, has not had a significant effect upon freeing man. Instead, 13Ibid., p. 41. l4 leisure, too, has become manipulated by the development of an entertainment industry designed to pacify and control.14 The individual is not to be left alone. For left to itself, and supported by a free intelligence aware of the potentialities of liberation from the reality of repression, the libidinal energy generated by the id (unconscious domain) would thrust against its ever more extraneous limitations and strive to engulf an ever larger field of existential relations, thereby exploding the reality ego and its repressive performances. 15 Although western society enjoys a high standard of material abundance, living is restrictive in that goods and services control needs. Innumerable choices are available, but they are choices which divert attention from awareness of objective needs and satisfaction. The individual pays for this material culture by sacrificing his time, his con- sciousness, his dreams: "civilization pays by sacrificing its own promises of liberty, justice, and peace for all."16 Marcuse believes that the alienation of labor is almost complete. Work relations have become to a great extent relations between persons as exchangeable objects of scientific management and efficiency experts. Competi- tion has been reduced to pre-arrangements. "The human existence in this world is mere stuff, matter, material, which does not have the principle of movement in itself."17 14Ibid., p. 43. 15Ibid., pp. 43-44. 16Ibid., p. 91. l7Ibid., p. 93. 15 Marcuse is hopeful that liberation from alienation will come from its total consummation, that is with the realiza- tion that man is not realized in labor, that his work and products have assumed a form and power totally independent 18 Goodman does not address him- of him as an individual. self to Marcuse's prediction, but it is doubtful that he shared Marcuse's optimism that total alienation is the answer to freeing mankind. Total alienation might give birth to a new awareness of freedom, but then again it might also spell destruction and death to civilization. If Goodman had taken Marcuse's hypothesis seriously, it appears dubious that he would have continued until his death offering proposals which would instead impede aliena- tion's final triumph. Marcuse and Goodman are in agreement that a non- repressive civilization, one in which alienated labor would cease to exist, is functional. This idea is a con- tradiction to Freud's contention that without excessive repression uncontained Eros would lead to the destruction of civilization and a return to savagery. Freud's basis for this assertion is: that free libidinal expression is incompatible with work since energy for work is stolen from libidinous energy; that only an absence of full gratification can sustain social organization; and that 18Ibid., p. 95. l6 civilization depends upon labor and this fact alone sets the stage for privilege and domination. Marcuse offers a convincing counter argument; its appeal, in part, being the optimism that it projects. In order to meet this argument, we would have to show that Freud's correlation "instinctual repres- sion--socially useful labor--civilization" can be meaningfully transformed into the correlation "instinctual liberation--socially useful work-- civilization." We have suggested that the prevalent instinctual repression resulted, not so much from the necessity of labor, but from the specific social organization of labor imposed by the interest in domination--that repression was largely surplus repression. Consequently, the elimination of surplus-repression would per se tend to eliminate, not labor, but the organization of human existence into an instrument of labor. If this is true, the emergence of a non-repressive reality principle would alter rather than destroy the social organiza- tion of labor: the liberation of Eros would create new and durable work relations.19 Both Goodman and Marcuse believe that modern tech- ; nology if properly applied could be an important factor in creating a new, liberated civilization. In People or Personnel, Goodman urges that we get on with technology in many areas having as a goal total automation, thereby eliminating many tedious, alienating jobs. Some labor, though perhaps in decreasing amounts as technology pro- gressed, would always be necessary, and this would depend upon energy diverted from instinctual, pleasure-seeking behavior. It would be small, however, and the crucial 19Marcuse, Bros and Civilization, p. 78. 17 difference would be the absence of excessive repression and domination. The work that would exist would be relevant to human welfare, to "objective human needs." In the foregoing discussion, we have established that Freud's theory of the rise of alienation as an off- shoot of the domination and Specialization of labor is compatible with Goodman's contemporary theory of aliena- tion, a malady due to the lack of self-determination and opportunities for meaningful action. There is no agree- ment, however, with Freud's contention that civilization must be oppressive to maintain its own survival. There- fore alienation is an inevitable, malignant side-effect. To better understand Goodman's belief that a non-oppressive society is not only possible but necessary for the well being of mankind, this study will continue with an in— depth look at Goodman's theory of human nature. CHAPTER II A THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE He knows that what is best is easiest and what is easiest is best. Does it not rest and slide in the accumulated rage of the universe, and survive in the next motion of the universe as it trembles open into freedom and the present, not otherwise than the trembling daisy stretches to the tips of its many trembling petals? By the best, the easiest, and the latest moment, our friends will everywhere create small worlds of freedom.1 Marcuse suggests that alienation is in part a result of man's becoming an instrument of domination; and implicit in any such system is a set of prescribed goals, behaviors, and rewards which the individual is expected to adopt as his own. He is thus controlled by a source external to the self. Thereupon the connection can be made between domination, external control, and alienation. To those who contend that most men are sheep who need to be led, the argument can be made that if such is the case, that if man by nature is in need of external control and direction, why is there such a host of social/psychological maladjustments such as alienation? It is logical that if lPaul Goodman, Adam and His Works (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968)) p. 385. 18 19 systems of domination--political, social, economic, educa- tional, etc., suited man's nature, mankind would by now be peaceful and content, but such is not the case. For an understanding of why domination, even in its most benevolent forms, leads to human suffering and unhappiness, this study will examine Goodman's remarks on human nature and psychology. The Need for Self Regulation The foremost claim Goodman makes about human nature is that man is self-regulating. Self regulation is the path, the only path to fulfilling human potential--physi- cally, emotionally, socially, and mentally. This pre- dominant theme, running through all of Goodman's work, is the basis for most of his suggested social reforms, e.g., decentralizing government, industry, and the schools, shared decision making in both public and private spheres, and a return to participatory democracy. Implicit in the concept of self-regulation is the freedom to act and to choose; and if this is to be anything more than paying lip service to the existing status quo, a wide range of "viable" alternatives must be available. This implies a society offering a variety of choices in life styles, work, social organization, education, etc. That man is creative and self-regulating is, Good- man stresses, an empirical fact. The organism "did succeed 20 in evolving to the point of having approximately the same form and functional properties as modern man prior to the time of the invention of language itself."2 Were man again free to self-regulate, he would not tolerate civilization as it is today. He scoffs at the idea that self-regulation is the path to crime and destruction. When animal needs are satisfied, there is little cause for crime and delin- quency of the young. You will be surprised when you allow organic self- regulation to develop and your outgoing drives to contact other persons, how the principles that you ought to live by will seem to emerge from your very bones and will be obviously appropriate for living out regardless of the social situation you are in. In agreement with Socrates, he reaffirms the position that "evil is simply error." When a society mistakenly does not allow for the self-satisfaction of human needs, mal- functions such as anxiety, alienation, anomie, and crime are the results. In Growing Up Absurd Goodman explains the rise in juvenile delinquency. Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves; this is the beautiful shaping power of our human nature. Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the 2Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1951), p. 26. The assump- tion is being made that Goodman shares the basic principles of Gestalt psychology as herein explained. 31bid., p. 220. 21 young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted.4 Long an admirer of Benjamin Spock, the well read authority on child care, Goodman criticizes Spock for abandoning his earlier position favoring self-regulation to that of upholding traditional, middle class values which are "phoney" and "damaging."5 In Problems of Parents, Spock suggests that children may need to be sent to counselors or psychiatrists, but he makes no attempt to relate unhealthful social conditions to emotionally ailing children. In agreement with A. S. Neill, Goodman believes that children often need protection from parents. A Gestalt Approach to Human Psychology Goodman's approach to defining human psychology in terms of man's interaction with his environment is essen— tially a Gestaltian one. It is from his early works in cooperation with the Gestalt psychologists Perls and Hefferline that he offers his most comprehensive explana- tion of human psychology.6 The main thesis of Gestalt 4Goodman, Growing Up Absurd, p. 13. 5Paul Goodman, The Society I Live In Is Mine (New York: Horizon Press, 1962), p. 92. 6It is being assumed that Goodman is in agreement with the premises of Gestalt psychology as presented in this work, Gestalt Psychology, 1951. Since this early work with Perls and Hefferline, Goodman has, however, dis- associated himself from Gestalt therapy. It is Goodman's belief that therapy is "wrongheaded" for it deals with 22 psychology is that phenomena which appear as unitary wholes must have their wholeness respected and can be analytically broken into bits only at the price of annihilating what one intended to study.7 Man is then an irreducible unit of social, cultural, animal and physical properties.8 Modern technological society has, however, dramatically contributed to fragmenting man, thereby giving rise to bore- dom, compulsion, anxiety, and alienation. In the roles of student, teacher, business man and assembly line worker the organism does not creatively interact as a total being but instead responds in preconceived, specialized modes of behavior. The average person grows up in a world of "splits," unaware of the potential dangers. Gestaltists use the terms "figure" and "ground" to connote the organism and context. In the healthy person, the relation between the figure and ground is a process of permanent but meaningful emerging and receding. Attention, symptoms rather than causes. A society which produces sick citizens is where the emphasis for cure should be placed. 7Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 238. 8This concept of man's nature is essentially that held by Marx in his early writing. His psychology is based on the primacy of man's relatedness to the world, to man, to nature. He sees man as related actively to the world-- seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, feeling, acting, desiring, loving. He speaks of man becoming lost, dehumanized and fragmented if his relationship to the world is not active and complete. 23 concentration, interest, concern, excitement, and grace are characteristics of a healthy figure/ground formation while confusion, boredom, compulsions, fixations, anxiety, and self-consciousness are indications of figure/ground forma- tion which is disturbed.9 The process of figure/ground background formation is a dynamic one in which the urgencies and resources of the field progressively lend their powers to the interest, brightness, and force of the dominant figure. It is pointless, therefore, to attempt to deal with any psychological behavior out of its socio-cultural, biological, and physical context. At the same time, the figure is specifically psychologica1;it has specific observable properties of brightness, clarity, unity, fascination, grace, vigor, release, etc., depending on whether we are considering primarily a perceptual feelingful, or motor context. The fact that the gestalt has specific observable psychological properties is of capital importance in psychotherapy, for it gives an autonomous criterion of the depth and reality of the experience. It is not necessary to have theories of fifibrmal behavior" or adjustment to reality except in order to explore. When the figure is dull, con- fused, graceless, lacking in energy (a "weak Gestalt"), we may be sure that there is a lack of contact, something in the environment is blocked out, some vital organic need is not being expressed; the person is not "all there," that is, his whole field cannot lend its urgency and resources to the completion of the figure. Practices of the traditional school such as forcing attention to specific tasks in which the child has no interest is certain to produce a poor gestalt. The child is unable to concentrate fully, thereby splitting parts of 9Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, 10Ibid., p. 15. 24 the personality, "part goes to energizing the resistor, and part goes to fighting the resistor."11 As the person attempts to concentrate he invariably meets with distrac- tions, and in his battle to continue concentrating, he becomes more and more tired and irritable. The task may be abandoned or performed poorly. In other words, by forcing the self to that which is not based on one's interest or bents, the struggle over distraction becomes the paramount issue. Boredom occurs, then, when attention is deliberately paid to something lacking interest. The situation that could become interesting is effectively blocked. The result is fatigue and, eventually, trance. Suddenly attention switches from the boring situa- tion to daydreaming. The sign of spontaneous attention and concentra— tion is the progressive forming of a figure/ground, whether the situation be one of sensing something, making a plan, imagining, remembering, or practical activity. If both attention and excitement are present and working together, the object of atten- tion becomes more and more a unified, bright, sharp figure against a more and more empty, unnoticed, 11The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget lends much support to Gestalt psychology. In a discussion of learning he explains: "learning is co-existence with life pro- cesses . . ." and best accomplished when spontaneous interests "which follow neither the curriculum nor the clock" are pursued. Piaget makes the further point that not only are the most meaningful learning experiences spontaneous but that the interruption of such experiences is potentially psychologically damaging. He explains that children who are continually interrupted during intellec- tual involvement, here he is referring to the time scheduling of most public and private schooling, become "intellectually burned," resulting in an avoidance of intellectual involvement altogether (David Elkind, Children and Adolescents [New York: Oxford Press, 1970], p. 131). 25 uninteresting ground. This form of unified figure against an empty ground has been called a ”good gestalt."12 The Necessity of Self-Regulation Goodman's staunch insistence 3. the necessity of self-regulation is a direct outgrowth of Gestalt psychology, for only if the individual is free to choose those acti- vities or tasks which represent an interest or felt need can he experience a good gestalt, that is a figure/ground which is clear, vivid, and detailed. The continual forcing or distracting of attention results in qualitatively poor experiences, experiences resulting in boredom and dis- interest, and as Gestalt psychology suggests, eventual alientation. Significantly, Perls, Hefferline, and Good- man warn that negative adaptations such as alienation may become permanent modes of response, that is the individual may be unable to respond with interest and concentration to any environmental stimuli.13 The organismic self-regulation to which Goodman refers may be defined as the process by which the organism becomes aware of needs as they spontaneously arise and acts 12Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 56. 13Ibid., p. 54. This explains the failure of many educational reform programs (as well as social). The child who is suddenly free to plan his own time may do so most unwisely with the disastrous effect of re-enforcing the belief that children are unable to choose what is best for themselves, undermining further attempts at open education. 26 to satisfy them. The organism knows when it is hungry, thirsty, sleepy, needing sex, or angry. For example, if a person is angry and expresses that anger, he is then relieved of it and able to turn to satisfying other needs. Our society, however, teaches that most displays of anger are unacceptable and punishable. It is such interference that Goodman warns against. The Spontaneous need is not extinguished though it is repressed. Inhibited by the threat of punishment the organism loses its power to initiate action. Goodman offers another example in Growing Up Absurd: Let me give a childish but important illustration of how this works out. A boy of ten or eleven has a few great sexual adventures-~he thinks they're great--but then he has the bad luck to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other expalanations that some dif- ferent behavior is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. If he gives in, he lives on in a profound disbelief even of his own body feelings. But if he persists and proves incorrigible, then the evidence of his senses is attached to what is socially punished, explained away; he may even be put away. The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had sexual experience. That objective factor 14 is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. The organism, active by nature, becomes passive. Spontaneous needs and desires become part of an internal struggle for expression. l4Goodman, Growing Up Absurd, p. 38. 27 Good Contact: Essential to Growth Need reduction is an essential component of Goodman's theory of growth. Only if the organism is free to satisfy basic needs can it preserve itself and grow. In psycho- logical terms Goodman describes growth as: (1) After contact there is a flow of energy, adding to the energy of the organism the new elements assimilated from the environment. (2) The contact- boundary that has been "broken" now reforms, includ- ing the new energy and the "organ of second nature." (3) What has been assimilated is now part of the physiological self-regulation. (4) The boundary of contact is now "outside" the assimilated learning, habit, conditioned reflex, etc.--e.g., what is like what one has learned does not touch one, it raises no problem.15 We recognize growth by the apparent changes in the organism characterized by increase in size, restoration, procreation, rejuvenation, recreation, assimilation, learn- 16 ing, memory, habit imitation, identification. Essential to growth is contact with the environment. By contacting we mean food-getting and eating, loving and making love, aggressing, conflicting, communicating, perceiving, learning locomotion, technique, and in general every function that must be primarily considered as occurring at the boundary in an organism/environment field. Good contact implies a lively, vivid ground/figure and involves awareness and motor responses, and in the broadest 15Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 428. 161bid., p. 121. 17Ibid., p. 373. 28 sense includes appetite and rejection, approaching and avoiding, sensing, feeling, manipulating, estimating, com- municating, fighting, etc., or every kind of living relation that occurs at the boundary of the interaction of the organism and environment.18 The quality of the contact determines what is assimilated by the organism and assimilation is what leads to growth. From this perspective, a society which values growth as a goal instrumental to human well being would provide ample opportunity for good contact. Goodman is critical of contemporary society, especially education, for not providing children with the necessities for growth. The regimented school day with fixed time schedules, fixed seating arrangements, and lesson assignments does not give children opportunities to interact with one another, that is loving, playing, fighting, discussing, etc., nor does it give children opportunities to contact their non—human environment. One of Goodman's educational proposals aims at facilitating better contact--locating classrooms in store- fronts and integrating children into the everyday affairs of the community, from business to government. Contact can also provide one criteria for judging the character of work. With the rise of labor specializa- tion, contact has become limited; for instead of processing 18Ibid., p. 229. 29 a total product, the worker repeats highly segmented tasks. Repetition results in boredom which is characteristic of a poor gestalt. Were jobs to be evaluated on the criterion of good contact, many would be scrapped and others dras- tically altered.19 One industrial innovation which provides good con- tact is the "mini" production line. Under this revised form of Operation, a relatively small group of workers is responsible for the entire manufacturing of a given product. Each worker learns many different skills, performing them on a rotating basis, and most important he identifies with the total process. The whole is not lost; good contact is preserved. Goodman is disenchanted with liberal reform measures because they violate the prinCiple of self-regulation, and in so doing, destroy good contact. Liberals do not now think that anybody is engulfed and needs a recourse to exercise initiative. Their strategy for helping the power- less is not to out things down to size or open spaces to 19C. Wright Mills, in his classic White Collar (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 229, reports the results of two national surveys in which workers reported on job satisfaction. In the first survey satisfaction was expressed by 85% professionals and executives, 64% white collar people, and 41% factory workers. In the second survey the figures were 86% professionals, 74% managerial, 42% com- mercial employees, 56% skilled, and 48% semi-skilled. These figures indicate that over half of the total employed popu- lation (U.S.) are consciously dissatisfied with their work. Wright predicts that the actual number is probably much higher. We are assuming that one reason for job dissatisfac— tion is poor contact. 30 breathe, but to spend money on schools, welfare, retrain- ing, area redevelOpment, managed from above. The powerless become clients.20 Good contact is characterized by attraction, move- ment, need, excitement, aggression, spontaneity, destruc- tion and assimilation. Much of what constitutes acceptable, contemporary social life fails because it does not produce good contact. Dating, marriage, discussion groups, class lectures, coffee hours, and so forth may actually inhibit good contact and in the best interests of the organism should be avoided. For instance, suppose someone invites you to a gathering in which you haven't the slightest interest. You would greatly prefer to spend the time otherwise. But if you frankly say so, the common view would have it that you are declining 'social contact.’ This is 'bad,‘ for we are taught early and late that some special virtue is inherent in gregariousness, even when it consists of nothing more than meaningless, insincere, time-wasting chitchat. But we say, "Yes, I'd be delighted," instead of, "No, thank you, I'd rather not." Thus we avoid breaking confluence with prevailing stereotypes of what constitutes good manners. But we must then be rude to outselves and treat with high-handed disregard otherwiSe possible activities which are matters of spontaneous interest and concern for us. When we say, "Yes, I'll come," and thus commit ourselves to what we do not wish to do, we are, in effect, saying ”No" to alternative ways of spending the time which are of more impor- tance to us. By preening ourselves on having a "positive personality"--being yes-man for every Tom, Dick or Harry--we retroflect the negative and say "No" to ourselves.21 20Paul Goodman, People or Personnel (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 29. 21Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, pp. 152-153. 31 Aggression:‘ A Pre-condition for Human Growth» One element of good contact which Goodman stresses is aggression; his prose reflects this belief. At this moment the teen-age boy, Paolo, could contain his rage no longer and he slapped Beata across the eyes. This unleashed a frightful energy in the tattooed German and he threw the youth to the ground and began to pound him, till Laddy seized him by the hair and dragged him off. "Don't do that, chum," he said quietly. 2 Goodman insists that primary aggression, that is aggression arising from the interaction of the organism with the environment as it makes contact, is essential to the unimpaired functioning of the individual and should be accepted as both necessary and legitimate. The anti-social connotations of the expression of primary aggression are "wrong headed" and should be changed. It is the partial inhibition and displacement of primary aggression that gives rise to war, murder, sadism, lust, etc. An occasional fist fight, a better orgasm, friendly games, a job of useful work, initiating enterprises, deciding real issues in manageable meetings, and being moved by things that are beautiful, curious or wonderful--these diminish the spirit of war because they attach people to life.23 22Goodman, Adam and His Works, p. 378. 23Paul Goodman, Drawing the Line (New York: Random House, 1946), p. 84. This view is not shared by Freud who contends that all levels of human aggression are inherent to man's nature and are but magnified by social restrictions and inhibitions. "The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend 32 It is the function of aggression to initiate action through contact with the environment to facilitate growth. There can be no assimilation of the new until destructuring (aggression) has occurred; "otherwise, the experience is swallowed whole (introjected), never becomes our own--and does not nourish us."24 Destructuring or the breaking down into parts occurs in order that an activity or situation can be recombined in a fashion more adequate to the require- ments of the here-and-now actuality. Much of what is passed off as "learning" in the schools is not, precisely because themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him" (Freud, Civili- zation and Its Discontents, p. 58). Eric Fromm's theory of aggression is more in keeping with Goodman's. He contends that man is by nature active in his development and if society does not provide for the positive development of man's potential, man will act destructively to transcend his existence. "He thus takes revenge on life for negating itself to him" (Eric Fromm, The Heart of Man, pp. 30-31). In Fromm's latest work he suggests two different types of aggression. The first, shared with all animals, is an instinctual impulse to either attack or flee when vital interests are threatened. Goodman discusses this type of aggression also, and refers to it as "annihilation," a function of defense based on the threat to existence. The other type, "malignant aggression" or cruelty, exclusively the characteristic of humans, is that aggression resulting from the frustrated need reduction (Eric Fromm, "Man Would as Soon Flee as Fight," Psychology Today, August, 1973, p. 36). 24 Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 68. 33 the concepts to be learned have not been acted upon (destructured) by the learner. Instead, information has been swallowed whole, soon to be forgotten.25 Since aggression is crucial to the well being and growth of the human organism, Goodman insists that social mores which prohibit and censure aggression should be changed. . . . when the aggressive drives are antisocial, it is that the society is opposed to life and change (and love); then it will either be destroyed by life or it will involve life in a common ruin, make human life destroy society and itself.2 Goodman's goal is to reorganize society in order that man can execute aggression naturally in socially satisfying ways. This indicates a society which is open to individual input and participation. And in Goodman's think- ing, a society which encourages the sharing of ideas and interests must accept conflict as a vital part of that process. 25Ibid., p. 67. Though behaviorists do not refer to specific stages of the learning process (since these stages are not empirical), there is agreement between the Gestaltista and the behaviorists in regards to the latter's contention that learning or knowledge acquisition implies changed behavior. Gestaltists agree that if knowledge is completely assimilated (or rejected) a change in the behavior of the organism is predictable. Gestaltists would, however, accept changed feelings, emotions, atti- tudes, and perceptions, as evidence of learning. The criteria for what constitutes learning in these areas might well produce real conflict between the two theories of learning. 26Ibid., p. 352. 34 Ultimately, if our methods of protest can be effective, their chief importance is that they are positively good in themselves. They characterize the kind of America I want, one with much more direct democracy, decentralized decision-making, a system of checks and balances that works, less streamlined elections. Our system should condone civil disobedience vigilant over authority, crowds on the street, riot when the provocation is grave. I am a Jeffersonian because it seems to me that only a libertarian, populist, and pluralist political structure can make citizens at all in the modern world, but especially in countries like ours that have breathed the air of a democratic tradition.27 Goodman's point is that the suppression of natural aggression leads to suppression of all conflict, thereby weakening the pluralist, democratic tradition which receives its lifeblood from debate of shared interests. Stated simply, individual repression becomes social repression and the combined effects destroy both the individual and the vitality of democratic society. Being a naturalist and staunch Jeffersonian, believing that man's innate good sense is often a better judge of right and wrong than official decrees, Goodman endorses power without legal process and over legal process. Finally in human affairs, the bindingness of promises is always subject to essential change of circumstances. There are due processes, such as referendum or election of new representatives to make new laws that are supposed to meet this contingency, and they roughly do. But due process is itself part of the social agreement, and in times of crisis it is always a question whether it 27Paul Goodman, Utopian Essays and Practical Pro- posals (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1964), p. 77. 35 is adequate or whether sovereignty reverts closer to the people, so to speak, seeking the General Will by other means . . . . It was certainly the intention of Jefferson, and the sense of American pragmatist philosophy up through James and Dewey, to try to devise institutions that would make permanent non-violent revolution possible.28 Goodman scoffs at the idea that direct intervention into due process leads to uncontrolled aggression and violence. Empirically, is it the case that direct actions which are aimed at specific abuses lead to general lawlessness? Where is the evidence to prove the connection, e.g., statistics of correlative dis- order in the community or an increase of specific lawless acts among the direct activists? The flimsy evidence that there is, tends to weigh in the opposite direction. Crime and delinquency seem to diminish where there is political direct action by Negroes. The community and academic Spirit at Berkeley was better after the troubles than it was before, until the administration began to renege. In 1944, the Warden of Danbury Prison assured me that the war objectors penned up there were, in general, the finest type citizens! On sociological grounds, indeed, the probability is that a specific direct action that cuts through frustrating due process, especially if it is suc- cessful or partially successful, will tend to increase civil order rather than to destroy it, for it revives the belief that the community is one's own, that one has influence, whereas the inhibition of direct action against an intolerable abuse inevitably increases anomie and therefore general lawlessness.2 This is not to imply that Goodman sees all protest and conflict with legal authority as healthy. In later works he is dismayed at the motivations, means, and goals or lack of them of young protestors and resistors. 8Goodman, New Reformation, p. 133. 29Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 366. 36 But the concept of "radicalizing" is a rather pre- sumptuous manipulation of people for their own good. It is anarchist for people to act on principle and learn, the hard way, that the powers that be are brutal and unjust, but it is authoritarian for people to be expended for the cause of somebody's strategy.30 Opposed to violence and a true believer in Dewey's maxim of the compatibility of means and ends, Goodman con- demns any activity aimed at reform which could not be used in a good society. Thus he favors open confrontation but refuses to engage in conspiratorial operations such as those of the Guevarists. Of the young radicals'growing attachment to violence, he wrote in 1967: In my opinion also they will have to learn that one is not going to reconstruct modern society with a fraction of the 10 percent Negro population, nor even with the "Third World" ruled by Ben Bellas, Nassers, Maos, Nkrumahs, Sukarnos, or their suc- cessors. This is not the stuff of new humanism. For instance, those who objected to being processed at Berkeley will have to think seriously about Chairman Mao's little red book. And those who want to make love not war but who also want to imitate Che Guevara in American cities, must ask themselves what adequate guerilla tactics would be in high technology, namely to poison the water, wreck the subways, and cause power failures in New York and Chicago; is this what they want?31 Goodman is convinced that the violent young are the tragic products of a society which has denied them the opportunities for growth; opportunities to initiate action, 30Paul Goodman, "Black Flag of Anarchism," New York Times Magazine, July 14, 1968, p. 11. 31Paul Goodman, Like a Conquered Province (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968), p. 437. 37 to make good contact, to execute aggression, hence, to self- regulate. Their aggression is misplaced and lacks purpose other than venting frustration. It is not destructuring followed by assimilation and remaking of the whole, but is instead a half completed process, the tearing apart. Goodman sadly comments: But for the alienated, unfortunately, action easily slips into activism and conflict that are largely spite and stubbornness. There is excitement and notoriety, much human suffering, with the world no better off. (New Left Notes runs a column wryly called, "We Made the News Today, 0 Boy!") Then instead of deepening awareness and a sharpen- ing political conflict, there occurs the polariza- tion of mere exasperation. Often it seems that the aim is just to have a shambles. Impatiently the activists raise the ante of their tactics beyond what the "issue" warrants, and support melts away. Out on a limb, the leaders become desperate and fanatical, intolerant of criticism, dictatorial. The Movement falls apart.32 Goodman believes that essentially the simple life is what best suits man's nature. He refers to "the impor- tant stuff" of life as those basic activities which both preserve and give pleasure. Since I am conservative by disposition, I am not quite ready to remake human nature (even according to my own blueprint), nor to scuttle the culture of the Western world. In my opinion, precisely the simpler matters--housing, shopping, being informed, and making a living--are the most important matters, and I set a high value on democratic initiative and deciding. Thus, if we have choices, I am led to speak for decentarlizing--"here it is feasible." This modest philosophy may be utopian, but it is pragmatic.33 32 33 Goodman, New Reformation, p. 53. Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 155. 38 Because of this simplistic view, Goodman is often criticized as being old fashioned and against progress. But in response Goodman argues that "progress" which destroys human relations, community, shared decision making, and creates impersonalization, materialism, and centralized authority is only masked destruction. Modern society is making it more and more difficult to satisfy these simple needs. From Adam and His Works, Goodman shares this wisdom: What a lesson he was learning! He knew that our existence is mathematically difficult, distances are great, it is not usual for lust to meet its best object, even less so in inopportune circum- stances. But he believed that it was possible to increase the probabilities of happiness, by multiplying one's efforts, by latitudinarian standards, by being satisfied with modest successes. It had not occurred to him that there existed a negative principle of defeat among people, that could nullify even brilliant promises. 4 Though there exists a potential satisfaction for everyone, the organism does not always make contact with a need fulfilling environment. Love and sex, for example, often lack fulfillment since "rarely is anyone both lovely and available."35 Sometimes since you don't love me any more I cannot find an animal spirit to move my feet, or one quits and leaves me in the street among the buses and the traffic's roar 34Goodman, Adam and His Works, p. 378. 35Paul Goodman, Hawkweed (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1967), p. 153. 39 as if I were deep in thought, but I am not ---until the animal spirit that preserves me still alive takes care of where I am and slowly drives my feet their way across the street.36 Sex is one simple animal need, giving pleasure, which Goodman refers to often in his prose. His descrip- tions of sexual encounters are so casual and frequently unorthodox (he often describes homosexual attractions) that he is sometimes criticized for both sexual perversion and an overemphasis on sex. Goodman views sex as an animal need which should be satisfied as frequently as the desire arises. Though the postponement of pleasure such as sexual gratifi- cation may have been important to man's early survival, today's attempt at sexual repression and inhibition has far outstripped its functional use. Goodman urges that we get on with our current sexual revolution and once and for all break down our unhealthful taboos on sex. . . . The only recourse is to try to get, as methodically as possible, to the end of the line, to undo the repressive attitude itself, so that the drives can reappear as themselves and come to their own equilibrium, according to organism self—regulation.37 My own View, for what it is worth, is that sexu- ality is lovely, there cannot be too much of it, it is self-limiting if it is satisfactory and satisfaction diminishes tension and clears the mind for attention and learning.38 361bid., p. 91. 37Goodman, Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals, p. 55. 38Paul Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1962), pp. 27-28. 40 Sex becomes a problem only when it is pushed into the back- ground. Then it becomes an obsessive need much like unrelieved hunger or thirst. Contemporary society adver- tises a permissive attitude about sex, but real contact is forbidden or guiltily hidden. This lack of continuity has been responsible for widespread sexual maladjustments including frigidity and sado-sexual needs. Goodman believes that pleasure is an excellent criterion, though not a sole criterion, of the Good. First of all, pleasure is a good indicator of needs necessary to survival and growth. The organism experiences pleasure when eating, sleeping, making good contact, etc. Pleasure is not purely accidental but is a quality of a completed action with important inner drives operating and meeting those impulses from within by opportunities from without.39 Secondly, pleasure permits the organism to function most productively, and its absence may even prevent function at some level. I undo myself because of a theory that I, alas, believe: that happiness, satisfaction, is the necessary ground for the full exercise of power. It is not that I am miserable, I can really put up with that philosophically; but that, being miserable, I am wasted. Then all is lost. 39Goodman, The Society I Live In Is Mine, p. 83. 40Paul Goodman, Five Years (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1969), p. 10. 41 Spontaneity: The Requisite for Growth and Health Throughout Goodman's work like a continuous thread runs the theme of "spontaneity," which is a necessary com- ponent of his concepts of good contact and growth. It is also implied in his general theory of human nature which conceives of man as being essentially open-ended, and continually emerging differently. Human nature, essentially unchangeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no constraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything assunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.41 Spontaneity is related to growth in that growth depends upon good contact, a clear and detailed ground figure, and good contact is best achieved by spontaneous attention. "Spontaneous concentration is contact with the environ- ment."42 In contrast, forced attention does not produce a clear gestalt because "part (attention) goes to the task, part goes to energizing the resistor, and part goes into fighting the resistor."43 41Paul Goodman, Kafka's Prayer (New York: Vanguard Press, 1947), p. 238. 42 Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 63. 431bid., p. 55. 42 If a man becomes quickly and unreasonably angry when he is frustrated, you may suspect that his desire ' for the thing is shallow; he is forcing himself to seek it against his nature. He's touch because he has to keep down his own rebellion.4 During deliberate attention, spontaneous needs do not become foremost yet they deflect attention, acting to sabotage the unnatural-concentration. As a result the figure becomes blurred and the organism may escape the conflict by sleep- ing, daydreaming, or fantasizing, etc. Spontaneity is most easily recognized in the young child. This is short lived, however, for as soon as the child reaches the age of four or five years, he begins the long trek of "education." It is the schools and from the mass media, rather than at home or from their friends, that the mass of our citizens in all classes learn that life is inevitably routine, depersonalized, venally graded; that it is best to toe the mark and shut up; that there is no place for spontaneity, open sexuality, free spirit. Trained in the schools, they go on to the same quality jobs, culture, politics.45 Goodman is most critical of the school's heavy use of operant conditioning as a supposed means of teaching the young. Though behavior may be altered or changed, the new behavior is uninteresting for it lacks grace, ease, force, and style. But worse still, the child may lose confidence in his own ability to choose and act. By the middle grades, 44Goodman, Five Years, p. 49. 45Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 23. 43 most children no longer attempt to follow the bent of their own interests if, in fact, they can still identify what those interests are. To be candid, I think operant-conditioning is vastly overrated. It teaches us the not newsy proposition that if an animal is deprived of its natural environment and society, sensorily deprived, made mildly anxious, and restricted to the narrowest possible spontaneous motion, it will emotionally identify with its oppressor and respond--with low grade grace, energy, and intelligence--in the only way allowed to it. The poor beast must do something just to live on a little. There is no doubt that a beagle can be trained to walk on its hind legs and balance a ball on the tip of its nose. But the dog will show much more intelligence, force, and speedy feedback when chasing a rabbit in the field. It is an odd thought that we can increase the efficiency of learning by nullifying a priori most of an animal's powers to learn and taking it out of its best field.46 Goodman has been a strong supporter of progressive education and more recent innovations such as community "mini" schools, open classrooms, and the "free school" movement. Each of these concepts in education share, to a greater or lesser degree, a belief in the self-regulation of the child. The child is encouraged to pursue learning experiences which best suit his needs and interests. A pragmatist himself, Goodman's views on education were deeply influenced by Dewey. But the school, he felt, could combine all the necessary elements: practical learning of science and technology, democratic community, spontaneous feeling liberated by artistic appreciation, freedom 46Ibid., pp. 88-89. 44 to fantasize, and animal expression freed from the parson's morality and the school maSter's ruler. This constituted the whole of Deweyan progressive education. There would be spon- taneous interest (including animal impluse), harmonized by art-working; this spontaneity would be controlled by the hard pragmatism of doing and making the doing actually work; and thus the young democratic community would learn the modern world also have the will to change it. Progressive education was a theory of con- tinual scientific experiment and orderly non- violent social revolution.47 Spontaneity is such an important part of human nature that Goodman relates it directly to man's psycho- logical well being. The description of psychological health and disease is a simple one. It is a matter of the identification and alienation of the self. If a man identifies with the forming self, does not inhibit his own creative excitement and reaching toward the coming solution; and conversely, if he alienates what is not organically his own and therefore cannot be vitally interesting, but rather disrupts the figure/background, then he is psychologically healthy, for he is exercising his best power and will do the best he can in the difficult circumstances of the world. But on the contrary, if he alienates himself and because of false identifications tries to conquer his own spontaneity, then he creates his life dull, con- fused and painful. The system of identifications and alienation we shall call the 'ego.‘48 By examining Goodman's concept of human nature, this chapter has attempted to illuminate the occurrance of aliena- tion under systems of domination due to the inescapable con- flict between man's innate need for self-regulation and 47Ibid., p. 42. 48Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 147. 45 external authority. We will now shift our focus to a form of social organization which Goodman foresees as the most likely means for achieving maximal self-regulation-- communitarian anarchy. CHAPTER III ANARCHISM: A SOLUTION TO ALIENATION I have a democratic faith, its a religion with me-- that everybody is really able to take care of him- self, to get on with people, and to make a good society. If its not so, I don't want to hear of it. A direct outgrowth to Goodman's concept of human nature is his commitment to a communitarian life style. Since self-regulation is the only road to the development and fulfillment of the self, man's social order must of necessity be flexible, non-authoritarian, and open to maximum personal involvement in all social areas--political, economic, religious, education, etc. Goodman believes that a communitarian mode of living which he terms "community anarchism" best facilitates man's need for self-direction. If the lack of self-direction breeds alienation, then we can assume that a social setting which feeds self-regulation would eliminate alienation. It is the contention of Good- man and anarchists in general that anarchism as a viable mode of life eliminates social/psychological malfunctions such as alienation. 1Richard Kostelanetz, "Prevalence of Paul Goodman," New York Times Magazine, April 3, 1966, p. 99. 46 47 The purpose of this chapter is threefold: to pre- sent a brief historical sketch of the development of anarchist theory; to compare and contrast various anarchist philosophies with Goodman and Freud, and to show that anarchism as a way of life can eradicate alienation. Anarchism as a Philosophy and Mode of Action The classic definition of anarchism states that it stands for the immediate liquidation of the State, a nega- tive interpretation of a positive ideal. Liquidation of the State ig the first step of implementing anarchism, but from there anarchist theory goes on to describe a very positive philosophy of living, one which embraces the most noble of egalitarian ideals. From Like a Conquered Province, Goodman speaks of anarchism with much enthusiasm. He believes that America, in its beginning, was flavored with a sweet taste of anarchist thought and action; much of his writings have to do with recapturing that spirit which is steadily being destroyed. Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social- psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful, and intelligent behavior occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states. Sometimes it is necessary to limit freedom, as we keep a child from running across the highway, but this is usually at the expense of force, grace, and learning; and in the long run it is usually wiser to remove the 48 danger and simplify the rules than to hamper the activity. I think, I say, that this hypothesis is true, but whether or not it is, it would certainly be un-American to deny it. Everybody knows that America is great because America is free; and by freedom is not finally meant the juridicial freedom of the European tradition, freedom under law, having the legal rights and duties of citizens; what is meant is the spontaneous freedom of anarchy; opportunity to do what you can, although hampered by necessary conventions, as few as possible.2 Of all the inherited stereotypes about political movements, perhaps the most common has been that of the bearded, bomb—throwing, blasphemous anarchist. Horowitz admits that this stereotype is not altogether unfounded although serious philosophies of anarchism seldom contain endorsements of violence as an acceptable means to effect change. "From the Narodniki in Czarist Russia, to the anarchist mine workers in Catalonia and Asturias in Spain, to the 'wobblies' of the IWW in the western part of the United States, anarchist social movements have been violent in practice if not always in theory."3 The anarchist movement arose, primarily, as a reaction to the rise of the State. It views the State as a social system inhabited by alienated proletarians, anomic professionals, and anxiety-ridden policy makers, and generally focuses its attack upon society and the State 2Paul Goodman, Like A Conquered Province (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968i, pp. 368-369. 3Irving L. Horowitz, ed., The Anarchists (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1964), p. 24. 49 which inherently corrupts. It is a commitment to the idea that communitarian organization is a product of human nature, while the state is an accidental creation. In con- trast to Socialism, it does not regard class differences as the root of man's unhappiness, but instead the miscon- ception that all forms of social organization must incor- porate centralized power and control as an essential element of order. The socialist view of rebuilding society by a redistribution of power falls far short of the anarchist goal of the abolition of all centralized power, as exem- plified by the State. By failing to destroy Power, the conditions remain and in time lead to renewed domination. The socialist goal is to reform society of its worst abuses; the anarchist goal is total reconstruction.4 Anarchists point out that both socialists and capitalists are mistaken in assuming that there is no alternative to a highly organized, omnipotent, bureaucra- tized government of one form or another. For in reality, the State has been a relatively recent development in the history of mankind, only since about the 16th century. "Before that, and since the fall of the Roman Empire, the State did not exist, yet civilization progressed."5 41bid. ' p. 23. 5Peter Kropotkin, "Modern Science and Anarchism," in The Anarchists, p. 159. 50 Differences in Anarchist Theory Horowitz describes eight basic forms of anarchism: utilitarian-anarchism, peasant-anarchism, anarcho- syndicalism, conspiratorial-anarchism, pacifist-anarchism, communist-anarchism, individualist-anarchism, and collectivist-anarchism.6 Since such a schema may necessi- tate placing any particular anarchist in two or more cate- gories in order to identify his posture on both economics and reform means, we shall limit our discussion to two models which represent broad differences in philosophy. These models include anarcho-syndicalism and communist- anarchism. Both of these positions contain elements that are crucial to Goodman's ideal of communitarianism. ideal of communitarianism. WOodcock identifies two prime areas of disagreement in anarchist philosophy; the use of violence as a revolu- tionary method and the nature and extent of organization, especially economic.7 It is understandable that violent revolution might be viewed as a plausible means of reform since anarchy has not represented a substantial power base and its suggestiOns for reform have been generally ignored. The most noted anarchists advocating violence have been Michael Bakunin and Max Stirner. Even the humane anarchist 6Horowitz, The Anarchists, p. 29. 7George Woodcock, Anarchism (New York: The World Publishing Company, Meridian Books, 1967), P. 22. 51 Emma Goldman wrote: "Does not the end justify the means: What if a few should have to perish? The many could be made free and live in beauty andcomfort."8 Rationalizing the use of violence has always been a problem, for on the one hand it is viewed as the only possible successful means available to achieve change, yet on the other hand it is directly opposed to the positive tenets of anarchist thought which uphold the rights of the individual to live as he chooses. Advocates of violence offer the argument that living happily under the State is an impossibility and that an individual's "free choice" to do so only represents the State's stranglehold over the individual's mind. By destroying the State, the individual then becomes truly free to choose. Most serious developers of anarchist theory agree that the influence of the State has corrupted free choice, but they are against threatening human life, no matter how idealistic the goal. Tolstoy, Proudhoun, Godwin, Kropotkin, WOodcock, and Goodman are revolutionaries, but in a peace- ful sense of the word. Leo Tolstoy was the first well known anarchist-pacifist, and his methods of peaceful con- frontation were to be later adopted by Ghandi as well as Civil Rights workers of the 1960's. As well as disavowing 8Horowitz, The Anarchists, p. 24, quoting Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), p. 88. 52 violence, most anarchist philosophy denounces all forms of human manipulation which is a common element of centralized State power. "Bribes," "deals," "patronage," and "payoffs" are not considered legitimate. Rather than fight a system of concentrated power with an opposing power block, anarchists suggest that citizens disavow the legality of the State and refuse to take on its yoke of domination. Anarchist philosophy does not differentiate between corrupt and non-corrupt forms of centralized power. All centralized power, decision-making, and authority is corrupting by nature, for it denies the individual his right to choose and act. The peaceful rebellion of diseffected youth of the last decade was anarchist in flavor. Slogans such as "tune in and drop out" though often in reference to a drug culture might well have been an anarchist quip. The many attempts at defining more meaningful life—styles in the form of communes and "families" were examples of peaceful anarchism. If anarchist hopes were ever realized and the State or in broader terms Institutionalism were dissolved, organi- zation, especially economic organization, would be the fore- most problem to resolve. Varying schools of anarchism disagree as to how far cooperative administration can func- tion without threatening individual independence. Hence, this area of concern has given rise to a wide spectrum of models of organization with the individual-anarchist on one 53 end to the communist or communitarian-anarchist on the other. Whether to use a medium of exchange, the criteria for wages or their equivalency, the ownership of property and goods--all represent controversial issues. We will continue by examining one economic system which has met with some modern day success in Europe. Anarcho-Syndicalism Anarcho-syndicalism is a method of industrial organization which departs from all traditional concepts of authority. Its central thesis is that it is not possible to create a hierarchy of economic value according to an individual's specific contribution to a society's economy. In other words, anarcho—syndicalist philosophy refuses to rank one person's job over another. Contrary to communism, syndicalism leaves all patterns of administra— tion which have in the past resulted in oppression and exploitation and sets out to build an organizational model based on the natural needs of man, not the interests of domination. It is held that the means of production should be the property of society held in common, and only by such an arrangement can the restricting influence of private property be removed and the resources of nature and science be used to their full extent for the benefit of humanity.9 9George Woodcock, "Syndicalism, the Industrial Expression of Anarchism," in Patterns of Anarchy, ed. Leonard Krimerman and Lewis Perry (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), p. 39. 54 Syndicalism was an important part of the working class movement in Europe during the late 1800's, especially France. It was also strong in Spain before the Civil War of 1946. Its short life was hastened by a new tactic in social revolution, the general strike. Horowitz describes its intended effect: The fusion of socialism and unionism was seen as functionally complete in the general strike. This was not viewed either as a strike for summer wages, or as a wide-spread attempt to garner political con- cessions from the State. While the possibilities of immediate gains were not denied, the essence of the general strike was to evoke the deepest class alle- giances and obligations of the workers. As economic strife between classes would become more intense, the meaning of the general strike would become manifest. The anarcho-syndicalist strike would entail direct worker participation in a broad social and economic upheaval. It would become an instrument for compelling the State to abandon its place on the historical stage to the direct asso- ciation of the wage earning class.10 Horowitz reports that the movement did not last, however, for it resulted in workers turning more and more to the State for mediation, thereby destroying its concept of autonomy. Its attempt at becoming a political force proved fatal. Anarcho-syndicalism sought to engage in mass politics while at the same time it wanted to escape the evils of political contamination. The paradox proved too great for the doctrine to resolve; and it was increasingly compelled to flee from the State, rather than defeat the State in a general contest of class wills.11 10Horowitz, The Anarchists, pp. 35-36. llIbid., p. 37. 55 Horowitz describes the syndicate as a form of union which differs from the ordinary trade union in that it aims at both economic and political reform as well as improvement in wages and working conditions. It differs also in its method of organization. The trade union has centralized a form, with authority, wealth, and privilege residing in a permanent bureaucracy. In contrast, the syndicate is organized by the workers at the place of work. The workers of each farm or factory are an autonomous unit who govern their own affairs and make all decisions regarding their work. Units are joined federally in a syndicate which serves to coordinate the actions of workers in each industry. The federal branch has, however, no authority over workers in any local branch, and cannot levy any fee, sanction, or mandate as currently occurs in trade unions. There exists no permanent bureaucracy; chosen officials elected to the federal level are frequently rotated. Governed from below, the syndicate is the purest form of democracy. Its lack of centrality gives it flexibility and promotes solidarity among its members.12 The old motives of profit and self-interest cease to dominate eConomic life; they are replaced by the incen- tive to define and create what is good for all members of society, without distinction. The wage system is also 12Woodcock, "Syndicalism, the Industrial Expression of Anarchism," p. 39. 56 abolished. No worker gets more than his colleague because tradition says his craft is worth more. "Men would get, not according to their social worth, for social worth can- not be estimated, but according to their needs, which is the only just means of sharing the goods of society,"13 explains Woodcock. This proposal is open to considerable interpreta- tion and criticism. The immediate question arises, "What constitutes need?" "Are need and want synonomous?" Here the anarchist theory of human nature (to which Goodman is in agreement), essential to all anarchist thought, attempts to answer such questions. It is assumed that a high standard of material living would be demanded by all workers, a price that no economy could withstand, but it must be remembered that intrinsic to all anarchist philosophy is the elimination of materialism as a criterion of the Good. "The sufficiency that will allow men to be free--that is the limit of the 14 This statement is anarchist demand on the free world." not based on a theory of self-denial but on the theory of naturalism. If not contaminated by the artificially culti- vated wants and needs of a materialistic society, man prefers simple pleasure such as good food and sex, friend- ship, communion with nature, meaningful work, etc. The 13Ibid., p. 42. 14Woodcock, Anarchism, p. 28. 57 GoOd Life, if freely chosen, would not then demand exces- sive material wealth,15 thereby making a stable economy possible. Though Thoreau and Tolstoy spoke from an agrarian perspective, the anarchistic theory of "natural man" is not to be construed to mean that man should return, were it possible, to the Golden Age of Agrarianism. On the con- trary, modern anarchists favor harnessing technology to work even more for man in many areas of work. Work which re- quires repetition of movement with little or no opportunity for creative input, such as assembly-line jobs, would be totally automatedas soon as technologically possible. Emphasis would be placed on producing functional products rather than the poor quality, flashy consumer goods of a materialistic society. Showy, chrome laden automobiles and washing machines with dozens of push buttons designed to become obsolete after a short period of service would be replaced by durable, dependable machinery designed to pro- vide years of service. Other areas would see a sharp decrease in automation. Children would not be processed by machines in the schools, physicians might once again get to know their patients, and the poor would be more than a welfare number. The production of some goods such as 5 . . l The naturalistic theory of human nature as pre- sented by Proudhoun and Kropotkin laid the groundwork for Goodman's more formalized theory of human nature and his many suggestions for contemporary social reform. 58 furniture, jewelry, and clothing might again become a craft, suitable to a syndicalist mode of operation. Goodman has long proposed a mixed economy in Western Society, one in which variations of syndicalism could be introduced. In many of his writings he discusses one successful modern day form of syndicalism, the "gang,” which has become an English tradition. The gang has many of the positive features of a syndicate, yet it could be compatible to a capitalist society. Though Goodman by no means infers that such an innovation into the American economy might diminish the faults of Capitalism, it does present a worthwhile alternative which might be a beginning to a redefined economy. A group of workmen agreed to complete in a certain period a certain quantity of piece—work, for which they are paid a sum of money divided equally. The capitalist provides the machinery and materials, but everything else--work rules, methods, schedule, hiring--is left to group decision. This arrangement has proved feasible in highly skilled work like building and in semi-skilled work on automobile assembly lines. The group may be half a dozen or a couple of thousand. Humanly, the arrangement has extraordinary advantages. Men exchange jobs and acquire many skills; they adjust the schedule to their convenience (or pleasures); they bring in and train apprentices; they invent labor-saving devices, since it is to their own advantage to increase efficiency; they cover for one another when sick or for special vacations. Obviously such a system, so amazingly at variance with out top-down regula— tion, timeclock discipline, labor union details and competitive spirit, is hard to build into most 59 of our industry. Yet it would suit a lot of it and make a profound difference. Where would it suit? How could it be tailored?"1 Goodman views the syndicate means of production as an excellent method to decentralize an overly centralized economy. He continues, "It is demonstrable that in many functions this (centralized) style is economically ineffi- cient, technologically unnecessary and humanly damaging."17 Goodman does not propose that we can again return to an agrarian life style, a common misinterpretation of his work. He is not opposed to centralization if it is bene- ficial to human welfare, but argues that in many areas it has been overused. "Therefore, we ought to adopt a political maxim: to decentralize where, how and how much is expedient. But where, how and how much are empirical questions; they require research and experiment."18 Anarcho-syndicalism has produced no outstanding theoreticians of its own, but its principles of worker self- organization, use of the general strike, cooperative owner- ship, and the free distribution of goods has been largely accepted by anarcho-communists such as Woodcock and Kropotkin. Its passing, says Horowitz, has transformed 16Paul Goodman, "Contemporary Decentralization," in Patterns of Anarchy, p. 384. 17 Ibid., p. 385. 18Ibid. 60 anarchism from an instrument of class politics to a doc- trine of personal moral action.19 Communistic-Anarchism Since the latter part of the past century, anarchism has taken an anarcho-communistic form as advanced by Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Anarchist com- munism views the individual as essentially a social being who can achieve full develOpment only in society, while society can benefit its members only if they are free. We foresee a state of society where the liberty of the individual will be limited by no laws, no bond-—by nothing else but his own social habits and the necessity, which everyone feels, of find- ing cooperation, support, and sympathy among his neighbors. Kropotkin predicted that communism is the evolutionary choice of free men. Many of Goodman's views were to emerge from Kropotkin's theory of human nature and definition of a communist society. Kropotkin suggested the abolition of wages and the free distribution of goods. Individual and social interests are not contradictory but complementary.21 19Horowitz, p. 37. 20Peter Kropotkin, "A Scientific Approach to Communist Anarchism,“ in Patterns of Anarchy, p. 228. 21The view is supported by John Dewey who sees the two as mutually enhancing. Their antithesis, he insists, is a false duality. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (Norwood, Mass.: The Macmillan Company, 1916), pp. 3567 357. 61 If authoritarian social institutions did not interfere, harmony would prevail. Born in Moscow in 1842, Kropotkin did field studies in geography, geology, zoology, and human collective rela- tionships. In his naturalist study of animal life in the mountainous terrain of Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria during the 1860's, Kropotkin came to disagree with the Darwinian theory that there exists a bitter struggle within a species for survival. On the contrary, Kropotkin reports: In all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution.22 He even noted that during periods of extensive hunger or deprivation the total species effected by the calamity was weakened and that "no progressive evolution of the species can be based on such periods of keen competition."23 The real significance of Kropotkin's conclusion was that it raised to him the possibility that a similar innate tendency of mutual aid might hold true for mankind as well. Kropotkin could not believe that man is so totally divorced from the rest of nature that he no longer possesses deep-seated tendencies toward cooperation. 22Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 1955), p. ix. 23 Ibid. Ill IL L I'll- 62 Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation.24 Interestingly, Kropotkin does not view mutual aid among the species as an act of love, but an innate tendency. It is not love to my neighbor-—whom I often do not know at all--which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and socia- bility which moves me. So it is also solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given Spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy--an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force 24Ibid., pp. ix, x. 63 they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the jobs they can find in social life.2 As proof of his unorthodox hypothesis, Kropotkin gives countless illustrations of small scale, voluntary, coopera- tive units such as the Hottentots in South-West Africa, I O I O 26 which have in some cases functioned for centuries. Kropotkin's conjecture that man is by nature peace- ful and cooperative runs afoul of Freud, who insists that man is by nature uncooperative and aggressive. The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbors and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure of energy. In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of them in check by psychical reaction—formation.27 Freud explains that civilization is able to exist despite man's natural aggression because of man's ability to inter- ject or internalize aggression. Without this device, man would have long ago perished. 251bid., p. xiii. 26See Chapters VII and VIII, Mutual Aid. 27Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 59. 64 There it is taken over by a portion of the ego, which sets itself over against the rest of the ego as super—ego, and which now, in the form of "conscience" is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is sub- jected to it is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment.2 Goodman agrees with Freud that aggression is intro— jected and that it is damaging to the individual, but he insists that aggression is necessary, and good when it is allowed to function as a process of growth. Kropotkin does not recognize aggression as part of man's nature; and Freud sees it only in negative terms. Goodman's theory bridges the wide gap between the two. Yes, aggression does exist but it is compatible with Kropotkin's theory of man as a cooperative being. Kropotkin blames the intervention of state power for the demise of small communal cooperative units. He denies that the concentration of power in the State represents an advanced form of civilization; instead he views it as a pitfall leading to mankind's demise. In short, to speak of the natural death of the village communities in virtue of economical laws is as grim a joke as to speak of the natural death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. The fact was simply this: The village communities had lived for over a thousand years; and where and when the peasants were not ruined by wars and exactions they steadily improved their methods of culture. But as 28Ibid., p. 70. 65 the value of land was increasing, in consequence of the growth of industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State organization, a power which it never had had under the Feudal system, it took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did its best to destroy the communal institutions.29 Here again anarchist theory conflicts with Freud who explains that the rise of social institutions embodying centralized power is in the evolution of civilization an advanced replacement of the original source of domination, the father. Freud does not address himself to anarchist theory but it is likely that he would label their simplistic cry for liberation as "naive" and not consistent with man's historically derived nature. His explanation of why men cannot simply throw off the chains of domination is a com- plex one, and considering man's long history of suffering and domination, one which should be carefully considered. The following is a brief sketch of Freud's theory of the development of civilization which explains his pessimism. In Freud's construction, the first human group was established by the enforced rule of one individual over all others. And the first person who was successful at domi— nating others, was the father; the man who successfully possessed women and sired children. Monopolizing the women for himself, he denied pleasure to his sons. The fate of sons was either one of submission to the father's 29Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, p. 236. 66 wishes, death, or establishing a new family (primal horde) by stealing a wife. For those who stayed, the burden of work shifted from the father to the sons who learned to suppress the gratification of instinctual needs. Thus the stage was set for sustained domination and the repression of sexual pleasures. The hatred felt for the despotic father was also mixed with feelings of love; ambivalent emotions were expressed in the wish to replace and to imitate the father, to identify oneself with him, with his pleasure as well as with his power.30 Primal patriarchal despotism thus became a success- ful order, but its stability was precarious for eventually the building hatred of the sons for the father resulted in his murder. It is a reasonable surmise that after the killing of the father a time followed when the brothers quarrelled among themselves for the succession, which each of them wanted to obtain for himself alone. They came to see that these fights were as dangerous as they were futile. This hard-won understanding--as well as the memory of the deed of liberation they had achieved together and the attachment that had grown up among them during the time of their exile-~led at last to a union among them, a sort of social contract. Thus there came into being the first form of a social organization accompanied by a renunciation of instinctual gratification; recognition of mutual obligations, institutions declared sacred, which would not be brok§$--in short, the beginnings of morality and law. 0Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 55. 31 Marcuse, quoting Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 67 The assassination of the father represents the supreme crime because the father established the order which created and preserved all individuals. Patriarch, father, tyrant, united sex and order, pleasure and reality, love and hatred. But the sons wanting the same thing as the father formed a new order which progressed from domination by one to domi— nation by several. "The father survives as a god in whose adoration the sinners repent so that they can continue to sin, while the new fathers secure those suppressions of pleasure which are necessary for preserving their rule and their organization of the group."32 Repression now permeates life and instinctual energy becomes available for sublima— tion in work. Freud hypothesized that the sense of guilt at having destroyed the father, thereby threatening the existence of the total group, lead to the original restoration of domina- tion. The crime against the reality principle is redeemed by the crime against the pleasure principle. This does not end the dilemma, however. The sense of guilt is sustained in spite of repeated and intensified redemption; anxiety persists because the crime against the pleasure principle is not redeemed. There is guilt over a deed that has not been accomplished: liberation.33 2Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, pp. 58-59. 33 Ibid., p. 62. 68 Freud assumes that the primal crime and its accompanying sense of guilt is reproduced throughout history. The con- flict is re—enacted through the revolt of the younger genera- tion against the older generation and established authority. In the subsequent repentance that follows, authority is re—established and glorified. In response to Freud it is argued that in the course of thousands of years the slain primal father has surely been forgotten, but Freud insists that there remains an impression of the past in unconscious memory traces.44 The gist of his argument is that civiliza- tion has a guilt produced need for domination and will con- tinually create systems of domination which act as atone- ment for the symbolic crime committed long ago. If Freud's hypothesis is true, the anarchists' dream of a free society can never be realized. Man will continue to live in frustration, desiring freedom yet crippled by a sense of guilt to achieve it. Most modern anarchists and liberal reformers do not agree with Freud's analysis. Goodman believes that social reform can be accomplished if a citi— zenry is aware of what can be, if it wills change, and has the technological means to minimize work and provide adq- quately for its physical needs. Guilt, and uncertainty are passed down from generation to generation not by "uncon- scious memory traces," but by superstitions, unrealistic 33Ibid., p. 62. 69 mores, moral codes, and expectations which fail to recognize and provide for the positive develbpment of human nature. Two of Goodman's chief criticisms of modern society were probably inspired by Kropotkin. The first is his assault on well-meaning liberals who develop large scale state and federal social programs backed by millions of dollars. Though the goals are often lofty—~curing poverty, providing job incentives, aiding the e1derly--the general result is increased dependency and inevitably alienation because the power to initiate action lies outside the self. Goodman believes that modern libersls have lost sight of the libertarian principles of individuality and liberty which once governed their actions. It is not the pursuit of humanitarian ends with which he differs, but the means to achieve those ends. Like Kropotkin Goodman endorses aid to others, but he too believes that it should be on a human scale, that is decentralized on a personal basis, and it should in no way threaten individual initiative and inde- pendence. The second criticism is aimed at social reform measures which attempt to alter human behaviors rather than the conditions responsible for causing them. Goodman is critical of both punitive movements to establish stricter laws and law enforcement as well as the current trend to cure the anti—social by means of the psychiatrist's couch. Goodman's ideas closely reflect those of Kropotkin: 70 By showing that the "struggle for existence" must be conceived not merely in its restricted sense of a struggle between individuals for the means of sub— sistence but in its wider sense of adaptation of all individuals of the species to the best conditions for the survival of the species, as well as for the great- est possible sum of life and happiness for each and all, it has permitted us to deduce the laws of moral science from the social needs and habits of mankind. It has shown us the infinitesimal part played by the natural growth of altruistic feelings, which develop as soon as the conditions of life favor their growth. It has thus enforced the opinion of social reformers as to the necessity of modifying the conditions of life for improving man, instead of trying to improve human nature by moral teachings while life works in an opposite direction.34 Although Goodman's philosophy is closely aligned to Kropotkin's, Goodman refers to himself as a community- anarchist rather than a communist-anarchist due to the con- temporary connotations of communism. Today, communism suggests the State writ large in its most centralized, omnipotent form, whereas in Kropotkin's era it represented anti-authority, decentralization, and community. 34Kropotkin, "A Scientific Approach to Anarchism," pp. 226—227. CHAPTER IV COMMUNITY VERSUS INSTITUTION AS A MODE OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The chief danger to American society at present, and to the world from-American society, is our mindless- ness induced by empty institutions. It is a kind of trance, a self-delusion of formal rightness, that affects both leaders and people.1 Traditionally the "State" has been the prime target of anarchist criticism, but modern anarchists such as Good- man now define the State more broadly to include all forms of social organization embodying the same principles of organization vis., centralization of power, hierarchy of command, bureaucracy, and role defined behavior, etc. We shall henceforth refer to all such modes of organization whether they are social, political, or economic as "institu- tional." Contemporary life has become grounded in the insti- tutional mode to such an extent that we are unaware of its impact upon us. At any given time we are unconsciously influenced by a wide variety of powerful institutions such 1Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 271. 71 72 as the School, the Church, and the State. Institutional- ism has become so synonymous with "progress" that it is difficult for most people to envision a mode of organiza- tion which could function without a rigid structure of authority, goals, and behaviors. This mind set is so imbedded that it is generally believed that without modern day institutionalism directing every facet of life from education to religion, civilization would regress to a state of barbarianism. Though the specific purposes of each institution vary there is a commonality in that each seeks to direct and control human behavior. Anarchists insist that all forms of institutionalism are incompatible with human nature, because man is by nature self regulating, and any form of organization which controls and manipulates is contrary to the positive fulfillment of man's nature. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to present the gross distinctions between the two modes of organization, and second, to establish a correlation between alienation and institutionalism. To achieve these purposes, this chapter will primarily draw from the work of Marcuse, Goodman, Presthus, and an unpublished manu- script by Marvin Grandstaff, entitled "Structural Socialization and Education." The effectiveness of an alternative to institutionalism as viable social reform depends upon how well the concept is defined. Confusion 73 often lies in assuming alternatives to a formal, pre~ established social structure would result in no structure at all. As Goodman and other anarchists such as Kropotkin point out, this idea persists under the fallacious dichotomycfi’ "structured" versus "unstructured" modes of social organiza- tion. The assumption is herein made that community forms of organization do not result in no structure and conse- quently no order, but in a different kind of structure and order, essentially one deriving its form from the nature of the function it serves.2 Emergency situations such as an automobile accident offer a good case in point. Order emerges as individuals assume responsibility in areas of competency. Passersby take on various tasks, e.g., administering first aid, directing traffic, and summoning the police and medical assistance. Humanizing the Institution Grandstaff insists that most efforts at social reform are illconceived because they seek only superficial modification of the institutional structure itself. Fromm, Silberman, and many others, known as liberal reformers, believe that if the institution is made more human, that is if it is more responsive to human needs by being more "flexible," less rigid, and more creative in its goals and 2Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 271. 74 mode of Operation, it can then function as a viable means of organization. The anarchist insists that it is mis- taken, however, to assume that the social and psychological effects of institutionalism can be countered by mere Opera- tional flexibility when the authoritative structure itself remains unchanged. Given the rigidity of our most noxious institutions we mistakenly suppose that rigidity, and not institu- tional organization itself, constitutes the enemy of our stifled personhoods.3 Grandstaff also scoffs at the notion that institu- tions can be humanized by shifting from a product to a process orientation. It is tempting to infer from this that the evil of institutions consists in their "product—orientation" in which there "are no goals." . . . the truth (is) that all social organization is rooted in purposive activity and that the difference lies not in one mode having purpose and the other none, but in the kinds of purposes there are and the role they play in the structure of the group.4 Significant Contrasts Before comparing the two modes we might first examine a commonly found example of community, the friend— ship group, and discern what its distinguishing character- istics are. To begin with, the coming together of the group is voluntary. Lacking the existence of a hierarchical 3Marvin Grandstaff, "Structural Socialization and Education," unpublished manuscript, p. II-4. 4Ibid., p. II-7. 75 authority structure, there is no strong competitive bid for office or position. Class distinctions do not exist, nor do management-employee divisions which predicate status distinctions. Relationships are open and each person is valued for his uniqueness. There is no task definition that pervades the activity of the group to impose an external structure on it--a friendship group forms out of the friendships of the members. It does not arise in order to "get something done," even though, as we all know, once formed, a working friendship group has a great capacity for getting done those things in which the group finds a mutuality of interest. The structure of the friendship group lies in the mesh of the ersons of its members and not in a design of relationships formulated before the fact and projected on the group. This is apparent when we consider that, in a friendship group, the change of a single.member can alter the character of group considerably. The group is bound together by the compatibility of the persons, by mutuality of interest, by commonality of experience and not by the tyranny of a task, the assignment of place in a designed order or the rule of law.5 Now let us compare two other groups; one which is similar in style to the friendship group, the sand-lot ball team, and one which is a "formal" group, that is one in which members must be committed to the.established purpose or product of the group, the professional ball club. Sig- nificant differences in the two modes are readily apparent. In the latter group "winning" becomes the assigned goal or task. Playing the game may or may not be enjoyed for its 5Ibid., II-S. 76 own sake. Players are forced to compete not only with their opponents for a victory but with their team members as well, for only the best players are of value to the team. Under the continual strain of competition with fellow team mates, it is difficult for long lasting, trusting relationships to develop. Those that do may be quickly severed if perfor- mance levels do not remain high, for only the professional's skill is of importance to the goals of the group. Con- versely, the sand-lot team plays the game primarily for the enjoyment it provides. The activity "playing ball" is its own reward, and winning is secondary. Although winning is still valued in the context of gaming, it is not crucial to the life of the team, or the continuation of the activity. Competition between players exists as friendly rivalry and as competition with the "self" to improve one's own skills. Friendships are free to develop because the constraints of intense competition is not an inherent factor. Motivation and Value In a discussion of extrinsically (instrumental) versus intrinsically motivated goal attainment, Dewey's remarks pertain to the above comparison. He insists that when an activity is undertaken only as an instrument to an external goal (e.g., winning), it is static and insignifi- cant. 77 In contrast with fulfilling some process in order that activity may go on, stands the static character of an end which is imposed from without the activity. It is always conceived of as fixed; it is something to be attained and possessed. When one has such a notion, activity is a mere unavoidable means to something else; it is not significant or important on its own account. As compared with the end it is but a necessary evil; something which must be gone through before one can reach the object which is alone worthwhile. In other words, the external idea of the aim leads to a separation of means from end, while an end which grows up within an activity as plan for its direction is always both ends and means . . . .6 The distinction also becomes one of intrinsic value versus extrinsic or instrumental value. Dewey describes the difference: Intrinsic values are not objects of judgment, they cannot be compared, or regarded as greater and less, better or worse. They are invaluable; and if a thing is invaluable, it is neither more nor less so than any other invaluable.7 Higher education is a good example of an instru- mental value in society today. Though originally the formal learning experience was undertaken for its intrinsic value, that is the joy and personal satisfaction of the learning experience itself, it has become the means for obtaining a passport to the job market. In this sense its value is only extrinsic or instrumental to goals external to the process itself. The communitarian concept of education differs greatly. Instead of a ritual of activity to be endured and 6Dewey, Democracy and Education, pp. 123, 124. 71bid., pp. 279, 280. 78 completed as a means to an end, education is valued in and of itself for its content and form is derived from the needs, experiences, and interests of the learner. Within this con- cept, education is an integrated part of the life of the learner, and it qualitatively enhances and expands contact with the environment. This concept of education is closely aligned to Dewey's: Since education is not a means to living, but is identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which they are ingredients.8 The-crux of the difference is that institutionalized acti- vities frequently become valued instrumentally as means to an end, e.g., playing ball to win, or becoming educated to ensure a high paying job; whereas communitarian activities tend to be valued in and of themselves. The Compatibility of Ends and Means In other instances of institutional organization, the purposes and goals of the institution may be desirable, but the means of goal attainment may be humanely objection- able and/or incompatible to the goals themselves. For example, preserving the peace, manufacturing goods, and providing free public health service may be viewed as worth- while goals; however, extinguishing human life, manning an 81bid., pp. 239-240. 79 assembly line, and herding people in and out of welfare health clinics are means which are destined to fall far short of their desired goals. Dewey insists that means and ends must be harmonious: The only way in which we can define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in which it terminates--as one's aim in shooting is the target. But we must remember that the object is only a mark or sign by which the mind specifies the activity one desires to carry out. Strictly speaking, not the target, but hitting the target is the end in view; one takes aim by means of the target, but also by the sight on the gun. The different objects which are thought of are means of directing the activity. Or, if it is the rabbit he wants, it is not rabbit apart from his activity, but as a factor in activity; he wants to eat the rabbit, or to show it as evidence of his marksmanship--he wants to do something with it. The doing with the thing, not the thing in isolation, is his end.9 7 Role Behavior and Self One of the most significant differences generated by the two modes is that of "role" and "self" oriented behavior. Psychologically and sociologically we interact with our environment in two ways; one as an agent or actor (role), and the other as our own unique personality (self).10 Grandstaff offers a clear interpretation of the two constructs: 91bid., p. 105. 10Though the concept "self" is the subject of much current literature (Sheelis, Ericson, Kenniston, Perls, May, to name a few), it is not yet recognized as scientifically verifiable. Hence, the counterargument is made that there exists no "self" but instead an integration of overlapping roles. This thesis takes the position that a difference in orientation does exist. 80 The concept of 'self' as I intend it, is not that of an autonomous 'personhood,‘ with which we are born, which is, strictly speaking, 'innate.‘ Rather, I mean by 'self' that entity that is formed through the whole history of our reaction to and with the world. It is not generated wholly from our private experience. It is our 'real' personhood, the referrent for such common expressions as 'I am not myself today.‘ It is more than the totalities of the roles we play and the behaviors we perform. It is, even, sometimes contrary to role-directed behavior. 'I (the self) didn't want to do that, but I (the subject of a role) had to do it.‘ The self is manifested (when it is not suppressed by a role) as the assertion of personal interest, need and preference in behavior. By 'role' on the other hand, I intend patterns of behavior that are defined outside the person and presented to him as expecta- tions of behavior. Sometimes the role ('child,‘ 'father,' 'good student,‘ 'businessman,‘ 'athlete,’ 'housewife') is presented directly as when some institution prepares a 'code of conduct,‘ but more usually it is presented indirectly. The existence of a mode of social organization which demands codified behaviors at the expense of expression of the "self"—-often leads to personal conflict. . . . at times the demands of the role and the impulses of what I name "myself" are emphatically at odds--the statement, "I (self) didn't want to, but I (role) had to“ (or the other way around) makes a perfectly clear kind of sense to me. All I am able to suppose, on the basis of this experience, is that there are two distinct sorts of personality structures operable, one reactive, drawing its substance from signals external to me, the other proactive, taking its formation from the signals internal to my own unique history and organization of experience.12 Role behavior is a process which begins most inno- cently in early childhood. Perhaps the earliest learned llGrandstaff, II—12. lzIbid., II-29. 81 roles are those of "mother," or "father," as practiced by the young child. By the time we step into our adult roles of parent, teacher, citizen, etc., we have become adept at recognizing clues which indicate the appropriateness of our behavior in a particular role. Most institutions have a low toleration for behaviors which diverge from established role definitions and frequently resort to censure or ouster if deviant behavior is not modified. For example, the teacher who allows her pupils physical mobility within the school setting or encourages open, honest dissent among her students soon learns that his/her behavior is not within the prescribed institutional limits. The teacher as "self" conflicts with the teacher as "role." It is quite logical that the institution holds "self" at bay, otherwise, the structure and operation of the institution would be challenged. In modern society role theory is generally viewed as a benign, sociological construct from which to explain human personlity and activity, but this explanation fails to denote the detrimental effects that such institutional roles have on the personality. Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman insist that a totally functioning self is essential to the well being of the human organism and any sacrifice thereof is detrimental in its effects. 82 It is a matter of the identifications and aliena- tions of the self: If a man identifies with his forming self, does not inhibit his own creative excitement and reaching toward the coming solution; and conversely, if he alienates what is not organically his own and therefore cannot be vitally interesting, but rather disrupts the figure/back- ground, then he is psychologically healthy, for he is exercising his best power and will do the best he can in the difficult circumstances of the world. But on the contrary, if he alienates himself and because of false identifications tries to conquer his own spontaneity, then he creates his life dull, confused, and painful.13 Role Dysfunctions In many instances the individual finds himself caught between conflicting roles. The soldier in combat, forced to kill or maim, finds a huge discrepancy between soldier and/or father and Christian, and unless he is able to reconcile these differences through an intricate process of rationalization, he suffers from guilt and mental anguish. Presthus uses the term "ambivalent" to describe the individual caught in the dilemma of personal conflict. Within an institutional setting, such as a big business corporation, the ambivalent is one "who can neither renounce claims for status and power, nor play the disciplined role that would enable him to achieve such goals."14 13Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, Gestalt Therapy, p. 235. 14Robert Presthus, The Organizational Society (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 152 83 The ambivalent's reaction may be clearer if we think of the organization as a system of highly circumscribed roles. Such roles are partly the result of personal accommodations to the bureau- cratic situation, worked out in the context of its systems of authority, status and small groups. Since satisfactory accommodations depend in part upon the number of behavioral alternatives avail- able, this situation limits the probability that idiosyncratic individual needs will be met . . . . In the ambivalent's case, the bureaucratic situa- tion evokes role strain because it tends severely to prescribe and to limit the range of accommoda- tions. Such conditions violate his permissive values and expectations, which resist the organiza- tion's claims for order and consistency.15 Most institutions usually overcome ambivalence and obtain loyalty and dedication from their members through a system of rewards which pay members for discharging a role. The payment may be in terms of a salary, an honor, power or prestige. As the individual becomes more dependent upon the renumeration provided him for successfully discharging a role, the more a part of the institution he becomes. The performance of the role becomes the way of profiting from the operation of the institution and the ”value" of the role and the institution become identified with the "value" of the reward, so that, for instance, to value eternal life is coextensive with valuing the church. The preservation of the institutional structure, then becomes a continuing concern of the subjects of the institution--even a primary concern, so that faced with a decision between preserving the institution and one's well- being, or even life, some people will choose to preserve the institution.1 15Ibid., p. 265. 16Grandstaff, II-20. 84 History has recorded many instances of individuals choosing institutional preservation over their own lives--from Christians bravely marching to the lions' dens during the Crusades to Kamikaze pilots flying suicide missions during WOrld War II. The greater the institutional reward, what- ever the form may be, the greater is the identification with the institution~and the more threatening to the "self," even more threatening than death itself, is any jeopardy to institution. Legitimizing the Institution Institutions do much in the way of public relations to legitimize their existence and to rationalize their use of authority. The more successful this rationalization is the more stable the existing power structure since the less chance there is of a serious challenge to it. Organizations try to establish their legitimacy by rationalizing authority in terms of ethical and ideological principles. All organizations, of course, strive to find some basis other than sheer power for their authority. Evocative symbols and rituals, usually idealistic, patriotic, or "service—oriented,” are enlisted to inspire loyalty to the organization. If loyalty is to be merited, the values, motive, and routine behavior of the organization must be seen as selfless; if possible the organization must appear as the embodiment of certain universal ideals that are beyond criticism.17 Another means of achieving total acceptance is to put forth a "charismatic" model, who is presumed to have 17Presthus, p. 141. 85 infallible judgment and near magical powers. This ration- alization of control when successful is a most dangerous one, for it encourages the rise of demogogues and tyrants by diminishing the power of the people to effect their own lives. As Goodman sardonically quips, "The more powerless people are, the more they put their faith in princes; and the more they put their faith in princes, the more power- 18 When institutional identification is less they are." complete, regardless of the means, the individual becomes synonymous with the role--its expected behaviors, values, and goals. This adjustment is personally stifling and always socially dangerous, in terms of preserving a free society, for the individual loses all critical awareness. Goodman insists over and over again that identifying with institutions is a typical response to feeling power- less: ". . . by identifying with big symbols and institu- tions peOple have a conviction that they are powerful, that they have 'mastered' Nature, that technology administration, 19 How the atrocities and plain bullying are omnicompetent." of the Nazi regime of World War II could have possibly been committed can better be understood within the context of Goodman's words. 18Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 91. 19Ibid. 86 Marcuse addresses himself to the widespread identi- fication with institutional control. He explains that when surplus-repression (denial of the self) is complete, the individual then operates quite contentedly under the existing societal performance principle (pre-defined code of values and behavior). The instinctual energy thus withdrawn does not accrue to (unsublimated) aggressive instincts because its social utilization (in labor) sustains and even enriches the life of the individual. The restrictions imposed upon the libido appear as the more rational, the more universal they become, the more they permeate the whole of society. They Operate on the individual as external objective laws and as an internalized force; the societal authority is absorbed into the "conscience" and into the uncon- scious of the individual and works as his own desire, morality, and fulfillment. In the "normal" develop— ment the individual lives his repressive "freely" as his own life; he desires what he is supposed to desire; his gratifications are profitable to him and to others; he is reasonable and Often even exuberantly happy. This happiness, which takes place part-time during the few hours of leisure between the working days or working nights, but sometimes also during work, enables him to continue his performance, which in turn perpetuates his labor and that of others. His erotic performance is brought in line with his societal performance. Repression disappears in the grand objective order of things which rewards more or less adequately the complying individuals and, in doing so, reproduces more or less adequately society as a whole.2 The Rationalization of Authority The implementation of authority offers still another source of contrast. Institutional authority is based on a 20Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, pp. 41-42. 87 relatively stable hierarchical arrangement, flowing from the top to the bottom, and knowledge or competency is not necessarily a requisite for holding a position in that hierarchy. Once assent is begun up the ladder of control, the assumption is made that the ascriber is competent.21 As Grandstaff suggests, "we can be, and.sometimes are, governed by fools and Charlatans, just because they have the office and, with it, the authority of the office."22 In contrast to the aforementioned is the communi- tarian concept of authority; i.e., authority grounded in expertise or the ability to conceptualize, perform, or give direction to a specific function or task. With competence as a basis, authority is free to move horizontally from person to person, depending upon the nature of the task. There is minimal danger.of an oligarchy developing since there exists no stable authority structure. Two examples come to mind which illustrate the con- trasting bases of authority. One is the school faculty meeting in which the principal acts as the focal point for discussion. It is he who sets up the meeting agenda, acts as parliamentarian, and holds final decision making power. 21The fallacy of this assumption is well exemplified in a recent book entitled The Peter Principle, the main point being that holders of positions ofauthority and influence tend to rise to their level of incompetency. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle (New York: William Morrow and Company,*1969). 22Grandstaff, II-15. 88 He encourages discussion of issues or topics, but faculty members soon become aware of his sentiments and are care- ful not to pass the bounds of acceptable dissent. The underlying assumption is that the principal, by the authority of his office, has the wisdom to make decisions concerning the lives of children, teachers, and parents. To disagree is to openly challenge that sanctioned authority and to be perceived as a threat to the smooth functioning of the organization. The administrator's expertise is seldom questioned--expertise does not become an issue as long as the position of authority is acquired by legiti- mately prescribed means. If we look at the same faculty group meeting informally after a college class or over a coffee or beer, we find a marked change in the nature of the group. Dis- cussion is lively, often intense, and heightened by loud exclamations and bodily gestures. A variety of opinions are expressed on numerous topics. Each contribution is weighed according to its credibility in light of the knowledge and experience of other group members. Some members of the group tend to be more influential than others, which is to be expected. The difference, however, between the respect given an individual in the first group as compared to the second is that of "assigned" authority versus "earned" authority. The former comes with the office; the latter is achieved. 89 Group Discipline Within the institution there exists a code of rules, laws, and punishments designed for the purpose of control- ling behavior. The code is enforced by the hierarchy, the union, or a special regulatory committee composed of institutional members. Just like goals and means, behavioral controls are external to the members composing the group, for they exist prior to and apart from their membership. The enforcement of discipline within a community, is less formalized--no formal code may even exist--and is viewed as both an individual and group responsibility. If rules or laws are formulated, they are done so through group con- census or agreement and readily open to revision. Grand- staff gives a somewhat idealistic but useful interpretation of discipline within the community. It is, in the truest sense, selfédiSinline, that is, discipline that arises from the person's own evaluation of the appropriateness of his acts and that shapes action in accord with those evaluations. The individual regulates his own behavior because to fail to do so is to endanger an activity or a project that he himself values. If the activity of the group has intrinsic worth, then discipline arises out of commitment to that activity rather than out of fear of some external agent, or even out of reliance on the external source of reward. There is a sharp contrast, then, between the enforced discipline that characterizes institutions and the self-discipline that operates in community.23 23Ibid., II-18, 19. 90 Size and Longevity_ There, too, exists differences in size and longevity. Institutions tend to be large, which prevents total group interaction in the sense of meaningful dialogue. On the other hand, communities tend to be small enough that face- to-face communication between all members is possible. Since it is from the ongoing relationships between all persons that the activity and goals of the group are defined, personalized communication is a necessity. If a community group grew too large to function to the satisfaction of all members, it is likely that splinter groups would form. The reason for this is that: The "self," a much more complex thing than a "role," must have an arena that allows time for its emergence, that incorporates a diverse enough array of activi- ties for its many dimensions to operate and that includes few enough other selves that all may come into play.24 _ This is not to suggest that all small groups are by nature communitarian in spirit. Small groups may be organized institutionally as well, but the smaller the group the greater the possibility it will be of a communitarian nature, and the larger the group the less likely it will be communitarian. Institutions tend also to be relatively permanent in comparison with communities. It is easily understood that if a community group derives its vitality from the 24Ibid., II-19. 91 cooperative interaction of its members and that membership shifts, the direction of the group will change or the group may well disintegrate. The institution is not subject to such a breakdown since, as has already been noted, people are used interchangedly in various roles; "x” can easily be replaced by "y" or "z". The purpose of the institution remains unchanged even though membership changes. The Origin of Alienation Our discussion will now return to Marcuse's theory of alienation which establishes a parallel between the rise of alienation and today's social embodiment of the per- formance principle, the institution. The validity of this hypothesis rests upon the acceptance of Freud's construct of the origin of civilization, and Marcuse's extension of it. i To recap, Freud suggests that the history of man's civilization is a history of repression, for survival necessitated the death of man's unrestrained quest for instinctual gratification (Eros). Uncontrolled Eros had proven destructive; preservation of the Species demanded that it be harnessed. Thus, the pleasure principle gave way to the reality principle, that of putting aside momentary pleasure to pursue those life sustaining activi- ties which would ensure security and preservation. For his own survival man struck a compromise, and as a result 92 civilization was born. WOrk, in the form of providing food, shelter, and clothing, ensured preservation of the species; and although it was undesirable and painful, it was not in its initial forms alienating because of the direct relationship to the purpose it served. Man tilled the soil, cleared the land, and hunted for his own personal survival and that of his offspring. Marcuse explains that alienation emerged with the advent of two imposed conditions; the domination of labor by an external force, and later, the specialization of labor. Under a system of domination, work no longer repre- sented a function defined by the individual and related to his personal needs, but became instead a function applied according to the dictates of an external source of authority. Feudalism of medieval times presented a very early form of institutionalized work.y Labor was still the means to buy a measure of safety and security, but it now became a commodity, procured at the discretion of those holding economic power. This trend was significant in the history of man's oppression, for from that time on self- regulation as an operating reality principle was lost. For the vast majority of the population, the scope and mode of satisfaction are determined by their own labor; but their labor is work for an apparatus which they do not control, which operates as an independent power to which individuals must submit if they want to live. And it becomes the more alien the more specialized the division of labor becomes. Men do not live their own lives but perform pre-established 93 functions. While they work, they do not fulfill theirzgwn needs and faculties but work in aliena- tion. Domination as a Necessity to Civilization. Freud contends that unhappiness is inescapble since domination is a requisite for assuring that work necessary for survival be undertaken: "necessity alone, the advantage 26 It is of work in common will not hold them together." here that Marcuse and Goodman part company with Freud. Marcuse insists that a non-repressive reality principle, one which does not negate work as a perogative of continued existence, but which negates human existence as an instru- ment of labor is Compatible with human nature and survival of the species.27 Freud's correlation, instinctual repres- sion--socially useful labor--civilization, could thus be transformed to "instinctual liberation--socially useful 25Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 41. 26 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 66. 27To be sure, every form of society, every civiliza- tion has to exact labor time for the procurement of the necessities and luxuries of life. But not every kind and mode of labor is essentially irreconcilable with the pleasure principle. The human relations connected with work may "provide a very considerable discharge of libidinal compo- nent impulses, narcissistic, aggressive, and even erotic" (Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 34 note). The irrecon- cilable conflict is not between work (reality principle and Eros (pleasure principle), but between alienated labor (per- formance principle) and Eros (Bros and Civilization, p. 43 note). 94 28 The prevalent instinctual repression, work--civilization." (surplus repression) has resulted not from a necessity of labor, but from a Specific social organization of labor imposed by the interests of domination. Contrary to Freud, Marcuse argues that the elimination of surplus repression would not eliminate labor but the organization of human existence into an instrument of labor.29 The Need for Re-evaluation If we accept Marcuse's theory that alienation is a product of domination, through today's repressive social reality, institutionalization, then we should be critically re-evaluating institutionalism as an appropriate mode of organization. This is not the case, however, for instead of seriously questioning the institutional mode, the assumption 28Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 140. Goodman refers to over centralizatiOn (Of which institutionalism is a farm) as our contemporary form of excessive repression. He too vehemently argues that we can alter our social structure: "Thus, both the empty rhetoric and the absence of concrete remedies have created the impression that the growing cen- tralization is historically inevitable, because of technical advance, increase of population, or increase of wealth. And nowadays, a philosopher like Jacques Ellul holds that the progress technique and the dehumanizing effects of over- centralization are identical and entirely beyond human control; he finally finds no distinction between 'technology' and the method of political and social organization; in our times, there is no alternative way of life. But I think he is him- self suffering from the brainwashing that he accurately describes. In my opinion, the sense of historical inevit- ability is the result of the lack of political attention and not the cause of it" (Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 73). 29Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 140. 95 is being made more frequently that any social objective can best be accomplished by it, whether it be work, play, education, religion, or human welfare. It is true that the institutional model has enjoyed many practical successes. It has aided us in achieving the highest standard of material living thus far known to civilization, for the production and distribution and Of goods best lend themselves to a fairly permanent, stable, institutionalized form of organi- zation. We have erred in assuming that all areas of human endeavor suit this particular mode of organization and in neglecting the human costs it has extracted. As the growing multitude of social critics suggest, i.e., Galbraith, Marcuse, Illich, Reich, and Goodman, there are many areas of social endeavor which have already proven unsuitable to the institutional mode. We developed little great art despite the intervention of institutions into the arts; we have few statesmen, for politicians have exchanged image consciousness for moral conscience; and we have little citizenry in the sense of active, moral agents, concerned patriots having been exchanged for apathetic consumers. We need only look at our mounting social problems--war, drug abuse, street and white collar crime, mental illness (of which alienation is a substantial factor), poverty, racial conflict, pollution, and corruption in government--to realize that our economic successes have been equaled by our social failures. 96 The question is not one of devising the right institutional program or humanizing the institution as modern liberals suggest, for the bureaucratic institutional structure by nature necessitates the establishment of rules and procedures which preclude the individual from effecting his own desires on the behavior of the institution. The stifling of initiative and creativity is not merely a by- product but is a requisite for operation. As was demon- strated in Chapter II, the self regulating organism is dependent upon an environment that fosters spontaneity, aggression, and initiation. Dysfunctions such as alienation can only be eliminated by creating alternative modes of social organization, modes which aid man in fulfilling his nature. CHAPTER V SCHOOLING: AN INSTITUTIONAL FORM OF DOMINATION In advanced countries, a chief cause--perhaps the chief cause--of alienation of the young has been the school systems themselves. It is ironical. The purpose of education is to help each youngster find his calling, the work in the community that fulfills him and, as Luther said, justifies him; yet we go to extraordinary effort and expense to provide schools that .eStrange him, that convince him that he has no calling and no community, and that nobody pays attention to him. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: one, to establish the case that "schooling" is an institutional form of domination which is alienating in its effects; and two, to present through the work of Paul Goodman, alternative, modes of educating the young, which contribute more posi- tively to human growth and well being. Goodman has stated that "the hard task of education is to liberate and strengthen a youth's initiative, and at the same time to see to it that he knows what is necessary to cope with the on-going activities and culture of society, so that initiative can be relevant."2 He continues that it lGoodman, New Reformation, p. 67. 2Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 140. 97 98 is absurd, however, to assume that this task can be accom- plished by so much sitting in a box facing front, manipu- lating symbols at the direction of a teacher or administra- tor. Such a practice lends itself better to regimentation 3 and brainwashing rather than education. We have, he declares, confused schooling with education. Schooling: A Deterent to Education Goodman's attacks upon modern schooling grows out of his belief that human growth, the underlying principie of all educational endeavor, can only occur within conditions fostering self-regulation, that is, conditions whereby the individual in response to a given need can initiate action, make good contact, destructure and assimilate experience. As schooling fails to provide opportunities for self regulation, so does it also fail to provide for education. Let me prOpose, rather, that social engineering, and any teaching machine, are uneducational in principle. They try, according to somebody else's ideas, to prestructure a kind of behavior, learning, that can be discriminating, graceful, and energetic only if the organism itself creates its own structure as it goes along.4 Instead of a setting in which the child can grow, the schools operate as custodial institutions much like jails and insane asylums designed to mold behavior into benign 3Ibid. 4Goodman, New Republic, p. 76. 99 conformity.5 Being a good citizen is doing homework; apprenticeship is passing tests for jobs; sexual initiation is high school dating; rites of passage are getting diplomas. Crime is breaking school windows, and rebellion is sitting in on the dean. The Seventh Century monkish invention of bringing a bit of Rome to wild shepherds is now used as universal social engineering. Goodman shared Dewey's hope that the schools would be a community somewhat better than society and serve as a lever for social change. Instead, he believes, they cater to the worst of society-—increasing absent minded production and consumption--and act as a means of keeping youth off the job market.6 Goodman bitterly denounces the schools' lack 5Holt, in The Underachieving School, describes many of the incidental negative behaviors and attitudes "taught" by the schools. "He learns many other things. He learns that to be wrong, uncertain, confused, is a crime . . . he learns to dodge, bluff, fake, cheat. He learns to be lazy. . . . He learns that in real life you don't do anything unless you are bribed, bullied, or conned into doing it, that nothing is worth doing for its own sake, or that if it is, you can't do it in school. He learns to be bored, to work with a small part of his mind, to escape from the reality around him into daydreams and fantasies-—but not fantasies like those of his pre-school years, in which he played a very active part" (John Holt, The Underachieving SchoOl [New York: Pitman Publishing Company, 1969], p. 19). 6Illich refers to the "hidden curriculum" of schools, which he insists do more ultimately to influence the learner than the official curricula. Illich writes "in a basic sense, schools have ceased to be dependent on the ideology professed by any government or market organization. Other basic institutions might differ from one country to another: family, party, church, or press. But everywhere the school system has the same structure, and everywhere its hidden curriculum has the same effect. Invariably, it shapes the 100 of integrity: "It is said that our schools are geared to 'middle class values,‘ but this is a false and misleading use of terms. The schools less and less represent any human values, but simply adjustment to a mechanical system."7 He insists that this need not be the case, however, for there exists a natural cohesion between societal and educational needs. The schools are the logical place to deal with problems facing every advanced country of the world, such as how to cope with high industrialism and technology, how to live in rapidly growing cities and prevent them from becoming urban sprawl, how to have a free society in mass conditions, and how to make the industrial system good for something rather than a machine running for its own sake.8 In agreement with Dewey Goodman believes that the schools could teach the young to live creatively in a consumer who values institutional commodities above nonpro- fessional ministration of a neighbor." Ivan Illich, Deschool- ing Society (New York: Harper and Row, Harrow Books, 1970), p. v. 7Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 21. 8Although he specifies no particular agency or institution as primarily responsible, Toffler, in Future Shock, urges that we begin to establish goals of technology rather than to continue pursuing blindly unharnessed technology: "The moment is right for the formation in each of the high—technology nations of a movement for total self- review, a public self—examination aimed at broadening and defining in social, as well as merely economic, terms, the goals of 'progress'" (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock [New York: Random House, Bantam Books, 1970], p. 478). 101 rapidly changing world by practical learnings in science and technology within a democratic setting. The Rise of Modern Schooling Although Goodman is Opposed to schooling as it has now evolved, he applauds the original Jefferson-Madison con- ception of compulsory education, because it incorporated individual and social needs. It was Jefferson's belief that peOple had to be literate and informed in libertarian polici- cal history in order to intelligently participate in and preserve a free society. The children of polygot immigrants needed to be socialized, to be taught standard English in order that they could contribute their skills to a growing nation which needed them and offered to them innumerable opportunities. The unpretentious curriculum included English, penmanship, spelling, and arithmetic.9 After the Civil War, compulsory education continued to be important due to the rise of industrialism and the high rate of immigration. Schooling was still looked upon as a means to moral excellence and economic success. It was not, however, a trap. Of the 94% who did not finish high school in 1900, a wide variety of life Opportunities still existed, from business to politics.10 Today the context in which compulsory education operates is entirely different. 9Goodman,New Reformation, p. 74. 10 Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 20. 102 Although legal compulsory attendance ends at 16 years, in reality it is necessary to obtain at least one college degree in order to be employable in nearly any area of worthwhile work. There is plenty of social mobility, except precisely for the ethnic minorities who are our main concern as drop- outs. Ambition with average talent meets with increasing stratification; those without relevant talent, or with unfortunate backgrounds, cannot even survive in decent poverty.ll Schooling as a Requisite to Employment Goodman urges that we drop formal schooling require- ments for most jobs and return instead to learning appren- ticeships. The average job in General Motors, with the advent of automation requires about three weeks of training for those who have no education at all. In the Army and Navy fairly complicated skills such as repairing llKenneth Clark in Dark Ghetto discusses how prejudice coupled with unrealiStic job requirements serve to make crime the only possible means to livelihood for scores of ghetto residents. "The overt delinquent, the acting-out rebel, on the other hand, seeks his salvation in defiant, aggressive, and in the end self-destructive forms" (Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto [New York: Harper and Row, Harper Torchbooks, 19691, p. 13). Elliot Liebow, from his study of street corner men in Harmem, Tally's Corner, draws the same conclusion regarding the unavailabiIity of sub-sistent paying jobs. "A man's chances for working regularly are good only if he is willing to work for less than he can live on, and sometimes not even then" (Elliot Liebow, Tally's Corner [Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1967]. PP. 50-5I). 103 communications equipment are learned in a year on the job, often by near illiterates.12 At first, no doubt, it was a good thing for wild shepherds to have to sit still for a couple of hours and pay strict attention to a foreign language, penmanship, and spelling. The total strangeness of what they learned made the halting deliberate academic process the only one possible, as one learns nonsense syllables by small doses and review. And mostly it was only aspiring clerics who were schooled. By a historical accident, the same academic method later became the way of teaching the bookish part of a couple of other learned professions, law and medicine. There is no essential reason why law and medicine are not better learned by apprentice- ship in real practice, but the bookish was clerical and therefore scholastic, and (I guess) any special education containing abstract principles was part of the system of mysteries, therefore clerical, and therefore scholastic.13 The academic disposition, says Goodman, is a most beautiful one, but, he argues, it is 292 for everyone. In fact, he concurs with James Conant's figure that only about 15% are academically talented and Should pursue extended formal education.14 To verify this, we need only visit academia. Boredom, cheating, apathy, alienation, and truancy are all symptoms of the unwilling learner. Most students endure schooling because they have no choice; others 12Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 54. See, too, the report of "Sweeney's miracle," in Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1968), pp. 3—4. 13 Goodman, New Reformation, p. 73. 14Ibid., p. 86. 104 give up and drop out.15 Because of this "hoax of schooling" many, many youngsters and adults are never allowed the opportunities to meet their potential. Reforming the School Because Goodman's concept of education is grounded in intrinsic motivation, he would have us eliminate grades, 16 As is testing and other extrinsic rewards of schooling. now often the case, students measure the worth of their schooling experience not by the satisfaction of the process but by the end results of a test score or final grade. This is anathema to growth and development of the individual nature. The "self" becomes defined by the expectations and rewards bestowed by others, thus leading to the commonly found identity crisis of post-adolescence. Testing encourages the memorization of facts rather than the assimilation of material. It is generally the recall of information that is rewarded, regardless of whether real understanding, in the sense of perceiving relationships, applying information, or experiencing effects first hand, has occurred. 15Holt favors discontinuing compulsory education because it is not in "the best interests" of all concerned (The Underachievinngchool, p. 182). l6Holt agrees that education results from internal or self—motivation: "Education is something a person gets for himself, not that which someone else gives or does to him" (Ibid., p. 4). 105 Within the schooling context, Goodman sanctions far more overt sexual expression than currently exists. Because sexual desire is a natural and spontaneous interest, its supression blocks the ability to fulfill secondary or higher needs.17 My own view, for what it’s worth, is that sexuality is lovely, there cannot be too much of it, it is self-limiting if it is satisfactory, and satisfaction diminishes tension and clears the mind for attention and learning. Therefore, sexual expression should be approved in and out of season, also in school, and where necessary made the subject of instruction. But whether or not this view is correct, it is certainly more practical than the apparent attempt of the schools to operate as if sexual drives simply did not exist. When, on so crucial an issue, the schools act a hundred years out of date, they are crucially irrelevant.l8 Providing Alternatives Goodman insists that reform can best be accom- plished by abandoning our present system of compulsory schooling and replacing it instead with a wide variety of alternative educational paths. I agree that we ought to spend more public money on education. And where jobs exist and there is need for technical training, the corporations ought to spend more money on apprenticeships. We are an affluent society and can afford it. And the 17Goodman adheres to a basic hierarchy of need ful- fillment. Needs such as those for food, shelter, safety, and sex must be satisfied before the organism can devote his full attention to higher needs, such as intellectual curiosity. Goodman ascribes to Bertrand Russell's statement, "Let them copulate so we can get on with mathematics." 18Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, pp. 27-28. 106 conditions of modern life are far too complicated for independent young spirits to get going on their own. They need some preparation, though probably not as much as is supposed; but more important, they need various institutional frameworks in which they can try out and learn the ropes. Nevertheless, I would not give a penny more to the present school administrators. The situation is this: to make the present school set-up even tolerable, not positively damaging--e.g., to cut the elementary class size to 20 or to provide colleges enough to diminish the frantic competition for places-- will require at least doubling the present school budgets. I submit that this kind of money should be spent in other ways.19 He suggests that we experiment with different kinds of schools, e.g., the mini-school, no school at all for some, the city as school, farm schools, apprenticeships, guided travel, work camps, little theaters, local newspapers, and community service. The commonality of most of these alternatives is that they have a purpose or function aside from educating the young, that is they are about something real, and it is from real situations, Goodman insists, that children are educated.20 "Incidental education" is the term Goodman uses to describe learning as a natural function of community inter- action. He aligns it with the intent and spirit of Dewey's progressive education movement before it became bastardized by the schools. 19Ibid., p. 59. 20Holt, The Underachieving School, pp. 11-12, also makes this point: "What we must remember about works is that they are like freight cars; they may carry a cargo of meaning, of associated, nonverbal reality, or they may not." 107 To carry on a society, I have been arguing, most transmission can be accomplished by incidental education. The physical environment and social culture force themselves on us, and the young are bound to grow up to them well or badly. Whatever is going on always fundamentally determines the curriculum in formal schooling; and if there is no schooling at all, it is the focus of children's attention and interest anyway, it is what is there. Dewey's maxim is a good one: there is no need to bother about curriculum, for whatever a child turns to is potentially educative and, with good manage- ment, one things leads to another. Even skills that are considered essential prerequisites, like reading, will be learned spontaneously in normal urban and suburban conditions.2 The incidental process better suits the nature of learning for a wide variety of topics because the young can see cause and effects relationships as they really exist, rather than through the eyes of a textbook. Also, the young incidental learner, for which reality is often complex, can in his own time, according to his own interest and initiative, incorporate learning experiences as part of his being. He is not forced to suffer the embarrassment of being expected to understand that which is beyond him, nor is he subject to boredom or daydreaming due to the unreal nature of learning experiences in a school setting. To illustrate the potential effectiveness of incidental learning, Goodman analyses the process of learning to speak. Speaking, which involves the use of signs, acquiring a vocabulary, and the mastery of syntax, with near 21Goodman, New Reformation, p. 104. 108 infinite variability in sentence structure and form, is a difficult intellectual achievement. Yet, nearly all children succeed very well, no matter what the class or culture. Children learn to speak as a matter of course, without trauma or failures, because learning conditions are optimal: speech is related to items or activities of interest, it is pre- sented by caring adults, and there exists the freedom to try out sounds without fear of interference or reprisal. If by contrast, speaking were taught by academic methods, Goodman phantasizes that the results would be much different. Speaking would be a curricular subject abstracted from the web of activity and reserved only for certain times of the day. It would not spring spontaneously from the child's immediate needs but would instead be taught according to a teacher's vision of the child's future needs. The rational- ization would probably be "You must learn to speak in order to go to college and get a good job." Lessons in speaking would be graded according to difficulty; monosyllables would precede polysyllables and using sentences would come last. Goodman predicts: The results of speaking instruction would closely parallel that of reading instruction found in the schools today. Being continually called on, corrected, tested, and evaluated to meet a standard in a group, some children would become stutterers. Others would devise a phony system of apparently 22Ibid., p. 93. 109 speaking in order to get by; the speech would mean nothing. Others would balk at being processed and would purposely become stupid. Some of these would get remedial courses. Others would play hooky and go to special infant jails.23 As in learning to speak, Goodman explains that most people who learn to read and write fluently have done so on their own with their own choice of materials, whether trade books, comic books, food labels or street signs. He insists that the self-motivated reader is far superior to the externally motivated reader because the former continues to read, whereas the coerced learner turns off to reading and is left with only a "vestigial skill." The irony of this situation is that most children would learn to read anyway, and it is the schools who sabotage the process by their interference. According to some neurophysiologists, given the exposure to written code in modern urban and sub- urban conditions, any emotionally normal child in middle-class surroundings will-spontaneously learn to read by age nine, just as he learned to speak by age three. It is impossible for him not to pick up the code unless he is systematically interrupted and discouraged, for instance by trying to teach him in school. Of course, children of the culture of poverty do not have the ordinary middle—class need for literacy and the premium put on it, and they are less exposed to it among their parents and peers. Thus for these children there is a use for the right kind of schooling.24 231bid., p. 94. 24Ibid., p. 96. 110 Goodman uses the philosophy of educators Aristotle, Rousseau, Frobel, Dewey, and Piaget to support his posi- tion on incidental education.25 Each insists that teaching is possible only if it reaches the child in the right order and at the right time; thus, the traditional teacher's regimented presentation of daily lessons cannOt possibly meet each child's requirements for learning. As evidence that the incidental learner becomes as well equipped to hold a job as the formal school learner, Goodman quotes a study by Ivan Berg of Columbia (New Generation, Winter, 1968) which states that "school dropouts do as well as high school graduates in less prestigious jobs."26 He also refers to an early 1960s report by the Wall Street Journal which states that there is no difference in performance between "dropouts" and diplomed employees for certain categories of jobs.27 25 . . . . This pOSition is, of course, not shared by B. F. Skinner and other behaviorist psychologists. In Technology of Teaching Skinner argues that teachers who rely on “natural contingenEies of reinforcement" are not doing their job. He explains: "Natural contingencies of reinforcement, moreover, are not actually very good. They are more likely to gener- ate idleness than industry. Trivial, useless, exhausting, and harmful behaviors are learned inthe real world. The human organism pays for its great speed in learning by being susceptible to accidental contingencies which breed superstitions" (B. F. Skinner, The Technology of Teaching [New York: Appleton—Century—Crofts, 1968], p. 154). 2 6Goodman, New Reformation, p. 75. 2 . . 7Goodman, Compulsory Mis-education, p. 54. 111 A Few_Radical Proposals for Educational Reform Goodman realizes that in a highly complex, urban society, a child cannot merely wander aimlessly about, exploring the city. He needs guidance and direction. The schools, however, have proven in the past several decades that they are not the vehicle to lend "guidance and direc- tion" as Dewey had optimistically hoped. Faced with the dilemma of a need for deliberate education, yet opposed to traditional schooling, Goodman meets the challenge by devising several unique, alternative educational proposals. In light of the focus of this paper, alienation, these pro- posals are most relevant because they nullify the conditions thereof. First of all they offer the young a wide variety of educational paths from which to choose, including no school of any kind, and therefore the prime source of aliena- tion, domination by an external source, is eliminated. Also, by recognizing as legitimate those educational experi- ences which are a natural part of life in the community, education becomes alive and real and is no longer an alienated function. And, by accepting the young as an integral part of the ongoing life of the community, both physically and psychologically, youth is no longer an alienated, outcast group. 112 The Mini-School One of Goodman's most noteworthy proposals which has been emulated on a very limited scale is the establishment of what he terms, "the mini-school." The mini-school repre- sents significant educational reform because it rids school- ing of its most blatant abuses--institutional domination which inevitably becomes characterized by standardization, bureaucracy, and centralization. The mini-school is a decentralized, neighborhood school of about 28 children (ages 6-12), supported publicly but administered locally by teachers, parents, and students. For each unit Goodman proposes four teachers of varying backgrounds and experience: one, a teacher licensed and salaried in the present system; two, a graduating college senior from a local college (where applicable); three, a literate housewife and mother who is skilled in cooking and other domesticated arts, and fOurth,a."literate, willing, and intelligent high school graduate or drop out." In New York City, for instance, the staff should be black, white, and Puerto Rican. If possible, children too should be of mixed race and class.28 For its setting, the mini-school would occupy two, three, or four rooms in existing school buildings or church basements and settlement houses otherwise empty during school hours, rooms set aside in housing built by public funds, and rented storefronts. The layout is fairly indifferent, since a major part of activity would occur outside the place. The place 28Goodman, New Reformation, p. 97. 113 should be able to be transformed into a clubhouse, decorated and equipped according to the group's own decision. It is good to be on the street where the children live so that they can come and go at will; but there is also an advantage in locating in racial and ethnic border areas, to increase the chance of intermixture. For purposes of assembly, health services, and some games, ten tiny schools can unite and use present school facilities.29 At approximate 300% savings in cost would be achieved by almost total elimination of bureaucratic administration. Administration would be needed for funding, licensing, locating sites, and inspection, but administrative personnel, such as principals, assistants, and secretaries, would be eliminated, as well as special area personnel, including librarians, curriculum directors, remedial teachers, and guidance counselors. The 300% savings achieved by eliminating those positions not directly related to teaching could thus be put into hiring additional teachers and diversifying the possibilities of experience. Also considerable saving would result from housing children in available space rather than constructing schools costing millions of dollars.30 Curriculum, as well as books and equipment would be chosen according to the interests, abilities, and direction of the group. Record keeping would be at a minimum. School attendance would not be compulsory, but Goodman predicts 291bid., p. 98. 3°Ibid. 114 that there would be no shortage of students for schools run according to the needs and interests of its children.31 There would exist few curriculum similarities between the two modes. This model permits natural learning of reading. There can be exposure to activities of the city. A teacher-and-seven can Spend most of the time on the streets, in a playground, visiting business offices, watching television, at a museum, chatting with the corner druggist, riding the buses and sub- ways, visiting rich and poor homes. Such experi- ences are saturated with speaking, reading, and writing. For instance, a group might choose to . spend several weeks at the Museum of Natural History, re-labeling the exhibits for their own level of comprehension; and the curator would be well advised to gilot them a couple of hundred of dollars to do it. Given so many contexts, the teacher could easily find a means of tuning into a child's reading interests. Goodman personally prefers Sylvia Ashton-Warner's method of teaching reading, which fits well into the mini-school concept of incidental learning. Her approach is to record daily a key word for each child that describes a significant activity or feeling experienced during the school day. Within a short time each child has an extensive and unique reading vocabulary which in no way resembles the trivial content of Dick and Jane. Because this method relates reading to gut level experience, it is therefore meaningful 311bid., p. 99. 321bid. 115 to the child. As was previously mentioned Goodman would endorse a more rigid reading program only for those children deprived of adequate language development for one reason or another. Goodman sees no value in having a formal curriculum for at least the first five years. He defends this position, in part, by the statement: "In any case, normal children can learn the standard eight years' curriculum in about four 33 Dewey's maxim that for a small months, at age twelve." child everything in the environment is educative if he attends to it with guidance serves for Goodman as a good rule of thumb. Repeatedly, he argues that there is just too much fuss made about primary education. "All that is necessary--but it i§_necessary-—is pleasant baby-sitting and attention by the community of grown-ups but this is what our society so notoriously fails to provide."34 As might be expected, Goodman places minimal impor— tance upon elementary teacher education programs. He reasons that any literate and well-intentioned adult can teach a small child many things. This is not, however, to imply that teachers of the young are of secondary importance. He stresses that they are Ehg_most important persons in the whole scheme of deliberate education because of the very personal nature of the interaction between the young child 33Ibid., p. 100. 34Ibid., p. 101. 116 and teacher. His point is that the quality of this inter- action is not subject to training, but to the personal development of sensitivity towards others. Since at this age one teaches the child, not the subject, the relevant art is psychotherapy, and the most useful course for a teacher's college is probably a group therapy in order that the aspirant teachers become aware of themselves.35 It is also useful to have a course in the economics and politics of school establishment. And the history and philosophy of education is a beautiful subject. The chief criterion for selecting a staff is the one I have mentioned: liking children and being willing to be attentive to them. But given this setting, which they can more or less run as they will, many young people would go into teaching and continue, whereas in the New York system the annual turnover approaches 20 percent after years of wasted training and an elaborate routine of testing and hiring.36 Clearly, an important aspect of the mini-school con- cept as it relates to eliminating alienation is its emphasis on the self-regulating child. Being free of external con- trol and manipulation, the child can seek his own satis- factions, for the locus of control remains internal rather than external. No longer stifled by the fear of failure to meet performance expectations, the child can develop the 35This viewpoint is in essence shared by Arthur T. Jersild, When Teachers Face Themselves (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1955), p. 3. Jersild's thesis is that teachers need to have a clear awareness of who they are--beliefs, values, needs, strengths--in order to aid children in developing their own awareness. 36 Goodman, New Reformation, p. 100. 117 confidence needed to respond to his innate desires for- creativity, Spontaneous action, and exploration.37 Goodman argues that education can only occur in an environment in which the learner is free to create, experi- ment, explore, decide, and error. Although institutionalized systems have proven successful in quantifying and organizing data, they have not provided for spontaneous behavior and cannot provide a trial and error approach to learning in an authentic life situation. But the learner is, by virtue of being a person, free to question or the search. As a self- regulating being, he is allowed to initiate action, to make good contact with the environment, to destructure experience, and to assimilate it as his own. Contrary to traditional schooling where control is filtered down from the state to local levels, the mini- school would be controlled locally, precisely by those per- sons for whom it serves. The design and implementation of program would be the shared responsibility of children, teachers, and parents. Ideally, Goodman envisions as many programs as there are children. Operating at a 7 to l pupil- teacher ratio instead of the usual ratio of 30 to 1, would make possible numerous first-hand experiences. For each 37In How Children Fail, Holt suggests that "fear" is a commonly found factoriin the schools and accounts to a high degree for the underachieving child. "So we have two prob- lems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them" (John Holt, How Children Fail [New York: Dell Publishing Co., Dell Books, 1964], p. 74). 118 child the mini—school would operate as an autonomous sub- community and as a means to integrate into the greater community. The child would have the security, comfort, and protection of an insulated group, and he would also have a base of operations from which he might reach out in new directions. Although decision making power remains within the group, teachers would still be in positions of leadership and guidance. The extent to which these positions might become autocratic would be checked by the lack of compulsory attendance. Without the guarantee of a captive audience, a teacher's worth would soon be established. Even though at the onset of the group, a teacher would hold a leadership position primarily because of his or her title, eventually he or she would have to earn this position in order to main- tain it. If teachers failed to work meaningfully with children, they would soon find themselves with no students. Other communitarian traits are also found in the mini-school. Being a small group, communication is on a one-to—one basis. Meaningful interpersonal relationships could thus developnaturally without fear of violating one's social class or status. Because there would be no pre-existing performance expectations, role defined behavior would be minimal. The self, "that entity that is formed through the whole history of our reaction to and with the 119 38 would be free to define itself. Of all of Good- world," man's proposals, the mini-school concept best integrates his total theoretical framework. The mini-school is an example of anarcho-communitarian organization within which the self-regulating organism functions. Non-Scholastic Educational Opportunities Another of GOodman's proposals is for the state to underwrite existing or new non-scholastic educational environments for bright but under-achieving youth. Examples would be community radio stations, local newspapers, little theaters, and design offices. I am thinking of enterprises run by about six pro- fessional and twenty to twenty-five apprentices of ages sixteen to twenty. The apprenticeship is to serve as an alternative to the last two years of high school (and perhaps first year of college). Apprentices to be paid $20 a week, in lieu of the $1,000 a year for schooling. Enterprises to be further helped out of the capital costs saved from new school construction.39 This proposal is significant in that it provides youth with an attractive alternative to schooling which offers both subsistant wages and the Opportunity to engage in meaningful work. It is aimed at eliminating the alienat- ing nature of the schools—~its lack of meaningful content-- and has the effects of lessening the stronghold of the 38Grandstaff, II-12. 39Goodman, People or Personnel, pp. 202-203. 120 schools as the only legitimate means to obtain vocational preparation. Non-Academic College "To fill a bad gap in our present framework of higher education," Goodman proposes the establishment of non- academic colleges designed to serve youngsters who have left school to work but wish to experience a college community. He suggests that a model to pattern might be the Danish Folk Schools where youth between 18 and 25 years of age learn‘ oral history, current events, and practical science, and can participate in the production of plays and music. This proposal is not unlike the mini—school: it is based upon a voluntary communitarian concept; and its purpose is to foster continued growth and experimentation.40 Work Alternatives to High School As an alternative to high school, Goodman proposes the creation of socially useful jobs to be filled by interested adolescents. The liberal economists who propose using a larger share of production in the public sector are pre- cisely not thinking of employing lS-year-olds; on the contrary, a chief motive of their plans is to diminish the unemployment of adults. But suppose, for a change, we think of the matter directly, with- out political overtones: on the one hand, there is a great amount of work that needs doing and has been shamefully neglected; on the other hand, there 4oGoodman, Compulsory Mis—education, p. 153. 121 are millions of young people who could do a lot of it and are otherwise not well occupied. Further, it costs about $1000 a year to keep a youth in high school (and more than $2000 in reform school), suppose we paid this money directly to the youth as he worked on an educative job.41 He identifies four classes of work which would be suitable for youth: construction--such as improving the scores of ugly small towns; community service and social work--like working in hospitals, or janitoring public housing; assist- ing little theater, independent broadcasters, and local newspapers; and rural rehabilitation and conservation. "For educational value for a majority of the young, I would match that curriculum against any four year high school."42 High School Students' GI Bill It is reasonable, says Goodman, to extend the idea of the GI Bill to high school students. He suggests giving school money directly to students to pursue any course which is "plausibly" educational. The student could choose an educational objective which would best suit his needs, interests, and motivations. He would not be forced to con- form under the present system of school domination.. (A students' GI Bill would likely lend support to many experi- mental schools and indirectly serve as a level for public school reform due to decreased enrollments.43) 41Ibid., p. 150. 42Ibid. 3Goodman, People or Personnel, p. 162. 122 Delayed College Entrance Under this proposal students would not qualify for admittance to college until they had spent two years past high school in a maturing activity such as working at a paying job, community service, volunteer service, or armed forces duty.44 He suggests: First, suppose that half a dozen of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges-~say Amherst, Swathmore, Connecticut, Weslyan, Carleton, etc.-- would announce that, beginning in 1966, they required for admission a two year period, after high school, spent in some maturing activity. These colleges are at present five times over- subscribed; they would not want for applicants on an conditions that they set; and they are 45 explicitly committed to limiting their expansion. The purpose of this proposal is twofold: to get students enough life-experience in order that higher educa- tion is meaningful, especially the social sciences and humanities; and to break the lockstep of schooling so that the student might enter college with some intrinsic motiva- tion. If entering college can be viewed as a choice rather than the continuation of an imposed expectation, one condi- tion of the "alienated student" is diminished.46 Support of Travel and Apprenticeships Goodman insists that most of the money now spent for high schools and colleges should be devoted to the support of 44Goodman discourages youth from choosing the Armed forces as an alternative to schooling due to his pacifist beliefs. 45Goodman, Compulsory His-education, p. 124. 461bid., p. 125. 123 apprenticeships; travel, subsidized browsing in libraries and self-directed study and research; programs such as VISTA, the Peace Corps, Students for a Democratic Soceity, to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; rural reconstruction; and work camps for projects in conservation and urban renewal.47 Ideally, the polis itself is the educational environment; a good community consists of worth- while, attractive, and fulfilling callings and things to do, to grow up into. The policy I am proposing tends in this direction rather than being fitted into an institutional system. I don't know if this tailor-made approach would be harder or easier to administer than standardization that in fact fits nobody and results in an increasing number of recalcitrants. On the other hand, as The Civilization Conservation Corps showed in the Thirties, the products of willing youth labor can be valuable even economically, whereas accumulating Regents blue-bggks is worth nothing except to the school itself. It is, by and large, not in adolescence but in later years that periods of study and reflection are needed. The Greeks, says Goodman, understood this and regarded most of our present college curricula as appropriate only for those over thirty. Reversing the Goal in Vocational Guidance Goodman's insistence that society must be re-created to fit human nature instead of attempting to mold man into 47Paul Goodman, "Freedom and Learning: The Need for Choice," Saturday Review, May 18, 1968, p. 73. 48 Ibid., p. 74. 124 a form alien to his nature is reflected in his final proposal. Right proportion requires reversing the goal in vocational guidance, from fitting the man to the machine and chopping him down to fit, to finding the opportunity in the economy that brings out the man, and if you can't find such an opportunity, make it. This involves encouraging new small enter- prises and unblocking and perhaps underwriting invention. Again, if at present production is inhuman and stupid, it is that too few minds are put to it; this can be remedied by giving the work- men more voice in production and the kind of train- ing to make that voice wise. As we have seen, Goodman's proposals are designed to maximize choice, that is to present alternatives to tra- ditional schooling, and to return education to its natural and prOper place as a function of the community. As means to eliminate alienation, Goodman's educational reform pro- posals are a valuable contribution worthy of further study and experimentation. Conclusion This analysis has tried to show that Goodman's educational criticism can best be seen as the application of a more general socio-philOSOphical position. His educa- tional thought begins with commitments to communitarian anarchism and gestalt psychology and is an extension of those commitments. The architectonic concepts on which he 491bid. 125 builds his social criticism and to which his reform pro- posals are addressed are those of institutional organiza- tion and alienation. The persistent presence of Goodman's work of a comprehensive view of society, of a global view of the sources of men's troubles, gives his analysis a com- pelling integrity and coherence and should assure for him a prominent place in any catalog of important educational thinkers. BIBLIOGRAPHY 126 BIBLIOGRAPHY Paul Goodman: Literary Works Adam and His Works. New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1968. Five Years. New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1966. Kafka's Prayer. New York: Vanguard Press, Inc., 1947. Making Do. New York: The New American Library of WOrld Literature, Inc., Signet Books, 1963. The Empire City. New York: Macmillan Company, 1964. Paul Goodman: Critical Works (Books) Compulsorpris-education and The Community of Scholars. New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1962. Drawing the Line. New York: Random House, 1946. Growing Up Absurd. New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1956. People or Personnel and Like a Conquered Province. 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HICHIGRN STATE UNIV. LIBRRRIES ll?WIHHIIHII\IlllliHll‘llHlHl‘HHIDIIW“WWI 31293101897399