The Social Conflict

The “conflict” concept was always very important in sociological theories. It recalls the classic antinomies about integration and dissolution, consent and dissent, stability and changes, because the opposition between conflict and order is at the social system base.

The conflicts vary depending on the level of conscience of social actors who participate at the conflict.

In this essay I will speak about the social conflict from Europe.

In XVIII century, the chances of leaving of Europeans and of North-Americans received a triple impulse. The disadvantaged groups extended themselves through the English Revolution, then trough the American Revolution and France Revolution. First in England, trough the Industrial Revolution, was opened new chances of offer. In the same time, the civil society started to be necessary then the old and strict ligats, especially in England. This modification means, first at all, an impulse. Then continue two century of politic contests about the theme “more chances of life for many people”. The social groups who become organized and who moved the conflicts inside the institutions in process of structure and clarification carried these discussions.

The changes theory says that the chances of life aren’t distribute in equal mode. There is no society where all the men, all the women and all children posses the same rights and have the same offer. The reason is that every society has to coordinate in the same time the different loads, the different interests and human’s abilities. The social positions may be different without being subordinated one to other.

The theory of social contract made difference between association and domination, contract of association and contract of domination. Even the difference between work’s division and society’s stratification is integrated in this theory. It’s interest is to underline the hope that the loads and the different interests may be coordinate, in principle, trough the absolute equality of rank. With all that, this hope is only an illusion, because in reality all social associations necessitate domination.

The society always means the control of people’s comportment. But this control can’t float in the air; neither it can support itself on the simple consensus. That means that some values are considerate valid, for example those of professional performances, of familial origins or of preparation’s level certified trough papers. To install viable values doesn’t mean only that the abilities, the comportment and the floats are measured in function of these, but also that exist instances which grant the validity and which can impose sanctions, can give laws, can reward and can punish. These are instances of domination. The society means domination, and domination means inequality.

Immanuel Kant said, regarding at this theme, that into a world of pure association “all talents would remain hide forever into their germs, into an archaic life of shepherd, into a simplicity, a temperance and a mutual love perfectly; the men, mild like sheep which graze, hardly could secure a biggest value for their existence that their domestic animals got. […] So, we have to thank to the nature for it’s intolerance, for the passionate vanity without rival, for it’s irresistible desire to own or to master! Without these, all the wonderful natural dispositions of humanity would sleep forever. Man wants concordance; but nature knows better what is good for its species; it wants disconcordance.”

Karl Popper uphold the idee that the society is named leadership, and leadership is named inequality, and inequality cause conflicts which represent the source of progress and contribute at the human chances of life rise.

This prospect specifies the way that we approach the history. Even if the domination hireling engaged trough inequality cause conflicts, it doesn’t mean that it is good in every form. In real life it isn’t good at all. “Every power corrupt.” Society, at its turn, isn’t agreeable, but it is necessaries. The question isn’t how we could release ourselves from mastery for plunge into a pastoral life, but how we could tame it such as being possible to create a best of chances of life. Lord Acton has a sequel: “Every power corrupt, but the absolute power corrupt in absolute way.” This is the moment when the civil laws became key-concept of modernity.

Before we direct the theory troughs analyze, we have to do two observations regarding at Kant and Popper. There are times when the social conflicts and its scientific explanation take a fundamental of constitutional character. We don’t speak anymore about the right to choose rise or about pension ensurance improve, but we speak about the social contract itself. This was happened in XVIII century; but it same to be valid again at the end of XX century. In these periods even the domination and society’s game rules are discussing.