The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1024612627

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-166627

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Spykman, Nicholas J. http://d-nb.info/gnd/124229867

Title:: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Place of publication:: Chicago

Publisher:: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: XXIX, 297 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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- u y aQ e No » n []= 1e A - 19 N= e- of al Se vO 1e- ts n- re in at {T= eS Bb-& ng of ry ch n- SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 65 stitutions and of specific aspects of social life in terms of the immediate factors only, such as the historical laws which explain the development of the state and the forms of production solely in terms of political and economic factors. It has been formulated as a law that the history of every political unit commences with the political and civil liberty of a few, spreads from these to the many and finally to all, and then reverts back to the few and finally to a single despot. But the fact that the few have liberty can- not be the cause of the fact that the many obtain it. This conceptual formulation of the historical sequence is there- fore not concerned with the inner causal connection of the successive phenomena. The same holds good for the so- called law of economic development. It explains nothing to say that the forces of production in each period outgrow the forms of production and finally break through them and create new ones. The actual forces, which according to this formulation change slavery into serfdom and serf- dom into a wage system, are not referred to. It would be impossible to picture with the help of this law the produc- tion form of the next stage. A real natural law would make it possible to do this. That one succeeds the other is the re- sult of a great many laws, but is not a law in itself. Historical laws of this kind merely give the relation in time of complex appearances on the surface of life, not the relation between primary elements and their actual forces. Each element within the complex is undoubtedly fully de- termined by and causally related to some preceding ele- ment, but the complex as a whole is not causally deter- mined by the preceding complex in the same sense. What the concept of a law of historical growth actually stands for may be indicated by a comparison with botan- ical growth. The laws of plant physiology which are effec-

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