CHAPTER II
OPPOSITION

CONFLICT AND STRUGGLE!

EFERENCE has already been made to the fact that
R the unity of groups is not due solely to the convergence
 of interests and the harmonious co-ordination
of elements. Societies require a certain proportion of attraction
 and repulsion, harmony and disharmony, asso-~iation
 and dissociation, integration and differentiation,
co-operation and competition among their elements to obtain
 a definite organization. Groups which are entirely
harmonious, and which are composed of elements which
have centripetal tendencies only, would not only be impossible
 empirically, but they would have no life-process and
no structure. The acceptance of leadership and the subordination
 to authority are therefore not the only forms of
interaction that make for social unity. The conflicts and
oppositions between the elements fulfil that same function.
They, too, contribute to the total process of socialization
and must therefore be investigated with reference to that
function.
That conflicts have sociological significance, inasmuch
as they either produce or modify communities of interest,
unifications, and organizations, has in principle never been
contested. But apart from this sociological significance
which accrues to conflict through its consequences and accompaniments,
 it has a sociological significance in and for
itself owing to the fact that it is a positive form of inter-1

 Adapted from Soz.. chap. iv, pp. 247-336.

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