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SOCIAL CONSERVATION
L777
tain themselves, even if merely as empty frames, only on
the basis of a rigid conservatism.
The opposite type of social self-preservation is char-
acteristic of groups that live within larger groups, either
tolerated or opposed and suppressed. The self-preserva-
tion of these groups and the persistence of their social unity
require an extreme elasticity and variability of sociological
forms. Their offensive and defensive strength lies just in
the variety of forms under which they can operate. They
must be able to expand and contract at any moment and
avail themselves of any type of organization that circum-
stances permit.
Bands of brigands and conspirators can maintain their
social unity only if they can instantly subdivide into small-
er groups, act separately under different leaders, and in-
stantly reunite again for larger enterprises. Great flexi-
bility of form is the indispensable condition of their per-
sistence. The Jews in Central Europe have lived for cen-
turies under conditions which have been similar from the
formal point of view to those of brigands and conspirators.
They have been small suppressed minorities within larger
social groups. They have maintained their social unity in
the face of these oppressions by a great variability of soci-
ological form. Their social solidarity has been a religious
solidarity, an economic solidarity, or a political solidarity.
It has attached itself to each of these forms according to
circumstances and conditions. Here again the flexibility
of form has been the means of persistence and the strength
of their defensive and offensive against the larger group.
Apart from such cases as the existence of a smaller
group within a larger group. there is no immediate corre-
* 80z., pp. 574-80. For a more elaborate treatment of structures that have
outlived their social usefulness, see G. D. H. Cole, Social Theory, chapter xiii,
“The Atrophy of Institutions,” pp. 193-200.
