Society may be defined as a number of persons pursuing common ends or purposes and united by a consciousness of common pursuit. It involves no reference to residence in any well defined area as community does. Participation in a common spiritual fund is not essential to it as it is to constitute community.
A society is not so enduring and permanent as a community is. It may dissolve as soon as the purpose for the realisation of which it is established is achieved. In any community there may be a number of societies and institutions whose organization into a complex whole may itself be called a society, In this usage the term in applicable to a group of persons forming a community. The two terms apply to the same object from different points of view. When nation of large community of society becomes politically organised it is called a state. A state may be defined as an association of individuals living in a common territory and having for its purpose, the promotion of perfect life through the maintenance of social moral order, and creating for its realisation, a central authority entitled to act with the whole force of the community behind it. If differs from both the community and the society in being politically organised in having within itself the distinction between a few who yield authority and the majority who submit to that authority. The fundamental differences lead to difference in methods of their work.
These can best be stated in the words of Barker as follows:
Both are sustained by the same moral purpose: they overlap they blend, roughly speaking we may say that the area is one of voluntary co-operation. Its energy that of goodwill, its method that of elasticity while the area of the other is rather that of mechanical action, its energy force its method rigidity.
The main points of difference between the state and voluntary associations are the following:
- The sate is permanent and enduring association while other associations are temporary. The later are dissolved as soon as their purpose is realised. The purpose of the state is the abiding purpose of promoting general welfare and so cannot be completely realised at any time.
- The state is compulsory association. We do not choose its membership but are born into it. Most of the other associations are voluntary; one can become a member of any of them when one likes and can also withdraw from it when one so chooses.
- The state is exclusive. A person cannot belong to two states at one and the same time, as he can belong to a number of associations simultaneously.
- The state is territorial association, it functions within the limits of well defined are. Voluntary associations involve no reference to any territorial limits.
- The most important point of distinction is that the state has authority. It can punish its members put them into jail, punish them, confiscate their property and demand of them sacrifices as no other association can do. It is omnipotent and is supreme over other associations.
Definition of state
Numerous definitions of state have been proposed by various writers from the days of Aristotle. Some of them envisage the state from the point of view of Sociology some from that of ethics and others from that of Philosophy. We are concerned with definition of the state as a political concept. The definition proposed by Aristotle is not useful from the political point of view. Though it is good from the sociological point of view. He defined it as a union of families and villages having for it a perfect and self-suffering life; by which we meant a happy and honourable life.
The definition distinguishes the state from other association by virtue of its ends but fails to state its fundamental aspect of political organization. Among modern attempts we may mention the definition proposed by Holland as typical. He defines it as a numerous assemblance of human beings generally occupying a certain territory among whom the will of the majority or of an ascertainable class of persons is by the strength of such a majority or class made of prevail against any of their number who oppose it. The definition lays stress on the necessity of political oganization and also recognizes the necessity of land and population as essentials of the state. The definition given by Holland and others of the similar nature, suffer from one grave defect. They do not say anything about the essential nature of the state, i.e., that exists for promotion of good life.
Since the state is essentially and fundamentally an association of moral beings and exists for promotion of good life. It seems necessary to prefer this aspect of it in the definition. Bearing this requisite in mind we may frame the following definition. This state is an association of purpose the proportion of perfect life through the development and maintenances of the socio-moral order and to this end endowing its central organizaion with the united pores of the whole community. This definition bring out clearly the various elements of state and specifies its moral purposes.
State and Country
State necessarily involves it as an idea in reference to land or territory, in order to make a state, community must be on a definite territory. But mere residence on a given land is not sufficient to constitute a group of people into a state. They must be politically organised and also be free from external control. These two ideas are absent from the notion of country.
State and Nation
The term nation interpreted by different writers. Garner defines it as a culturally homogenous social group which is at once conscious and tenacious of its unity of psychic life and expression.
The bounds which make a group of people into a nation are not racial but psychological and spiritual. If we accept this meaning of the term nation we may say that the difference between it and the state is one of political organisation. A Nation becomes a state when it establishes a government of its own free from dependence on any external authority. But writer like Bryee do not accept this meaning. According to them a nation is group of people united by psychic and spiritual ties and living under their own sovereign authority or at least aspiring to become independent.
From this point of view there is hardly any difference between state and the nation, the two terms can be interchanged. People, use the phrase the ‘League of Nations’ as equivalent to the league of state, they speak indifferently of the Japanese nation. This view seems to be loose. There are some important difference between the two which ought not to be ignored. State connotes while nations does not connote political organization. Further statehood is objective. Former is condition in separable from civilized ways of living. Nationality is a way of thinking and feeling. It thus seems desirable to keep the two nations to stand for a group of people united together by sentiment of nationality.
Socialism: application of democratic principles to economic life
On account of the great variety of meaning in which the term socialism is used it is not easy precisely to define its relation to democracy. Whether socialism is to be regulated as the extension of democracy to economic life or not depends upon the sense which the two terms are employed. Those who take equality to be the central and most vital constituent part of the democratic faith and define socialism as a comprehensive movement aiming at the creation of social condition in which there will be a more just and equitable distribution of wealth and all individuals will find equal opportunities to utilize and enjoy their native faculties would whole heartedly endorses the view that socialism is our application of the democratic principles of equality to economic life.
But if class war is regarded as key note of socialism resulting in the dictatorship of the Poletrait, it is evident it cannot have much to do with democracy. There are also persons who identifying socialism with an attempt to regiment life accuse it of being destructive of individual liberty and therefore of being anti-democratic. The capitalists in Great Britain, America, France and other so called democratic countries did not discover anything remotely resembling democracy in communist Russia. Such view may however be regarded as one sided understanding socialism as an indictment of capitalism in which those who own and control the material means of production are in a position not only to exploit the landless and propertyless wage earner but also to yield immense political power in the state and as movement for the replacement, of the present capitalistic order by new social order in which there will be the maximum of justice and equality in the economic and political spheres.
One can answer the given question in the affirmative. Liberty, equality and fraternity constitute the democratic faith. In so far as socialism aims at ultimately abolishing the present most unequal and inequitable distribution of national wealth and bringing about a progressive equalisation of incomes through socialization of the material means of production can certainly be described as an attempt to apply the democratic principal of equality to economic life. It should be borne in mind that in its birth socialism is the child of passion for equality and of the feeling of injustice which resent the absorption by other than the hand-worker of a disproportionate part of what his labour produces. Secondly, in so far as the ultimate aim socialism is to establish social condition in which the individual will be abnabled to transcend the struggle for existence and enjoy real freedom to pursue the higher values of life it seeks to give him what democracy prizes most namely, freedom.
Another argument may be advanced to show that socialism may justly be regarded as an extension of the people. It is a form of government in which ultimate power resides in the masses.
Experience of the working of democratic constitution in capitalistic states like England and America shows that in world to today political power tends to fall into the hands of those who yield economic power. It was therefore realised that so long as land and capital continue to be owned privately by a few individuals there shall be no real freedom for the masses and therefore no true democracy. The only way to have genuine democracy in the political sphere is to have economic equality is one of the fundamentals of socialism is an application of the democratic principle to economic life.
Basic principles of socialism
Socialism is highly ambiguous term. It is used not only in broad as well as in a narrow sense but also stands for theory and movement. It is on one side a theory at the functions of state and is opposed to individualism on the other side. It is an attack on the principles of capitalism and a movement for the establishment of new social order based on principles radically different from those on which the present society is based. It is in this later sense that the terms in generally used.
Thus understood socialism is the best regarded as an indictment of the existing economic organization society which rests upon the two closely connected institutions of private capital and free competition. In indicts capitalistic order of society for (1) having created serious inequalities in the distribution of wealth, (2) being wasteful and inefficient in its working for being indifferent to consideration of jesuitic and humanity. All these evils follow from the private industry. The socialist supplements his criticism of capitalism with suggestions for the removal of the evils inherent in the system. He recommends that ownership of means of production should vest not in private individuals but in the democratically organised society basis.
Socialism thus stands for the socialism of industry. Social ownership by means of production would ensure that industry would be organised for good of society and not for private gain. In other words socialism wants to substitute the motive of social service for that of personal gain in industry. This may be regarded as the second main principle of socialism. In the next place, socialism wants to remove the great and serious inequalities in the distribution of wealth. It is from the nature of case impossible that the incomes of all the members of community should be equalised but what can and should be attempted is a more equitable distribution of wealth.
The socialism of industry and the eradication of the motive of private gain from industry would bring about a more equitable distributions of wealth. Lastly, it may be pointed out that socialism wants to emancipate the workers from the bondage of the capitalist and enable them to live a life the worthy of human beings. At its root is the desire to give the individual the maximum amount of liberty to pursue and promote the spiritual value of life. It aims at a new organization of society with that end in view it wants to place the requisite a good and happy life within reach of all.
Collectivism or state socialism, syndicalism, guild socialism and communism are important schools of socialism. They differ in regard to their attitude to the state, the role of the workers in the new social order, and about the means to be employed in the attempt to usher in the new social order. Collectivism wants to preserve the state while the other three are more or less anti-state. The latter wants to vest the control over industry in the workers engaged in it and not in the state. They also recommend the use of the direct and violent means for the realisation of their ends as against collectivism which is wedded to the employment of constitutional means only.
