Society And its Purpose
Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 16
The most frequent errors of supporters of both systems
652. If we consider impartially the group who support the system of resistance, we can generally say that they do not always give progress in good the importance it deserves. The group increases if we add to it all those peaceful people who, ignorant of political theories, simply desire not to be disturbed in their chosen way of life and family customs. Very often, because of sad experience, evil effects them more than hope of good.
653. The class of political theorists supporting movement is composed of writers and thinkers whose errors are expressed with greater precision, and could be called scientific errors. The proximate origin of these errors is a ceaseless abuse of abstraction. In their calculations these theorists neglect much real, observable data and are content to formulate a doctrine composed of pure generalities. As a result, they substitute progress in general (something purely abstract) for progress in good (something real). They further confuse the idea of progress with the idea of movement by adding one abstraction after another. Seeing that all progress implies movement, they conclude that all movement is progress, and use this sophism to fabricate their theory of social movement.
654. This theory reached a point at which the extremely general word `movement' replaced the word `progress'. People lost sight of the difference between going forward and not backward. In other words, they could no longer distinguish between progress and movement. This would have been sufficient to mark the theory as absurd if it had not been supported by another ingenious proposition, by another more elevated theory pertaining to the history of mankind, which claimed on behalf of the principle of social movement that `humanity of its nature always goes forward, never backwards; every movement applied to the social body (movement which impels the body forwards, never backwards) must therefore be useful.' This theory does indeed flatter human vanity, but is it true? Let us see.