Johan Galtung

Theories of conict
Defi ni ti ons, Di mensi ons, Negati ons,
Formati ons
Columbia University, 1958
University of Oslo, 1969-1971
Universit at Z urich, 1972
University of Hawaii 1973
Contents
Preface 5
1 DEFINITIONS OF CONFLICT 9
1.1 Contradiction and Incompatibility: A First Approach . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2 Contradiction and Incompatibility: A More Formal Approach . . . . . . 16
1.3 The Goal Dimension: Drives vs Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.4 Conict: Actors in Pursuit of Incompatible Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.5 Two Types of Conict: Structure-Conict and Actor-Conict . . . . . . 25
1.6 Frustration and Conict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.7 The Elements of Conict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.8 The Phases of Conict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
1.9 Conict Theory and Game Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2 DIMENSIONS OF CONFLICT 43
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
ACTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.1 Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.2 Structure of Actors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3 Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
GOALS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.5 Structure of Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.6 Acceptability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
INCOMPATIBILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.7 Analyticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
2.8 Substitutability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
2.9 Incompatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
PURSUIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2.10 Attitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2.11 Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.12 Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
THE ABC TRIANGLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
3 NEGATIONS OF CONFLICT 107
3.1 Transcendence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.2 Compromise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.3 Deepening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.4 Broadening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.5 Fission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
3.6 Fusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
3.7 Intra-Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3.8 Inter-Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3.9 Conict-Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.10 Actor-Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.11 Penetration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3.12 Incapacitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4 FORMATIONS OF CONFLICT 125
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.2 The Key Conict Formations: A Brief Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
4.3 Center vs Periphery Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
(1) Capitalist Imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
(2) Social Imperialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
(3) Superpowers vs the Rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
(4) Big Powers vs the Rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
(5) North vs South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
4.4 Center vs Center Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
(6) Capitalist vs Socialist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
(7) Capitalist vs Capitalist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
(8) Socialist vs Socialist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Epilogue: Basic humand needs, conict and peace reasearch 159
Appendix: A Framework for the Analysis of Social Conict 167
Preface
Theories of Conict is based on lectures given when the author was professor of sociology
at Columbia University 1958-60, of conict and peace studies at the University of Oslo
1969-1977, and visiting professor at Universitat Z urich spring 1972 and University of
Hawaii spring 1973. The book was mainly written in Z urich and Honolulu, gently
facilitated by the late Professor Peter Heinz in Z urich and Professor George Kent in
Honolulu. To both my most sincere gratitude.
The predecessor, A Framework for the Analysis of Social Conict, New York, NY:
Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, 1958, is reproduced here in the
original version as an Appendix. But neither that one, nor this book, nor another book,
Theories of Peace, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, 1967 was published.
Why?
Answer: because the books had not lived through enough confrontations with real life
conicts, as opposed to meetings with other books in libraries, and with their authors at
conferences. My model for a peace science from the beginning back in 1951 was medical
science, and its theory-practice interface. The lectures, and this book, clarify concepts
and theories. Artists and sculptors would have called them sketches. They are working
books. I wanted as fresh a start as possible, based on intuitions and brushes with reality,
not readings and academic discussions only, however indispensable.
Not building primarily on others there are no references. They come in A Theory
of Conict, A Theory of Development, A Theory of Civilization, A Theory of Peace,
TRANSCEND University Press, 2009.
The concepts were tried out, like in Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping,
Peacemaking and Peacebuilding, Anti-Semitism in the Making, Towards a Theory
of Race Relations, Institutionalized Conict Resolution: A Theoretical Paradigm,
Conict as a Way of Life, The Middle East and the Theory of Conict; in Essays in
Peace Research, Volumes II, III and V, Copenhagen: Ejlers, 1976-79-80.
In Part Four (commissioned by the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Aairs in 1974)
5
reality comes closer. But there are many theory and practice steps from there, via Peace
By Peaceful Means, London: SAGE, 1998, to 50 Years: 100 Peace & Conict Perspectives,
TRANSCEND University Press 2008 (see www.transcend.org/tup).
The reader will nd in this book such ideas as dissociative vs associative relations,
actor vs structural conicts based on values vs interests, symmetric vs asymmetric
conict, conict transformation, empirical vs potential reality, conict transcendence
as opposed to compromise, conict resolution vs conict repression, conict resolution
through transformation of potential into empirical reality, goals vs pursuit by means
of resources, the focus on equity and the rejection of the conict-manager who steals
somebody elses conict and deprives them of that chance of growth. Needless to say,
they have all been developed further, but basically they are all here.
Chapters 1-2 have been published as the entry Conict Theory in Lester Kurtz, ed.
Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conict, Amsterdam etc.: Elsevier, Second edition,
2008, pp. 391-400; otherwise nothing has been published elsewhere.
And nothing has been changed apart from some language editing, like making sentences
and paragraphs shorter. I am most grateful to S.P. Udayakumar, then (1992) my assistant
at the University of Hawaii, for making the digital version, and to my assistants Summer
2009, Naakow Grant-Hayford and Karoline Weber, for their help with the nal manuscript;
all three also wonderful dialogue partners.
There are things I would have said dierently today but I can identify with the 1973
version, and found it interesting to revisit myself 36 years later, even 51 years later (for
the Appendix).
It was also interesting to revisit the chapter commissioned by the Norwegian foreign
minister at the time, Knut Frydenlund. Written in 1973-74 the Cold War was certainly
on, but as is evident from Part Four I did not believe in the East-West conict becoming
hot in the Atlantic Theater, only in the Third World. NATO and the WTO were
seen in the chapter not so much as pitted against each other as ways of consolidating
the gains from World War II with both of them enforcing their systems and deploying
military force for that purpose.
Thus, I saw world dynamics more in terms of Center vs periphery formations than in
terms of Center vs Center formations. There were two of them, capitalist imperialism
and socialist imperialism, and upheavals were predicted in both, with US and Soviet
interventions. More concretely, the Soviet empire was seen as an early victim of upheavals
in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet system itself would collapse because of its anti-human
character. The US imperial control was also seen as crumbling in the longer run.
6
Nor did I believe in any general North-South conict, the conicts being inside the
two imperial formations. The focus was also on superpower cooperation in the sense of
respecting the others sphere of interest, protesting interventions but not too much,
using repression cooperation, passive or negative, as a way of building cooperative ties,
very apprehensive of a nuclear war between them.
Basically both the US and the Soviet Union would try to keep their periphery elites
in power and strike a deal on that basis. This actually culminated in the Gorbachev
cooperation with Reagan and Bush, with hands o the other side intervening in Panama
and in Caucasus-Balticum. In the terminology used in Part One the prognosis was in
terms of asymmetric center-periphery conict, with nonviolence and guerilla strategies,
not in terms of any big symmetric encounter. Afghanistan was not predicted, however,
neither the Communist take-over, nor the Soviet protection, nor the US intervention.
Another prediction was in terms of an emerging European vs Asian conict, now in
full bloom, militarily-politically with West Asia and economically-culturally with East
Asia. The prognosis of China-Japan cooperation seemed far-fetched, but with the power
and paradigm shift in Japan from LDP to DPJ it now looks more probable.
I only hope the reader will also derive something useful from the book.
Jondal and Alfaz, August 2009
Johan Galtung
7
8
Chapter 1
DEFINITIONS OF CONFLICT
1.1 Contradiction and Incompatibility: A First Ap-
proach
Once upon a time, during the Han dynasty, there was (perhaps) a man who was a dealer
in weapons, somewhere in China. In his store were the means of attack as well as the
means of defense, and among them a halberd and a shield. The man, the dealer in arms,
had anticipated not only modern patterns of advertising, but also the modern arms race
with its ballistic missiles, its anti-ballistic missiles and anti-anti-ballistic missiles, and
had two posters.
One advertised his halberd: This halberd is so sharp that it can pierce any shield!
The other advertised his shield: This shield is so strong that no halberd can pierce it!
And thus it was that the Chinese characters for halberd and shield, juxtaposed in that
order, became the character for contradiction:
in Chinese pronounced: mau tun
in Japanese pronounced: mu jun
But are these two statements really contradictory? And what does it mean that they
are contradictory, if we agree that they are?
To explore this point, fundamental for any theory of conict, let us look at these two
statements:
9
P1 Point X is on one side of a strip of paper;
Point Y is on the other side of the same strip.
P2 The curve X-Y connects the two points without ever crossing the edge of the strip
of paper.
Even a beginner in mathematics will yawn at this hackneyed example, and we apologize
to them. Others might like to tear out a narrow rectangular strip of paper, mark X on
one side and Y on the other and try a solution: twist the strip, join the two narrow edges
together, and the curve X-Y can be drawn with no diculty.
The example serves to illustrate one point: there is more to reality than what meets
the naked eye. What appears impossible may become possible once the concept of reality,
in casu a strip of paper, is extended, or at least transformed. The Mobius strip is only
one simple example: mathematics is, indeed, full of them. For ex mathematicians have it
in their power to expand their reality so as to make possible what was impossible in the
reality to which they were formerly constrained. Take the example of what happened to
numbers:
Starting with they had to add so as to permit and they got
natural numbers fractions unlimited division positive numbers
positive numbers irrational numbers unlimited roots positive real
numbers
positive real negative numbers unlimited subtraction real numbers
numbers
real numbers imaginary numbers unlimited roots complex numbers
complex numbers etc.
In the original reality of natural numbers the two statements:
P1 N is a natural number
P2 N is the dierence between a and b, b>a
constitute a contradiction, for there is no such natural number.
Back to the Chinese merchant: is there a reality in which his two statements would
not form a contradiction, without stretching the denitions of halberd and shield? There
probably is. His statements concern the relative impact two weapons, both presumably
made of metal or at least of some mineral, the Aztecs used swords of obsidian have
10
on each other. These impacts are well studied in geology (mineralogy) under the general
heading of hardness, and the scale of hardness, from the lowest, talc, to 10, diamond,
is problematic. Shape plays considerable role, but so do external circumstances. It is
not inconceivable that one material may outdo another at one temperature, but has to
capitulate at another.
To this the answer might be that sword and shield dier in form, not in substance,
and that they are used under exactly the same circumstances; in the heat of the battle,
to be precise. The merchant might still retort if a suit were brought against him, that his
particular halberd would only pierce a little, because it would be blunted, again a
little. In other words, to beat that merchant sharper denitions would be needed to
bring out a contradiction. The legend adds, however, that when confronted with the
contradiction in his two statements the merchant was at a loss.
In the following contradiction will be given a specic meaning. The point of departure
is a set of theses or sentences that say something about reality, whether they are data-
sentences dividing the world into observed and unobserved, theory-sentences (hypotheses)
dividing the world into foreseen and unforeseen, or value-sentences dividing the world
into desired and rejected. The dierence between is and ought does not concern us
here. Either kind is ultimately descriptive of reality, they all refer to states of the world.
Nor are we concerned with operationalization, testability or such matters. An intuitive
understanding of what the thesis says about reality is sucient. The important point are
the dichotomies.
Imagine, then, that we have a set of theses, T. To say that T is a contradiction is
another way of saying that some states of the world the theses express are mutually
incompatible. This, in turn, is another way of saying that the realization of one thesis
will impede the realization of at least one other thesis. By realization, then, we mean
that something is, or becomes, part of empirical reality, which means that the thesis is,
or becomes, a data-sentence. It is or becomes conrmed, true, tenable, while at
the same time also being a theory-sentence or a value-sentence.
If the thesis is all three at the same time the meaning is that the state of the world
that is observed, is also foreseen and pursued, which might be said to be a denition of
the best of all worlds.
In dening contradiction as a property of a set of theses, in other words as a meta-thesis,
it is assumed that no single thesis is formulated in such a way that it is a contradiction.
If it were, it should be split into at least two theses.
Further, contradiction is taken in its literary sense, contra dicere, to speak against,
11
impossible; only that what is impossible, is not the counterpositive statement. The
latter is descriptive of what is here called irreality, I, the outermost sphere.
Between the two is potential reality, P; that which is possible but is not (yet). But if
it is not, how, then, can we know that it is possible? We cannot know by referring to
data about that which is observed, nor about what is pursued. We can only know by
bringing that reality into being, through practice, in other words. Where that will bring
humankind is unknown and unknowable; for that reason the borderline between potential
reality and irreality cannot be xed. But the borderline between that which is, and that
which might be is assumed, in this connection, to be unproblematic, although there will
be decision problems in practice. There will be grey zones, e.g. disagreements among
competent observers.
We have assumed that any contradiction thesis refers to empirical reality; in other
words, that it is a statement pronouncing something as impossible in empirical reality.
Each single thesis in T may or may not refer to empirical reality.
But if contradictory, each one of them can only refer to empirical reality, be realized in
other words, under the condition that the negation of the other theses, singly or combined,
is realized. This statement may, obviously, also be true or false, since it is an empirical
statement. If it is false then it has to be shown where in empirical reality the theses in T
are compatible. If it is true in empirical reality, then there is still the problem of whether
it would remain true in a potential reality. And the more interesting problem: whether a
process can be identied whereby that potential reality can be brought into empirical
existence.
In line with ordinary usage we shall now say that to transcend a contradiction (einen
Widerspruch aufheben) is to make empirical a potential reality so that T is no longer a
contradiction, in other words create a reality where the theses are no longer mutually
incompatible, but can all be empirically realized.
The Mobius strip may be seen as an example of a transcendence of that kind by
transforming reality. But is the M obius strip part of empirical reality before the reader, you,
all readers, everybody, did that little experiment? Yes, and that serves to underline the
dierence between objective and subjective transcendence. A contradiction is objectively
transcended if this empirical reality is possible. To what extent it is also subjectively
transcended depends on the degree and extension of consciousness about this possibility.
For this reason any contradiction-certicate may itself contradict a thesis about partly
discovered, contested empirical reality, and this is a crucial type of the second order
contradiction referred to above. When somebody says but that is incompatible, and
13
somebody else exclaims to the contrary, it is possible, I have seen it in ... a second
order contradiction has been identied.
What makes the whole idea of contradiction so basic is not the concept of incompatibil-
ity, or exclusion, which would also be found in empiricism, but the idea of transcendence.
Underlying it is the assumption that known empirical reality is only a fraction of potential
reality, and that other realities can be brought into being. What is incompatible today
may become compatible, not sub speciae aeternitatis, but tomorrow, even now, here.
It should be pointed out that we have systematically avoided referring to two theses.
That gure of speech reduces T to a set of two theses only, and is not general enough.
It tends to arrest thinking and conne it to the thought-prison of the dichotomy, so
ubiquitous and so dicult a prison to break out of. This is particularly important in
conict theory where conicts much too often are conceived of in dichotomous terms:
North-South conict, capital-labor, democracy-dictatorship, etc. This is not to deny the
usefulness of dichotomies under some circumstances, but those circumstances should be
spelt out and demonstrated empirically. The dichotomy should not be built into the
thought form, the discourse, from the very beginning. From the circumstance that there
cannot be less than 2 theses in T to constitute a contradiction it does not follow that 2 is
also the maximum number.
Another word to be used with care is synthesis. It does not merely refer to a
simple mixture, an eclectic combination, an in-between compromise, but to a higher
unity. What is intended by transcendence, however, is something more modest: a
transformation of empirical reality so that what once was a contradiction no longer is.
The incompatible has become compatible. Whether this new reality is higher or not
is another matter, and to assume that history somehow proceeds towards ever higher
realities is obscene for anybody who has lived through the twentieth century. The term
transcendence will be used for anything from the smallest micro-changes to the real
watersheds in history, and for subjective and objective transcendence.
A third word to be used with care is antithesis. There is an image of antagonism
evoked by the term anti, as if each thesis stands for a force trying to ght its way
against the other force, the thesis. Again, this is an image that is very useful under
circumstances to be spelt out, but articial under other circumstances, like in the M obius
strip example. We prefer not to build it into the contradiction concept from the very
beginning, but to develop it as a special case. Moreover, there is also an element of
anthropomorphism, and even an over-accentuation of consciousness implicit in the image,
however unintended this may be. The world becomes animated in a way hardly conducive
14
to further exploration. We aim at a broader discourse than this dichotomous speech,
wrongly attributed to Hegel, with thesis vs antithesis producing synthesis.
15
1.2 Contradiction and Incompatibility: A More For-
mal Approach
Let us now formalize this somewhat, and in a way which may imply a limitation of the
perspective; although we are not convinced that this is necessarily so.
We shall assume that any thesis in T is a proposition, in the sense of attributing
properties to something. In another context we have dened a proposition as any
statement
P
s
(X
1
, X
2
,.....X
n
) or P
s
(X)
where S is a set of m units, X is a set of n variables and P is a distribution, probabilistic
or deterministic, of S on X. For m=n=1 we get simple propositions like God is good,
I have a car; for m=200 and n=2 we may get propositions like the higher a country is
on the international division of labor, the higher its GNP per capita.
For our purpose, however, we shall usually assume that the propositions in T are about
one variable only (n=1). A proposition involving two variables will then show up as a
contradiction between two propositions involving one variable each, e.g. C is low on the
international division of labor in year Y and C is high on GNP per capita in year Y+.
The contradiction is in what the proposition excludes. In so doing we have also, implicitly,
said that the incompatibility may be probabilistic rather than deterministic, and also that
the two statements do not necessarily refer to the same point in time. This restriction to
n=1 is, however, only a convention to facilitate and standardize presentation.
A contradiction can be dened involving theses of any order of complexity, for any
number of variables. Thus, a contradiction between a thesis with one variable and one
involving two other variables would be tantamount to a proposition with three variables,
and so on.
Thus, the general paradigm for a contradiction would be based on m units and n
variables, and t theses, T, specifying the distribution of m units on n variables. Here are
two cases, both with t=2.
In the rst case m=1 and n=2, there is one unit, the body, and two variables. The
two theses locate the unit on either variable:
T1 The body has fallen freely 5 seconds
T2 The body has fallen freely 5m
16
But if the body is subject to the laws of free fall, then elapsed time t and distance s
relate to each other like s = 1/2gt
2
, so 5 meters is (about) what it would have fallen after
1, not after 5 seconds, when the distance covered would be (about) 125 meters, under
the conditions of free fall with g = 9.8. So T is a contradiction, but not for g = 0.4.
Figure 1.1.
In the second case m = 2 and n = 1: there are two units and one variable. The two
theses also locate the units on the variable.
T1 for the unit I: I have Milano
T2 for the unit my brother: my brother has Milano
However, the variable is only in a formal sense one and the same, that of possessing
Milano. In a more real sense there are two variables: I having Milano and My brother
having Milano. As diagram:
Figure 1.2.
Of the four possible combinations one is excluded; hence, T is a contradiction. But
there are certainly ways of transcending this contradiction, to be discussed later.
17
In general, then, when there are m units and n variables we shall need (mxn) axes
to explore the contradiction. This denes an (mxn) dimensional space, S, like the two-
dimensional spaces in the two examples. Each thesis in T denes a sub-space where the
unit is (or the units are) located, according to that thesis. These subspaces intersect and
form a region we shall call INT, for intersection. Each point in this region stands for the
realization of all t theses in T. It should be noticed that t is not necessarily equal to mxn,
nor is INT necessarily a proper set. It may be empty because there is no intersection or
equal to the total space dened by the mxn axes. But in general we assume that INT is
a proper set dierent from either.
Each point in S represents a reality. We now divide S into two parts, the compatibility
region, COMP, and the incompatibility region, INC. This division is not done on the
basis of the theses in T, but on the basis of the empirical distribution of m units on the
n variables. Thus, we assume that there exists some basis for saying whether a point is
realizable, i.e. belongs to empirical reality, or not. In the former case it belongs to the
compatibility region, in the latter case to the incompatibility region. In the rst example
above the basis for this distinction was the law of motion, COMP being a parabola, in
the second case the meaning of possessing Milano.
We can now give a more formal denition of contradiction: A contradiction obtains
when the intersection is located in the incompatibility region, or simply
Contradiction: INT INC
Nothing new has been said in formulating it this way, but this formulation makes the
transition to a theory of conict very easy since INT has a special meaning in that theory,
and INC has exactly the meaning already given to it.
We then proceed on the basis of the idea of incompatibility to work out a denition of
conict. To do this the idea of incompatibility is retained in the form given at the end of
the preceding section, as a contradiction, leaving open whether or not the contradiction
can be transcended by changing empirical reality.
Conict, then, is a special case of incompatibility, but what kind of special case? What
are the differentiae specicae that make a conict out of an incompatibility? We assume
them to be two in number, and a rst formulation might be as follows:
[1] the variables referred to in the theses are goal-dimensions;
[2] the units referred to in the theses are live actors.
What one thesis does is to indicate the location of a set of actors on one goal-dimension,
and a set of such theses will serve to indicate their location in a space of goal-dimensions.
18
Here it should, at once, be said that goal is taken in a very general sense. It has no
necessary connotation of end or value. All it says is that the variables with which
conict theory deals are not at; they are equipped with a goal-gradient. Concrete
ways of conceiving of goals will be spelt out in the next section.
It should also be emphasized that the units, i.e. the sets of actors, may range all
the way from the single individual to highly structured sets of sets of sets and so on of
individuals; like groups, countries, regions, worlds.
Moreover, we assume generally that these individuals are human beings, from individ-
uals to collectivities; not denying that it may be fruitful to talk about conict in the
animal world. But we are not convinced that the referent is the same; it looks as if in
that case we should rather talk about hostile or antagonistic behavior as something
short of any transcendence.
1.3 The Goal Dimension: Drives vs Consumption
Basic in this connection, hence, is the concept of the goal-dimension. Life is manifold
and human life perhaps even more so. We take it as axiomatic that life, and not only
human, is the pursuit of goals, not necessarily deliberate, whether it takes the form
of approaching positive, or avoiding negative, goals. What is positively and negatively
evaluated varies from culture to culture, whether the culture is collective or individual,
and from species to species.
Each individual has explicit and implicit cultural elements, standards, of his-her own;
also changing and rarely completely clearly structured. But goals nevertheless serve
as positive or negative sign-posts, perceived or not perceived, along the life-line of any
individual or set of individuals (collectivity), sometimes creating drives to arrive at, or to
avoid, these sign-posts. The sign-posts are approached and they are avoided, and approach
and avoidance are both processes that ll the better part of the lives of individuals and
collectivities. They should be distinguished from the goal-states which are the sign-posts
themselves, where the positive value is approached and-or the negative value completely
avoided. In the consumed goal-state there is no approach or avoidance. The drive is
extinguished until it reappears, or attention is given to other goals. Thus, a goal-state has
a temporary stability: the author with the completed book, the hunter with the game,
the couple in intercourse, the person enjoying his meal, the politician elected to his oce,
the conqueror at the moment of conquest, the people that have obtained nationhood, the
19
nations that have obtained statehood, the leaders that have managed to integrate the
revolution that has liberated the people, the party that has managed to privatize the
public sector, the other party that has managed to nationalize the private sector.
Thus, there is a basic asymmetry in life between pursuit and consumption: what
one has not, or is not, may make itself more clearly felt than what one has, or is. The
person deprived of air, whether because of drowning or suocating for some other reason,
appreciates air fully, and probably even enjoys hours of gratitude if air is made available
for consumption again. But very few have the capacity to appreciate the air around us
every minute of the day, nor do we feel that we no longer are hungry for food or sex right
after consumption of the goal-state.
The entrepreneurial type can be dened as one who is always looking for new things
to create. He is not merely enjoying the institution he has built, resting on his laurels.
The military conqueror is known to look for more conquests to be made, the politician
for more changes to be made in the social structure, and thus man chases woman until
the woman in the end catches him (G.B. Shaw), and so on. To live is to strive; where
there is no drive, no strife, there is no life.
It may be objected that this may be a way of characterizing a specic collective or
individual culture more than a general statement about goals. Modern man, to the extent
he resembles Sorokins sensate man, is process and change oriented. He is looking for
ways of changing the external world, engaged in the struggle for control, if necessary
through conquest. But how about Sorokins ideational man, striving for changes in the
internal world, perhaps summarized as a struggle for salvation? Do they experience lack
of salvation, or salvation, as such? Biographical and other evidence seem to point in the
rst direction: it is the uncertainty, the struggle with forces inside and outside oneself
that seem to dominate that persons mind.
Salvation is described as a bliss relative to sinful life before conversion, but it has
to be re-conquered all the time. If it has been obtained for oneself, then an ideational
entrepreneur may want to extend it to others and become a missionary, or to deepen
the scope of his own salvation becoming a monk, a hermit. In other words, the striving
is still there, only along other dimensions.
Thus, the distinction is probably not only between process and goal, between the
awareness of hunger and the lack of awareness of its satisfaction, but also between
individuals and collectivities with various degree of appetite and ability to struggle for
more of the goals and to invent new goals. That drives are extinguished upon consumption,
and that there is an asymmetry between the drive state and the consumption state, are
20
both true by denition.
The libertine losing interest in the woman after the rst intercourse proves nothing
new about the structure of goal-pursuit in general, only that his goal-stateeven though
he may not have known this himselfwas precisely the rst and only intercourse. The
non-libertine may be interested in follow-ups, not to mention to broaden and deepen
the scope of interaction seeing that same person as the source of mutual satisfaction of
multiple goals. It is customary to refer to the accompanying sentiment as love if the
scope is relatively broad, saying nothing about the time-perspective and whether there
is an eort to broaden it further. When there are no more eorts, no new drives, only
consumption, love may become routinized, even dead.
We can think in terms of a wave pattern: the drives are transformed into energy and
released into some kind of activity in an undulating pattern. Frequencies and amplitudes
may vary, but it is dicult to imagine a life where the wave is reduced to a completely
level line. Except, by death, like the brain waves in encephalograms.
Let us put this in more formal terms crucial for understanding conict. In the diagram
the line is the life-line of an actor, an individual or a collectivity as, moving through time
and space:
Figure The life-line of any actor
At G, at time t, there is consumption of a goal, gratication. At t
0
, when the actor is
at A, he is at a distance from G: the value may be consumed gradually over time, like
gradually achieving mastery of a new language. Or, it may be in terms of spatial distance,
as when the invasion army is approaching the capital; or in terms of time distance, the
libertine again, calculating time needed till surrender. The dierence matters: the rst
interpretation may mean a gradual extinction of the drive and the others a wetting of
appetites.
If G is the consumption of an apple, the zero point stands for zero bites; then the rst
bite and so on till the apple is consumed.
For the goal of democracy one may count the number of participatory sectors of society,
for the goal of socialism the number of equitable sectors; representing gradual realization
of the goal.
21
How about ownership: either the actor owns the means of production, communication,
destruction, or not? Depends on how many he has to consult with; ownership may also
be represented in a graded fashion.
This gives us four dierent meanings when we talk about goal, and they should be
kept apart.
Table 1.1 Four Aspects of goal
goal as
dimension
goal as
end point
goal as
standard of evaluation a variable goal
goal as
consumption
degree of
goal-consumption
goal-state:
goal-consumption completed
When peace is mentioned as a goal it is usually in the upper right hand corner sense,
and peace is usually claried when spelt out as a variable because positive peace is
then contrasted with negative peace. Shades and grades of peace can then be specied.
All this should be distinguished from locating an actor on a goal-dimension, and
particularly from locating him at the end of the dimension where the goal is consumed:
the actor is in or at the goal-state. One thing is goal and goal-dimensions as abstract
entities belonging to the culture, or to the analytical apparatus; another is goal or degree
of goal-attainment as a concrete state of the actor.
Thus far we have talked about goals and drives and it might be tempting to relate
the two. This has been done fairly often at the level of individual: one has tried to
measure the drive as a function of the physical distance from the goal, and of the degree
of realization of the goal. The relation between drive and distance is often referred to as
the gradient, and they may look as follows:
Figure 1.3. The Relation Between Goal and Drive
22
In the rst case, consumption starts at G and the drive becomes more intense the
closer one is; in the second case the consumption ends at G and the drive is extinguished.
Combined into one diagram yields an A-shaped curve known to many actors for many
goals.
1.4 Conict: Actors in Pursuit of Incompatible
Goals
Let us now add another actor to create a social system.
If life, action, is the pursuit of goals, then social life, interaction, is the exchange of
value. Actors enter into exchange relations, for many reasons, one of them being that
they think they gain utility (subjective value); another because they are used to do so;
still another because they are forced to. The farmer and the city-dweller exchanging
food with manufactured goods are useful as examples of a limited type of exchange.
The prison inmate and his guard also exchange valuesthe inmate is usually forced into
his position and the guard is usually paid to be therebut the values exchanged are
predominantly negative, like not being a troublemaker against relaxing the rules. We
refer to the interaction relation as dissociative if the values exchanged are mainly negative
or neutral, and as associative if the values exchanged are predominantly positive.
Both examples above have a certain supercial equivalence or reciprocity about them:
the farmer gets his due in terms of manufactured goods, the guard gets back from the
inmate as trouble whatever he, the guard, may have added to the punishment in terms of
strict reinforcement of regulations, etc. But reciprocity, or equity, is not a generally valid
social rule. In the relationship between slave-owner and slave, or between nineteenth
century capitalist and worker, it makes no sense to talk about equity in the exchange.
In the following sections the dierence between equality among actors and equity in
the exchange between actors will be explored. Cases of gross inequity in exchange will be
referred to as exploitation, which may even go so far as to involve an exchange between
positive and negative value, as when the slave contributes to prot and receives all kinds
of deprivation in return.
How is exchange on unequal terms possible? Simply because the two-person free-will
market model has very limited applicability. It portrays the individual as master, seeking
optimal value exchanges, and not as an element in a more comprehensive and complex
social structure where repression plays a major role.
23
The social structure may prescribe for the individual his patterns of exchange and x
the exchange price for his labor (wages), his love (that love should be reciprocated), etc.
Not all actors are able to change the prices since they are often not geared to one isolated
individual but to positions, to statuses and roles, as a worker, a lover, an enterprise, a
big power, etc., not easily changed. But not all spheres of life are thus regulated and
circumscribed, and the spheres that are only regulated up to a certain level leave lots of
possibilities for the change-oriented individual, group or nation.
Thus, individuals as well as collectivities are both free and bound, both able to x the
terms of exchange as they want and to withdraw from unrewarding bargains, and unable
to do so. With a less complex image of social reality no analysis will carry us very far.
To summarize: life is the pursuit of goals, social life is the exchange of value - and
that which pursues values, and exchanges values, is referred to as an actor.
In the pursuit he acts, and in the exchange he interacts; actors move along their
life-lines, dotted with goal-consumption, culminating in goal-states.
Occasionally the life-lines intersect: the actors come together in space and time, become
relevant to each other and may engage in value-exchange or interaction; positive, neutral,
negative.
And this is, of course, where conict enters, although it can also be dened for one
actor.
We can now dene conict, building on the notions of contradiction and incompatibility
developed in the general goal-notions explored here. According to these notions there are
goals to be realized; the realization sometimes referred to as goal-consumption. Thus,
with the units being sets of individuals and the variables being goal-dimensions, INT
becomes the region of acceptable goal-realization, here called ACC, or the acceptability
region. A conict, then, is a contradiction where the acceptability region is located inside
the incompatibility region:
ACC INC
This will serve as a point of departure. A conict simply involves incompatible goals.
But there is more to it: those goals are pursued, leading to Conict=Actors in Pursuit of
Incompatible Goals.
24
have control over their own consciousness-formation and are not subject to too much
manipulation and mobilization of resources to pursue those goals, which presupposes
that they have control over their own internal organization. Neither condition is satised
for the underdog Periphery in the vertical case, and that is what makes it vertical.
The dierence between the two types of conict can now be made sharper in the eort
to dene the conicts, not only the two relations. So, what are the two types of conicts
about?
The way it is conceived of here there is always conict in the vertical relation because
conict is already built into the structure whereas conict may come and go in the
horizontal relation.
The vertical structure has much more permanence, the horizontal structure is more
eventful. For that reason they are best captured, analytically, in what somewhere
also has been termed the structure-oriented and actor-oriented perspectives, discourses,
intellectual frameworks, respectively.
According to the former, society is seen as a structure and the essential characteristics
are the nature of the interaction relation and the interaction structure, not the nature
of the individuals and sets of individuals. To refer to them as actors presupposes
that they can act, i.e. that they have sucient Spielraum, action-space, that they have
alternatives and hence can set goals and pursue them. This opportunity is to a large
extent denied the underdog periphery in the vertical relation; and for that reason analysis
in terms of consciously formed goals and organized pursuit of them easily becomes false
and misleading.
But it is not misleading in the second, horizontal, type of relation. Here there are
actors by denition capable of formulating and pursuing goals. Hence the structural
network can be permitted to recede into the background in an analysis, and the focus
can be on the actors themselves, on their goals and strategies. Just as much as marxist
types of analysis are less warranted in the latter, strategic analysis of individuals whose
consciousness has been deformed by being at the bottom of a vertical division of labor,
penetrated, fragmented, can only lead to illusions of harmony when the bottom does not
express any goal dierent from that of their masters, nor takes any step in that direction.
Similarly, marxist analysis of a horizontal situation leads to strained eorts to cast the
relationship in terms of exploitative interaction. This, of course, is not to deny that
vertical type analysis of internal relation inside S
1
and S
2
may be very fruitful in eorts
to understand S
1
-S
2
relations even when the latter look horizontal.
In the following, however, marxist and liberal analytical schemes will not necessarily be
28
used; the analysis will move forward on its own conict theory terms, obviously borrowing
from either.
And the terms are sucient to dene the two types of conict, i.e. the typical conicts
in the two social situations. Since the sets of individuals have already been claried in
the two cases, conict obviously has to be explicated by turning to the goal aspect.
In a vertical relation the conict is dened in terms of interests, and according to the
following axiom:
It is in everybodys interest not to be exploited
The entire analysis of vertical conict derives from this assumption, and we shall
later show that there is a similar assumption behind the much better known analysis of
horizontal conict.
The basic point is, of course, that there is no reference to consciously formulated goals,
only to interests. These interests are objectively dened, and tied to an analysis of the
interaction relation itself. If exploitative, then somebody is exploited and somebody is
an exploiter. What the axiom says is that however interest is dened, it is in everybodys
interest not to be exploited, even when he begs for subjugation.
Is it in somebodys interest to exploit? It is denitely, very often, somebodys subjective
goal to exploit, but is it also in somebodys objective interest? A Gandhi might say no:
the exploiter may think that it is in his interest, but it actually is not; not merely because
the exploiter will sooner or later have an uprising topple his privileged position, but also
because he becomes a slave of his own eorts to exploit and to maintain the exploitation.
To destroy the exploitative structure, therefore, is also to liberate the exploiter from his
exploitation, and set him free.
But the opposite view is indeed also possible. There is such an overwhelming multitude
of situations where people, consciously or not, seem to accept positions of privilege, and
to react against any eort to reduce the exploitation.
An analytical concept is needed to explain this as well as to explain the situation of
the exploited.
The exploiter may not be conscious of his exploitation, so why does he persist in it?
One answer may be: because it is in his interest to do so.
On the other hand, the exploited is in a situation not in his interest, so why does he
nevertheless sometimes accept it consciously and openly? One often found answer may
be: because he has false consciousness or none at all.
Thus, interest is seen as something that may or may not be expressed as a value. If
the expressed goal does not coincide with the interest, which we assume for everybody is
29
the equity solution, E. One conict history would be for a system to start in A with S
1
as the exploiter, then move to C with a revolution with S
2
as the exploiter, and then end
up in E with equity.
And that ends our story so far. It all hinges on the concept of equity, not only on the
negative concept of exploitation. In equity S
1
and S
2
can meet, but for that to happen
much consciousness formation is needed. In both.
Meeting in equity there can still be incompatibility, but the conict is horizontal, and
according to the following axiom:
It is in everybodys interest to maximize value.
Obviously this may bring us from a marxist to an economist paradigm. But there is
no assumption that values are egoistic. Cultures will dene them and play the role for
horizontal conict structures play for vertical conict. Their cultures may be altruistic,
with no axiom to the eect that the sum of a zillion egoisms is one altruism.
So far conict has been dened, like many authors do, in terms of incompatibility of
goals, and two major subtypes of goals have been indicated, interests and values, giving
rise to two major subtypes of conict: conict of interest (structural conict) and conict
of values (actor conict). The distinction is neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive;
many, maybe most, conicts are mixes of the two.
This does not mean that we split the theory of conict into two conicts of interest
and conicts of values. On the contrary, we shall assume that there are two basic parts
of the theory of conict, but dened dierently.
One is a conict transformation theory of how conicts of interest are transformed
into conicts of manifest values. And the other is manifest conict theory.
In other words, it is assumed that conict in latent form, as conict of interest, does
not have an independent life, remaining the same, but will be heading for transformation
into manifest form, as conict of values. Indeed, latent conictsexploitation, penetration,
fragmentation are persistent facts in social life, but that persistence is for each specic
conict in an unstable equilibrium. Consciousness-formation and organization, individual
and collective, are also facts of life.
But can it not be imagined that a latent conict is resolved without necessarily being
transformed into a manifest conict? From the axiomatic statement just given no, but
this is certainly not evident.
For instance, could it not be that somebody comes from the outside, digs into the
structural conditions of the conict of interest, changes-manages the whole situation and
produces a more equitable society? Yes, this can certainly be imagined, but there would
31
still be a conict of interest in the division of labor between the outside conict-managers
and the conict-managed. The conict-managers would use the conict of others as the
raw material that they themselves would process and turn into a processed product, a
conict solution.
With the old Herr (topdog) gone, the Knecht (underdog) will wake up to nd himself
under a new Herr the conict-manager. The rule may be dierent, but the opportunity
of self-growth, of becoming truly autonomous through ones own conict transformation
or conict manifestation, has been lost.
1.6 Frustration and Conict
So far we have assumed that goals are not only set but also obtained, that goal-states
are reached and goals consumed. However, it is a rather trivial fact of life that it often
takes time and other resources to reach goal-states, and even if the actor tries as hard as
possible, the goal-state may nevertheless never be arrived at.
It is customary to refer to this as frustration, which means that the access to the
goal-state has been blocked. It is also customary to talk about sources of frustration,
which are the factors that must be removed to permit the access to the goal-state when
the actor is said to be frustrated.
There are many diculties with these denitions, however. To take an example: a
person wants an academic degree, but has to mobilize time, money and other resources.
He is frustrated because of this, but in the end gets his degree. In that case one might
perhaps say that his frustration is relative to the goal-state of getting his degree easily,
and that diers from the frustration of a person who fails the examination for the third
and last time.
One major class of sources of frustration can be referred to as scarcity of resources.
Not to aord something produces a clear case of frustration; to aord it and discover
that it is out of stock another; to aord it, locate it and then discover that somebody one
cares for and about dislikes the object, still another. But there may also be goal-states
that are blocked because no resources can ever be mobilized to reach them. He who has
glued the goal perpetuum mobile on his mind is in a dierent kind of diculty from he
who merely wants to invent a more eective steam engine than anyone else before him.
The same applies to the person some time ago who wanted to go to the moon: today
that goal is more realistic.
32
In other cases we do not know: mathematicians often set themselves goals in terms of
theorems they want to prove where they may be unable both to prove and to disprove.
Politicians certainly do the same: he who works for the world government cannot say
whether his goal is realistic and may become a part of empirical reality. But given the
actor, his goal and the resources available we have a basis for operationalizing the degree
of frustration as the amount of additional resources needed to reach the goal-state, ie, to
remove the sources of frustration. As indicated, it may vary from zero in the case of no
frustration to innity in the case of unrealistic goals.
Let us now complicate the picture again, this time by introducing not only one value-
dimension, but two, so that there are two dierent goal-states, G
1
and G
2
to refer to; for
the same actor or for dierent actors is of no signicance. We have mentioned scarcity of
resources as one important source of frustration and this now brings us to the next: the
situation where two goal-states exclude each other because they are incompatible. This is
not the case of having insucient resources to obtain ones goal, but of realizing that one
goal stands in the way of realizing another goal. A person may nd it dicult to be both
rich and happy, or to be both honest and considerate; a nation may have diculties being
loyal to an international community of nations and at the same time safe-guarding its
own more immediate interests. Or: two persons may nd that they are in love with the
same, third, person who is as monogamous as they are; two countries may nd that the
desire for autonomy for one conicts with the desire for markets for the other, and so on.
It is customary to refer to this as conict, which means that the access to one goal-state
is blocked by eorts to reach an other goal-state; the goal-states are incompatible, exclude
each other.
In principle this is not very dierent from frustration. In frustration there is one
goal-state and insucient resources to reach it; in conict there are at least two goal-
states and insucient resources to realize them all. Thus, conict is for two actors what
frustration is for one actor, for which reason one sometimes treats conict as a special
case of frustration. We shall prefer to do it the other way, however, as will be elaborated
below. At any rate, the distinction between the two is important since conict (except
when G
1
and G
2
are pursued by the same actor, the two actors are inside one) is to
the social system (and to sociology) what frustration is to the personal system (and to
psychology). But it is important to tie them together in a general theoretical framework
to be developed in the following two parts of this book.
Life in general, and social life in particular, would now look highly dierent if goals
were always adjusted to the possibilities of satisfying them. It is important to imagine
33
this state of aairs since this book is dealing with the particular conditions under which
goals are not satised, whether this is best analyzed in terms of too high ambitions or too
limited resources. Under this condition, which is hard to imagine, frustration and conict
would both be unknown since they are both special cases of limited resources. Life would
consist in A-shaped wave patterns with limited amplitudes: goals are satised, then goals
build up again, drives become intense, they are satised, and so on and so forth.
It is customary to associate this type of existence closely with stability, and that is
probably correct: there would be few ripples on the waves that could serve as foci for the
emergence of new social patterns. There would be no motivation for a pattern of change
and growth.
But appetites might be growing as conditions of satisfying them develop, challenging
even a stable and collectivistic social structure protected by a culture of a buddhist
variety. It does not account for the circumstance that the worlds richest societies also
seem to be the societies that change fastest, or the possibility of having change itself as a
value, even a dominant one. Such a world, with sucient resources for all goal-states to
be enjoyed, would probably rather be characterized by non-buddhist patterns of behavior
and attitudes.
On the other hand there is the world with a maximum of frustration and conict. Any
grown-up person today will immediately think of the nazi concentration camp as a model,
with its seemingly unlimited potential for inicting frustration and conict. The results
in terms of behavior of the inmates are well-known; they range from animal brutishness
to extreme apathy to incredible acts of compassion.
We mention this to place the study of frustration and conict in its proper perspective,
as dealing with human essentials, with matters of life and death. For somewhere on this
range from zero to innity in terms of degree of frustration and conict every personal and
social system on earth is located. The quality of the existence of the actors is a function
of this condition. And, as so often is the case in human aairs: the best prescription for
most individual and collective actors is in media res. Too much frustration and conict
may have a highly destructive eect, and too little may provide the actor with too low
levels of stimulation, challenge, to function adequately.
Conicts are frustrating but not all frustrations can be put on the standard conict
form with actors, goals, incompatibility and pursuit. To deal with the latter we need
more conceptual tools.
34
1.7 The Elements of Conict
We have dened conict as a social system of actors with incompatibility between their
goal-states. We shall show that surprisingly much can be said about conict as such,
with no reference to special types of conicts. It is a property of social systems; then
conceived of as a more or less interdependent systems of actors striving to achieve their
goal-states. In the process it happens that they stand in each others way, or so they may
believe, and this is where the system becomes a conict system. We are concerned with
the general theory of such systems.
However, to make it less abstract, and to have tools of analysis, some dimensions of
conict systems will have to be introduced. The science of conicts, conictology, needs
elements of analysis as much as any other science to arrive at hypotheses that can be
tested and serve as a basis for the establishment or empirically conrmed propositions,
which in turn can serve as building-bricks for theories (or vice versa). Twelve such
dimensions will be presented in the next part of this book, in this chapter we shall focus
on a more precise version of the denition.
For a start these are the elements in the conceptualization of conict:
1. The actors, m of them, who may be of any kind. We assume that they are, for
good or for bad, relevant to each other so that they form a system of actors.
2. The goals, n of them, also of any kind, that the actors try to achieve, forming a
system of goals.
We do not assume that all m actors try to achieve all n goals, but we need information
on where they stand on all of them. The system of goals combined with the system
of actors form the action-system.
The movements of this system can be traced in the many-dimensional goal-space,
R, where each actor can be located on each goal-dimension.
3. The acceptability-region, A, which is dened as the set of positions in the many-
dimensional goal space acceptable to all actors. This point of bliss is the point
where all m actors enjoying the goal-states on all n dimensions, obviously a part of
A. However, often some actors may accept less, thus extending the acceptability
region.
4. The incompatibility-region, I, which is dened as the set of points that cannot
be realized because one or more goal-states, points on the goal-dimensions, are
35
incompatible with one or more others. The points not of incompatibility are points
of compatibility and also form a set, the compatibility-region, C. Clearly, I + C =
R if we presuppose that we have sucient information to decide for each point in
R whether it is a point of compatibility or incompatibility.
5. The conict, which is dened as a property of the action-system which obtains
when there is no overlap between acceptability-region and compatibility-region. Or,
dierently expressed: the acceptability-region is a subset of the incompatibility-
region. Still dierently expressed: when all acceptable combinations of degree of
goal-consumption exclude each other, are incompatible with each other.
With the action-system and the denition of conict, we can now dene the conict-
system as the minimum set of actors and goals that does not change the conict. If
we start out with m actors and n goals it is not always the case that all of them are
needed, for instance to dene the East-West conict. Thus, the conict-system is
the hard nucleus of the action-system where the conict is located; if we reduce it
further then we lose actors and-or goals that are indispensable for the understanding
of the nature of the conict.
To analyze a conict, however, we often have to add to the conict-system some
more actors and goals, as when the East-West conict is analyzed in its global
context, adding the Pacic to the Atlantic theater, then referred to as the refer-
ence-system. Thus, conict-system and reference-system are the minimum and
maximum, respectively, needed to analyze the conict.
We then add to the scheme so far developed:
6. Conict attitude, which we identify with mental states of the actors, and
7. Conict behavior, which we identify with somatic states of the actors in the action-
system.
Thus attitude and behavior are used to describe completely the states of the actors
in the system; using the age-old body-soul division between the somatic and the
mental states.
This means that the conict-system is looked at from two dierent angles: an ab-
stract angle where goal-states are analyzed for their compatibility or incompatibility,
and a concrete angle where actors are analyzed in terms of attitude and behavior.
We then use behavior in such a way as to include verbal as well as non-verbal
36
behavior, not to mention behavior that consists in keeping constant the state of
ones body; inactivity. And we use attitude so as to include cognitions as well as
evaluations and emptiness; inactivity.
These are very broad concepts, but the line between them is relatively clear, which
is not the same as saying that we do not believe in empirical correlations between
somatic and mental states of the actors. It should perhaps be added that if the
actor is a collectivity, then behavior refers to the behavior of its members, and
attitude to the attitudes of the members. However coordinated and harmonized,
even masses ultimately boil down to individuals.
We mention this because there might be an alternative denition, reserving behav-
ior for collective representative behaviorwhich may not be representativeand
attitude for collective representative attitudewhich may not be representative. We
reject that approach as being too reminiscent of the old group-soul idea, and
because of diculties in drawing the border line.
At the concrete level of behavior and attitude actors act and feel the conict, they
are the conict. We are used to identifying this as destruction, both in behavior
and attitude, an identication which is not necessary even if empirically tenable.
But had it not been for the destruction, violence, that may accompany conict the
eld would not have attracted so much attention as it does.
8. Conict negation is now easily dened: it is a process that includes the disappearance
of the conict. In other words; it is a succession of states of the conict system where
the end state has one denitely characteristic: an overlap between acceptability
and compatibility has been found. Conict negation is a process where the nal
state may be referred to as conict termination.
Nothing is implied about the quality of the negation: it need not be just, good or
lasting; the negation just is in the sense that the conict is not: acceptability- and
compatibility-regions overlap. Thus, a negation may involve killing one actor or
suppressing one goal, just as well as it may involve the fusion of two actors into a
integrated whole or the dissolution of the incompatibility through the mobilization
of reservoirs of time, energy, money etc. All elements we have listed to arrive at
the denition of conict become keys to conict negation in as much as they are
elements in the conict situation, and constitute in themselves approaches, both in
theory and in practice, to the negation and termination of any conict.
37
Paradoxically it seems more easy to arrive at a theory for the resolution than for the
origin or genesis of conicts. Much can also be said about the dynamics of conicts, but
it looks as if knowledge of the dynamics and resolution phases of conicts sheds more
light on the phase of origin than vice versa. A conict system is a succession of states;
the more similar these states the more static the system, the more dissimilar the more
dynamic, by denition.
Knowledge of the nature of the conict itself at all points in the history of the system
is indispensable, particularly since the conict will change and generally aggravate by
an admixture stemming from the escalation in the dynamics phase. But given the way
conict has been dened most of the relevant properties of the system are already included
in the denition of the conict: the description of the actors, the description of the goals,
sucient knowledge about either to establish acceptability and incompatibility regions
and their relation to each other. It is claimed that with this knowledge it should be
possible to proceed on the basis of general conict theory, and that the shadows thrown
by the prehistory are of minor signicance relative to the impact of the factors already
included in the denition of the successive conicts in which the system is found. History
is already absorbed in actors and goals.
1.9 Conict Theory and Game Theory
We have now presented the building-blocs for a conict theory: actors, their goals (values,
interests) imputed to them by analysis of their interests and studies of their behavior to
uncover what they seem to pursue, and on interview methods to get verbal declarations
about value-orientations and other attitudes. Acceptability- and incompatibility-regions
are dened and compared. The more detailed knowledge about all these factors or aspects
of a conict, the more can be said about the conict dynamics and possible resolution.
In game theory the same elements appear, but in a somewhat dierent order so that
the emphasis becomes dierent. There are actors, but usually only two. There are goals
but they are usually projected onto a generalized utility-dimension so that for all practical
purposes the theory is handling only one goal. This means that game theory in its simple,
very common, case is studying (2,1)-conicts, known as two-person games, but more
general formulations of the theory are certainly available.
For some mathematical theorems to apply there is the condition that the goal-dimension
(utility-dimension) is additive, even limited to the structure of an interval scale. There is
39
incompatibility-line in Diagram 1. In the second case the situation is more complex, the
utility-pairs are more scattered. Two of them are located on the zero-sum line, two of
them on the line of equal utility. If these lines are identied as the lines of pure conict
and pure cooperation respectively, then games can be seen as composed of these basic
elements, depending on how the parties or actors are coupled together in the system they
are components of.
This can be well expressed by means of correlation, or better, agreement, coecients:
if the coecient is negative, then the conict element is predominant, if it is positive
then the cooperation element is predominant, and if the correlation is zero then there is
a mixture of equal magnitudes present in the system.
In the game theory paradigm the points represent possible outcomes: given a certain
combination of action-choices certain combinations of utilities emerge. Hence, these are
possibilities or compatible combinations, and they span a space that can be lled with
compatible combinations if mixed strategies are made use of.
In the conict theory paradigm the two regions of compatibility and incompatibility
usually come out as contiguous regions. But this is no built-in necessity. The sets of
points of compatibility can have any structure, and the distinctions in terms of correlation
can be equally well made for the conict theory paradigm. Usually the compatibility
curve is much more interesting than the region, for it stands to reason that the parties
will at least try to obtain positions on the curve and not be content with an inferior
position inside the region from where both can move without harming the other.
In conict theory the emphasis is on position on the goal dimension; in game theory on
action-choice. Thus game theory appears as more concrete, relating directly to concrete
actions, whereas conict theory is more general, not asking how the party arrived at a
certain point in the diagram, it only maps their joint position. The advantage is that
trajectories can be traced and regions dened with great accuracy, in game theory they
come out as points only.
But the two are essentially translatable to each other and should both be used
depending on the type of information that is available: positions on goal-dimensions, or
action-choices.
41
42
Chapter 2
DIMENSIONS OF CONFLICT
Introduction
This book is written in a spiral; things are touched upon, left behind, approached again
when some other themes have been explored a little bit, fade out then to be approached
again later on. Thus, after the preparatory work done in Part One an eort will now be
made to approach a major theme: the dimensions, necessary and sucient, to conceive
of conict in all its phases, origin or genesis, process or dynamics, resolution or negation.
In short, its ongoing, never ending transformation.
Let us start by making a distinction between typologies of conict and dimensions
of conict. A typology classies conicts into types. A dimension is a variable that
apply to all conicts, regardless of type. Moreover, they can be conceived of dynamically:
a conict can move along these dimensions; that is what makes them dierent from a
taxonomic, static scheme. Actually, there is only one typology that we would not include
among the dimensions, the simple typology derived from the type of actors participating
in the conict: conicts involving persons, involving groups, or involving societies. This is
a typology and not a dimension because we would not generally assume it to be dynamic.
An interperson conict would remain an interperson conict, although its history might
reveal ramications from and to all the other types.
When it comes to dimensions each author in the eld will have his own bundle to
present, and this book is no exception. The present bundle has been arrived at with two
principles in mind.
43
First, as already mentioned: it should be possible to say what we want to say about
conict relying on these dimensions, and whatever can be derived from them by purely
logical operations, alone.
Second, the dimensions should be as few as possible, for economy of thought use
conceptual puritanism. Why? Why submit oneself voluntarily to Occams razor? Are not
the richness and variety of society in general, and conict in particular, so overwhelming
that it can only be captured by a language that with the same richness and does that
not argue in favor of the variety in natural languages?
If there were a choice between the puritan rigor just advocated and the richness
of natural language we would certainly opt for the latter. But there is also virtue to
the former, often referred to as scientic discipline. The virtue is to some extent
combinatorial: the researcher says, to himself and to others, here are my terms of
reference, let me now try to get as much out of them as possible. If they are very many
one cannot possibly explore all the combinations. But if they are very few I can do that,
and this may lead me into dark corners where the fruitfulness of the dimensions chosen is
measured exactly by their ability to lighten up those corners. Thus, the puritanism of
conceptual economy serves as a heuristic, as an aid not only to formulate what I already
know, but also to ask questions about the unknown. The fruitfulness of the scheme
should be judged on the basis of the latter rather than the former.
To arrive at the dimensions we use the denition of conict: actors in pursuit of
incompatible goals, remembering that as limiting case actors may be parties, goals may
be interests, incompatibilities may never be brought into the open, and the pursuit may
be steered by the structure. This limiting case must be given much prominence.
It has been found useful to group the dimensions under the four headings of actors,
goals, incompatibility and pursuit. With three dimensions for each heading this gives a
total of 12, but the scheme is not quite that economical since there are subdimensions:
44
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The Table may look impossible at rst glance, but is actually very simple. Thus,
the two rst two columns simply start with the number of actors and number of goals;
then proceed to the structure of the sets of actors and the structure of the sets of goals,
obviously dening some kind of space; and then continue with two important functions
of that space: the type of consciousness the actors have of it, and the extent to which
various positions in that goal space are acceptable or not.
In the third column, then, the incompatibility function does the same for what is
empirically possible, attainable, realizable or not, preceded by two important distinctions
in the theory of incompatibility, analyticity and substitutability.
And nally, there is the fourth column which starts out with such obvious manifestations
of conict as attitude and behavior, and then brings in a basic variable in any theory
of conict: how the resources are distributed, which is a euphemistic way of bringing in
power, but then power of dierent types.
The basic distinction is between ideological or normative, remunerative and punitive
forms of power, to be explored in some detail. But underlying that is power or resources
as something an actor has, and power as something built into the structure as part of the
position of an actor. Obviously this relates to the key distinction in Part One between
actor-conict and structure-conict, and the two types of power can be referred to as
resource power and position-power respectively. We just mention this point to assure the
reader that the key distinction from Part One has not been lost sight of but comes up in
dimension (12) below.
Let us then dig into this systematically, and in the order indicated in Table 2.1.
ACTORS
2.1 Domain
This is a deceptively simple dimension: simply counting the number of actors. However,
there is the basic idea that the counting starts at zero, with the nonactor, the party
to a conict. Then, the single actor conict, the actor at odds with himself, is of course
included; dening the category of the intraactor conict, whether of the intrapersonal,
intragroup or intrasocietal variety. Correspondingly, when the domain exceeds 1 we
obviously have to do with interactor conicts, starting with the bilateral or bipolar
variety, ending with the multilateral, multipolar type where m actors are involved.
46
How then would we distinguish between, say, an intragroup and an interperson
conict? Does not the group consist of persons, like a society consists of groups, and does
not that mean that an intragroup conict is simply a conict between persons, just as
an intrasocietal conict would be a conict between groups? No, although this may be
the consequence of an intraactor conict, it seems a waste of terms to identify them
with each other a priori. On the contrary, we can conceive of an intragroup conict
as a condition where the same intraperson conict is found throughout the group, in
the smallest subsection; and similarly we can conceive of an intrasocietal conict as a
conict where the same intragroup conict is found throughout the society. In either
case the collectivity is ridden with or by a fundamental doubt, for instance as to what is
worse, to be red or to be dead; or what is preferable, a socialist government headed
by Jews or the country occupied, by anti-Jewish Germans (a Cold War, postWorld War
II dilemma, and a preWorld War II dilemma in France, respectively).
Thus, the intracollectivity conict is a collectively shared dilemma, dilemma being
a term often made use of in connection with intrapersonal conict; here generalized.
Perhaps the dierence between intraactor and interactor conict can be made more
clear in terms of some possible, although extreme, outcomes, as indicated in Table 2.2.
Table 2.2. ConictTypes and Possible Outcomes
type
person group society
domain intra suicide apathy anomie
inter homicide internal war external war
Typically, the extreme outcome of the intraactor conict would be some kind of
selfdestruction and the extreme outcome of interactor conict some type of other-
destruction. But this means that it might be very advantageous for a possible target of
that other destruction to manipulate the perception of a conict so that it is seen as
an intra-actor conict, leading to gradual erosion, inactivity and selfdestruction of a
potential aggressor.
We do not have to go so far as to the collective suicide found in some cultures for a
group or a society to become inactive. Total collective apathy, or one corresponding term
at the social level, anomie, would render a potential aggressor innocuous.
For the time being there is not much more to get out of this dimension. It only denes
the number of actors in the set of actors, not the structure of that set. To that we now
turn.
47
2.2 Structure of Actors
To dene a structure one needs a set of elements, and a set of relations between them.
To the social scientist there is no doubt what the latter is: the key relation of interaction,
analyzed in terms of exchange, what passes between the parties, and inchange, what
goes on inside the parties as a consequence of the interaction. But what does this
interaction relate or connect? We cannot say actors because we may have situations
without actors, only with parties. But in the latter case it would usually make sense to
say positions, that in which the party is put to perform according to the interaction
rules. We let that do for the time being, and turn to the major distinction: whether
the conict is unstructured or structured, and in the latter case whether it is vertical or
horizontal. Needless to say, these distinctions are analytical and hence too blunt. There
are all kinds of shades in between, such as the semistructured conict, the diagonal
conict, and so on. But, as somebody has said: the existence of hermaphrodites and
other intermediate types does not make the dimension of gender invalid as an analytical
or practical tool.
First, there is the unstructured conict which in a sense is a conict that takes place in
a vacuum, a vacuous conict. There is no prior interaction whatsoever, like the colonial
powers suddenly descending on an African society. Analytically speaking this case is often
relatively simple to handle since analysis of the resources the two actors bring into the
conict will often carry us a considerable distance in understanding what is happening.
This dimension will be explored below, in Section 2.12, under (12). Suce it here only to
say that in this case we could clearly speak about symmetric versus asymmetric conicts,
depending on the distribution of the resources the actors have at their disposal for the
conict.
However, in general we shall assume that conict is structured, and in that case the
major focus would be on the nature of the interaction. More particularly, the focus will be
on the results of the exchange and inchange; on whether the net benets that accrue
from the interaction are unevenly or evenly distributed. In the rst case the conict is
vertical, in the second case it is horizontal.
This is the basic, fundamental distinction, because it is so closely related to the
distinction between conicts of interest and conicts of goals. The conicts of interest
are structurally dened, they do not necessarily leave any traces whatsoever in terms
of consciousness, attitude or behavior in the parties. And the basic, but by no means
the only one, conict of interest would be in connection with verticality. However, as
48
pointed out in the preceding part of the book there can also be structural conicts that
are horizontal only that they are probably not so important. Further, in a vertical
conict parties may certainly become actors through organizations and interests become
goals through consciousness formation, so there is no contradiction in saying that an
actors goal is his interest. The point is merely that there can be interests that are not
goals.
In horizontal conict, a conict between parties in an equitable relationship, we would
not talk about conicts of interest since that term has been tied to some kind of asymmetry
in the interaction structure, in the form of exploitation, penetration, fragmentation or
marginalization. Thus, the horizontal conict would typically be a conict over goals.
At this point it is important not to confuse the verticalhorizontal distinction with
the asymmetricsymmetric distinction.
The former has to do with a position in the structure, the latter with the resources
they bring into the conict. The two are strongly related empirically, however analytically
distinct they may be.
Thus, exploitation is usually predicated on the assumption that he who is on top
of the structure, in its center, will also command the resources. In other words, it is
predicated on the assumption that structural power is highly correlated with resource
power; relational power with dierence power to express the same in terms with a slightly
dierent connotation. But that is not necessarily the case.
Correspondingly, the theory of revolution, the opposite of the theory of repression,
assumes that those at the bottom of a vertical structure have latent resources. The
function of consciousness formation and organization is to mobilize these resources. When
this is done a vertical conict may turn into a symmetric conict, or even an asymmetric
conict in favor of the underdog.
Having said this let us introduce some additional distinctions in connection with
interaction, highly useful in conict theory.
First, an interaction relation connects actors. However, it may not necessarily connect
all of them, in which case the connection is weak; if it does connect all of them it is
strong. If the interaction is vertical this gives us weak order and strong order respectively,
and in the latter case one may even have linear order. There is some way of ordering
actors so that the dierences between them become measurable. An example would be
the ordering of civil servants on a salary scale, where they can be compared in terms of
the number of steps that separates them. In Figure 2.1 some examples are given, for
both the vertical and the horizontal cases. It should be noted that in either case strong
49
The horizontal types are the simplest ones. In Model III, Communal Society, all
interaction is horizontal and the connection is strong, not like in Model IV, Pluralistic
Society, where groups relate to each other horizontally, but very weakly or not at all.
In the vertical case strong has been interpreted weakly: the point is that no element
is isolated from the rest, all are connected, but at the bottom of society there may be
fragmentation. It is quite clear who is above and who is below, but those at the bottom
are only relate to each other by having the same actor on top of them. This is Model I,
Conservative or perhaps better Feudal Society.
Correspondingly, in Model II, Liberal Society, the predominant mode is still vertical
but it has been modied by introducing horizontal interaction between equals. The
weakness in this case, is not exactly of the type indicated in the denition above; that
denition would point more in the direction of detachment between vertical units. But
in spite of these impurities in the denitions the scheme is so related to what has been
presented here for conict analysis, and also brings us towards more concrete societies.
Thus, conservative society has its obvious manifestations today in archetypical Japan,
liberal society in the various types of class societies from the United States to the Soviet
Union, communal society in the peoples communes in China, and pluralist society appears
as some kind of future utopia, more or less articulated in the minds and actions of some
people.
Our point in this connection, however, is not to engage in of futuristic analysis but to
indicate something about the concrete setting in which conicts may take place.
Thus, in Model I and Model II societies the conicts would predominantly be vertical
and in Model III and Model IV societies predominantly horizontal. The latter two
would, by denition, have overcometranscendedvertical interaction. They would be
non-exploitative, equitable societies.
The point is that conict genesis, as well as conict dynamics and conict resolution,
will take on very dierent forms in these four societies, and that is a theme which will be
developed later.
More particularly, we would be interested in studying what kind of conict resolution
mechanisms would develop in these four social forms; clearly more related to structure-
conicts in Models I and II, and to actor-conicts in Models III and IV.
Let us then turn to the next aspect of interaction, particularly well known through the
works of Sorokin, Parsons and many social anthropologists. The focus is not on inequity-
equity, but on the scope of interaction, from the narrow band referred to as specic
interaction via the broad band of diffuse interaction to an interaction so encompassing
51
formation: 2two blocsor 15 + 7 = 22, the number of participant countries in the two
alliances?
How do we take into account the NN, neutral-nonaligned, countries playing an increas-
ingly important role?
And, what dierence does it make that the NATO system possibly is more organized
like a Model II society with the superpower on top, some middle powersUK, France, the
Federal Republic of Germanyin the middle and small powers at the bottom whereas
the Warsaw Treaty system is more organized like a Model I society, obviously with the
superpower on the top?
And then, what has been done once can be done twice: one can open up the single
country actor and ask what it looks like on the inside, what is its structure?
And so on, and so forth. What has been given here are only some major tools for that
type of exploration.
2.3 Consciousness
We now come to the question to what extent the parties we have been talking about are
capable of seeing the forces operating upon them. To the extent they do we shall say
that they have consciousness, consciousness being dened exactly as the insight in ones
own situation, or more specically precisely in the forces conditioning oneself, meaning
ones self, including inner forces.
The major signicance of this dimension lies in the distinction between conicts of
interest and conicts of values. Thus, in the pure conict of interests we assume no
consciousness, no insight in the situation in which the party nds itself.
That does not mean that the conict does not exist; only that it is objective (indepen-
dent of, ante consciousness), not subjective (in consciousness). Another term often used
for the subjective conict is one that is perceived.
53
This gives rise to a simple but important combination of the two categories objective
vs subjective conict, indicated in Table 2.3:
Table 2.3 Objective vs Subjective Conicts
Actor-oriented
not subjective subjective
Structure-oriented not objective no conict conict of goals
objective
conict of interest
False consciousness
interests = goals
True consciousness
As mentioned repeatedly above there are two ways of nding out whether there is a
conict anywhere: one is actororiented and leads to the exploration of values somewhere
in the actors consciousness or subconsciousness, revealed in attitudes and/or behavior.
The other is structureoriented and leads to the exploration of any kind of asymmetry
built into the structure. The asymmetry denes interests of two types: the interest in
maintaining advantage, and the interest in getting out of disadvantage. Obviously, this
leads to four dierent cases, as indicated in the Table.
The case of no conict is in need of no further comment. But the other three cases
can stand some elaboration, although it is rather obvious what is intended.
Thus, there is the important category of the conict of interest that is not perceived,
not subjective. In this case there is a pure conict of interest, and since we do not assume
that parties have no consciousness (they are alive), whatever consciousness they have is
false since they do not see their own situation.
This immediately leads to the question of how this false consciousness has come about:
what are the structures upholding it? In our analysis this is explored by using the
ubiquitous twin of exploitation-penetration.
It is exactly through the penetration of the consciousness of the underdog, through
the mystication of the structure for him, that he is led not to see the obvious.
This can take place at the level of the person, of the group, and the society. The
precise mechanisms will vary, but they have one thing in common: the topdog somehow
gets under the skin of the underdog.
The parents penetrate the consciousness of the children they dominate, the teachers
the students; the managers the workers; the Center nations penetrate also physically the
Periphery nations by making their elites into pliable bridgeheads for themselves, and so
on. Thus, Ibsens A Dolls House is precisely about what happens when a Nora throws
away the false consciousness built into her.
54
And the reaction: All was quiet till Ibsen wrote that play.
Diametrically opposed to this is the pure category of the conict of values that are
subjective, as it would have to be in order for a value to be dened, but structureoriented
analysis does not lead to the issue of any kind of asymmetry certicate. In other words,
it is the type of conict one would have in situation of zero or horizontal interaction,
with compatible goals. Thus, a denite stand is taken here: we do not assume that all
conicts have a class character. There are subjective conicts, and they are vacuous or
horizontal which does not mean that all vacuous or horizontal conicts necessarily
have led to consciousness formation. For this a certain crystallization is needed, maybe
through some conict manifestation in one form or another. But that would not be a
case of false consciousness, or at least not of the serious kind mentioned in the category
above. It might be a case of unconsciousness, which is something dierent.
Finally, there is the obvious combination of the two categories: the conict which is
at the same time objective and subjective. In this case there is consciousness, interests
are seen as goals, which means that there is true consciousness. For whom? For the
underdog, or for the top-dog, or for both. For there is no assumption that the top-dog
necessarily has more insight in the conict of interest than the underdog; that would
introduce the palpably untrue hypothesis that all exploitation is somehow premeditated.
It should be emphasized that consciousness is not the same as attitude. The way
it is conceived of here consciousness is cognitive and attitudes cathectic (which is not
the same as evaluative). Since it is cognitive, the whole notion points to one major
function of social science: to contribute to true consciousness.
This is exactly what the social scientist should be equipped for.
On the one hand he should have the tools to develop insights into structures, on the
other hand he should also understand actors, and he should be able to combine the two.
However, when this is not necessarily what social scientists engage in, then it may be
fruitful to ask what holds him back? And the answer to that question would probably
have to be divided into two, at least.
The obvious answer is that the social scientist might himself have considerable vested
interest in putting some limits on the extent to which he wants to explore false con-
sciousness, demystify social structures. He may himself be highly privileged, or at least
belong to the privileged class. And even if the vested interest is not so strong, he may be
ideologically opposed to its clarication. He clearly sees society from one vantage point
only, that of his class, or perhaps more importantly, sees the world from one vantage
point only, that of this region, however analytically schooled, and this may distort and
55
contract his perspective.
More importantly, however, would be the idea that analysis might not be enough. We
have argued strongly above in favor of the idea that societies can only be understood
when they are in a state of excitation, not only in the normal state. There is an obvious
parallel here to the physicist-engineer encountering some new compound, exposing it to
a context dierent from the normal 15
o
C and one atmosphere pressure to see how it
reacts. And this leads to a confrontation, a special type of experience, as a deeper tool for
social insight and normal state analysis. He might detest that phenomenon being more
law-and-order oriented, and disinclined to engage in or benet from such experiences.
56
GOALS
2.4 Scope
Actors and goals are here to some extent treated symmetrically which means that the
dimensions of goals will be similar to the dimensions of actors.
Thus, we start, simplistically, with the scope of the conict: the number of goals at
stake. Let it immediately be said that this is not a well dened entity. Actors have a
certain separateness, a certain capacity for boundary maintenance; goals do not. How
many goals we see in a conict, and to some extent also how many actors we see also
depends on how we want to analyze it. The criterion does not lie so much in counting
as in the conclusions we can arrive at, particularly the extent to which we are able to
develop a practice-indicative theory.
Thus, it is more than obvious that a goal can be subdivided so that instead of a conict
with one goal we suddenly have one with 20. But it is equally obvious that how fruitful
this is depends on the extent to which the subgoals really enter in a dierent manner. A
typical example would be the splitting of the conict goal under the conict resolution
technique known as trading into a number of subgoals that can then be traded o
against each other. In this case the subgoals do enter dierently, and that would be the
criterion.
Just as for the domain of a conict the limiting case of scope is zero: there are no
goals in the sense of values at all because we are dealing with a conict of interest. It is
only when that interest is perceived and converted into an internalized value as a goal
that the scope jumps from zero to one, to put it that way. And then it continues, to n
goals, but not in the sense that there is a conict over all n goals.
By the scope of the conict we mean all the goals that come into play for the
actors included in the analysis; some of them competitive, some of them cooperative, a
distinction to be explored below in 2.9, as (9).
Let us now combine domain and scope in an obvious way and introduce what we
could call the character of a conict, the pair (m,n) with the rst gure standing for the
number of actors and the second gure for the number of goals, as in Table 2.4:
57
Table 2.4 Character and Complexity of a Conict
Scope
1 2 3 . . . n
1 (1,1) 0 (1,2) 1 (1,3) 2 . . . (1,n)
2 (2,1) 1 (2,2) 2 (2,n)
D
o
m
a
i
n
3 (3,1) 2 . . .
.
.
.
m (m,1) (m,2) (m,3) . . . (m,n)
The complexity, c, of a conict is dened as c = m + n 2. Obviously, this introduces a
diagonal way of looking at Table 2.4 lumping together conicts with dierent character
because they have the same complexity as dened.
In the upper left corner is the conict with complexity 0, the improper conict. It is
not really a conict for there is only one actor and one goal. He cannot reach the goal, it
is unattainable, but not because it is incompatible with some other goal pursuit in
that case there would have been a proper conict but because it is blocked, a term
which explains nothing but describes everything. In other words, a conict of complexity
O is a frustration.
The signicance of frustration as a limiting case of conict lies in its use in conict
repression strategy.
Obviously, if, particularly in a vertical conict, one party can make the other believe that
when he does not reach his goal it is not because something or somebody else stands in
the way, but because of his own inadequacy, or because of some absolute, even physical
block, then the whole situation changes character.
It is a major technique of manipulation, of mystication, as when people at the bottom
of vertical societies (Model I or Model II varieties) are told that the only reason why
they are down there is because they were born into that position and will remain there,
either because the society is based on the like father, like son principle, or because
the society is based on the like talent, like position principle. In either case higher
positions are inaccessible, and the person will be much more happy if he understands
that this is the nature of things. He will in fact be more free if he develops this insight in
necessity instead of letting his frustrations erode him from the inside.
At complexity level 1 we encounter what could be called the two paradigmatic conicts,
with character (l,2) and (2,1) respectively. Relative to the rest these conicts are over-
58
analyzed, but there are good reasons why.
Conicts of the type (1,2) are also referred to as dilemmas: this is the case where
there is one actor and two goals. And conicts of the type (2,1) are often referred to as
twoparty conicts, over one goal, like the two princes in conict over the ownership of
Milano.
In German and Norwegian that goal is often referred to as Streitapfel/stridens eple
(the apple of strife, the English bone of contention), in a sense indicating the oneness of
the goal. Horse-trading indicates the same and more so given their indivisibility.
The notion of complexity has led us to lump these two types together, and we have
even referred to them as paradigmatic. For one problem can now be formulated: to what
extent can any conict be dissolved into these two components so that it can be written
as a resultant of x(1,2) conicts and y(2,1) conict? It might readily be conceded that
intra- and interactor conicts are fundamentally dierent, and that any given conict
may have components of either. But can all other conicts be reduced to these forms?
Here we only pose the question, possible answer are for later.
Let it only be said that if the answer should be positive (which it is not) the theory of
conict would be extremely much more simple than it is: it would essentially consist of
the exploration of the two paradigmatic conict types. Once you know about their genesis,
dynamics and termination you know it all. And this, in turn, would mean that the work
in conict theory has been well directed, for psychologists have invested enormous energy
in studying the former; and so much theory in sociology, political science, international
relations, economics and game theory has gone into studying the latter.
We could then move on to higher levels of complexity, but need more analytical
machinery in order to do it so that substantive insight can be added. Let it only be said
that one conclusion which we shall arrive at is that the theory and also the practice of
conict does not show any simple, linear relationship with complexity. It is not the case
that conicts with low complexity are better understood and better handled, and from
there it becomes worse and worse. To the contrary; there are good reasons to say that the
medium range of complexity, from 2 and onwards a couple of steps, is least understood,
and most problematic in practice.
Only at higher levels of complexity does the light of theory shine more clearly through
the mist, and the problems of practice become less obstreperous. And to this there is
an interesting parallel in mechanics: it is well known that the threebody problem (to
calculate what happens when 3 bodies are brought into space with initial positions and
velocities given) has not yet been solved. But the onebody problem has been solved
59
(Newtons rst law of mechanics), the twobody problem also (the law of gravity); and
the mbody problem (for very high m) is solved in statistical thermodynamics, kinetic
gas theory etc.
The problem is whether this says anything about society and nature, or only something
about our ways of conceiving of society and nature. Thus, the two paradigmatic conicts
both share in their character the magic number 2, the two-ness, the duality so often
encountered, not only in analysis, but also in nature. The human body has many bilateral
symmetries including those in the brain, and it may very well be that if we had been
trilaterally constructed we would have come to grips with trilateral concepts like the
threebody problem more easily. For the time being, however, let us leave the problem
at that and return to it later in connection with conict dynamics and conict resolution
theory in Part Three.
After this exploration into complexity of conict let us combine domain and scope in
another and equally obvious way. Clearly, m actors and n goals dene an mxn behavioral
space where for each actor there are n axes, one for each goal, indicating how far he has
come in the realization of that goal. We have presented a number of such behavioral
spaces in the preceding Part One of the book, although only for the two paradigmatic
conict types. But this is a useful gure of speech, although not much more.
It permits us to give a static picture of the situation by means of one point which
tells us where all m actors are on all n goal dimensions, and a dynamic picture of the
situation which would give us the trajectory of that point as it moves through time, a
curve with time as a parameter.
That dynamic or diachronic representation is particularly useful in connection with
(1,2) conicts. Thus, imagine that a country wants to realize two goals, that of economic
growth and that of educational growth. In the short run there may be a conict, a
dilemma here, in the sense that there may be a choice between investing in highly research
intensive education, educating very few people far into tertiary levels of education, and
investing in capital intensive and research intensive production on the one hand, and, on
the other hand, investing in broad education for the people, primary level education for
all, that in the rst run could only lead to labor intensive production. And there might
be all kinds of mixtures of these two extremes. In the long run, however, it may very
well be that the two goals are not competitive but cooperative.
However, it will still make a lot of dierence through which history the actor in
question, that particular country, arrived at its point of bliss: was it through trajectory
numbers 1, 2 or 3?
60
relativistically in terms of gradual realization of goals, then we are led to the important
concept of the indifference curve. From the point of view of that actor the indierence
curve (or indierence set) is a set of points that he cannot order or rank, because they
are equally good or bad. Other criteria are needed.
A person may allocate resources, for instance time and-or money, to travel and-or build a
house, but he is indierent whether he does one or the other. The only thing he is not
indierent to is the total amount of resources available for the project, whether for pure
travel, pure housebuilding or for any combination. Thus, he has indierence curves that
reect the amount of resources at his disposal, but he is not indierent to the ordering of
indierence curves, as expressed in Figure 2.5:
Figure 2.5. Relations on and Between Indifference Curves
When a strong order can be imputed then it might be fruitful to refer to the goals
that are strongly ordered as actually being goals on one value dimension. In order to
do so, however, one would usually also have to assume that they are somehow of the
same kind, that there is a fundamentum divisionis. In other words, it would usually be
assumed that the goals dier from each other only in terms of being more or less of the
same kind, not in terms of having more or less value of dierent kind. In the rst case
the order may become linear, not only strong by bringing in some extrinsic measurement,
for instance the number of square kilometers of Milano, or the number of grams or bites
of an apple. And in the latter case, where only values are to be compared, linearity
may (perhaps) be imputed by means of the countless procedures by which psychologists,
economists and others try to measure the utility (for instance in utiles).
This leads us to the second relation between goals, the horizontal relation of similarity
or equivalence. Goals can be more or less interchangeable, not only in the sense that they
62
are on the same indierence curve because they represent the same amount of value,
but simply because they are suciently similar. The dilemma a person is in when he is
deciding whether to buy a book or a bottle of liquor, is dierent from the problem he
has in discriminating between two books, by the same author and more or less on the
same subject. When he says it really does not matter this means something more in
the latter case than in the former. More precisely, it means that when he chooses one
over the other he can forget about the other precisely because they are interchangeable,
whereas in the other case he may forget about the other for some time, but not when he
has sucient resources to devote his attention to the rejected goal once more. Similarity
relations induce equivalence classes among goals, just as indierence relations do, but in
the former in the positive sense that one element can be taken to represent all the others,
whereas in the latter it is only in the negative sense that no element stands out as more
preferable, having a higher priority than the other.
Let us now compare what has been said here about structure of goals with what was
said under (2) above about structure of actors. In either case we have on the one end the
completely unstructured case: actors unrelated by interaction, horizontal or vertical; goals
unrelated by preference and similarity relations. And on the other end the completely
structured case: actors linearly ordered in a hierarchy, or horizontally fused through
interaction with increasing scope and goals linearly ordered in priority, or horizontally
fused through similarity.
That gives us four strongly structured cases, and it is customary to refer to all of them
as integration: there is no nonsense, no play. There is solid structure, order, not just a
heap of actors and goals.
Obviously, there is a dierence between vertical integration and horizontal integration.
In the former some type of unity is obtained because one actor, or one goal, is so obviously
dominant. Ranking privileges actors, and prioritizes goals. And in the latter case the
unity is obtained on an egalitarian basis, through fusion, coalescence, unity in diversity,
whatever term we might prefer.
But, leaving that distinction aside we could simplify all of this by talking in terms of
unity (horizontal or vertical integration) vs diversity (the weakly structured or unstruc-
tured situation) for actors as well as goals.
And that permits us to ask one seminal question: how do these two dimensions of
integration relate to each other? Table 2.5 gives us the possibilities:
63
Table 2.5 Actor vs Goal Integration
Goals
unity diversity
Actors unity
diversity impossible
The basic point is just one: when the actors are unstructured we cannot possibly
assume that they can arrive at unity, in the vertical or horizontal sense, of goals. Some
unity on the actor side is needed in order to obtain some unity of goals, whether that
actor unity is vertically imposed from the top, or horizontally arrived at through some
level of fusion of actors. In very simple terms: in order to structure a set of goals priority
in similarity relations have to be dened.
But who shall dene them, unambiguously? It can only be done by something that at
least for this particular purpose can be referred to as one actor, in other words, it can
only be done in an intraactor conict. The inside of that actor may be some vertical
order, linear, strong or even weak, provided it is connected. Or some horizontally fused
set where individual subactors may still be vaguely distinguishable; but some unity there
is, some kind of oneness.
Of course, this is not in any way implying that with unity on the actor side there
has to be unity of the goal side; in that case dilemmas would be non-existent, which is
obviously untrue. Which is another way of saying that all other three combinations are
possible.
Needless to say, this plays some role in connection with conict negation theory, for
one type of conict negation would simply be to give priority to the highest actor, and/or
to the highest goal.
But the latter is only possible in an intraactor conict with a coordinated view
of the total situation, unknown to the bicephalous or multicephalous character of the
interactor conict. Thus, in general we would need more conict work in bilateral
or generally multilateral conicts since there are both diverse actors and, by denition,
conicting goals to take into consideration. A major reason for actor integration, be that
as couples or as communities.
64
2.6 Acceptability
Another term very often used for this particular conict dimension is utility. However, we
have avoided this term for two reasons. One of them is the wish not to be associated with
the debate on utility measurement. And another is the more human, active connotation of
such terms as acceptability, accept as well as their negative counterparts, rejectabil-
ity, reject, which we see as considerably less bland than the expression negative
utility.
Using the term acceptability makes it possible for us to talk about extension of
acceptability area, not that easily expressed in utility terms, and so on.
Acceptability is seen here as a function, dened for each actor at each point in the
action space. For simplicity, however, let us start by discussing acceptability as a function
of the actors own dimensions. What acceptability then tells us is, simply, how each point
on that goal dimension is valued.
The rst distinction to be made is in terms of positive, zero, negative meaning
accept, indierent, reject respectively. These are three regions on the goal dimension, and
since we have been using the term dimension we assume that they are ordered from left
to right, from decreasingly negative through zero regions to increasingly positive. This
assumption is both conventional and convenient, but certainly not indispensable for the
reasoning.
The division into positive, zero, and negative regions immediately begs the question
what if one, two or all three for that matter of these regions should be empty?
The question gives rise to eight dierent possibilities, through simple combinatorics,
but they are all quite meaningful as can be seen from Table 2.6:
65
Table 2.6
Accept Indifferent Reject No. Goal dimension type
x x x 1 full-edged goal dimension
x x Empty 2 nothing indierent, polarized
x Empty x 3 nothing rejected, positive goal
Empty x x 4 nothing accepted - negative goal
x Empty Empty 5 everything positive
Empty x Empty 6 everything indierent
Empty Empty x 7 everything negative
Empty Empty Empty 8 no goaldimension
The rst type is the fully edged goal dimension with positive, zero and negative
regions. When we then eliminate one of these regions we rst arrive at the typical positive
goal dimension: something is dened as positive, to be pursued, and what is not positive
is indierent relative to that particular positive goal.
Corresponding to this there is the negative goal dimension where something is dened
as negative, to be rejected, and the rest is indierent.
In the history of conict theory these two types of goal dimensions have played a certain
role in dening approachconicts (between two positive goals), avoidanceavoidance
conicts (between two negative goals), and the approachavoidance conict, between
one positive and one negative goal.
They are actually much more similar than the highly divergent terms should indicate,
for in each case there is a clearly dened acceptability region in the upper right hand
corner of the conict space. The only idea is that acceptable in the avoidance cases does
not stand for anything positive, but for the avoidance of something negative. And that
only brings out the obvious point: acceptance is a relative term, it connotes a gradient, a
dierential along a goal dimension, rather than anything absolute. Things are more or
less acceptable, not necessarily acceptable per se.
Then, there is the third type with no indierent point or region at all: things are either
acceptable or rejectable. Needless to say, this is a highly polarized conict dimension.
For or against only.
The second half of the table gives us four strange conict dimensions, possibly more
important theoretically than in practice. Thus, if everything is positive (type 5) or
everything is negative (type 7), where is the material out of which a conict can be made?
Answer: in the dierential, it may be more or less positive, more or less negative. The
message is simply that the actor is in an intrinsically positive or intrinsically negative
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situation, like engaging in his or her favorite culinary or sexual activity, or enduring some
kind of torture. Gradations in terms of more or less will still make quite a lot of sense.
In type 6 gradations are taken out: the goal dimension is simply at, dening total
indierence. We need this as a limiting case since this improper goal dimension is the
material out of which proper goal dimensions are made through consciousness formation.
And that does not only consist in perceiving, understanding the dimensions of the
situation, but also in equipping these dimensions with gradients, internalized as values,
positive or negative.
In type 7 the dimension is perceived but not equipped with a dierential; in type 8 it
is not even perceived. It is simply nonexistent, the total negation of the fulledged
goal dimension of type 1.
In practice there is no need to make use of all these eight types. It all amounts to
the dierence between no consciousness at all, which would be type 8 above; then the
indierent goal dimension of type 7 awaiting some structuring, and then all the others
which have one thing in common: an acceptability dierential.
Whether that dierential is inside the positive region alone, inside the negative region
alone or spans both of them, and in that case, whether there is an indierence region
dened or not, is less consequential.
In this connection, however, it should be noted that the dierential in evaluation
might precede any clear cognition of a conict. At the lower levels of consciousness
formation the general notions of something rejectable and something acceptable may
certainly precede the type of intellectual cognitive structuring in goal dimensions that
the researcher might engage in. This would, then, in a sense be a fourth type added to
the three just mentioned - and even more basic raw material for consciousness formation.
If the dierential, the gradient, is what merits most attention, then the next
subdimension here would bring in a new aspect of that dierential: whether it is
bounded or nonbounded. The latter is a gure of speech: unbounded would somehow
mean innite acceptability or rejectability, which makes mathematical sense. Whether it
also makes sense in a theory of human conict is another matter. However, there is one
simple interpretation in terms of fundamental goals, positive or negative.
Goals of unlimited acceptability or rejectability are not subject to any compromise
or trading. They are non-negotiable and cannot be exchanged for anything else, except,
perhaps, another unbounded goal.
The next aspect of the acceptabilityfunction is equally conventional: what does the
function look like? We assume that the function is monotone, brought about through
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ordering.
But is it continuous or discontinuous? There is a simple denition of the former: the
acceptabilityfunction is continuous if for any two points on the goal dimension the actor
can imagine a third point with acceptability between the other two.
Thus, whether a function is continuous or not is a subjective characteristic of the actor,
depending on the actors ability to imagine. But the actor may not conceive of the
dimension that way, in which case the acceptabilityfunction is a step function. Clearly,
a stepfunction with only two steps is a dichotomous acceptability-function: there are
only two accept-ability levels, low and high.
If in addition the low level is negative and unlimited, and the high level is high and
unlimited we are clearly dealing with the most intractable goal dimension possible.
This leads straight to the next sub-dimension: the derivative at the boundary. By
this is simply meant how the acceptability function crosses the rather important boundary
between positive and negative acceptability, between accept and reject.
The two extremes, steep versus at are indicated in
Figure 2.6. The Derivative at Acceptability Boundary
In the rst case, the steep case, the boundary is a precipice, a quantum jump from
acceptability to rejectability. In the second case, the at case, there is also a boundary,
but much less well dened since the derivative of the acceptability function is zero at
that point. Needless to say, these two conditions can also obtain anywhere else on the
acceptability function, but they are particularly signicant at the point A=O, which by
denition is the boundary.
Finally, let us look more closely at that boundary. So far we have only made the
distinction between the boundary point and the boundary region, but if we introduce
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more goal dimensions the important distinction between independent and dependent
boundaries can be made.
Figure 2.7. The Form of the Acceptability Boundary
In the rst case, the independent case, the joint acceptability function is simply the
product of the two acceptability functions for G1 and G2. In the second case, the
dependent case, the joint function is not that simple. What the actor accepts along one
goal dimension is not independent of, but depends on, how much he has achieved on the
other goal dimension. The two goals are coupled in acceptability so that he may lower
his demands on one of them provided increasing satisfaction on the other. Thus, for a
good meal I might like to have both beer and wine, but what constitutes quantum satis
of one certainly depends on how much I get of the other.
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INCOMPATIBILITY
2.7 Analyticity
As indicated above we cannot discuss incompatibility without making a distinction
between empirical and potential reality. Other terms that are frequently used in this
connection would be impossibility, infeasibility, unattainability. But we prefer
incompatibility which is more relational, less absolute, and points to a relation between
goals and actors. Something stands in something elses way, that is the point, whether
it is a (1,2)conict or a (2,1)conict, or any other type with the exception of the
improper (1,1)-conict, the case of frustration. What incompatibility means is simply
that this combination is not realizable in present empirical reality. Something has to be
done with that reality; realizing a potential reality, if the incompatible is to be made
compatible, or the contradiction to be transcended.
As mentioned above incompatibility is tantamount to a contradiction certicate. There
are at least two theses that cannot both be true. More particularly, in conict theory we
are concerned with theses that relate actors to goals in one way or the other. Thus, the
two theses:
T1: I have a cake
T2: I have eaten the cake
cannot both be true at the same time, that would run counter to the adage that you
cannot have your cake and eat it too. Compare that to the following two theses:
T3: I have a cake
T4: I have an apple
There is no corresponding adage to the eect that You cannot have a cake and an
apple too. Why?
Because we can, through simple inspection of the linguistic formulations, conclude
that there is a contradiction in the rst case but we cannot arrive at that conclusion
in the latter case. The rst case gives us visions of a cake disappearing into the mouth
of somebody with subsequent disintegration and subjection to a digestion process that
seems dismally irreversible: the cake is simply not retrievable. Either you have it or you
eat it, you cannot do both. No experiment is needed to ascertain this. The very concept
of eating is antithetical to having.
In the latter case, however, we entertain no such visions at all. We need additional
information, for instance about the price of cakes and apples, and the amount of money
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that can be expended on either. On this empirical basis we may arrive at a conclusion in
terms of incompatibility or not; but in either case we need more information than what
is contained in the verbal theses alone.
One might now simply conclude that when the contradiction lies in the linguistic form
alone, then the conict is logical (more precisely, negatively analytical, which is a special
type of contradiction); and when this is not the case then it is empirical (or synthetic).
But we would like to see this as a continuum rather than as a dichotomy, and refer to
this particular dimension as analyticity.
Thus, in the rst case the analyticity is certainly high, but not absolute. Is it so
obvious that eating really is antithetical to having? What if a person were able
to eat the whole cake in one gulp, and that his stomach was made in such a way that
it could store the cake a long time before various acids, enzymes and so on start their
devastating activity? In that case he would have eaten the cake and also have it, even
quite well protectedmuch in the same way as sh eat sh even to the point where they
are retrievable.
But this means that there are lots of empirical assumptions in connection with eating
that may have been taken for granted. And yet, we would still say that this is dierent
from the cake and apple example. But it is not that dierent, as can be seen from these
two alternative formulations:
T5: I have a cake worth 75% of my money
T6: I have an apple worth 60% of my money
In this case resources are brought into the picture, but the formulations are still not
sucient to conclude that there is a contradiction on the basis of the formulations alone.
To mention just one point: the assumption that the grocer extended no credit, which is
an empirical assumption.
Obviously, analyticity has something to do with the number of assumptions we have to
make in order to arrive at the conclusion that the theses entail a contradiction. If we make
no assumptions at all then the contradiction can only be contained in the formulations
themselves, completely irrespective of the state of aairs in the empirical world. In that
cage analyticity may be said to be high, and correspondingly it may be said to be low
the more assumptions we have to introduce in order to arrive at the incompatibility
conclusion.
But this means that analyticity has something to do with exibility versus rigidity
in the denition of the empirical world: a logical incompatibility holds even in a highly
exible world; an empirical incompatibility presupposes a more rigid world. And in these
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formulations ways out of the two types of conict are also indicated: in the empirical
conict it may be by relaxing somewhat those rigidities, whereas in the logical conict, by
denition, no change in the empirical world will bring about any negation of the conict.
What, then, would bring about that negation? Evidently what is left in dening the
conict: the theses themselves, through reinterpretation.
One of the most important cases of a logical or analytical conict is what could be
referred to as relative conicts, where the actors are not aiming at an absolute amount
along some goal dimension, but at getting most, even all.
Thus, imagine the case of two siblings orphaned by the premature death of their
parents in an accident, with no testament left behind, and in a legal vacuum with no
automatic rule.
Here are their theses:
Sibling S1: Everything to me because I am the eldest
Sibling S2: Everything to me because they loved me most
In short, they both want 100% of the inheritance, H, and they both back up their
demands with wellknown arguments.
The real test of whether this is a relative, logical conict or an absolute, empirical
conict can be made by changing the empirical world.
Thus, a friend of theirs might say: Why dont we put the inheritance, H, in the bank
at a very good interest rate and wait till the balance of the account is 2H, then either of
you can take out what you want, H.
The advice sounds interesting, but if this is really a relative conict the siblings will
stand by their formulations, requesting everything.
Instead of sharing 2H equally both of them will want 2H, which means that the new
(theoretical) solution with this approach would involve four times the inheritance left
behind by the parents. Evidently, the bank will benet.
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Figure 2.8. Relative and Absolute Conict
This would hold insofar as the conict is a relative conict; if it is an absolute conict
with the two siblings really wanting H and just H the conict would be over when 2H
has been produced and properly shared. In that case changes in the empirical world, in
this case brought about through compound interest, would have done the trick. But in
the relative, logical conict no change in the empirical world can solve the conict where
both of them want 100%.
One may ask, what then could solve the conict? As indicated above: reinterpretation
of the formulations, or simply reformulation, for instance to: 100% of the original
inheritance H. Under that condition the bank trick would work.
Under this general heading of relative conict there is one type that is so important
that it almost overshadows the rest, like the branch that is bigger than the rest of the
tree: rank conict. This is not the same as vertical conict although it is related to it.
The point of departure in rank conict is, indeed, the verticality of a social structure.
The rank conict perspectives does not challenge this structure, it more or less takes
it for granted as a law of nature. Within this perspective rank dimensions are dened,
both in terms of division of labor, in terms of centrality in the structure, and in terms of
distribution of resources.
Clearly, these rank dimensions are at the same time goal dimensions, but of a special
kind. They dene positions in a rank structure, topdogs and underdogs if one is content
with dichotomizing the rank dimension, or topdogs, middledogs and underdogs if a
trichotomy is found better for analytical purposes. And so on.
Characteristic of the rank conict, then, is that it is a conict high on analyticity. It
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is a logical conict, and more particularly a relative conict to the extent that everybody
wants to become a topdog. Expressed in other terms: to the extent that everybody wants
to have 100% of rank.
And they may not. With top rank less applaudable consequences may follow: envy,
verbal and physical abuse, worry that the top rank may be stolen, erode, or wither away
in any way. In addition, the rank dimension itself may wither away like a monetized
inheritance under the condition of galloping ination.
So we only say high on analyticity for there are changes in the empirical world
that would negate the conict, meaning changes that would negate the verticality of
social structure in general, that dimension in particular or holding top rank even more
particularly. What this amounts to, hence, is simply that rank conict remains a logical,
relative conict as long as it is assumed that no such change takes place. However, if this
assumption is valid for long periods of time in vast regions of space the theory of rank
conict will always be an important point in the general theory of conict.
The point is not to have much money, but to have more than anyone else in the
relevant social space: locally, in the community, nationally, in the country globally, in the
whole world.
Cursed be those with such ambitions; damnation will be their fate.
2.8 Substitutability
This particular dimension brings us back to the reections in chapter 1.4 about the
dierence between actor conict and structural conict. The basic point in this connection
is known to everybody who has ever been in an organization and had troubles with
the head of that organization. Some kind of incompatibility has arisen, for instance
about the ends or means of the organization. The crucial question is the following: does
the incompatibility remain after substitution of actors in the organization, and that
means not only the head of the organization but also those lower down, or does the
incompatibility dissipate with substitution?
In the rst case, high substitutability (the incompatibility holds up) the conict is
structural; in the latter case it is an actor conict tied to those particular actors, and
disappearing with them.
The signicance of this dimension, in addition to its extreme utility for analytical
purposes, lies in the phenomenology of conict as experienced by the participants. Very
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many conicts are probably held by the participants to be actor conicts, their conicts,
but are nevertheless very high on substitutability, indicating that they should rather be
seen as structural conicts.
Take the socalled puberty crisis, the syndrome of rejection of parental authority and
selfassertion that hits a family at a certain phase in teenage development. The ubiquity
of the pattern, in time and in space, the way in which it applies not only to the rst child
but to the second and the third, not only to ones own children but to the neighbors
although with considerable variation, should indicate that it holds up under considerable
substitution of actors. In other words, it is a structural conict.
Or the way US imperialistic activity in IndoChina held up under substitution of US
presidents, even ve of them so far. Substitution of one president for the other is not the
same as substitution of the total US actor in the structural position held by the United
States. However, with the power given to US presidents, particularly in foreign aairs,
this is more than a metaphorical illustration.
Or, instead of interpersonal and intersocietal conict consider a structural intrapersonal
conict. A person has a dilemma, torn between work and family; a struggle between
a desire to achieve and perform, and a desire to enrich and develop further profound,
warm human ties inside the closest circle. This dilemma digs deeper and deeper into
the person, to some extent splitting the person, in a semi-schizophrenic way into two
parts, the work person during working hours, and the family person at night and during
weekends. But the person is not able to make that transition: one penetrates into the
other, neither becomes perfect. An unhappy, unstable, ambivalent mix develops, and the
frustration becomes deeper and deeper. There are signs of breakdown at work life as well
as in family life; when in the work situation the unfullled family obligations dominate
the horizon, and in the family situation the frustrations at work are lling the mind
disturbing either.
It means much to that persons understanding of the situation whether the conict
is seen as something peculiar to him or her, an actor conict, or something built into
the particular position in the social structure where that person is located. Or, for that
matter: built into practically speaking every position in the social structure and in any
structure where work and family have been separated because the family is no longer a
unit of production, only, and often not even that, a unit of consumption.
To know that this problem is not something wrong with me but possibly with the
structure may change the situation completely, and change the person from an introvert
brooder over own destiny and shortcomings to an extrovert activist, conscious, organized
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for basic social change which always has to mean structural change.
Correspondingly, it means rather much, as so often pointed out, for the approach
taken to conict resolution: should it be actor oriented or structure oriented? In the
former case it becomes a question of adjusting the person to the structure by seeking
the root of inadequacy in his or her personality, very often diachronically, going back to
early infancy. In doing so the individual actor is maintained as the basic unit in conict
analysis, and an individualistic cosmology is thereby reinforced.
But then one can also do the opposite: seeking the root of the conict in the structural
perspective, nding what causes the same kind of intrapersonal conict in many, most or
all persons located in the same position in the structure. The key to conict resolution
has to be structural change, like bringing work home, to the family.
This should not be confused with the intermediate position of social therapy of a
group of persons rather than the individual person treated in psychotherapy as the unit
of conict resolution. To single out for attention not only the person with symptoms
of breakdown but his signicant others, like major role partners in family, school
and at work, is an important step forward from the individual oriented perspective to
intrapersonal conict. But it is still dismally actor oriented. It is still engineering at the
personal level, a teaching and learning process through which those particular actors are
being trained to adjust and to handle not only themselves, but also each other so as to
minimize intrapersonal and interpersonal conict.
But the structure remains the same and the conict will not only reappear with new,
untreated actors, but also remain there all the time, although possibly in a more latent
form. Social therapy as well as psychotherapy of structural conict will forever remain a
cosmetic operation, trying to adjust people to a wrong structure. And one would agree
with those who say that the person who performs adequately in a crazy structure will also
have to be crazy for the two to negate each other suciently to bring about something
that looks normal.
The actor-oriented approach to a structural conict puts a heavy load on the actor,
and is compatible with fundamental christian cosmology, particularly of the protestant
variety, only that bad conscience will be deprived of its religious overtones and show up
as a feeling of inadequacy, frustration. A structural perspective can relieve the actor
of that burden, exonerate him or her so to speak, and put the structure in focus. But
in doing so it also deprives the actor of his conict. It is no longer his or her conict,
but something more abstract that could just as well have been somebody elses conict,
a predecessor, a successor, anybody in the same position anywhere at any time. The
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structural perspective alienates the person from the conict for the key to alienation
in conict is the same as to alienation at work: substitutability. The feeling of guilt,
shame or inadequacy may disappear, but what remains is a bland, even dehumanizing
depersonilization.
And that places us rmly in a dilemma where the approach to this dimension is
concerned: is it good or bad that a conict is one or the other? Of course, this is a
naive way of formulating the dilemma, one reason being that it is probably fruitful to
conceive of a conict as being both at the same time, but at dierent levels of awareness,
and at dierent levels of reality.
Thus, a conict may be structural in the sense that it can only be dissolved if the
structure is changed. But at the same time it may be an actor conict in the sense that
the actor relates to it as his or her conict, as something insubstitutable, an works on it.
How can this be possible? Because through conict dynamics the innite richness of
persons, and the varieties in structures, will approach a structural conict as some type
of raw material to be processed by the participants themselves and turned into a conict
so special that personal aspects are added to the structural nucleus.
To use a simple metaphor: it is like buying any kind of gadget, mass produced in a
highly alienated factory in the sense that the product would be the same under a wide
range of substitution of workers, engineers, or managers. And when the product has been
acquired by the consumer it is still highly substitutable. But after some use the product
acquires a personality which makes it much more dicult to part with a shaving machine
used to the point where it functions below optimal eciency than with a brand new one.
A peculiar attachment develops because each little scar on the polished surface carries
a message of an insubstitutable link between commodity and user. Such ties may still
develop between commodities and consumers, but in modern societies production is
organized so that should they develop between commodities and producers it is referred
to as an accident, taken out of the production detected by quality control, and possibly
sold on a special sale of substandard products.
We have mentioned this at some length because of the basic signicance of this
dimension for the phenomenology of conict. In no sense does it mean that structural
conict is the less important category, only that it is not necessarily the good or
radical perspective, nor necessarily a pure case however useful analytically.
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2.9 Incompatibility
We are then in a position to approach the key concept in the theory of conict, incom-
patibility, also known as contradiction. No doubt this is problematic, and the depth or
lack of depth in understanding of conict will show up more readily at this point than at
any other.
As will be seen from Table 2.1 we shall treat incompatibility in a strictly parallel
fashion to the way acceptability was treated. This is not an enforced parallel: the two
are basically very similar, although their similarity has been stretched as far as possible
in order to simplify presentation and, more importantly, in order to benet from the
analysis of one in the analysis of the other.
Thus, the point of departure is incompatibility as a function of each point in the
behavior space dened under (4) above. The behavior space is the space where the set of
actors can be located as a point; an incompatibility is a function of any point in that space.
Actually, the function we dene is the negation of incompatibility, the compatibility
function, which we then assume to be positive when something is compatible (possible,
feasible, attainable) and negative when something is incompatible (impossible, unfeasible,
unattainable). That leaves us with the boundary, the zero region in the behavior space
for which there is still compatibility, but only barely so. For incompatibility means
INC : COM < O
That is the denition of the incompatibility region.
Thus, the compatibility function denes three regions. Once more it becomes mean-
ingful to ask whether one, two or all three of these regions are empty, and that leads us
to a repetition of the problem formulation in connection with acceptability.
But there is little sense in elaborating the eight types simple combinatorics will lead
us into; they are not that interesting. There is the fully edged compatibility function
which would dene a compatibility region, an incompatibility region and a boundary
between the two; the latter may also in some cases be a region. However, very often it is
just the boundary which would make what would correspond to type 3 in Table 2.6 the
typical case. Type 2 would be rather uninteresting except as a limiting case: there is
no incompatibility. In that case there can be no conict either, for unlike acceptability,
incompatibility is not a question of dierentials but of negative compatibility. This would
make type 4 interesting and also type 5, but always on the assumption that the situation
is dynamic, that compatibilities can be somehow made to appear. Types 6 and 7, however,
would be out: in this case there could be no conict either, and the same applies, of
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compatibility function which evidently is a plane in this particular case, cuts the line
between the origin and the bliss point at the midpoint, and in the threedimensional
representation this plane is indicated, although not in a very useful way. Needless to say,
much more complex compatibilityfunctions could be imagined, including much more
complicated compatibility borders, but that kind of complication is unnecessary at this
point.
Since we are not going to assume in general that positive and negative valences can be
expressed in terms of units that even dene an interval scale, we are not going to worry
much about the form of the compatibility function anyhow.
Since three dierent examples can be represented in the same three dierent ways,
they obviously have something basic in common. In other words, what is it that is placed
on the positive and negative compatibility axes? In the rst example, the monetary
one, it is simply money: money expended in dierent positions on the OB line. What
is indicated is the balance, or in other words the cost of occupying a certain position.
However, we are not going to interpret in terms of cost since this gives a too special
monetary connotation to the analysis. A more general term is needed.
The compatibility function will here be identied as a resource function. What the
compatibility function tells for each point in behavioral space is the resource balance
at that point. When it is positive there is compatibility, when it is negative there is
incompatibility, and when it is zero the behavioral system is at the boundary. Obviously,
the three conicts just mentioned are conicts because the resources of money, time and
energy are constant. And in general we shall conceive of a system with constant resources
as a closed system and a system with changing resources as an open system. In the latter
case the resources may either decrease or increase; in the former case there is a resource
loss (or dissipation), in the latter case a resource gain (or accumulation).
The basic point now is that the term resource should be taken in a very broad sense.
Thus, one resource may be imagination, another may be exibility in a social system, a
third may be tolerance and so on, far beyond the Western favorites, money, time and
energy.
The important point now is to arrive at a relatively clear conception of what the
key resource is in a concrete conict. The answer to that type of question may often
have to be manydimensional, or lead to the introduction of new resource concepts not
necessarily reected in common or specialized language.
To approach this problem from a slightly dierent angle let us return to the question of
what an unbounded compatibility function might signify. If it is unlimited and negative,
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physical law both corners are excluded, leaving for empirical reality only the narrow band
between the two, an opening in which boiling water may appear under dierent pressure.
What is the meaning of degree of incompatibility, and is it bounded or unbounded,
the latter meaning absolute impossibility?
The best approach would be to redene the laws as incompatibility borders by
reinterpreting the diagrams as conicts. In the rst case the two axes stand for politics
of growth and politics of equality respectively, and in many societies these are not
abstract value dimensions but concrete goals with well dened groups backing one or the
other. And this brings out the point that to the extent the variables in terms of which a
law is formulated are goal dimensions, a law may be tantamount to the declaration of
a region in a behavioral space to be an incompatibility region. And that means that the
law becomes a component in a social conict.
But what about the second gure, can this also be said to represent a conict? In this
case the conict might sound somewhat contrived, since one would have to introduce a
person, a group, a society that for some reason or another wants to have water boiling at
low temperature, maintaining normal, sea level pressure, here referred to a high. They
are told by the physicist that you simply cannot do this: to high pressure corresponds
high boiling temperature; if you insist on boiling water at ordinary room temperature
you cannot do so at sea level pressure; you must move even uncomfortably high up.
Let us then move to the third and last gure where the term law is used in a
completely dierent sense: the legal sense. In this case there is a person who wants
to engage in a forbidden act, but who also wants to avoid punishment. In a perfectly
functioning legal system this puts him in the situation of boiling water: he is balancing
on a narrow strip between legal behavior and avoidance of punishment on the one hand
and illegal, but pursued behavior and punishment on the other. On either end of that
strip are the errors statisticians will recognize as errors of type I and Type II respectively:
he does something illegal, but avoids punishment, or he actually does nothing wrong but
is punished none the less.
The crucial question now seems to be under what condition it might be possible,
nevertheless, to penetrate into the incompatibility region, and even reach the bliss point.
In general it seems evident that resources will have somehow to be extended, that
there may be costs involved in the broad sense of that term. In the exploration of the
nature of those resources and costs would lie the answer to the question of what type of
incompatibility we are dealing with.
Thus, in the rst case the argument can be made that the incompatibility is based
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on the assumption that the accumulation takes place in an inequitable manner. This
leads to the question of how inequity, concretely, is combined with growth, and the
bridging term here seems to be vertical division of labor. The vertical division of labor
means, concretely, that some people have more enriching (in the material as well as in
the spiritual sense of that word) tasks to do than others. This is by denition inequity;
at the same time there is no doubt that it is compatible with growth. The history
of capitalism shows that, and there might also be other economic systems combining
inequity with accumulation.
But what would happen if work were organized with horizontal division of labor? By
denition there would be equity, but could there also be growth, in the sense of increased
accumulation? Without going into any detail the example of the peoples communes in the
Peoples Republic of China seems to indicate that there is this possibility, although they
may not accumulate exactly the same things as the products accumulated under vertical
division of labor. In another context we have referred to this as invariance-breaking,
brought about by the variation of a third variable (vertical versus horizontal division
of labor) whose constant value has been assumed. When horizontal division of labor is
introduced one basic assumption would be that on the average much more creativity is
released because everybody is participating in problem formulation and problem solving,
not only in the implementation of solutions to problems explored by a tiny elite. But that
means that the society which maintains vertical division of labor has an underutilized
resource, the creativity of the bulk of the population (the masses).
The point about this resource, however, is that it is latent and has to be released. The
system as it is does not have it available, which means that the system has somehow to
be opened up so that this resource can be made available. Needless to say, that opening
of the system is often referred to as a revolution. Equally needless to say: revolutions
involve costs which brings in the negative aspect of the compatibility function in this
case, presumably greater the more removed from the diagonal in the gure.
In short: the conclusion is that there is incompatibility only as long as no new resources
are brought into the picture. The moment they are brought in, and are of the kind
mentioned, the incompatibility boundary may be moved outward, towards the bliss point.
What was incompatibility proves not to be impossibility in any absolute sense. But
does this also hold for the physical law in the second diagram? Are the conditions under
which this contradiction may be transcended?
Using the logic of the examples just explored this can be restated as the problem
of nding a third variable the variation of which will permit the penetration of the
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incompatibility boundary, possibly even to the bliss point. Let us for a moment switch
to another example: the Galilean s=1/2gt2. Simplied as s=5t
2
he who wants a freely
falling body to traverse 50 meters in 5 seconds sounds simply ignorant, not to be taken
seriously. For every educated person would know that after 5 seconds the freely falling
body would have traversed something like 125 meters, neither less nor more.
But when you read it as s=1/2gt2 the third variable, assumed to be constant, is
already there: g. It is only a matter of solving a simple equation to nd that the solution
is g=(2x50):25=4. The only question then remains: under what conditions can that
particular person, impatient with natures laws, get this constant of gravity? Again the
answer is simple: by joining a space ship and performing his experiment at a certain
distance from the center of gravity of the earth. Or a centrifuge: s=250 is obtainable
with g=(2x250):25=20.
But, it may be objected: in the law relating pressure and temperature of boiling water
there is no such third variable the variation of which would permit us to penetrate to the
point of bliss. Let us image that all physicists agree that this is the case. One answer
would be that this is a postulate, there is no such third variable, and that I am free to
have as my guiding light the opposite postulate: there is always such a third (fourth,
fth. . .) variable the variation of which will change the form of the law.
Very dierent attitudes to laws will depend on which of these postulates one believes in,
or sees as a basic principle of guidance. In the rst case, the axiom of unlimited tenability,
laws become iron laws, and incompatibilities become absolute impossibilities. In the
second case, the case of limited tenability, laws become rubber laws, and no impossibility
is absolute.
Again, however, we come back to the problem of resource and cost. The man who
absolutely wanted freely falling bodies to fall less quickly would have to pay, literally
speaking, for his particular desire: there are considerable costs involved. The system has
to be an open one, permitting the introduction of resources not specied in the original
description of the system.
And the same will possibly apply to the water boiler. But what about the person
who wants to commit a forbidden act and at the same time avoid punishment? It is
rather obvious what kind of resources he has to bring into the picture: ingenuity so as
to avoid detection, alibis in case he is detected, expert counsel in case his alibis do not
hold, bribing of the judges in case a counsel proves insucient, a machinery for escape
from prison in case the judges prove incorruptible, and so on. It is not that he cannot
combine the illegal act with punishment avoidance, it is only that the system has to be
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open enough for the new resources to be brought in.
Let us then look at a logical conict, high on analyticity: Take
from the Church: Thou shalt not kill!
from the Military: Thou shalt kill!
Here theses have been formulated as norms. But norms are nothing but evaluated
actions, which means that they are abbreviations for action dimensions (in the case not
killing vs killing), and the dimensions are equipped with goal arrows, as in Figure 2.11:
Figure 2.11. Incompatibility as Impossibility: Logical Conict
The incompatibility indicated here is the incompatibility between P is killing and
P is not killing. Aristotelian logic declares that these statements cannot both be true,
you can have one or the other, but tertium non datur. It looks like an impossibility, like
unbounded incompatibility.
Or, does it really? First, there is the possibility hinted at above in the analyticity
chapter: the possibility of reinterpretation indicated in Figure 2.8. Thus, one might get:
From the Church: Thou shalt not commit murder!
From the Military: Thou shalt defend thy country!
The example is in need of no further elaboration: the bliss point may now be attained,
possibly with the help of that bridge between the two norm senders, the military chaplain.
But what were the costs involved, what were the resources that had to be brought in?
Reinterpretation, however, is not the only possibility. Reinterpretation is a way of
accepting tertium non datur, but reinterprets so that one thesis is not the negation of
the other.
But how about keeping the theses as they are, rejecting tertium non datur? In
twovalued logic this is impossible, but there are other logics. And then, social reality is
much richer and oers many more possibilities.
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The radical, transcending compatibility is, of course, nonviolent, nonmilitary defense
of the country, possibly even more eective.
But there is also the category of nonlethal violence, incapacitation without killing,
for instance by means of toxic agents of various kinds in the form of aerosols. It is killing
from one point of view, nonkilling from another; but it is not the same as reinterpretation.
Then, there is the possibility of a compromise: killing, but not as much as one could do,
keeping the killing oscillating somewhere between the maximum level indicated by one of
the theses, and the minimum level indicated by the other. As is well known both of these
dilemmanegation techniques are used by the United States in the IndoChina War.
If we now look back at all these examples it would be good to have some kind of
typology of incompatibility. The basic typology was introduced in the rst part of this
section: analytically, the distinction between logical and empirical conicts. As to the
latter the examples have indicated another distinction: between empirical incompatibility
due to scarce resources and empirical incompatibility due to laws. Needless to say,
the latter is not a good distinction for incompatibility due to scarcity of money, time,
and other types of resources can also be given the form of a law; moreover, it was
indicated that those laws are more or less so, that those in social science are certainly
rubber laws, and those in natural science possibly, even probably so - implying a less
servile attitude in the social, and natural, scientists formulating these laws. And as to
the distinction between logical and empirical: it was shown also to be a rather blurred
one, that it is even doubtful whether a pure contradiction (in the sense of negatively
analytical proposition) can be conceived of in connection with incompatibility theory.
What remains, however, is degree of incompatibility. It somehow has to do with the
amount of stiness or rigidity in the system, which again has to do with the amount
of resources needed, or costs suered, in order to break down the incompatibility. In
the case of the empirical conicts these costs have to do with changes in the empirical
world, and the examples in Figure 2.10 indicated that these costs might have to do with
fundamental change in social structure, manipulation of physical structure, personal costs
incurred and so on.
In the case of the logical conict there should in principle be no change in the empirical
world that would alter the incompatibility, but in practice there is because so few logical
conicts show up, on closer inspection, to be maximum high on analyticity. However, for
those that are we can still talk about the costs incurred, and the resources neededfor
instance in terms of imagination, intellectual and ethical risks, etc.for reinterpretation
and reformulation.
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Again, rigidity/exibility stands out as the major landmark in this landscape. But in
saying so it should also be remembered that there are many other ways of negating a
conict than breaking down the incompatibility barrier. If that were not the case the
history of mankind would have looked very dierent. The phenomenal variety of human
society would have been less because the incompatibility would have forced more uniform
patterns on a humanity often very short on resources.
Let us then go on to the next item on the list: the shape of the compatibility function.
This is simple because the basic distinctions were already made in connection with
acceptability theory: if we assume some type of monotone order then the distinctions
between continuous and discontinuous functions, and the division of the latter into
functions with several steps and only two steps, still holds.
Since our explorations above certainly have indicated that compatibility, like accept-
ability, is hard to measure, we will very often be led to the simplistic division of the
behavior space in two regions, referred to as COMP and INC respectively. It is only in the
case of scarce and measurable resources that some precise type of compatibility function
can be dened, and the mathematics based on more complex structures, even to the
point of continuity, can be made use of. However, we do not consider this a diculty or a
drawback: the history of conict theory is replete with examples of how mathematization
leads research astray, making the analyst lose himself and his problems in the desire to
draw on more and more of the richness of mathematics, into complexities not mirrored in
reality.
The next item to be considered is equally easily dispensed with: the derivative at
the boundary. The comments made in connection with acceptability can be used here,
mutatis mutandis: there is the compatibility function that cuts through the behavior
space at a steep angle, and the compatibility function that cuts it tangentially, at
a at angle; see Figure 2.9. The interpretation of a very great resource dierential is
separating the compatible from the incompatible this means that very many resources
have to be mobilized to push the incompatibility border further out; if there is a very
small dierential the dierence between empirical and potential reality would be a minor
one. Needless to say, these are gures of speech only, a translation of basic, if simple,
aspects of incompatibility theory into a more or less mathematical language that does
not in and by itself yield more insight.
We then proceed to the considerably more complicated theory of the boundary form;
the shape and location of the compatibility region in the behavioral space.
In discussing this it will also be made quite clear that (in)compatibility theory is not
87
no longer the issue. The point is that whatever the level of realization of one goal does
not inuence the level of realization of the other.
Clearly, these are the cases of negative, positive and zero correlation between levels of
realization of two goals. It is useful to have it translated into these terms since it opens
for a variety of empirical indicators and techniques. Thus, into these thought forms we
may pour not only synchronic, but also diachronic data. We may look at a behavior
unit and observe its trajectory over time to see whether it conforms to any of the three
patterns, or possibly to some other pattern.
Thus, imagine that the behavioral unit is a married couple, and that G1 and G2 are
the states of wellbeing, even happiness, of husband and wife respectively. In the case of
disharmony the situation that makes one party happy makes the other party unhappy,
and vice versa. The situation may be of the trivial kind described in connection with the
couples vacation dilemma. But it may also be of a less trivial, more cruel kind: either
spouse derives considerable delight from the unhappiness of the other. This, incidentally,
also means that they cannot be unhappy together as the couple depicted in the second
case, the harmony case: they share good days, or bad days, together and they agree as
to what are good days and bad days.
And nally there is the case of the detached, literally speaking decoupled couple: the
state of well-being of one is completely irrelevant for the state of well-being of the other.
As argued elsewhere synchronic data based on many units scattered in behavioral
spaces of the types indicated above can never substitute for diachronic trajectories. But
they may give some cue, at least enough to the formulation of an hypothesis. Thus, if
one looks at the countries of the world today and interprets G1 as educational growth
(the average schooling attainment in the population) and G2 as educational equality (the
inverse of the disparity in schooling in the population) then the countries scatter typically
as in the disharmony case. They tend either to be low on growth and relatively high on
equality, or high on growth and very low on equality, with some notable exceptions.
That type of data would be useful in analyzing an intraactor conict, the conict
confronted by educational decisionmakers in any country as to whether they should go
in for educational growth or educational equality, or nd some way of breaking down this
invariance so as to go for both of them at the same time.
But data on interactor relations can also be cast in the same form. Thus, take the
case of imperialism. The actors in imperialism are, of course, not countries but groups
within countries. As pointed out repeatedly, imperialism can be analyzed in terms of four
such actors: the center in a Center country, the periphery in that same Center country,
89
the center in a Periphery country dominated by that Center country, and the periphery
in that Periphery country; cC, pC, cP and pP respectively.
Diagrammatically they may relate to each other as indicated in Figure 2.13:
In the left hand part of the gure the four groups are depicted, the arrow stands for
general exploitation, the broken lines for disharmony and the unbroken line for harmony
in the relationship.
Figure 2.13. Imperialism, Disharmony and Harmony, I
In the second part of the gure there is an indication of how LL, level of living, a
very broad term, including material standard of living, but also autonomy and feelings,
may vary over time for the four groups. So far after the Second World War there has
been much growth in LL with the cC and cP groups going hand in hand, and a growth in
the periphery in the central countries, for the poor man in the rich countries so to speak,
by and large parallel to the growth of the rich, at a respectful distance. But the most
important fact is that the periphery in the Periphery has suered a standstill, partly by
being outside the system, partly by having the surplus created by them expropriated and
appropriated by the three other groups.
However, even if up to now the cC, CP ana pC groups have by and large experienced
an increase in LL this may not necessarily last. And the point in the imperialistic system
is that if it does not last but conditions are deteriorating they will also go down together,
and possibly up together again as indicated in the gure. There will also be oscillation
corresponding to this for the pP group, but they will be very small relative to the other
oscillations; that is precisely what is meant by being the periphery in the Periphery.
How, then, does this translate into the notion of compatibility regions, and disharmony,
harmony and independence? It seems clear that as it is depicted here the rst three
groups are in a relation of harmony to each other: they go up together and possibly
90
down together. At the same time, however, there is no doubt that the center in the
Center exploits the periphery in the Center. Thus, harmony as here conceived of is
entirely compatible with exploitation in the sense of dependence it is only that together
they exploit even more those below them again so that in the total global setting their
relationship nevertheless shows up as harmonious. We emphasize this in order to make
quite clear that harmony is seen here as a technical term implying positive correlation
between goal realization for actors, it is not seen as a value in itself, like, for instance,
equity (meaning absence of exploitation).
In the gure as it is drawn there is no clear case of disharmony for it is not assumed
that the growth of the three top groups or classes is predicated on the decline of the
periphery in the Periphery. We could have made this assumption and that would have
given us a more drastic model of imperialism. Thus, for instance given the meaning of
the relationship of the European Community and the associated states with the negligible
economic growth in those states as a whole, given the increase in level of living of the
elites in those states, it becomes clear that there must by and large have been some
deterioration in the conditions of the people.
And correspondingly, if those people manage to come into power there might be some
deterioration in the condition of the elites. The Cuban case is relatively clear here:
the phenomenal and quick increase in the condition of the Cuban people was indeed
accompanied by a deterioration in the condition of the bourgeoisie.
There would also have been a corresponding deterioration in the cC and pC groups
in the United States had the United States, the Centrum country, not been so big that
the Cuban aair was negligible for its economic importance, even if certainly not for its
political and military importance.
However, we did not want to base the concept of imperialism on the worst possible
case, for that would make any change from the worst possible to the second worst look
like the end of imperialism. The case where the three upper groups show variation to their
level of living independent of the lowest group would also be classied as imperialism.
And the same would be the case if the lowest group showed improvement in their level
of living dened in the broad sense, but insucient to catch up with the others. One
might talk about all these cases as dierent degrees of harmony, but in line with the
use of these terms encountered in some theories of conict we have placed the cutting
point elsewhere in this connection. Moreover, the mutual irrelevance implied when one
stands still and the others go up and down is also an important metaphor, because it
points directly to one major mechanism of conict resolution: decoupling. In the case of
91
disharmony, this would be even more the case.
Thus, the conclusion can be formulated as in Figure 2.14:
Figure 2.14. Imperialism, Disharmony and Harmony, II
Here four of the six possible bilateral relations between the four groups have been
depicted in the form indicated in Figure 2.12. In the rst case there is the relationship
between the two centers: they go up together and down together, but not only in the
sense of correlation but in the sense of going up to the same point assuming that the
level of living for the two centers is about the same. This would not be true, however,
today if we really included in LL autonomy since the dependent cP group is not its own
goalsetter. However, it is certainly not dicult to envisage an imperialism where cP
and cC stand in a relation not only of complete equality but also of complete equity, with
the same role where goal setting is concerned.
Where the situation inside the Center country is concerned there is harmony in
the statistical sense dened above, in the sense of correlation, but not in the sense of
agreement. They go up and down together, but they do not go up to the same point:
there is conict because pC does not realize its goal, assuming that it is aiming at the
same LL as cC.
The last two cases compare the majority of the population in an imperialistic system,
the periphery in the Periphery, with the two groups in the Center. These are cases of
statistical independence, but we have also indicated in the gure the case of disharmony,
the case of negative correlation.
The conclusion is that goal states may be positively correlated, negatively correlated
or uncorrelated, and to the extent that this is due to some kind of interaction coupling
this leads to notions of disharmony, harmony and decoupling. Let us then turn to another
aspect of the compatibility and in-compatibility regions: not so much their location, as
their shape.
Thus, consider these cases:
92
Figure 2.15. Four Types of Incompatibility
In all cases we have assumed the same goal dimension G but two dierent actors, A
1
and A
2
. Thus, the two axes are comparable and the boundary form tells us something
about the relation between A
1
and A
2
.
Thus, in the rst case this relation as far as boundary form is concerned is clearly
symmetric (which does not mean that it may not be highly asymmetric in terms of power,
to be discussed below). The slope of the boundary is minus 1, which means that if the
system moves up and down on the boundary then a unit loss to one is a unit gain to the
other. Moreover, in the incompatibility region.
In the next two cases the symmetry has disappeared, in the rst case very clearly so
because for A
2
the goal is even in the incompatibility region which means that even if A
1
suers goal deprivation A
2
will not get full gratication. That he may get in the third
case, but the asymmetry is still evident in the circumstance that this does not preclude
A
1
from considerable goal satisfaction.
Moreover, in this case there is another type of asymmetry in the favor of A
1
: a change
that means little to A
1
means much to A
2
because the slope of the boundary is not only
negative but greater than unity. This is the famous mosquitoelephant situation: it is
not that what is a sneeze to the elephant is an earthquake to the mosquito, but rather
that what is a little mouthful of air to the elephant is the end of life to the mosquito who
happens to be ying right there.
These two asymmetries are then combined in the broken incompatibility boundary
shown in the fourth gure, consisting of two lines, one having the same slope as in gure b,
the second having the same slope as in gure c. Imagine the relation between center and
periphery within and between countries again, as indicated in the sketchy presentation of
a theory of imperialism above: the steep downward slope at the end would be A
1
reaching
out for nal gratication, for ultimate economic growth to improve the level of living
even further somewhat beyond the elephants mouthful of air, thereby causing a steep
decline in the level of living of the periphery, even down to the level where fundamental
needs are basically left unsatised.
93
Thus, there may be asymmetries of dierent kinds revealed in the shape of the
incompatibility boundaries, and this is made particularly clear if the same goal dimensions
are used for the two actors. The situation often looks much more symmetric if a modest
goal is assumed for the underdog actor and related to the extravagant goal declared by
the topdog actor. Moreover, the exercise serves to remind us of the obvious that the
boundary does not have to be rectilinear: it can be broken, curved, have any shape. But
the more fanciful the shape the stricter the assumptions about measurement, and these
are exactly the types of assumptions we do not want to make.
In conclusion, then, some words about the relation between acceptability and incom-
patibility. They are both functions of the behavior space, and they both dene the regions
that are critical in a theory of conict: the acceptability region (ACC) and incompatibility
region (INC). Since they are subsets of the same space they can be compared, and that
type of comparison yields, traditionally, ve dierent results, as indicated in Figure 2.16:
Figure 2.16. The Relation Between Acceptability and Incompatibility
The rst two cases only are the cases of conict, because every point that is acceptable
is at the same time incompatible if we assume that the incompatible set does not include
its own boundary; on that boundary solutions can be found. For all the other cases there
are acceptable points that are compatible, hence conict solutions. In the rst of these
cases (c), all four combinations are found whereas in cases (d) and (e) some combinations
are ruled out.
Thus, in (d) what is acceptable is compatible and what is incompatible is unacceptable.
There is nothing acceptable that is incompatible, although there may be something incom-
patible that is unacceptable. And in the last case there is nothing that is incompatible
94
and also unacceptable.
Of course, the last three cases give us other approaches to a theory of harmony, since
they have to do with more harmonious worlds than the ones depicted in the rst two.
PURSUIT
2.10 Attitude
We then come to the dimensions that give life to these diagrams. So far one may safely
say that what has been done is only to map out the positions and the situation; there
is no dynamism in the system of any kind. It is then taken as axiomatic that the only
type of dynamism that can be brought into the system rests with the actors, and one
of the basic types would rest with their activation. The general formula applied is that
of pursuit, pursuit of goals. And this is analyzed in terms of three concepts: attitude,
behavior, and power.
To have an attitude is to cathect, to will, to want, which is more than to evaluate. To
evaluate is to distribute pluses, zeros and minuses; to cathect is to feel this distribution.
The phenomenology of cathexis is fundamental for conict analysis along this dimension,
but we will only touch upon some points in this connection.
First, as already said: attitudes may be negative, neutral, positive. These are bland
terms indeed; better terms might be hatred, detachment, love.
But then, again, these terms may be too strong. There is a vast territory between
detachment and the other two, and there is also the obvious point that these may be two
dimensions rather than one, that there is such a thing as the both-and in the ambivalent
lovehatred, that there is pure love and pure hatred (possibly), and that there is also
the blandness of neither-nor.
At this point one might go into a discussion of the object of the cathexis, but that
will be done under the dimension of behavior. Rather, we shall take up another point:
what kind of attitude does one expect in connection with conict? Since most answer
negative, even hatred, it might be appropriate to question that assumption.
If one assumes that conict is a special type of frustration, and in addition assume
that frustration somehow is accompanied by aggression and that one component in
aggression is an aggressive attitude, then the conclusion above can be correctly derived
from denitions and the frustration-aggression hypothesis. And there is no doubt that
95
there is a frustrating element in conict, but is it so obvious that it is the only element?
Or, could it be that there is a fundamental distinction between conict and a very special
case of the (1,1)conict dened as frustration? We think there is, and it is easily seen.
The dierence lies in the basic point about conict: incompatibility between goals.
But these are goals that relate to actors, the same actor or others, which means that
conict constitutes a bond within and between actors. But any bond within and between
actors is the material out of which what is human in human beings and social in human
society is made. Of course, that bond does not have to be in terms of conict, it could
also be cooperative; but a bond it nevertheless remains.
In a very basic sense a person with a dilemma is a richer person than a person
without one because the dilemma is one kind of raw material out of which personal
growth may come. Correspondingly, two persons with an interpersonal conict are tied
together in a way two persons detached from each other are not. They have at least their
conict in common, and that conict may also be seen as raw material out of which
deeper aection, understanding, or in more neutral terms a deeper relation, may grow.
And correspondingly for conicts in more complex systems; the social conict, of the
intrasocietal or intersocietal varieties, are also the contradictions out of which social
growth may be the result.
If conict is viewed this way it should be welcomed rather than abhorred. In other
words, the ideal might not be the conictfree situation, the perfectly harmonious tie, but
a situation where there is sucient conict to constitute a challenge, yet not irresolvable
enough to lead to breakdown, apathy of various types.
Among the theoreticians of conict Marx, Freud and Gandhi all understood this point,
although in dierent ways. To Marx and Freud intrasocietal and intrapersonal conict,
respectively, were exactly the seeds out of which development would come provided the
conicts were properly understood and the contradictions properly transcended.
To Gandhi an antagonism was always seen as something the antagonists had in common
that could unite them rather than divide them. For him the idea that a conict was
a frustration and the antagonist an enemy was a sign of primitivism, the law of the
jungle, as opposed to the idea of seeing the antagonist as a potential partner in the ght
against the antagonism. Needless to say, for Gandhi much of the theory and practice of
conict was an eort to convey this message to an antagonist who might have another
view of conict, for instance the jungle view.
In short, we do not assume in any way that conict attitude has to be negative. Nor,
96
for that matter, do we assume that there has to be a special conict attitude. The
attitude can remain exactly what it was before there was any conict, latent and-or
manifest, whether that level was already negative, neutral and positive. In fact, it is even
doubtful whether there is such a thing as conict attitude, as distinct from attitude in
general. No doubt, there is such a thing as attitude escalation, which we take to mean a
process towards increasingly negative or increasingly positive attitude. But that can only
be dened as a process, not as a permanent state of aairs.
The basic distinction in attitude theory would be between attitudes toward Other
easily negative unless overshadowed by a general love thy enemy attitudeand attitudes
toward the conict as such. Toward the antagonist vs toward the antagonism, Gandhi
would have said. The former may range from love and friendly feeling to hatred and
hostile feelings. And the latter may also be positive-neutral-negative; welcoming the
challenge vs a neutral, clinical wait-and-see vs fear of what may happen. That gives us
nine combinations, all of the empirically possible, including hating Other and looking
forward to the challenge - and vice versa.
2.11 Behavior
And the same applies to behavior: there is such a thing as behavior escalation, and that
is also a process not a state of aairs.
And, it is meaningful to distinguish between negative, neutral and positive behavior;
interpreted, vaguely, as meaning destructive, neutral, and constructive behavior. And
then the problem arises; towards whom? Towards what?
At this point there is a tradition in conict theory of talking about nonrealistic or unreal
conict, usually applied to conict behavior, but sometimes also to conict attitude.
The idea is that it is nonrealistic or unreal when the object of the (presumably negative)
conict attitude and-or behavior is displaced, it is not where it should be. We have found
this category not very meaningful, and even mystifying since the problem remains: what
should the object of the attitude and behavior be?
And the problem also remains: should the realistic-real attitude and/or behavior be
negative, neutral, or positive? Is it realistic to hate the right actor?
Let us look at the second problem rst and restate it in line with what was said above:
what are the adequate processes where attitude and behavior are concerned, are they in
the negative, neutral or the positive direction?
97
We do assume that there is such a thing as conict-induced attitudes and behavioral
processes, and to try to stabilize our own terminology in this connection let us suggest
the usage of 8 very well known terms indicated in Figure 2.17 (see next page).
As can be seen from the gure the distinction is made between negative and positive
escalation.
Thus, it is not assumed that escalation is increased hatred or violence or
both; that belongs to a biased conict perspective that assumes a priori the
conict>frustration>aggression causal chain. If one wants to focus on nega-
tive escalation alone, then direct aggression (or direct violence) might be the adequate
term. And the same applies for deescalation: one can deescalate from love-construction
as well as from hatred-destruction.
Figure 2.17. Conict Induced Attitudinal and Behavioral Processes
If one wants to focus on negative deescalation only, then there seems to be no imme-
diate term available, for which reason we have preferred to coin a new one: deaggression.
Concretely, this is what happens when hatred and destruction are somehow built down,
for instance through gradual stepping down of a war, and eventual withdrawal.
If there is a need for special terms for negative escalation and deescalation, then
there should be even more of a need for the corresponding positive terms, and this is
where association and dissociation enter the picture. In peace theory they may be known
as the positive versus the negative approaches to peace respectively, since peace would
be incompatible with the negative end of the spectrum. Here they are all seen as conict
processes.
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Finally, there are the conventional twin concepts of (bi)polarization/depolarization
(block formation and its dissolution), running the entire spectrum from negative through
neutral to positive and vice versa. Thus, they dier from escalation/deescalation (of
love and hatred, violence and cooperation) that reect processes in either direction around
a neutral, bland, zero point.
Naming dierent processes of conict manifestation is in itself certainly not sucient
to develop an answer to what is the adequate conict response. On the other hand the
answer is rather obvious: there is no general answer. It depends, and more particularly,
it depends on where the conict is located on all the other dimensions.
Here we shall only point once more to the major distinction between actor conict
and structure conict, and more particularly to the distinction between conicts of
values and conicts of interest. There is no doubt that confrontation is one element
that may contribute to conict transformation, to transforming interests into values via
consciousness formation, and transforming parties into actors via organization.
But this does not mean that the confrontation necessarily has to be negative, even if
very often it is. Nor is it obvious who the enemy is in a structural conict. It may be the
topdog who will cling to his vested interest. But it may also be that the confrontation
will awaken him, stirring his sluggish conscience as Gandhi said so that topdog and
underdog blend together in a Gandhian type process, jointly ghting the antagonism,
the exploitative, penetrating, segmenting, fragmenting, and marginalizing structure. A
tall bill to meet.
Much consciousness and organization are needed to live up to this challenge. And
conicts hang together. Adequate or inadequate attitude and behavior acquired in one
may spread to the other. The sum total conict situation is of interest, not only one at
the time.
In other words, if adequate is dened in terms of instrumental for conict resolution,
and conict resolution is seen as a particular form of conict negation highly dierent
from conict repression, then there can be no general answer as to what type of process,
or what mixture of types of processes is adequate. This holds for conicts of interests,
and also for conicts of values: we simply have to have more information.
But, when a conict is more properly understood then the distinctions just made will
be useful in analyzing conict attitudes and behavior.
Conict being ubiquitous and pervasive and persistent it probably makes little sense
to single out some conict attitudes and behavior as nonrealistic, unreal, and others as
not.
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For the director of an enterprise it may be comforting to tell himself and his colleagues
that the aggressive workers are only displacing their hostility which actually derives from
the perceived inadequacy of the morning coee at home, only that they had to leave too
early to direct the hostility against the real enemy, the wife.
And, correspondingly for the wife: it may be comforting to say that he takes it out
on poor little me, he does not dare anything else. Such deceptions detract considerably
from the rancor in an angry look, word or gesture.
Without denying that some conict manifestations may be analyzed this way., three
basic warnings should be given in connection with precisely this type of analysis.
First, as already said: this may be a dangerous way of mystifying a conict trans-
formation process, from one of interests to one of values. If what is actually the rst
manifestation of a gradually crystallizing conict formation is not seen as such, but as
a reection from another and less relevant conict, this is simply missing the writing
on the wall. That may be in the interest of the underdog if those manipulatory devices
mobilized from the top are seen as eorts to prevent the bottom from being suciently
organized.
Proper reading of such signs may also be the way in which top and bottom together
could arrive at basic changes in the structure. Thus, there is no clear conclusion as to
what is advantageous for whom. But there is a clear problem of conict mystication
inherent in the very idea of unreal, nonrealistic conict.
Second, and in line with this, in the whole notion of nonrealistic conict there is
a class element that should not pass unnoticed. The conict situation of the underdog
is always by denition highly dierent from that of the topdog. He has usually a more
limited range of parties with whom he interacts, and due to false consciousness also a
more limited awareness of the total situation. When the agony becomes too great and the
underdog lashes out against somebody, including himself, certicate of unreal conict
manifestation can easily be issued, particularly from topdog quarters; and there may be
some supercial truth to it. But what should he do? He is not sitting in the elegant, soft,
carpeted rooms of the topdog having a cool analysis of the situation with expert advice
as to who is the enemy and who is not. And the point then becomes that it is often so
much in the interest of topdog analysis to issue those certicates at an early stage in the
game, exactly to prevent conict transformation from taking place.
Third, in saying that some negative conict attitude and behavior is unreal there is
at the same time an implicit recognition that in other cases the same type of behavior
might be real, realistic. But why should that be so? Why should one necessarily
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assume any negative conict attitude-behavior to be realistic, taking into account the
points made above about the possibility of positive attitude-behavior, not to mention
the Gandhian point of conict as a unier. In short, this seems to be little but a social
cultural stereotype, arising out of one conict culture, and should not carry the stamp
of universal approval. One might argue that a much better distinction if these terms
are to be used would be to say that attitudes-behavior directed against an antagonist is
unreal, nonrealistic; and that the only real, realistic attitude-behavior is directed against
the antagonism. No reconciliation with the evil structure, conciliatory attitude-behavior
toward the evil actor for he is also only a product of that structure!
And, nally: there is also often a hidden assumption of reductionism, the idea that
some conicts are more real than others, that others should be seen as projections from
them. Analysis mind should not be set at rest before any type of conict manifestation is
traced back to the primordial, fundamental conict, the basic raw material out of which
all conict manifestations are ultimately made.
There have been two major candidates produced by Western civilization recently to
serve this role as conict demiurgus: the Freudian assumption of intrapersonal conicts
of a special kind as basic, and the Marxian assumptions about intrasocial conicts of
a special kind as equally basic. Interestingly, both trends of thinking arose in a period
when reductionism played a considerable role in natural science, and natural science
served as model science.
2.12 Resource
Clearly, to have a theory of conict without a theory of power is meaningless, although it
is sometimes done under the assumption that conicts are actor conicts, and that actors
are equal. Here the assumption is that actors are generally not equal, that the balance of
power is in favor of one or the other which is another way of saying that conicts are
usually not symmetric but asymmetric.
As pointed out above (under (2), structure of actors) asymmetric conicts should
not be confused with vertical conicts, nor should symmetric conict with horizontal
conict. Vertical-horizontal is dened relative to the structural situation of the actors,
whereas asymmetric- symmetric is a more general concept referring to all kinds of power,
including structural power. When we use the terms topdogs and underdogs it is
relative to this broader concept, and that leads immediately to the distinction between
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three types of conicts:
symmetric: topdogtopdog conict, underdogunderdog conict
asymmetric: topdogunderdog conict.
Thus, a special type of the latter would be vertical conict. One thing is distribution
of power; quite another and more dicult problem is the nature of power. To this there
are many answers, and we shall follow three lines of thinking in this connection.
First, there is the fundamental distinction between structural, power and resource
power, growing directly out of the distinction between structure-oriented and actor-
oriented perspectives on society. This basic distinction in the theory of power falls like
a ripe fruit in our basket: structural power as something built into a position in the
social structure, resource power as something an actor has or is. To balance structural
power the structure has to be more equitable; to balance resource power the resource
distribution has to be more equal.
Second, both types of power are relational. A gun possessed by a person in and by
itself does not constitute power; there has to be somebody who is afraid of it for power
to emerge. But the power relation is dierent in the two cases. The actor on top of some
kind of vertical division of labor has power by virtue of the position he occupies, built
into the structure itself. In addition to this he may or may not have resource power, for
instance a gun to distribute bads, or a coer to distribute goods; threats and bribes;
sticks and carrots, respectively. The classical capitalist in position of means of production
can give the means of livelihood, the dierence between life and death, in return for the
wage-earners labor, but this is built into the structure and should be dierentiated from
the goods and bads he may decide to distribute on top of that. Thus, structural power is
institutionalized, resource power depends for its use on ad hoc divisions.
And this leads immediately to the doubleness of social structure in this connection:
it is both the source and nature of (structural) conict, and the source and nature of
(structural) power applied in that conict. Those who have vested interest in a structure
in which they benet from any combination of exploitation, penetration, segmentation,
fragmentation and marginalization are also at the same time those who have most
structural power by virtue of their position with which to retain their privileges, and
negate any eort by those with vested disinterest to change the structure. Or to kick
them out, which may or may not be the same thing.
But if the nature of structural power serves to maintain the nature of structural conict
how is it ever possible to get out of it when those at the top also have more resources at
their disposal? They cannot aord resource power and have no structural power?
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Third, those at the bottom have latent resources, and the stability of the situation is
predicated on the assumption that they are not aware of this, or unable to mobilize them.
It is in the mobilization of latent resources at the bottom that the key to the solution of
structural conict is located, and that mobilization is, of course, a basic aspect of any
theory of revolution. The key concept here would be countervailing power, and of that
power there are two kinds: power balance, and power negation.
Balance of power would rest on the assumption of having the same kind of power as
the other side and about equally much. If we use the conventional distinction between
ideological, remunerative and punitive power, depending on whether it is based on internal
or external sanctions, and in the latter case on gratication or deprivation, goodies and
badies respectively, then the approach to balance of power is obvious. It simply means to
develop the same kind of thing: a counterideology, producing goods that can be thrown
into the conict bargaining to tip the balance in the other direction, or producing bads
that can be used to inict sucient damage.
The trouble with this kind of theory of countervailing resource power is that it does
not indicate any escape, any way out for those at the bottom of a vertical structure, just
as little as the theory of structural power does. Of course there is the case of the guerrilla
freedom ghters in a peoples war who liberate districts and make use of the resources
acquired to produce the means of remunerative and punitive power, in addition to the
ideological power they have already. But that does not explain how they were able to get
that far; hence, there must be an additional element in the theory of power that can not
only help explain underdog liberation, but also in very concrete ways help the underdog.
Fourth, rather than countervailing power there is power negation. It is based on a more
profound analysis of the nature of power entirely in line with the combination of structure-
and actor-oriented perspectives advocated in this book. The basic point is to understand
that resource power only bites provided the bottom is suciently penetrated. More
particularly, this means a suciently high level of identication with the topdog to be
susceptible to his ideological power; suciently high dependency on the topdog to be
steered by his carrots, his goods; and sucient fear of the topdog to be directed by his
sticks, his bads.
Power negation consists in negating these three assumptions, developing the type
of selfrespect that makes him see his own situation and dene his own values in line
with his interests; in developing the type of selfreliance that makes him independent
of the various goods and rewards oered by the topdog, and in developing the type of
fearlessness that no longer makes him afraid of topdog destructive power. It can be
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likened to an inoculation against power, to ghting enemy bacteriological warfare through
inoculation and the immune system rather than through counterbacteriological warfare.
The three properties mentioned (selfrespect, selfreliance and fearlessness) are
the material out of which real autonomy is made, and do not carry a monetary price
tag. By that is certainly not meant that they are easily developed, nor that such
mental characteristics are developed through some type of isolated, idealistic process of
consciousness formation alone.
On the contrary, they are probably best developed through confrontation with power
used for repressive purposes, but that problem belongs to the theory of conict dynamics,
not to an eort to outline the major components in such a theory.
In general it is felt that the theory of power negation is the missing link explaining
how vertical conicts can nevertheless be solved. A theory that only emphasizes resource
power will usually be a theory for the strong, like all the strategic theories of the 1950s
(deterrence, rst strike and second strike, credibility and what not) was only a power
theory that could be used to understand superpower relations.
In that sense this is a theory of the poor mans power. And, it may also in a certain
sense be said to be a theory of Asian power as opposed to Western power because the
Western perspective on power became focused on the power of things rather than of the
mind, on power as vested in hardware rather than in the human software.
Why, then, is power analysis an indispensable ingredient in any conict analysis?
First, because the dierence in structural power is what conicts of interest are about,
making power enter both sides of the conict equation, so to speak. Evidently more
power has to accrue to the bottom of the structure to make the conict more symmetric,
and power negation is more available than countervailing power matching the topdog
point for point.
Second, because the notion of incompatibility is itself linked to the notion of resource,
meaning that he who has more resources is also he who can better move the incompatibility
border and further, because the more resource power you have, the more elements you
can throw into the conict process, to your own advantage.
Third, because power negation based on self-respect, self-reliance and fearlessness
make people autonomous grown-ups, less leaning on others and lled with fear. In other
words, power negation is not a road to peace but peace itself, to quote Gandhi.
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THE ABC TRIANGLE
Conict has been dened in terms of incompatibilities, of contradictions, and that should
not be confused with the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of conict, often
destructive (hatred and violence against objects and people).
They all come together in an A-B-C triangle, as illustrated in the gure, often in an
ever escalating spiral:
Figure 2.18. The conict triangle
The triangle serves the double purpose of keeping the three apart, and of relating
them with the arrows of two-way causation.
The original conict, through the mechanisms of behavioral escalation, leads to new
incompatibilities, a string of derived conict generated by acts of physical and verbal
violence (I want to hurt you vs I want to stay unmolested). Since they are derived
their solution in isolation will not solve the basic conict, but may serve the purpose
of de-escalation, and hence prepare the ground for solving the basic conict. Another
aspect is the use of derived conicts for bargaining according to the general principle that
the more issues two parties have in common, the more possibilities would there be for
trading o one issues against the other. But that also constitutes an incentive to engage
in destructive behavior.
In this entire conict dynamic attitudinal processes also take place, with their well
known tendency to develop in a parallel fashion. There are important symmetries in the
perception, they are to some extent mirror images of each other, through imitation and
projection. The task: de-escalation of all three, A, B and C.
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Chapter 3
NEGATIONS OF CONFLICT
We cannot proceed further in any discussion of conict before that concept has been
further claried, and one way of clarifying it is to explore its negation. What would one
ll into the open space in the expression The opposite of conict is ...? This projective
conceptual test would denitely be answered dierently by dierent students of conict,
and each answerincluding the non-answer of rejecting this methodwould give a special
connotation to conict as such.
Through the exploration of the negation of a concept some steering is given to the meaning
of the concept itself. Thus, it makes a lot of dierence whether one sees the negation of
vertical division of labor as being horizontal division of labor or as being mutual
isolation. The former is a negation of vertical, the latter a negation of division of
labor. The political perspectives thrown on, say, trade would dier entirely, and through
that the light shed on the very idea of vertical division of labor. In the rst case
attention would be geared towards better terms of trade, for instance through better
sharing of positive and negative spino eects; in the latter case it would be geared
towards self-reliance, selfsuciency, autonomy etc.
We have chosen to base the theory of conict on the notion of incompatibility of goals;
goals being interpreted to include values as well as interests. However, conict is not seen
as an abstract notion, but as something highly concrete that can be tested empirically. If
somebody claims that there is a conict somewhere then he should be willing to stipulate
the conditions under which specied actors may be observed in the pursuit or defense of
specied goals.
In the case of a conict of values this should be relatively easy: direct methods of
observation would in general be available. In the case of conict of interests it is more
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dicult since the social conditions under which the conict would be manifest might only
be realized under exceptional circumstances. Nevertheless, we shall assume that in such
cases empirical evidence can be presented so that the inference about the existence of a
conict would be tenable beyond reasonable doubt.
As see conict as the condition under which there are actors in pursuit, and-or defense,
of incompatible goals the negation of conict would be all other conditions. But this
is not what we mean by negating a conict, or conict negation: by that we would
mean a process starting with a conict and ending with a nonconict. The problem
is how to conceive of this process, and for that purpose the denition of conict just
given may serve as a point of departure. The denition includes four terms: actors, goals,
incompatibility and pursuits/defense. Together they, and they alone, dene the conict
system. For a conict to be negated one or more of the four components will have to be
modied. If they are all maintained, then the conict continues unabated, not negated.
What kind of modications, then, can we conceive of - based on these four components
of the conict system? Theoretically we could try to modify one at a time, and since there
are four components, that would give us 2
4
= 16 possibilities, one of which would leave
the system as it is. However, although this reasoning is awless from a combinatorial
point of view, it does not yield much insight, one reason being that modied is a
somewhat crude category, another reason being that it produces modications that do
not make much sense.
Thus, it would not make much sense to modify both the incompatibility and the
pursuit components. To modify the latter can only mean one thing: that one or both
parties for some reason or another no longer pursues or defends the goals. But in that
case what happens to the incompatibility is of less interest. Correspondingly, modication
of the incompatibility would not make sense unless the pursuits/defenses are somehow
maintained.
This simple reasoning gives rise to the fundamental distinction in conict negation
theory between incompatibility modication and pursuit-defense modication. We shall
refer to the former as conict resolution, and to the latter as conict repression. In both
cases conict in the sense dened above has been negated. But in the rst case this
negation is strong, touching the real core of the conict, the incompatibility itself. In the
second case the negation is weak, touching, modifying the pursuit of incompatible goals,
but leaving the fundamental incompatibility untouched.
If the incompatibility is likened to a red light then it has been extinguished and-or
green light has come up in the rst case. In the second case it is only receding into the
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background, because it is overshadowed by so many other lights, shades, destroyed, or
what not.
We are aiming at conict resolution, but it is strongly felt that a theory of conict
negation would be incomplete if it only included that. There is an obvious parallel to
psychotherapyand there should be since psychotherapy is dealing with intrapersonal
conictsthe fundamental distinction between solving a personal conict by confronting
it and working it out, and repressing it. This is reected by this broader concept of
conict negation. However, putting them together under one heading should not make
us oblivious to the fundamental distinction between resolution and repression.
In the rst case the conict negation is somehow accepted, the extinguished light sym-
bolizing an internalization of the solution in the intra-actor case, or an institutionalization
of the solution in the inter-actor case. Or both.
In the second case of conict repression there is no such acceptance. At most the
conict is no longer at the top of the agenda. Somewhere there is still a red light.
Let us then proceed to the other two components, the actor system and the goal
system. Both of them can be modied. Thus, both of them can be expanded, adding
more actors and-or more goals. And both of them can be contracted, eliminating actors
and-or goals, but this can to some extent be seen as the same process.
And then there is the possibility of changing the actors by changing the relation
between them, and of changing the goals by modifying them, particularly by the type
of modications often referred to as moderation. In principle this gives us more
possibilities for either systemincluding maintaining them as they arealtogether 16
combinations. But once again, we do not have to delve into all that; some simple factors
come to our rescue and simplify the analysis.
Thus, it is not necessary to consider joint modications of the two systems. Such
combinations are logically meaningful and may even be empirically frequent, but they
fall as ripened fruits into our basket of conict negations once we shake the tree carrying
the more fundamental possibilities.
In short, they will just be seen as combinations of more elementary possibilities. If in
addition we do not have to consider both contraction of actor system and goal system
(but only the former), we end up with 6 possibilities, not 16.
The result of all this is shown in the following table, yielding a typology of 12 types of
conict negations.
These 12 types of conict negation arrived at by multiplying the basic dichotomy
(incompatibility modied vs pursuit/defense modied) by the six possible things that can
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happen to the actor and goal systems combined, have now been given names. Such names
may not necessarily carry the same connotations as are warranted by their position in
the typology: sometimes they may be too broad, sometimes too narrow. But we have
chosen these particular terms because they seem by and large to steer the thoughts in
the direction wanted.
In order to comment on them, explore them, make them more meaty these 12 types
can conveniently be dealt with in pairs, as the terms also indicate. The types in each pair
are also each others negation, in the sense of being contrary rather than contradictory
to each other, but this will be dealt with at some length below.
Table 3.1. A Typology of Conict Negation
CONFLICT SYSTEM COMPONENTS
Actor
system
Goal
System
Incompatibility modied,
pursuit/defense maintained
Pursuit/defense modied,
Incompatibility maintained
Maintain Maintain (1) TRANSCENDENCE (7) INTRAACTION
Maintain Change (2) COMPROMISE (8) INTERACTION
Maintain Expand (3) DEEPENING (9) CONFLICTADDITION
Expand Maintain (4) BROADENING (10) ACTORADDITION
Change
Maintain (5) FISSION, DECOUPLING
DISINTEGRATION
(11) INCAPACITATION
DIRECT VIOLENCE
Contract Contract (6) FUSION, RECOUPLING
INTEGRATION
(12) PENETRATION
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
Conict Resolution Conict Repression
3.1 Transcendence and 3.2 Compromise
When most people, including many social scientists, talk about conict resolution these
are probably the two things foremost on their mind. The goals dene what is acceptable
to the actors, the compatibility function what is attainable. O-hand there would be
two simple ways of handling this type of problem, referred to as a conict: either by
making what is acceptable compatible (i.e. attainable), or by making what is attainable
(i.e. compatible) acceptable. In the rst case actors and goals are maintained exactly as
they are, but there has been a breakthrough, the incompatibility barrier has been lifted,
the system has been transcended. What was impossible has become possible, not only
the region of acceptability, but sometimes even the point of bliss has become attainable.
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In the latter case the actors remain as they were, but the goals change, they are
modied in the sense of being moderated. In this case the original compatibility barrier
is entirely respected, it is only that the acceptability region has been expanded in such a
way as to touch the barrier. The point where the acceptability region touches the barrier
is referred to as the point of compromise.
Diagrammatically the two conict negations can be illustrated as shown in Figure:
Figure 3.1. Transcendence and Compromise
It should be noted that in the case of transcendence and only in that case is the
contradiction underlying the conict transcended in the sense dened above: a new
empirical reality has been created. Of course, this new reality may only be new to the
actors themselves. What is empirical and what is potential is relative to the point of
reference, and the point of reference here is the conict system.
In all the other types, including compromise, the fundamental underlying contradiction
somehow remains. This, incidentally, is also one reason why this book is called Theories of
Conict and not Theories of Contradictions it is felt that the notion of contradiction
is not only too broad, but also too narrow to serve the purpose of a rich social theory.
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3.3 Deepening and 3.4 Broadening
As seen from the implicit denition given in Table these are each others contraries in
the sense that in the rst case the actorsystem remains constant but the goal system is
expanded, whereas in the second case the goal system is maintained where the original
actors are concerned, but the actorsystem is expanded, and with that expansion some
new goals are brought in. Let us now give meaning to the words.
Through deepening the general scope of interaction between the actors is deepened,
made more diuse, given a broader scope. There are more points on the interaction
agenda; the agenda has been widened. However, this is not in itself sucient to bring
about any kind of conict negation. What is needed is the kind of deepening that brings
with it more conict, so that one conict can be traded o against the other or more
particularly: the original conict can be traded o against some new conict. This is not
the same as compromise although the distinction is not a very clear one. Compromise can
be used when there is only one conict object, so to speak, and the actors will agree
on a solution somewhere between the two extremes everything to me, nothing to you
and vice versa. Trading can only be used when there are at least two conict objects,
and one extreme position is exchanged for the other. Thus, as will be developed later,
compromise can only be used when the goal dimension in question is divisible, for instance
dened in terms of money or time; two fundamentals under capitalism,(the divisibility
being a good reason why the system is so successful) so that in between positions can be
found; whereas trading will have to be resorted to when the value dimension is indivisible:
it is everything or nothing.
An example of such an indivisible goal is the horse, at least as a material object.
Access to the horse, for instance in terms of time, or prot rights, is certainly divisible.
If ownership of a horse is dened in all or nothing terms conicts over a horse cannot be
solved by means of compromise, but they can be solved by means of trading, provided
there is another conict between the same actors, for instance over cattle. The reason for
this example is clear enough: hence the term horsetrading.
There is also another reason why the distinction is not too clear. Thus, the actors
may be locked into what they regard as one conict. They are unable to transcend
it, and unable to nd a compromise. However, by suitably subdividing the conict into
any number of subconicts and trading one o against the other the conict may be
dissolved. We would see this as a way of expanding the goal system for the sum of all
these subgoals is never quite the same as the original goals. Needless to say, this is a
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very important and powerful technique of conict resolution, often engaged in by third
parties/mediators.
Let us then turn to broadening, giving to the system a larger domain. Again, this is
not just a question of adding more actors. The new actors have to bring with them more
conicts, and more particularly conicts with the old actors. Again, the idea is that of
trading one conict against another. But the trading no longer takes place between the
two original actors. It takes place in a conict market which at least would have to be
trilateral, for which reason this way of negating a conict can appropriately be referred
to as multilateralization. And just as for the case of deepening, the expansion of the
actor system may come about by splitting actors into subactors, organizing some kind
of conict market among them.
And just as for the case of deepening the logic is very simple: what an actor loses
in one conict he gains in another. In the case of broadening a cyclical arrangement is
needed for this to work
A B
This means that B yields to A, has a decit relative to A.
Figure 3.2. Deepening and Broadening
Broadening or multilateralization is very well known in the theory of international
trade as multilateral clearing. When B has a trade decit relative to A, C relative to
B and A relative to C they may cancel them provided some type of multilateral market
(e.g. through convertible currencies) is set up.
A basic similarity between deepening and broadening can now easily be seen: there is
an implicit assumption that A, B and C are more or less at the same level, more or less
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equal on various power dimensions. If, for instance, A were far above the others then A
would be likely to have a trade surplus relative to both B and C Which in turn, with the
current international structure, would be most likely to have neither decit nor surplus
but simply a void between them. In that cyclical canceling would evidently not work; for
that to work there must be limits to inequality.
And the same applies to the case of deepening: if A is much more powerful than B he
might prefer not to yield in any conict but simply impose solutions. In saying so, we
have evidently introduced a notion of power that so far has been kept outside this theory,
which meaning anticipating something to be developed later on.
This is important for it indicates how a theory of conict resolution based on the four
types so far developed has built into it assumptions of equality not necessarily satised
in the real world. Thus, for compromise to be arrived at (meaning any point on the
compatibility perimeter short of the extreme points) it is assumed that neither party
wants to, or is capable of, imposing his will completely on the other party. And this,
in turn, means that so far we have only given the elements of a theory of relatively
egalitarian conict negation, including an element of optimism: transcendence.
3.5 Fission and 3.6 Fusion
At this point something more dramatic starts happening to the conict system, something
profoundly aecting the original actors and very dierent from just adding some new
actors. It is assumed that one factor behind the incompatibility lies in the circumstance
that the original actors have somehow been tied to each other. Of course, they are
dierent actors, but they also come in each others way - otherwise there would be no
conict. Under the formula of ssion this problem is resolved by the two actors cutting
loose from each other, by decoupling, disintegration. The intention, and often also the
consequence, would be to obtain autonomy not only in goalsetting, but also in the
pursuit of goals, opening for the possibility of pursuing goals unimpeded by what the
other party does. For the general purpose here it does not matter whether the underdog
or the top-dog actor breaks loose. But by using these two terms it is generally assumed
that this is the type of conict negation likely to obtain under conditions of inequality,
for instance because the four types mentioned above have been tried and found wanting.
A formula for ssion, decoupling, in marriage known as divorce.
Correspondingly, under the formula of fusion the actors fuse into one so that it is
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no longer meaningful to distinguish between them. From the vantage point of conict
theory this does not mean any kind of mystical body amalgamation or supranational
integration in the institutional sense, but simply that if there is still a conict it would
now be an intraactor conict.
If we now assume that one actor is more capable of coordinating goal-setting so that
incompatibilities are foreseen and removed by appropriate goal-setting than two or more
actors, then fusion of an actor system into one actor should tend to negate conicts.
But for this to happen the components of the new single actor would have to be genuine
in their new goal setting. For instance, one actor might give up his original goal and see
as a goal that situation which obtains when the other actor has realized his original goal.
The term conversion would be appropriate here, since the underlying assumption would
evidently be that a change in goal setting has taken place somewhere. The total goal
system has become less extravagant for which reason one could talk about a contraction.
It should be distinguished from a compromise where the actors settle for less than what
they actually want. The dierence between the two approaches, and the dierence
between them and the preceding approaches, can be illustrated diagrammatically in
Figure 3.3.
Figure 3.3. Fission and Fusion
The basic dierence is that we no longer have a conict diagram: the decou-
pling/coupling is assumed to be so complete that the two actors no longer come in
each others way, in the case of ssion because they are operating on dierent planes, so
to speak, in the case of fusion because they are walking together on the same road.
That concludes our survey of types of conict resolution. Let us then turn to the types
of conict repression, which also come in pairs, and in this parallel fashion induced by
the construction of the typology.
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3.7 Intra-Action and 3.8 Inter-Action
In a sense the logic these two types have in common, and also shared with the next pair
of types, is to keep the actors busy with something else so that the conict recedes into
the background. The incompatibilities are maintained, nothing happens to them, but
there is no longer active pursuit or defense of the goals. The actors are the same in the
two cases, and in the rst case even the goals remain the same. So, what would then be
the meaning of intraaction? What is happening?
The meaning would simply be that the actor turns in work, and starts seeing himself
as a closed system. If he does not realize the goal he pursues he will then no longer see
this as due to a conict, as due to somebody elses goal pursuit standing in his way, but
as due to some objective bloc in the way of his own goal realization. In other words, he
will stop conceiving of the situation in which he nds himself as a conict system and
will start seeing it as a frustration system indeed. Since the barrier is seen as objective
the adequate mode of behavior is action here called intraaction, not interaction with
another actor, another subject. In this situation of frustration he may do one out of
two: engage in aggressive action (the frustrationaggression hypothesis), or engage in
something completely dierent. The aggressive action may be directed toward others or
towards self, in either case it would be some kind of displaced reaction. The aggression
directed against others may also be directed against the actor with whom he actually is
locked into a conict, but in that case this is not seen as instrumental to the pursuit of a
goal, but as irrational behavior due to a propensity for hostility either caused by the
frustration, or possibly seen as innate.
And if he engages in something completely new, some other goal pursuit for instance,
this is a clear case of diversion from the original goal which is still maintained but
receding into the background.
The second type of interaction, may also bs seen as a case of diversion. The general
idea would be to try to engage in other activities than those that are related to the
incompatible goals, thus spinning the incompatibility into a cocoon of compatibility,
partly to make it disappear, partly to create the type of framework within which solutions
might later appear. In game theoretical terms this is often referred to as engaging in
some increasing sum activity, not only in constant sum (often misleadingly referred to
as zero sum) or decreasing sum activity. Competitive sports, individual or collective, as
substitute for class struggle?
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3.9 Conict-Addition and 3.10 Actor-Addition
In a sense these two have already been explained: they have the same structure as
deepening and broadening, except for the conict-solving conditions introduced into the
denition of those types.
Thus, conict addition would mean exactly that more conicts are added, but not in
such a way that one compensates for the other through trading but so that the original
conict recedes into the background because it is overshadowed by the next one. Thus, if
I steal your car today chances are that you will forget about it if I burn down your house
tomorrow. One conict diverts the attention away from the other, and correspondingly
for actor addition: interaction with third and fourth actors would divert attention away
from the original actor system. Israel vs Palestine?
3.11 Penetration and 3.12 Incapacitation
These are not each others opposites. In fact, penetration can be seen as a special case of
incapacitation, for what it means is that one actor dominates the goal setting of another
actor so much that the dominated actor becomes a replication or reproduction of the
dominating actor. Penetration works on the consciousness of the actor and produces false
goals by producing false consciousness, for which reason pursuit or defense are modied,
but real incompatibility is maintained. Obviously, this is precisely one of the basic
elements in the situation dened as a conict of interest so what this type amounts
to is nothing less than the repression of conict by turning it into a conict of interest.
For that reason the opposite of penetration is disintegration, the decoupling as described
above, and this can only take place through consciousness formation and mobilization
sucient to break loose and establish autonomy.
Incapacitation carries this further. Under penetration there are still two actors, but one
of them has the consciousness formed by the other. Under incapacitation one actor has
been removed, made incapable of pursuing goals even if still having them. To prevent an
actor from realizing goals is to prevent an actor from self-realization, which is tantamount
to violence. And of violence there are two types: structural and direct. Consequently we
may distinguish between two types of incapacitation: social incapacitation and physical
incapacitation. Under the former the actor is made incapable of goal pursuit by being
exploited so that he is impoverished below the level needed in order to stand up and
defend and pursue what is rightfully his. Or, he may be so fragmented, so split that
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he is not able to organize, or made so marginal that he is outside the general eld of
multilateral participation.
And then, adding to this, there are indeed the standard techniques of physical inca-
pacitation, banishing the actor, excluding the actor and, eventually, maiming or killing
him which would be the nal solution, the Endl osung. There is also the possibility that
both actors engage in this type of conict repression simultaneously, by committing joint
suicide, thus eectively repressing the conict forever. Violence, in order to serve conict
repression, does not have to be other-directed - it can also be self-directed.
And that concludes our survey of types of conict repression. Let us now try to look
at the total picture emerging from Table 3.11.
First, it should be noted that there is no assumption that all these types are at the
disposal of any conict system. Each conict system has its own peculiarities when
studied in suciently concrete detail. Due to factors and circumstances some types may
be excluded in a particular conict or class of conicts, and it is important to know which
ones. For a theory of conict negation, as opposed to a typology of conict negation,
such factors have to be explored.
Second, although there is a certain claim to the logical exhaustiveness of the scheme
there are many other things that may happen in connection with conicts than their
negation. What is claimed is only that when the conict is negated then the way in
which that happened can be located in this typology, which means that the types can be
identied empirically, singly or combined.
There is certainly no assumption that these types are mutually exclusive. Social reality
is so complicated that not even disintegration and integration are mutually exclusive:
actors may disintegrate along one dimension, integrate among another like couples do,
married or not. Our relation is over, but we are still good friends is a very frequent
expression of that idea.
Let us now try out this theory of conict negation on an example, to see rst of all
whether the theory makes us discover types that we would not otherwise so easily have
seen, and secondly to test whether the types stand up when confronted with empirical
examples and do not merely collapse as logical constructs, theoretical artifacts with no
empirical counterparts. Our test case is an interpersonal conict, complex enough to
serve as a pons asinorum into the whole subject of conict theory.
The actor system is a couple, husband (H) and wife (W); a very normal, bourgeois
couple with a four-weeks vacation coming up next summer. They spend much of the
winter debating the where-to-go issue, and this is where the conict arises. The husband
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is a passionate mountaineer and needs steep mountains not too easily scaled; the wife
wants to live by the sea, beaching, possibly also bitching, just a little bit. They have
both good reasons, splendid arguments why the style of vacation they favored would be
good not only for themselves, but also for the other party. At the same time they both
feel that in order to really consume the two natural habitats they go in for four weeks
are needed, no less, no more.
In short, the conict is there: the point of bliss with the husband having four weeks in
the mountains and the wife four weeks by the sea is clearly located in the incompatibility
region. Or, is it?
In the experience of the present author it is almost surprising how few conict negations
most people are able to come up with when confronted with this particular problem, or
most other conicts for that matter. Moreover, it is certainly not the experience that
academically trained people, for instance social scientists, are any better than people
equipped with nothing but ordinary human imagination and experience in seeing ways
out.
Presumably this would also apply to the real husband and the real wife in the story:
they might be blinded, not only by the mind-contracting impact of the conict, but also
by the generally speaking low emphasis in our cultures on what for want of a better word
we might call conict imagination.
Let us then peruse the types in Table and see what we get.
Transcendence is simple enough: a vacation spot should be found where a steep,
attractive mountain rises just above a beautiful beach, with a hotel or a cabin just in
between.
The interesting point about this type of resolution is that it may be obvious to people
living in some parts of the world, like the part of Egypt bordering on the Red Sea, or
Taormina in eastern Sicily; considerably less obvious to people living in some other places,
like the western part of Denmark. For the latter beach with adjacent mountains simply
do not belong to empirical reality. They would certainly be able to conceive of it as
a potential reality, but contradictions are not transcended in potential reality, only by
making the potential empirical.
The nearest mountain that could tempt the husband might be in the Alps, and that
would not solve the conict given the absence of true beaches.
In other words, it should again be emphasized how much the distinction between
empirical and potential reality is person and situation contingent, and not an absolute.
It also brings out the obvious point that a third party equipped with the empirical
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experience of, say, the particularly fortunate Taormina combination from the point of
view of this couple, would also be equipped to give them a piece of advice that would
open for a type of resolution they would not themselves have found. Empirical experience
may help.
Compromise is something they would usually have come across as a possibility in
their deliberations, which may make one wonder what it is in our culture that makes
compromise stand out to many people as the method of conict resolution. In the Figure
we have indicated a compromise point in favor of the husbands inclinations, assuming
that he imposes his will more readily. There is also an indication of how the compromise
moves the compatibility border because of the time lost in moving from one habitat to
the other. Of course, a compromise does not have to be according to a 50,50 formula,
but according to any formula p,q such that p+q = 100 and both p and q are neither 0,
nor 100.
Deepening would be a method also frequently resorted to. The wife might dig up from
her memory some other conict, for instance over some accessory coveted by her but
not admitted into the budget over which we assume that this particular husband has
monopolistic control. The basis for a deal is obvious: I go with you to your mountains
provided we nd a good solution to the accessory problem. The example shows clearly
how close trading is to the bribe, but that need not concern us here. If it works in the
sense that no conict any longer exists because both parties are satised with the total
outcome, then it works.
The strategy of sub-dividing the goal can also be applied here. Husband or wife can
realize that this discussion is one they will have year after year as long as their marriage
lasts, and one way of subdividing it would be to take one year at a time. The trading
formula is obvious: I go to the sea with you this year, provided you go with me to the
mountains next year, and so on. It should be noted that this diers from compromise
precisely because the solution is found by combining two extremes, not in any in-between
position.
Broadening is a more rened category because it requires the introduction of at least
one more actor. What kind of actor can be imagined? Let us assume that the wife yields
to the husband and consents to go to the mountains. This gives her some kind of a decit,
and the husband some kind of a surplus. Needed is a third actor in some kind of conict
with either, and a formula whereby that actor would induce a decit in the husband and
a surplus in the wife.
There are several possibilities: the wifes mother, the wifes lover, and the wifes child,
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all of them referred to, somewhat dryly, as C. The point, however, is not that the wife
necessarily likes being with them or having them join her as a compensation in her
mountain martyrdom. We have assumed the conict system somehow to be closed except
for what is explicitly introduced into it as deepening and broadening. This means that
the wife cannot simply comfort herself by something taken from the outside. At one point
or the other the husband would have to pay for the compensation, and the whole idea
of broadening is that he pays to C, who in turn pays to the wife. Each payment means
parting with something, which means giving in, in some conict. The typical example
would be the case of the child whom the father would prefer to send somewhere else for
vacation, and the mother would prefer to have for company.
If the gain from the wifes point of view is insucient to compensate for her loss in
the barren and steep mountain side, and what she sees as the loss to the husband is
insucient as punishment, she might increase the price either way by throwing in the
mother-in-law (provided she is of the proverbial type), or even the (suspected) lover. This
may look like an articial approach, but it is felt that this is only so because most people
might not be able to verbalize it when they engage in such practices.
Fission or disintegration has a very clear meaning in this connection: after endless
debates that gradually take the form of quarrels they make a very simple decision: I go
to the sea and you go to the mountains, we come together after vacation and compare
notes. Separation for vacation purposes may be the beginning of the slippery slope
leading to separation in marriage, resulting in divorce, and then it may also be exactly
the opposite. The basic point is the realization that the incompatibility disappears with
decoupling. There is only incompatibility under the assumption that husband and wife
have to be together during their vacation.
Fusion or integration would be the exact opposite: a fusion into one at least where
perspectives on vacations are concerned. Shared perspectives develop, sincerely shared,
accepted, internalized by both. The content does not matter. It may be that the husband
converts to the wifes view, or the wife to that of the husband, that they both convert
to a compromise formula, going in for vacation in the desert, or on the plains, or for
no vacation at all. They might also go in for a vacation on the moon for that matter
indicating that whatever they go in for might still be unattainable but in that case
this would be tantamount to the frustration of the husband-wife actor, not to a conict
between husband and wife.
Altogether this oers them six possible conict resolution formulas, which is not too
bad; it should not be impossible to nd something reasonably acceptable. Admittedly,
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transcendence may be out for geographical reasons, and compromise may be out because
of the losses incurred. But that still leaves four possibilities, of which the last might
have to be the result of some deep non-intellectual dialogue leading to a fundamentally
emotional sharing that would make the term fusion or integration warranted. The
term love is close.
However, even if some, most or all of these possible types are objectively available
they may not be subjectively at hand for the simple reason that they neither pre-existed
in the actors minds, nor developed during the conict. In fact, there seems to be little
evidence to indicate that participation in conict as such stimulates conict imagination
and expands the space of possibilities. There are certainly types of conict participation
that have this eect, such as reected, dialectical conict participation; but these are not
necessarily empirically the dominant forms. Hence, it is certainly not unlikely that our
couple would relatively quickly, even from the very beginning, fall into one of the conict
repression types.
Thus, they may drift away from each other both of them frustrated, dropping the
issue, sometimes announcing to themselves, to each other, and to friends that vacations
are not for us. They may reach out for each other doing other types of things, engaging
in all kinds of positive activity, trying to forget about the frustrated vacation hopes.
They may add to this conict other conicts, for instance over the accessories, gradually
deepening the conict gap between them. They may turn to other persons including
child, mother-in-law and lover where activities that also would permit the vacation would
recede into the background.
Or, one of them may so eectively brain-wash the other with his or her arguments that
the other gives in or up: Yes, dear husband, now I see that the mountains are better,
not only for you but also for me. And nally, there is the drama of incapacitation: one
of them making the other actor incapable of pursuing the goal. We do not have to think
in terms of poisoned food; more important is the secret hope that illness, some kind of
social obligation or work load would give to the other the freedom to pursue his or her
goal at will.
There are subtle and not so subtle ways, out of which the type mentioned immediately
above, penetration, (so important that it is singled out as a special case of social
incapacitation) would probably be the most signicant one for this type of conict. In
gure form:
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Figure 3.4. The Couples Dilemma: Vacation by the Sea, or in the Mountains?
In the compatibility region they nd compromises like 2 weeks in the mountains and 1
week at the sea, losing vacation time traveling from one to the other. Their loss may then
become the travel agents gain. There are usually hidden parties somewhere, beneting
from inability to resolve conict.
Conclusion: the typology of conict negation stood up against this conict, not only
producing a range of resolution formulas, but also a range of repression formulas. What
the typology does not, and should not, provide, is a prediction of the couples choice.
At this point their knowledge and skills, and above all their free will, singly or combined,
enters. Conict is a challenge and they may or may not rise to the occasion. Of course
what eventually happens is conditioned by something to be explored in a deeper conict
theory than this one. But conditioned is not the same as determined. There is space
for conict imagination mentioned above. The more of that precious capacity, the
wiser the choice.
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Chapter 4
FORMATIONS OF CONFLICT
4.1 Introduction
A conict involves parties in some kind of incompatibility. There are two basic kinds of
incompatibilities: one is over relatively clearly formulated, explicit values like a piece of
territory, a commercial right; the other is over more implicit interests like the mutually
incompatible interests between slaves and slave-owners, colonies and colonial countries,
the exploited and the exploiters, the repressed and the repressors. In this case there is
not even an assumption that the parties to the conict are aware of the conict. A major
mistake in politics is only to include in political analyses the rst category. And a further
frequent mistake would be to only include those conicts within the rst category that
have already erupted with clear conict manifestations, including the use of violence.
If the task of conict analysis is to help understand the future better, even in the sense
of promoting the forces one thinks deserve support, conict analysis has to include both
types. Many, perhaps most of the conicts of interest will sooner or later be transformed
into a conict of values, through increased consciousness formation, organization, and
above all confrontations. The latter is often a question of incidents that may look innocent
to the outsider but are highly meaningful to the parties to the conict because they are
seen within a framework of thinking, feeling, a context of despair and hope, that gives
them a coded meaning, hidden to the outsider.
For he whose conict analysis is limited to the rst kind only, and perhaps only to the
small category within the rst kind where there is trouble, shooting in the streets,
etc., such things will come as a surprise.
Since he will need an explanation for the source of his surprise he will easily resort to
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reductionism and see what happened as the manifestation of evil intentions and strong
capabilities drawn from some other conict he already knows, put to work at wrong
and unexpected places. This will, in turn, easily lead him to irrational, even stupid,
policies, like in Vietnam.
The following is an eort to provide a simplied conict map of the world today. In
making such a map the concept formation plays a considerable role. Roughly speaking
this is the key to the context of the conict: which are the parties, actual and potential,
that are participants to it, which are the third parties, what do they all stand for?
Needless to say, these parties are not necessarily countries: they may be groups within
countries such as classes and racial-ethnic groups; they may be non-territorial actors (in-
tergovernmental organizations, international associations, multinational corporations);
they may even be Nature.
It is within the formation that the incompatibility gets concrete meaning, that the
skeleton of conict analysis is clothed with meat and blood, although in the form of a
hypothesis.
For the conicts in a stage of mature development, even manifesting themselves
violently, there is usually little doubt as to who are the parties opposed to each other
even if the parties actually ghting each other are not necessarily the same as the
parties with an objective incompatibility. But for the conicts of interest, the more
latent contradictions in the social web of relations, it may be easier to talk about the
incompatibilities than to predict correctly along which lines society will show its cracks
when the contradiction matures through the transformation process indicated above.
Arguments in this connection will be presented in the text below.
4.2 The Key Conict Formations: A Brief Guide
We assume that the parties of which world conict formations are made are the terri-
torial actors (countries and other territories), the non-territorial actors (organizations,
associations, corporations), human groups (that may be national or transnational), hu-
mans in general and nature. No doubt the territorial actors will continue to be major
parties to conicts for many years to come, but conicts formulated in terms of them
may often more correctly be seen as conicts involving a mixture of national, subnational,
and transnational elements.
However that may be, let us start with a simple division of the countries of the world
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using such categories as capitalist versus socialist depending on whether the dominant
economic system is market economy or centralized economy, and Center, Periphery,
Autonomous depending on whether the dominant relation relative to the outside is one
of domination, of being dominated, or neither one nor the other:
Table 4.1. A Typology of Countries
Capitalist Socialist
Center US, EC, Japan Soviet Union
Sub-Center Canada, Rest-EFTA
Periphery
Third World
Eastern Europe,
Mongolia, N. Korea,
Cuba
Autonomous Per u? Tanzania?
Burma? Algeria?
Yugoslavia, China,
Albania, N. Korea,
N. Vietnam
Some years ago there would be people whose conict thinking concerning the world
would be limited to one formation: the East-West conict. Their focus would be
on the top row in Table 4.1 only. Later on it became fashionable to talk about the
North-South conict, and the focus would be on the left-hand column in Table 4.1, with
some uncertainty as to exactly how the socialist camp should be tted into the picture.
There was the idea of a 90rotation of the conict axes of the world, indicating that
we now have a conict between the Center in general and at least the capitalist part of
Periphery in particular.
We hope below to show how tenacious both types of thinking were and still are, and
want here to give only one indication in that direction. Both of them, singly or combined,
were eorts to give a map of the world in terms of conict formations; in other words the
same exercises as we are engaging in here.
But, both singly and combined they gave a much too insucient basis for understanding
of the present, leaving alone some predictions about the future that might lead to more
adequate action in the present.
Of particular importance is the ability to draw upon several types of conicts simulta-
neously, not all of them reducible to one basic pattern of thinking, so that one is at least
mentally prepared to receive signals from various layers and dierent parts of a highly
complex world. Several formations should be present in our minds so that we can receive
and process signals from several of them, not try to t them into the formation that
enjoys a privileged position in our mind.
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For this a much more diversied analytical basis is needed.
Here, then, is a list of conict formations with which one might work, as a point of
reference (see Table 4.2).
It should be pointed out that the list is neither exclusive nor exhaustive: there are
certainly others to be added, and the fteen already mentioned should be seen as aspects
of a concrete reality rather than as fteen empirically separated phenomena. They
obviously feed into each other and interact with each other, in ways to be explored later.
Table 4.2. A List of Conict Formations
I. CENTER vs PERIPHERY
Imperialistic formations
(1) Capitalist Imperialism
(2) Social Imperialism
Center countries vs Periphery countries
(3) Superpowers vs the rest
(4) Big powers vs the rest
(5) North vs South
II. Center vs Center
(6) Capitalist vs socialist
(7) Capitalist vs capitalist
(8) Socialist vs socialist
(9) European vs Asian
III. Periphery vs Periphery
(10) Periphery vs periphery
IV. Intra-Country Formations
(11) Class conicts
(12) Racial/ethnic conicts
(13) Territorial conicts
V. NON-TERRITORIAL FORMATIONS
(14) Territorial vs non-territorial actors
(15) Man vs Nature
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The present part of the book, however, is limited to (1) to (9). The remaining six
vary so much around the world that as a minimum a whole book would be needed. But
the Epilogue is an eort to explore these formations under a general perspective: basic
human needs.
4.3 Center vs Periphery Formations
We start with these since we consider them to be the most important ones in the world
today, aecting the highest number of people and in the most dramatic - at present as
well as in terms of potential levels of violence - formations.
Most important among these are the imperialist formations. They have all several
elements in common that will not be elaborated here, suce it only to mention them
very briey:
exploitation: There is a Center country which interacts with
Periphery countries in such a way as to receive
economic, political, military, cultural and other
benets more than the Periphery does from the
Center;
penetration: This is done by establishing a bridgehead, a center
in the Periphery linked to the center in the Center
through ties of harmony; as members of the same
multinational corporation, the same international
political movement, the same international military
alliance, the same cultural system-organization;
fragmentation: Whereas the domineering groups in the Center are
well integrated, kept together, the units in the
Periphery are kept apart;
marginalization: The Periphery is kept as a second class outside
the inner circle, even when it is not excessively
fragmented and exploited.
So much for the general theory of imperialism, let us then turn to two specic cases;
capitalist and socialist imperialism.
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(1) Capitalist Imperialism
In this case the exploitation is above all economic: transnational, often in world-
encompassing economic cycles set up in such a way that both in term of spin-o eects,
and in terms of trade benets, much more wealth accumulates in the Center than in the
Periphery; and to the extent they also accumulate in the Periphery it is in the center of
the Periphery rather than the vast periphery.
The characteristic features of the consequences of this pattern show up in terms of
living standard: the level of living of the two cooperating center groups is increasing, so
is the level of living of the periphery in the Centerthe working classes in the Center
countriesbut at a respectful distance from the former two.
But the level of living of the periphery in the Periphery is not only not increasing;
it has recently even experienced severe signs of decline from the very low level already
existing.
This is crucial because it is at this level that not even basic human needs (food, clothes,
shelter, health, education) are adequately satised. Throughout its history capitalist
imperialism has shown itself incapable of providing the satisfaction of basic needs for the
masses in the Periphery countries, however much it has proven itself capable of increased
level of living for the other three groups.
This explains, or has to do with, three very simple ndings from the history of
revolutions in our century:
(a) Revolutions have only taken place in Periphery countries where the proletariat has
nothing to lose, not in Center countries where they might have something to lose,
viz. the sharing of the spoils of exploitation with the upper classes; in terms of
welfare state-systems, protection of industries through tari and non-tari measures,
etc.
(b) Revolutions have usually taken place in situations where basic needs were even less
satised than before, and have arisen right out of this fundamental dissatisfaction.
(c) Even so, almost all socialist revolutions (with the exception of Cuba) have taken
place only after a war has so much weakened the national and international power
structure that the revolutionary forces became strong enough to tip the power
balances in their favor.
If we now assume that capitalism in its imperialist form will continue to be unable to
satisfy basic needs for the masses, partly because they need the masses as cheap labor
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(including as labor reservoirs) - partly because of the uncontrolled greediness of the upper
classes, nationally and internationally, then it is likely that upheavals will be a continuing
feature wherever capitalist imperialism is found, and for a long time to come, simply
because the rst two conditions above, (a) and (b), will remain satised.
They are likely to be successful if the power structure has been weakened for some
other reason, and-or is inattentive (Cuba), etc.
There seem to be three ways in which this can happen if it happens at all; all of them
having to do with how the four groupings characteristic of any imperialist formation.
The center and the periphery in the Center and Periphery countries can be reduced to
two, opposed to each other in a clear bipolar conict formation:
(1) The Peoples War of Liberation: this is the masses in the Periphery countries
against a tripartite alliance of the other three, the metropolitan elite together with
their workers, Lumpen-Proletariat, marginals, and with the elites at the Periphery
level. This was the pattern found in the Indo-China wars, and more or less in all
colonial and neo-colonial wars after the Second Word War. If transnationalized this
becomes the Lin Biao model.
(2) The National War of Liberation: in this pattern there is a crystallization by country;
it is the Periphery country against the Center country because the local elite has
solidarized itself suciently with the people, even to the point of leading the local
masses. The most frequent pattern in earlier wars of liberation, for instance in the
19
th
century. If transnationalized this becomes the North-South conict, between
regions.
(3) The Marxist Model: Proletarians, Unite!: both peripheries might join forces against
the oppressor they have in common, the harmonized centers. This pattern is much
less likely because of the geographical and social distance between the two peripheries.
Whereas the centers are highly mobile and use the means of transportation and
communication in their command to apply the means of destruction with pin-point
accuracy, the peripheries are considerably more fragmented.
There are, however, two conditions under which this fragmentation can be overcome:
geographically by having the masses of the Periphery countries move into the Center
countries as migrant workers, the rst examples on a large scale being the importation of
slaves during four centuries, from the western coast of Africa to the eastern coast of the
Americas, in an arch from Washington to Rio de Janeiro; and
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socially, through a recession, or rather a world depression that would so much reduce
the living standard of the masses in the center countries that they would with considerable
more ease identify with the masses of the Periphery countries.
Inside European countries in the 19
th
century neither geographical nor social separation
were important enough to make the thesis of the unication of the proletariat look
ludicrous.
On a world scale, however, it looked rather unrealistic, then as also today. But the
two conditions mentioned might come into being, in which case new conict formations
would appear.
This is very well known by the forces interested in maintaining capitalist imperialism,
for which reason they will keep the number of foreign workers low and-or control their
political activity.
Thus, there will be the obvious threat that the migrant workers will be the rst to be
dismissed in case of economic diculties.
They will also see to it that the distance in standard of living between the two
proletariats, in the Center and in the Periphery, the Third World, is maintained.
This also implies signicant use of Keynesian techniques in order to avoid the type of
conditions whereby standard or living may sink so much in the rich countries that global
world identication of the world proletariat takes place.
(2) Social Imperialism
Social imperialism is imperialist, but dierent from capitalist imperialism. It refers to
the right hand column in Table 4.1, and is today only exercised by the Soviet Union over
six of the Eastern European countries, Mongolia, and to some extent Cuba and North
Korea.
It may be argued, however, that China has a similar relation to Tibet and possibly to
other autonomous regions in western China, but whatever stand one has on this issue it
is at least of a dierent scale of magnitude from the operation run by the Soviet Union.
Like for any other type of imperialism social imperialism has lasting eects on the
Periphery countries in the sense that the Center reproduces some of itself in the Periphery,
and is based on both vertical division of labor and bridgehead formations. However,
there is one basic dierence that is central to any theory of social imperialism: it does
not presuppose economic exploitation. Social imperialism can certainly very easily be
combined with capitalist imperialism, but this is an empirical, not a logical or automatic
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connection. Thus, of the many accusations China has against the Soviet Union economic
exploitation does not seem to play any important role. And it can also be said that
whatever the Soviet Union does in Eastern Europe it is Eastern Europe that exploits the
Soviet Union economically rather than vice versa.
Before proceeding this last point should be elaborated. We would have talked about
economic exploitation if:
1. Eastern European countries were systematically given tasks within CMEA which
kept their productive machinery at a low level of processing,
and-or
2. the terms of trade were extremely unfavorable to the Eastern European countries.
However, the general trade composition between the Soviet Union and the six Eastern
European countries does not seem to be indicative of division of labor in the direction
indicated; as mentioned, if anybody is exploited then it is the Soviet Union by the Eastern
European countries. There are the cases of the Galati steel mills in Rumania and the
terms of trade with Czechoslovakia, but it is not obvious that these cases alone serve to
prove a general thesis about the Soviet Union exploiting Eastern Europe economically,
even if one adds to them several other examples.
But if neither the purpose, not the consequence, is economic exploitation, what is then
the mechanisms of social imperialism? As the name indicates it can be seen as a way of
imprinting the social structure of the Center on the Periphery, for which reason a more
clear term might be structural imperialism. It is a way of creating a mirror image of
oneself, of bringing about homology with oneself. But why is that done when there is no
promise of economic gain?
Because the theory of motivation behind the forces impelling individuals and countries
to exercise power over others is based on more than the pillar of economic processes alone.
To make others like oneself is already an exercise of power, with two clear benets:
The surrounding world becomes more predictable by reprogramming them so that
they are run according to the same rules as oneself, and doing what is right by spreading
the correct, socialist pattern to others who may not understand that this is to their own
best.
These are reformulations of what the Soviet Union is accused of: building a cordon
sanitaire of obedient, predictable, satellites, and of spreading communism to as many
countries as possible.
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Both reasons are good enough in and by themselves, they do not have to be further
bolstered by promises of economic prot. On the contrary, it is clear that the Soviet Union
is often willing to pay a high economic price if the other two benets are forthcoming.
If social imperialism is the export of a certain structure it now makes sense to ask
what this structure is. For imperialism to have any meaning there has to be a center-
periphery gradient inside the Center as well as inside the Periphery country; in other
words, the structure that is exported is vertical. And we can assume that the center in
the Soviet Union more or less consists of three poles: the Party (or rather, the Party
elite), the Apparat (or rather, the higher levels of the enormous state, regional and local
bureaucracy) and the Military-Police machinery.
This power triangle is also integrated through personal unions (the same person
occupying positions in two, even three of the poles), and benets from a number of elite
privileges. It exercises its power over such groups as all the minorities, the peasants-farmers
and the intelligentsia through a number of methods out of which policing techniques and
direct repression form only a minor part.
Even more signicant are built-in depolitization, promise of elite privileges on the
condition of loyalty, combined with a threat of losing them if the loyalty shows signs
of attrition. Add to this daily struggle for food, clothes, housing and other amenities
and the general eort to overcome bureaucratic red tape, and so much of citizen time is
wasted on trivialities that little is left for political activities, even if it had been permitted.
By reproducing this structure in other countries the Soviet Union is by and large
guaranteed against unpredictable, disagreeable changes. Eastern Germany in 1953,
Hungary in 1956, Poland in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland again in 1970,
do not prove to the center of the Center that this is an impossible goal, only that it is
dicult to obtain; meaning that the homology was not perfect enough, not that some
exibility has to be exercised due to local conditions.
How is this structure reproduced? Quite simply by building a military-political division
of labor where the Center gives the basic command and the Periphery oers obedience,
in return for protection of the Periphery elite, and - we hypothesize - for some right to
exploit the Center economically.
Concretely this division of labor is exercised through a local bridgehead, with the
same structure as in the Center and loyal to the Center. It is hardly fruitful to discuss
what comes rst, the division of labor or the bridgehead, since it is obvious that they
have to develop dialectically. Like for capitalist imperialism the stability of the system
depends on the harmony between the Center and the Periphery elites, and one of the
134
pillars in the foundation of that harmony has to be some rewards extended by the Center
elite to the Periphery elite. They can be personal, such as positions in their international
military, political and economic machineries, or they can be collective such as promises
of military, political and economic support in moments of distress, when the local elites
are threatened and brotherly assistance is needed. Thus, the Soviet elites oer the
Periphery elites protection, and they on their side oer the Soviet elites something
important: an environment suciently similar to the Soviet Union itself to make the
Soviet system look normal.
Thus, the price the Periphery countries as a whole have to pay for social imperialism
is considerable: their structure cannot deviate in any signicant manner from that
of the Soviet Union without challenging her, and their elites cannot deviate in any
signicant manner from the Soviet foreign policy without also challenging her. The net
result: repression inside the Periphery country, lack of autonomy outside; in short lack of
freedom.
Under what condition could this system, possibly, break down?
Neither lack of freedom, nor lack of autonomy, threaten the most basic human needs
referred to above, since that particular type of political energy cannot be mobilized. But
people have made great sacrices throughout human history in order to obtain freedom
and autonomy, and there is no reason why this could not happen inside the conguration
of social imperialism.
Applying the same type of analysis as in connection with capitalist imperialism we have
to look into the conditions under which the four classes characteristic of an imperialist
conguration would reduce to two.
In general, we would assume that the masses of the Soviet Union would side with the
two elites in maintaining the structure. First, it is in their interest to do so since the
structure at least in the short run is tied to the security of the Soviet Union. Second,
there would be an element of pure jealously: why should the Periphery countries undergo
changes whereby the lot of their masses would be easier when the masses of the Soviet
Union are kept down the way they are? It is very well known in the Soviet Union that
the Periphery countries are kept in a certain way and often at considerable cost to the
Soviet Union; to upset this system will be seen as a sign of extreme ingratitude.
On the other hand there is no reason to assume that the masses of the Soviet Union
could not some day enter into a much more basic type of identication with the masses of
the Periphery countries. The condition for this would probably not be that the repression
becomes worse but that it is perceived as coming from the same quarters (Moscow). And
135
here it might well be that we are dealing with the opposite mechanism of that found
under capitalist imperialism where exploitation is typically worse in the Periphery than in
the Center. It may well be that if the repression should become less in the Soviet Union
then these countries will all become more similar and the possibility of identication will
increase at the same time as the jealousy factor mentioned above would vanish.
Another condition in this connection, however, would be increased travel or communi-
cation in general giving the masses more of a basis for comparison. Today that basis is
present at the level of the elite, and it is probably fair to say that Center and Periphery
in this system of social imperialism are constantly comparing their conditions when they
meet at international meetings, conferences of various kinds, etc.
If the Periphery elites are treated badly then conditions for some type of national
liberation would be present according to general theories. Obviously there is some type
of positive feedback at work here: when there are signs of independence then the elites
will be treated badly, and this will accelerate the moves towards independence, with
the danger that the Soviet Union will aggress and stie any further attempt towards
autonomy.
That gives us two scenarios of liberation corresponding to the national war of liberation
and the marxist paradigms indicated under the heading of Capitalist Imperialism above.
The third pattern, a peoples war of liberation, is not very likely in this connection,
partly because the masses are not deprived of basic material needs; freedom and
autonomy being more the concern of the elites; and the situations when they are
deprived of basic needs satisfaction are few and far between as evidenced by the list
above. Also, the geographical proximity of the Soviet Union, and the joint repressive
machinery in the hands of the other three groupings, makes for such a formidable enemy
that the war is hardly likely to succeed. Either or both of the two ambivalent groups must
ght with the masses in the Periphery and that would bring us back to the two patterns
discussed, singly or combined. And just as for the case of capitalist imperialism we can
certainly assume that the repressive powers know very well about these mechanisms and
will do their best to be on guard against any factor that would tip the balance of power
in its disfavor.
Generally we would be inclined to feel that liberation in the Periphery countries in
this system would come about as a consequence of the weakening of the Center country
where internal repression is concerned. But how likely is a development of that kind?
Dicult to say, but three scenarios pointed to seem relatively unlikely.
The rst is the idea that internal rebellion might come about as the result of liberal-
136
ization in the economic sense, in other words Liebermanism. Whether decentralized
decision-making when it comes to production is really taking place in the Soviet Union can
be discussed, and whether there really is increased sensitivity to consumption demands
from the population is also far from obvious. But the basic point is that decentraliza-
tion, combined with the operation of demand-supply mechanisms of the kind known in
capitalist societies, do not in and by themselves imply more freedom for the masses.
A wider range in products, more individual design to meet or change consumer habits,
are not identical with freedom as such. On the contrary, it might very well be that
in addition to the repressive state apparatus currently found in the Soviet Union a
neo-capitalist elite might emerge who would also manipulate the population. Thus,
state propaganda and capitalist commercial propaganda are two aspects of general mass
manipulation and could very well go hand in hand, as already to some extent witnessed
in some of the socialist countries.
Second, there is the idea that more freedom might come about as a result of the
demands brought upon the government by the Soviet intelligentsia. However, this is also
far from obvious. The Soviet intelligentsia is a class in its own right, although possibly
not in the marxist sense (we would actually dispute this: if one denition of class is
that surplus would be expropriated and decided over by others then the intellectual
products produced by this class are certainly decided over by the apparat). But this class
has its own interests, and there are reasons to doubt that it is suciently identied with
the masses at large not to rest content with the satisfaction of their own demand for an
extension of their actions space, more access to literature, more freedom to write and
talk as they want; or travel abroad and receiving more visits from abroad.
Third, there is the idea that more freedom might come about as a result of external
pressure. But in a highly nationalistic country like the Soviet Union the opposite is more
likely to be the result.
Hence, changes in the system of social imperialism will probably come about as
the result of accumulated, small changes throughout the space dominated by social
imperialism and over time. But it is highly unlikely that the system will last: it is too
repressive to constitute a lasting condition for such a large portion of mankind.
(3) Superpowers vs the Rest
This conguration is much talked about today, and for good reasons. It is quite clear
what the formation is: the superpowers pitted against the rest of the worldpresumably
137
able to dictate their willwhen there is a coincidence of their interests, on everybody else.
The superpower condominium is a conict because it is hardly to be expected that what
is in the interest of the superpowers would always be in the interest of the rest of the
world.
However, the pattern is in need of some analysis, for it is not clear exactly what the
mechanism of the superpower condominium is, nor the precise way in which it is operating
on the rest of the world. And at this point it looks as if the distinction between resource
power and structural power may be used in a theoretically protable manner, for if the
superpowers are able to impose their will on somebody else then it has to happen through
the exercise of power.
However, it cannot primarily be in terms of resource power. For this splits into three
components: ideological power, remunerative power and punitive power, and in general
we would not expect the superpowers to be able to pool their two ideologies, to put their
assets together, or to make a credible threat out of the potential use of a joint nuclear
force. We say in general for it is not obvious that this could not in some cases operate
in such a way as to give tremendous power to the superpowers.
Thus, although the probability is low it is not zero that China might once be the
target of not only joint superpower blackmail, but a joint superpower nuclear attack.
And if the superpowers to some extent are able to pool their assets in order to explore
space then they might also much more than so far is indicated be able to pool assets to
manipulate poor countries through technical assistance.
And, nally, there is a certain joint superpower ideology that might be exported to the
rest of the world. This ideology would be neither capitalism nor socialism as economic
system, neither liberalism nor marxism as a philosophical creed, but superpowerism.
By that we would refer to a certain division of the world into vertical blocs, each one
headed by one superpower, coupled with the idea that it is at present the best one.
Superpowerism as ideology might be negative: it is not that the superpowers are perfect,
only that any alternative is even more imperfect. To the extent that the centers in the
Periphery of capitalist and social imperialism believe in this, and agree, the ground is
prepared for a much more formidable type of power: the structural power of the two
empires described under (1) and (2) above dividing the world in spheres of interest.
Hence, our hypothesis is that the superpower condominium insists on the joint and
coordinate use of the structural power built into these two empires. But it is more
than the sum of two already existing imperialisms. It is coordinated and thereby united
imperialism according to the formula If you take care of yours, Ill take care of mine.
138
The machineries for taking care of are already described under the two preceding
formations. They would consist in appeal to ideology, in manipulation with promises of
remuneration and threats of punishment, pulling all the strings woven into the fabrics of
the two imperialisms.
There are two contexts in which this united imperialism might be protably used: one
is the context of conict, the other the context of cooperation. In either case the basic
point is to keep the Periphery under control, in the rst case so that their conicts do
not threaten superpowers directly or indirectly, in the second case so that superpower
cooperation is not threatened by their conict.
There are several theories as to why superpowers might have a joint interest in repressing
or at least managing Periphery conict. One of them is simply that such conicts might
escalate and hence threaten the superpowers Hinterland unless brought under control
at a suciently early stage. This would involve some measure of de-escalation, but for
de-escalation to work it has to be two-sided and this is where the other superpower is
brought into the picture.
Another theory would point to the signicance of the economic blackmail brought to
bear upon the superpowers by Periphery countries in conicts. Any such country, and
particularly the center in that Periphery country, might tell its Superpowers: If you
dont come forward with sucient investments in military and-or development assistance,
then the opposition will gain the upper hand. No doubt the superpower condominium
might in part be seen as the obvious counter-tactic against this Periphery action pattern,
particularly when Periphery countries with highly limited buying power are involved (the
Vietnam case).
However, there is a third point that seems to be more important in explaining this
prevalence of superpower coordination at the time being: the role of the superpowers
as conict managers per se. This is not in order to save them from any kind of nuclear,
economic or other blackmail. But what would remain of this feudal structure imposed
upon the world of states through the institution of the superpower if they were not given
an important say in connection with the general regulation of conict?
To see this more clearly three alternatives to a superpower condominium should be
mentioned: conict regulation through the United Nations, conict regulation by the
parties to the conict themselves, and conict regulation by one superpower doing it
alone.
The latter is probably what both of them would prefer to see happen, but very dicult
to achieve unless both parties to the conict are within their own campand even in that
139
case it might not be so easy as evidenced by the case of Cyprus.
Joint conict management will at least preserve the superpower status as such if not
any universal claim by either of them. Conict management by the UN, unless it were
by the Security Council in a way suciently dominated by the superpowers, would mean
serious degradation of the superpowers; conict management by the parties themselves
even more so. Hence, they would have a joint interest in doing it together when doing it
alone is impossible.
The point made here is closely related to the important role played by the superpowers
in being the primary deners of other states through the institution of recognition, a
ius prima noctis. He who presides over the birth of a state may also preside over its
death through conict management. In doing so they are only exercising their feudal
prerogatives in the international system.
Then there is the second aspect of superpower condominium: the context of superpower
cooperation. There is cooperation for mutual benet between the superpowers today,
and the condominium would in this case take the form of joint eorts to prevent the
Periphery countries from rocking the boat of that cooperation. There was no major
Soviet protest when the USA invaded the Dominican Republic 1965, nor US protest when
the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia 1968.
But is this not simply another way of stating what we have already said before?
The thesis was that the superpowers cooperate in order to control the conicts of the
Periphery; but here the idea is in a sense the opposite: they control the Periphery (and
not only their conicts) in order for the superpowers to cooperate. Why?
This is not the place to develop in detail the nature of superpower cooperation, but if
one should phrase it in one sentence it might run something like this: it is an eort to
control the most costly aspects of the arms race so as to liberate productive forces for
other purposes; and the economic transaction between the superpowers consists essentially
in a trade and cooperation pattern whereby technology ows from west to east and raw
materials, also in energy like gas and oil, from east to west. In doing so both elites and the
masses in both blocs get short term gains: the capitalist system exchange processed goods
for raw materials and the socialist countries get the technology their rigid, uncreative,
repressive systems have been unable to develop by themselves and thereby satisfy some
of the consumer needs of their masses. In other words, there is much at stake and hence
considerable incentive to control the Periphery countries so that this type of system can
remain stable.
Our thesis is that what makes this a joint operation over and above conventional su-
140
perpower control of their own Periphery by means of conventional imperialist mechanisms
would be an implicit contract. Rather than the old I shall stay o your periphery if you
stay o mine, which is essentially negative, there is a positive joint command I shall
control mine if you control yours.
This, however, presupposes a joint interest in that type of control. But, would not the
United States prefer to see a change towards capitalist-liberal systems in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union, and would not the Soviet Union prefer to see a corresponding
change in a socialist-marxist direction in Western Europe, actually in the West in general?
In a sense they probably would. But although that was the professed goal of the 1950s
and may still be a long term goal, it does not seem to be the short term goal.
For any such change might seriously upset the present balance. It would in all
probability expand the group of non-aligned countries, it might also bring non-alignment
to power regimes that might be highly critical of the type of economic cooperations
currently being expanded. A truly capitalist regime in the relatively developed countries
in Eastern Europe would thoroughly appreciate the signicance of being ones own
processor of goods; and a truly socialist regime among the relatively liberal countries of
the West would at least have an opposition suciently opposed to continued exploitation
of East Europe, knowing themselves its true meaning.
However, in addition to these factors there is the obvious point that any change would
lead to increased uncertainty, decreased predictability. The present situation is one the
parties in general, and the superpowers in particular, have gotten used to. Any change
would necessitate a transition from routine action to ad hoc activity. Hence, sucient
motivation exists to try to institutionalize the present pattern. And what would be
more adapted to that purpose than the military machineries, turning inward rather than
outward.
Thus, we are in fact hypothesizing a new military balance, where the military ma-
chineries are gradually turning their attention more to what happens inside their own
bloc than to the relation with the other bloc; leaving the external relations more to the
diplomats, arms control and disarmament negotiators, etc. The balance element would
consist in I watch mine provided you watch yours; the tacit agreement of balanced
internal watchdog activity. The balance would consist in being approximately equally
able to guarantee stability, with the same or dierent means: there would be no balance
if one party were signicantly superior to the other in stability-keeping operations.
Thus, the superpower condominium has a structure and functions. But the parallel
is not perfect. The power the Soviet Union exercises over its six Periphery countries in
141
Eastern Europe is not the same as what the USA is able to, or willing to do, in Western
Europe; but to some extent paralleled by what the USA is doing in Latin America.
And that leads us to a second hypothesis, that the watchdog balance may be divided
into two:
A tough one where US control over Latin America and perhaps some parts of south-
east Asia like the Philippines, will be exchanged for Soviet control over non-European
countries, such as Mongolia, North Korea, partly Cuba and perhaps some Arab states
like Syria; and A soft watchdog balance in Europe. For the Eastern European countries
this would mean some relaxation, possibly brought about as a result of the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe but not too much as seen by the coup in Greece
and near-coup in Italy.
This raises one rather important question: under what conditions will this superpower
condominium be used? There are two answers to that question: that the superpowers start
quarreling again between themselves, or more seriously expressed: that the contradiction
between them surface; and that the various Periphery countries use the occasion to
not only express but even enact some kind of solidarity among themselves relative to
the superpowers. The latter must not be confused with the Periphery countries of one
superpower standing up jointly against the pressure from above: that would be one of
the scenarios for overcoming capitalist or social imperialism.
Rather, the idea, to take an example from the 1960s, the Dominican Republic (1965)
and Czechoslovakia (1968) standing up together, appealing for Periphery solidarity across
camps, in the name of a very simple principle: protection against superpower protection.
(4) Big Powers vs the Rest
There are ve big powers in the world today: the two superpowers, and then the European
Community (EC), China and Japan. Together they constitute the Center in Figure 4.1 of
which the two superpowers, that have gured very prominently in the rst three conict
formations, constitute some kind of a top.
For our purposes it might be useful to introduce another dimension in addition to the
capitalist vs socialist dimension used in Figure 4.1, viz. the European (or Occidental) vs
Asian (or Oriental) dimension. The result is given in Figure 4.1:
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located, diametrically opposed to each other and with a direct link to the small center of
this Center: the United States.
This is not the classical atomic model where the United States is in the center as a
nucleus, the EC on the k orbit, Japan on the l orbit and the Soviet Union and China on
the m orbits respectively. for the latter two are supposed to come closer to the nucleus
than to the other orbiting powers; like the other two also tied to the United States by
special relations. And special relations they are: for long-lasting arch-enemies the
distance progressed towards more neutral and semi-friendly relations is considerably more
impressive than the distance from a cool to a lukewarm relationship. As time passes on,
however, that psychological distance will rapidly contract.
There are clearly two things to discuss here: the idea of a big power condominium as
a whole, and the possibility for the United States to carve out a new position as a leader
of that condominium.
We would regard both aspects of this formation to be non-starters. There will not be
a suciently well developed cooperative pattern between all the ve, at the same time,
for anybody to talk or act meaningfully on behalf of this big power condominium. The
contradictions and antagonisms are too pronounced and important for reasons spelt out
in connection with conict formations (6)-(9). The United States will not be able to
maintain a position anything like what is depicted in Figure 4.3 for the same reasons:
there are other forces of repulsion and attraction operating at the top of the world, not
only those that are compatible with the US-centric conguration.
More particularly, that image is incompatible with three trends or processes that seem
to have a high probability:
(1) the slow and painful emergence of the European Community as a superpower also
in the political, and perhaps even in the military sense; opposed to anything but
real parity with the United States,
(3) the gradual emergence of an increasingly associative relationship between China
and Japan, even to the point of alignment, and
(3) the continued decline of both the United States and the Soviet Union as powers in
an ideological-moral sense.
This is not simply down with the superpowers, up with the other three - it is rather
some strange conguration of this type:
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Figure 4.3. A Declining Superpower World
US-SU China-Japan
Third World
In other words, we assume a more scattered world at the top, and some sort of
continuation of the Nixon-Brezhnev relationship as a model for decreasingly important
US-Soviet cooperation. We assume that this will continue for some time, but that the
other big powers will liberate themselves from it, become more prominent, and to a large
extent be followed by their entourage.
But, however that may be where the details are concerned, the gross features of the
future of the big power system seem to be suciently dierent from any big power
condominium model with the United States in its center to make that model look like
what it is: a phantasmagoria, grown out of a long time dated tradition of seeing the US
as the worlds Number one country in all respects. A corollary of this tradition is the
tendency to see the relationship anyone has to the United States as the most important
aspect of that state - - and this is precisely the type of thinking underlying Figure 4.2.
In short, the problem of a strategy for the resolution of this conict does not arise: the
formation will not crystallize except for a very short lived period for the simple reasons
that it does not have suciently built-in viability.
Which is not to say that there isnt a grain of truth in it. For what is implied by the
model, taking the United States as a point of departure, is the well known idea that the
US is now willing to recognize communist regimes in the Center (the Soviet-Union and
China), and in a Periphery dominated by a country in that Center (which means Eastern
Europe). Similarly, the Soviet-Union has probably come around to accepting capitalism
at the Center of that system, and perhaps also in some of its Periphery it is somewhat
uncertain in how large a part of the Periphery. Further, both of them would loathe the
emergence of countries with regimes of the opposite kind inside their sphere of interest
and would cooperate with this purpose in mind. All this, however, is already implied by
conict formations n1 to 3: There is nothing new in it. What would have been new
would have been to extend the same kinds of rights and uses to the other three members
of any contract, and that is precisely what does not seem to be in the cards for the time
being.
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(5) North vs South
This is a very frequently found gure of speech, but it is not that clear what the North-
South conict actually refers to, bringing out clearly the virtue of talking in terms of
conict formation. It forces one to specify the conict, including the parties to the
conict. And where this is concerned the term is ripe for several interpretations.
First, there is the idea that it simply refers to the conict between most of the Third
World and the capitalist countries, in other words, the capitalist imperialism described
as conict formation (1) above. However, this interpretation is either wrong or not
suciently elaborated.
The terms North and South are clearly geographical concepts, and as such refer to
conicts between countries rather than to conicts between groups, for instance classes.
It would lead to thinking in terms of a conict between the United States and Brazil, for
instance, and not between the United States and its sizeable bridgehead in Brazil on the
one hand, and the masses of Brazil on the other.
In so doing this gure of speech is highly misleading, even a propaganda gure that has
already had a rather unfortunate impact on world consciousness. It leads to actor-oriented
thinking in terms of countries as billiard balls, rather than to a structure-oriented thinking
that would go deeper into country structures.
Moreover, it makes it impossible to understand why the elites of the South so often,
and so easily, are bought o; for instance through the deals set up between the European
Community and the associated states. Any two-country theory of imperialism is bound
to fail; the billiard balls have to be opened up and structured.
On the other hand the gure of speech might also refer to a special outcome of the
formation of capitalist imperialism: the scenario whereby the Periphery country as a
whole would stand against the Center country as a whole. Thus, it may simply refer to
the condition whereby there would be a truly united Third World against the capitalist
Center of the world, the US-EC-Japan triad. As mentioned above, however, this condition
is pretty far from its realization.
Second, there is the interpretation which goes beyond the capitalist imperialism conict
formation and sees the conict in terms of all developing countries against all developed
countries. In terms of Figure 4.3 this would mean the bottom left corner against all the
rest, but with China joining the formerpotentially even as their leaderrather than the
rest. No doubt, there is some reality to this image, but some care has to be exercised in
the analysis.
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Thus, generally speaking there is a dierence between the relations of capitalist
countries and socialist countries to the Third World: the latter is less exploitative.
The trade composition is less asymmetric, the technical assistance given in dierent
forms is less bridgehead building if one excludes what is made for military and very
clearly political purposes, the nancial aid given less tied to economic pressure.
Hence, there would be less of a conict of interests with the socialist countries as there
is with the capitalist countries. But this does not exclude that there may be a conict of
values. And the value is simple enough: that of the North getting an even better share of
the total world power than the South, and even more so than has been the case so far.
That points to political, military and cultural power, but also the world surplus in an
economic sense.
The world surplus can be said to be divided into two: world resources, and world
productive surplus. In both elds a general North-South conict shows up in the sense
that there is a conict over both. The idea that the world has a limited reservoir of
resources that somehow belongs to all of humankind is gradually taking root as a new
basis for a distribution formula, and there is a similar idea concerning the world productive
surplus.
However, there are diculties with either approach. Most of the world is divided
into contiguous territorial units called countries, and there is the old tradition that
what is found inside the country belongs to that country. Hence, only that which is
outside these conventional limits or connes of distribution can still be redistributed,
the world commons: the oceans, the ocean oor, and what is underneath, the air space
above the oceans, possibly the polar regions, outer space. No doubt there are resources
available and untapped so far, and one idea would be that the proceeds from them should
asymmetrically favor countries that are developing, poor or poor on resources.
And there is the corresponding idea for the productive surplus: to redistribute it as
famine relief, development assistance, etc.
There seems by and large to be even more conict over the rst, world resources, than
over the latter, world productive surplus. In a sense this is not strange for the world
productive surplus is produced somewhere, i.e. inside a country, or countries as would be
the case for some multi- or trans-national corporations, and is hence rmly under control.
If redistributed, then according to somebodys will. But the world resources are still up
for division as objects of some kind of primary competition or conict, not a secondary
conict after the ownership question has been settled.
This shows up very clearly in connection with the question of the 200 mile limit and
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similar problems: the Soviet Union, for instance, is here clearly on the side of the North.
Hence, what we would generally imagine is that the most powerful countries want to
impose upon the unclaimed resources a pattern of ownership similar to that which already
exists in the world in order not to introduce a disequilibrium that might be to their
disadvantage.
There might be one major exception to this: Japan which is the only country among
the ve big powers systematically resource poor, and at the same time certainly
developed. For Japan, hence, the division between resource rich and resource poor
countries will become a major one, and Japan will probably to some extent try to align
herself with other resource poor countries in order to exercise a joint pressure on the big
powers and the world authorities in general in favor of some type of redistribution. But
that puts Japan in a special niche, with North in being resource dependent (which the
Soviet Union is not), with the South in making distributive claims.
When it comes to the world productive surplus the situation is today colored by the
experience of the last decades. Thus, it has probably been made relatively clear that
there may be more to gain from being on the sending than the receiving end of this type
of distribution.
In other words, to produce goods for redistribution on a non-commercial basis may in
itself be an important economic mechanism; not only for keynesian purposes, but as a
general force motrice of the whole productive machinery.
To get access to more of the worlds resources and process it oneself may therefore
oer an attractive perspective to what is referred to as the South.
A more modest claim would be control over the resources located inside ones territory
so that they do not ow out of the country.
For these problems it is quite probable that the center and the periphery in the
Periphery might stand relatively united, and for that reason we might talk about the
North-South conict in some cases, keeping in mind that the deeper aspects of the
international structure concern more the countries in the capitalist sphere than those in
the socialist part of the world.
The capitalist countries made a mistake which probably will be repeated many times
in the future, and has already been repeated, to believe that the redistribution of
resources according to some market formula would make people and countries forget
about exploitative relations, whether they be of the economic, political, military or other
kinds.
One important aspect of the North-South conict is that it may cut across other
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conict formations and produce some interesting congurations.
Dening the Soviet Union as North may serve to reinforce the superpower condo-
minium, and this may serve to weaken the capitalist North-South formation rather than
strengthen it because the superpowers are so much more visible. And correspondingly
for China and Japan: they are big powersbut the former is poor and autonomous, the
second is resource poor and therefore not so autonomousboth of them making the world
more complicated than it otherwise might have been if all the big powers had been rich
and resource rich.
In short: the North-South conict is more a gure of speech t than an empirical reality.
Turning the world 90
o
might weaken the East-West conict. However, for this to happen
there has to be more solidity to the formation than the present analysis brings out.
4.4 Center vs Center Formations
We now proceed to the second of the ve major categories of conict formations, this
time focussing on what is known in political analysis as big power politics. Frequent
references will be made to Table 4.1 and Figure 4.1 above, particularly to the latter. That
gure is a map to big power politics, simple in its conguration, rich in its implications.
One might feel that devoting much analytical energy to ve countries alone is to
commit a fallacy of elitism, and we would certainly have agreed if this had been the
only perspective, as is quite often the case in political analysis. But it is only one out of
ve, and, moreover; the signicance of these powers lies not only in the high proportion
they have of world power resources, including population (perhaps 1,600 million on the
world total), but above all in the structural power they have at their command, to some
extent analyzed above as center vs periphery conict formations. The relations between
them are therefore of prime interest, and even more so because the relation between their
peripheries, by the very nature of imperialist bloc formations, are relatively insignicant.
As will be developed later, at least for the time being, Periphery vs Periphery formations
are likely to be within the same bloc, not between blocs.
Looking at Figure 4.1 there are several ways of slicing the big power cake for political
analysis. The rst would be the classical one: capitalist vs socialist, which would have
two subdivisions: one in Europe (including North America), and one in Asia, including
USA. With typical eurocentrism this is known as the East-West conict, although in
Asia it would be a West-East conict. Another set of terms would be the Atlantic as
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opposed to the Pacic theaters.
Then, there is the opposite way of reading the table, vertically: the European vs Asian
conict formation. This also splits into two: within the capitalist system and within the
socialist system.
Together we get a total of six angles, but we prefer to simplify it, starting with
capitalist vs socialist, going on to capitalist vs capitalist, then socialist vs socialist,
and nally Western vs Eastern, preferring those terms to occidental vs oriental.
Of course, there are also more possibilities: one of them against the other three (or
four), not to mention the interesting diagonal formation: US-EC and China vs Soviet
Union and Japan. We shall have some comments on that particular conguration towards
the end of Part Four.
(6) Capitalist vs Socialist
As mentioned this is the old, well-known East-West conict, the actors of which were
very clearly dened through the alliance and treaty systems established in the late 1940s
and mid 1950s: NATO roughly coinciding with the US-EC combination, AMPO (the
treaty linking Japan to the United States), WTO providing the Soviet Union with buer
support, and the treaty of eternal friendship between the Soviet Union and China. It
was an almost perfectly crystallized system, with the vertical lines dividing capitalist and
socialist countries by all the mechanisms known to polarization theory. In other words,
the actors were perfectly dened, but how about the issues?
Roughly speaking they can be divided into two parts: those arising from World War
II and those that have a broader implication, sometimes referred to as ideological,
sometimes referred to as the struggle for world domination. We shall deal with them
in that order, an it will very soon become clear that there is an intermediate category
between the two.
A glance at Figure 4.1 will give the neutral observer one key to understanding the
conict of considerable importance, although usually denied by the capitalist camp: the
aggressors of the World War II Germany, Italy, Japan, are all within the capitalist part
of the conguration. Moreover, their ght during World War II was disproportionately
more cruel when directed against the countries now in the socialist camp than in its ght
with European, capitalist powers. Facing westward, Nazi Germany fought a relatively
classical war by modern means; facing eastward it was a war of brutal extermination not
unlike the wars colonial powers had fought to eradicate the natives. The same applies
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to Japans ght in Asia: the Rape of Nanking has all the characteristics of the Nazi
German war in Eastern Europe.
All this has an important consequence: the conict does not have a symmetric history.
For the socialist camp there was an admixture consisting of a continuation of the World
War II, systematically underestimated in the capitalist camp, deliberately or not.
What the capitalist camp was most concerned with was the change of regime, that took
place during World War II, aecting in a major way capitalist interests. These interests
were partly highly concrete: property (xed or mobile) had been conscated-nationalized
in Eastern Europe and China, as had happened before in the Soviet Union. The problem of
appropriate indemnication looked dicult, almost insolvable. More important, however,
were the perspectives where future interests were concerned: it denitely looked as if
the days when Eastern Europe and China could be used as peripheries of capitalist
imperialism were counted, both with regard to imports of raw materials, and possibly
also raw labor, from them, and to export of manufactured goods and capital to them.
And, the right to settle.
All this was then quickly given an ideological form, particularly as reports of harsh
punitive or educative measures were taken against former elites, who had willingly
served as bridgeheads for Western European and Japanese penetration, were owing into
Western news media. In short, the basic conict issue took the form of a conict over the
economic and political system in areas formerly under capitalist domination.
However, very soon, the conict was reproduced in other areas. First, there was the
threat that communism might spread to the countries in the capitalist bloc, partly
because of contradictions within the system, and partly because of subversive activities.
And, second, to areas in the Third World, roughly that which is left of the world when
the alliance systems just described are removed. This was then increasingly generalized
to a combined conict over power and over ideology.
After the conict took root in the world structure, and it quickly did, building on the
polarization the Soviet Union had been exposed to after the Bolshevik revolution 1917 and
its foundation in 1922, as well as some of the conict attitude and behavior engendered
by World War II. The most comprehensivequantitatively and qualitativelyarms race in
world history unfolded itself.
From what has been said above, it is quite clear what would be its three major
dimensions: a horizontal system between the two Centers, to deter and ght aggression;
a vertical system within the formations of capital imperialism in the West and social
imperialism in the East to maintain status quo, and a vertical system within the Center
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countries themselves to deter and ght any subversion.
Unfortunately most of the debate and political action have focussed only on the former,
and particularly on its nuclear dimension.
But the control systems inside the empires form a part of the capitalist vs socialist
conict formation, although they certainly also can be seen as conicts in their own right,
as done above. Here the methods are dierent: bases, local military missions, training of
ocers in the Center countries, dependency of the local elite on military, economic and
political aid from the Center for their political survival, and so on. And nally there is
the conventional apparatus inside the Center countries: secret police, national guards
and militia (all the time with conventional armies in the background), all kinds of control
methods to make sure that any opposition bent on fundamental change is kept at bay.
The total magnitude for this system of war and repression has certainly not yet been
grasped by anybody; because it has never been seen in its totality.
Formulated this way, it is also clear under what conditions the East-West conict
would diminish in salience; under what conditions it might even wither away. Funda-
mentally seen, it is probably correct to say that a conict will decrease in signicance,
and even sink below the political horizon, to the extent that issues are being resolved,
and this can happen partly because they are no longer salient, partly because a new
equilibrium is found, deemed satisfactory to either party. It is our contention that
both these mechanisms have been operative during the thirty years after World War II,
particularly during the last ten years.
First, time has passed and the issues arising from World War II, such as conscation
and nationalization, not to mention the general change of regimes in what used to be
countries in the capitalist periphery, will only remain psychologically and politically
important to those who not only remember the alternative but had some kind of interest
(not necessarily material) in its continuation.
Such a person would probably have had to be born in the beginning of this century,
which means that he and she today is either dead, retired, or in the process of passing out
of the political process. Most important in that connection were those who had fought on
the Axis side in these countries, in Europe and in Asia, and at least the ocers among
them are now on that age category. A purely demographic process, hence, is therefore
responsible for a part of the conict resolution.
Second, to the extent that the conict has to do with less past-oriented, more dynamic
aspects of international interaction, considerable change has been produced during the
last years, after the so-called detente set in. More particularly, this process is, at least
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in Europe, characterized by some kind of reopening of these countries for economic
transactions that are - although both form and terminology dier - remarkably similar to
what went on before.
Fundamentally speaking, it is still a question of exporting technology and capital
from the capitalist center to the socialist periphery, and importing raw materials and
products at a relatively low level of processing to the capitalist center. There is one basic
dierence, however, at least so far: there is no import of raw labor, that only comes from a
semi-socialist country like Yugoslavia, not to mention from the entire capitalist periphery,
such as Portugal, Spain Southern Italy, Turkey, and indeed Third World countries in
general.
These two factors are probably sucient to explain why the East-West conict has
abated in its central, hard-core area. The high level horizontal war system the two Center
direct at each other is standing there without a real target. They are not irrational enough
to launch a rst strike, knowing the nature of the second strike; unless the provocation
has been intolerable.
The level of the arms race between East and West has probably been of less signicance
for the detente: the demographic process, and the economic adjustment process in the
interest of particularly the elites of both systems, could take place at any level of the arms
race. The threat of a mutual destruction far canceling any possible gains resulting from
an aggressive war was already established with the explosion of the atom bombs over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The tremendous overkill capacity of today was not necessary
to make that point.
It may, however, be argued that the arms race had to continue for a long time in
order to constitute such a drain of all kinds of resources that it became too competitive
to, for instance, consumers needs in the Soviet Union, and urban renewal and general
renovation in the United States. This factor, however, has to be weighed against the
stimulus the arms race has given to the military-industrial complex in the West and the
military bureaucratic complex in the East.
There is one eect/the arms race in all probability has not had, however, and that
is the major function attributed to it: that of deterring an attack. In order to deter an
attack, there has to be an attack to deter. That such an intention was ever seriously
considered on either side, in spite of the ever increasing capability, has never been
established. Objectively speaking, if any side should attack it would have been the West,
since the West had suered the loss of its traditional capitalist periphery in Eastern
Europe. The Soviet Union had already gained after World War II, as crystallized in the
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Teheran-Jalta-Potsdam agreements and would only be prepared to defend them.
However, it does not look as if anybody has so far established a serious attempt in
this aggressive direction from the West.
The same applies to the East: what actually happened was soviet withdrawal from
such areas as northernmost Norway, Denmark (Bornholm) Finland, Austria and northern
Iran.
This does not mean that there was no interest in the East for a basic change in the
West, but this was to be brought about by revolutionary upheavals within the general
formation of capitalist imperialism, including internal revolts in their Center countries.
Nor is there any doubt that the Soviet Union and some groups within the periphery
of social imperialism wanted to contribute to this, but by means short of a belligerent
attack.
(7) Capitalist vs Capitalist
Dicult to tell. The East-West conict formation being so powerful that intra-bloc
conicts even if objectively existing will not be given any space for articulation. And,
EC and Japan are both tied to the US in powerful, well controlled alliances.
On the other hand, capitalism is based on competition and comparative advantages
which is what counts.
The comparative advantages of the EC, so far only six countries, will take time to
crystallize as economies of scale with increasing integration of the six. Singly none of
them can rival the US; combined they might constitute a challenge.
The comparative advantage of Japan - the size of two big European countries - lies in
its high level of skilled labor, labor-capital, and capital-state cooperation.
They felt very badly treated by the Nixon Shock of 1971 (the US dollar no longer
backed by gold), and the textile crisis, and will increasingly demand export access in
return for the US bases in Japan in general, and Okinawa (also after its return to Japan
in 1972) in particular.
(8) Socialist vs Socialist
The world does not have much experience with this conict formation since the history
of socialist countries is a short one. Moreover, it must not be confused with social
imperialism, the second conict formation above, since that is a Center-Periphery conict.
But within that formation, in Eastern Europe, there might have been important
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Periphery-Periphery conicts, and it is quite possible that such conicts will emerge if
the lid is taken o the Eastern European international dialectic, which is another way of
saying if the power of the Soviet Union is signicantly reduced.
However, it is unclear, whether conicts, that might then come out in the open would
have a clearly socialist character, or simply take the age-old form of territorial conict
(e.g. between Hungary and Rumania over Transsylvania, etc.).
Needless to say, the conict formation socialist vs socialist above all refers to the
relation between the Soviet-Union and the Peoples Republic of China.
In saying so it is quite clear who the actors are: those two countries, or at least certain
elites in those two countries. It is considerably less clear what the conict is about, and
this may serve to illustrate an obvious point in general conict theory: if the conict issue
is very clear, then the denition of the actors to a large extent becomes empirical, and
hence considerable less clear. And conversely: when the actors are well dened, then the
conict issues between them may be rather multidimensional indeed, in need of empirical
exploration.
One way of summarizing six major conict issues between these two major actors in
world politics today, ordered from the less important to the more important, might run
as follows.
The North-China issue. This is the most well-known issue between the two, and
probably also the least important one. It concerns the territories North of the present
border, territories referred to in China sometimes as North China, in the Soviet Union
known as the Far East. The issue has a very concrete aspect in the Ussuri river, where
certain islands are sometimes under, sometimes above water and where the river itself
changes its course. However, such issues are not too badly dened by international law.
Closely related to this are the broader issues under the heading of the unequal
treaties. It is not obvious that China wants any major territorial change, except for,
possibly, some regulation concerning the agro-geography of the Ussuri-river.
Rather, it may look as if the conict is more about the denition of the past than
about any territorial regulation of present or future. In other words, it might well be
that what the Chinese really want, is an unequivocal admission from the Russians to the
eect that the treaty was unequal, and continues to be unequal regardless of any change
of regime in Moscow.
What is wanted seems to be some kind of admission of having committed a wrong
rather than any real rectication of that wrong. The problem is whether the Russians
would be willing to concede this, particularly since it would be tantamount to an admission
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that a socialist state continues the imperialist practices of its feudal- capitalist predecessor
state.
Formulated this way, it is clear that the Chinese ask for rather much, and it is doubtful
that a compromise can be found, particularly since two very dierent dimensions (one
territorial, one political) are involved, and it would require much exibility to strike a
horse-bargain between the two.
The Mongolian Issue. Again, it does not look as if the Chinese have a territorial
modication on their mind. In other words, the point does not seem to be that the
Chinese feel Mongolia is ours.
But they denitely feel that Mongolia should not be a part of Soviet social imperialism
either, which again brings us back to Conict Formation No. 2 above.
The only dierence is that in this case China is involved, with which the Soviet Union
has a much broader and longer conict border than with Western Europe (and might
have a similar relation to the countries in Eastern Europe). Mongolia is in the Soviet
zone of inuence. China wants it out of that zone and might also feel that the Chinese
type of socialism is better suited for the Asian Mongolians than the European Soviet
version. After all, Mongolia was a feudal country far from the Eastern European capitalist
experience.
The Central Asian Soviet Republics. The same issue applies to these ve republics
(Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan): the Chinese seem
to feel that these republics are populated by people more similar to themselves. If they
had been in a position to decide for themselves their pattern of socialism would have
been dierent, and certainly not directed from Moscow.
Again, the issue is probably not that the Chinese want it to be directed from Peking
in the same sense as it now is from Moscow, but that they should enjoy considerably
more autonomy, perhaps even independence.
Needless to say, if this is the case, one is already touching a conict issue of considerable
deeper signicance than the preceding two. And, as they are parts of the Soviet Union
the integrity of that construction is at stake. We would expect high hostility in this key
antagonism.
The Past History of Soviet-Chinese Relations. From the very beginning of the Chinese
revolutionary eorts in the early 1920s the Soviet-Union was inuencing the course
of events in a high-handed manner; sometimes using Comintern as an instrument for
domination, referred to as leadership out of experience. That relationship was also
direct, in the period of reconstruction after the Chinese civil war and World War II, and
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construction of socialism in the early 1950s.
The submissiveness went so far as to send a delegation of cooks to Moscow to study
Soviet cuisine; if there is any eld where the Chinese were in no need of a master it is the
culinary aspect of life. The bitterness relative to the old master is profound, also since
the Chinese feel that Mao should have succeeded Stalin, not Malenkov.
Conict over the Correct Definition of Socialism. First, to the Chinese, collectivization
of the means of production and economic planning are seen only as necessary and not as
sucient conditions for a socialist society to come into being. Second, the Chinese seem
to have a less ascriptive view of what constitutes a good socialist leader: he and she
have to prove themselves again and again, there is no such thing as being born red.
Third, the Chinese see socialist- communist society as something to be created new and
fresh every day.
These points are rather dierent from Soviet conceptions. If practiced in the Soviet-
Union they constitute a threat to the Soviet elite view of permanence, nality to socialism,
of having arrived. For the Chinese nothing is permanent except, maybe, China itself.
Conicts in the Third World. By and large, this conict issue can be summarized in
one sentence: most Third world countries are, one way or the other, trying to get out of
capitalist imperialism, and the major question confronting them is: what is to succeed
that stage? The Soviet appeal is decreasing with more knowledge of Soviet reality.
(9) European vs Asian
Again, dicult to tell, and again because of the overpowering inuence of the East-West
conict formation perspective. But with rapid decolonization, the hold of EuropeEngland,
Netherlands, Portugal, Franceover Asia is vanishing fast. China rises in autonomy if not
(yet) economically. Japan rises economically if not (yet) in autonomy. We are dealing
with giant forces that have been repressed for a long time and it stands to reason that
when unleashed they will change the world.
Combining this formation with what has been said under (7) above, who is going to
be the major loser in the longer run is clear: the United States of America. Who is going
to the major winner is less clear, however.
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158
Epilogue: Basic humand needs,
conict and peace reasearch
The basis thesis to be defended and explored here can be formulated simply: the point
of departure for any study of politics in general, and international or global politics in
particular, must be basic human needs. We have two arguments in favor of that thesis,
and they can also be formulated in a very simple manner.
First, politics is not a random process; there is an element of goal-directedness. Actors,
individual or collective, subnational national or supranational (including transnational)
try to attain something. There is an everlasting eort to realize goals, to implement
programs written in a goal language, which leads to conicts, including conicts over the
denitions of those programs.
Which goals should be taken most seriously? The argument would be that these goals
should be as close to human beings as possible, and should express social reality as it is
experienced by us, the humans, presumably the means and ends of politics.
An argument of this kind is only meaningful if it is also stated what the argument rejects.
Thus, it rejects an analysis of politics in terms of abstractions only; and particularly
abstractions related to such large-scale systems as states and the interstate, world system.
There is no scarcity of variables with which to describe such systems: states can be
seen as poor vs rich, powerless vs powerful; societies can be conceived of as open vs closed,
capitalist vs socialist; the world system can be seen as unipolar vs bipolar vs multipolar,
having few states as members or many states, being composed only of states (territorial
actors) or also of non- territorial actors, and so on. But these are all abstractions relative
to the concrete satisfaction of basic human needs.
What does it help when a state is rich and powerful if the citizens, at least many, even
most of them, are poor and powerless, living in misery? What does it help that a society
is socialist if the citizens are unfree, incapable of deciding over their own conditions?
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Of course, many theories exist to the eect that there is either an automatic empirical
connection between what happens at state and society levels, or the local level, and
human needs satisfaction; or to the eect that this relation is even a logical implication,
a tautology.
It is probably only the last years events, that have led so many towards a highly
skeptical attitude when it comes to the relation between such abstractions as GNP/capita
or public ownership of means of production. The events have forced us always to ask
the question: yes, but how is the situation at the level where concrete human beings are
born, grow up, live and work, live and hate and die exactly how do they experience
their lives? Poverty in the midst of plenty, powerlessness in the midst of power, repression
in spite of claims to the opposite? Great contradictions between the concrete level where
human lives are lived, and the abstract level where human lives join together in systems,
and systems into supersystems.
What we are saying is in fact just this: homo mensura, man is the measure of all
things. But this is not seen here as an abstract, value-loaded position only. It does
not imply any rejection of the obvious, that there are collective actors that do pursue
goals seen as abstractin the preceding paragraphsuch as wealth, power, democratic
organization of political life, socialist organization of economic life. Nor is there any a
priori rejection of the hypothesis that some of these strategies may lead to human need
satisfaction for people below the politicians directly responsible for such exercises.
However, nor is there any acceptance of such hypotheses, always keeping open the
possibility that goal realization at the collective level may be irrelevant or even counter-
productive when it comes to basic needs satisfaction at the individual, human level.
And this leads us to our second anchoring point: the idea that however much collective
actors are capable of realizing abstract goals, ultimately, sooner or later the failure
to satisfy basic human needs will generate forcespopular movements that isthat will
threaten even the most beautiful construction in social-political architectonics. Hence,
it is important to conceive of human needs in such a way that their non-satisfaction,
both from empirical experience and from more general and theoretical points of view,
will with very high likelihood lead to such movements. The needs may for some time
be suppressed, the movements may for some time be repressed, but sooner or later the
forces will be there.
What, then, is our catalogue of basic human needs? It is with some hesitation one
puts forward such a catalogue, but the two anchoring points mentioned above can be
used not only to justify the theory of basic human needs as a point of departure for
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a theory of politics, but also to serve as guidelines for dening something as a basic
human need. Thus, one has to feel fairly certain that these needs stand for goals that
human beings more or less all over the world really want to see satisedthere will be
exceptions of course, but relatively fewand so strongly that non-satisfaction has social
and political consequences. It has to be demonstrated that non-satisfaction can be
identied with major social-political problems; recurrent phenomena that are well known
in contemporary politics, in past politics for that matter, and likely to be with us forever
as long as human beings are populating the Planet Earth.
One possible catalogue with a corresponding list of socio-political problems would look
as follows:
Table 1 Basic Needs, Socio-Political Problems
BASIC NEEDS SOCIO-POLITICAL PROBLEMS
I. THE MOST BASIC NEED
life, survival violence - security, absence of violence
II. BASIC NEEDS
Input:
food, water
Environment protection:
clothes, shelter, health
Community:
education, togetherness
poverty - growth, well-being
III. NEAR-BASIC NEEDS
work, creativity
freedom, mobility
politics, participation
repression - human rights, social justice
IV. RELATION TO NATURE
partnership
environmental deterioration
ecological balance
- depletion problem
- pollution problem
- population problem
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We have divided the basic human needs into four groups, corresponding to what
seems to be the major problems in the world today: violence, misery, repression and
environmental deterioration. The latter split into three: depletion of raw materials,
today particularly discussed in connection with energy crisis, pollution of nature and
humans, and the population problem. The relation between lack of need satisfaction and
these problems is so immediate, so tautological one might say, that this seems to pass
the test where this criterion is concerned.
Is the list suciently universal? We take it that humans everywhere with very few
exceptions want to survive, that human beings cling to life. They also want to be
guaranteed the minimum needed for continued survival: the inputs to the body in the
form of food and water, protection of the body from the hazards of a sometimes very
hostile nature (in the form of shelter, and in the form of health care which may one
day also extend to the type of internal deterioration of the human body known as
ageing); and the need for community with others, membership in a culture so as to
make human communication and dialogue possible here referred to as education as
opposed to schooling; and togetherness with others, with friendship, love, sex as major
ways of expression and impression. Without the needed inputs and protection from the
environment humans as biological beings cannot survive; nor can they without community
with others, as social beings. And still, this is only a modest, even primitive concept of
human beings dened by satisfying the basic needs mentioned so far. Hence the more
controversial category of near basic needs; like the need for some form of work that
permits creative self-expression, the need for freedom, the need to engage in politics in
order to shape the conditions of ones own life.
We then conceive of freedom essentially according to the old liberal formula of free
mobility of persons and ideas. This means free mobility from and free mobility to,
mobility as a sender and as a receiver, the freedom to travel and be travel to, the freedom
to communicate and be communicated to. Put dierently: the freedom of expression,
and the freedom of impression, of association and 0f dissociation, person-to-person and
by means of long-distance communication (letters, telephone and telegraph, mass media).
It means all that is needed at the personal level to bring about consciousness formation
dened as insight in the forces acting upon oneself.
The need to engage in politics brings this one step further. We do not see it merely as
a right, but as a need. It is taken as axiomatic that everyone has a need to participate
actively in shaping ones own condition of life. Politics goes beyond consciousness
formation and includes the possibility of association, organization, mobilization.
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Politics is a dicult concept to dene. But it seems to involve two elements: on
the one hand, the transformation of consciousness and organization into some type of
confrontation and struggle, with a view to transcending existing social political orders
at the micro or macro levels; and on the other hand some element of regulation of this
struggle, even institutionalization.
Politics implies ghting, but ghting according to rules. Politics may become very
raw and crude when the rst element becomes dominant; at other times, it becomes
extremely at and stale because the second element becomes dominant, perhaps most
clearly seen in contemporary presidential and parliamentary democracies. Both of them
are forms of repression, perhaps adequately referred to as repressive intolerance and
repressive tolerance respectively.
We have used the term repression more extensively so that it also covers the
non-satisfaction of the need for creativity.
One example would be the perversion of work into jobs with no creative element; in
other words alienation, the total absence of freedom as dened above.
Another example would be the eort to consolidate an existing social order rather than
to permit politics, or social dialectics, to unfold itself. Of course, we are not saying that
human beings cannot for a long time tolerate lack of creativity, freedom and politics. But
in the longer run the assumption is that these needs are so basic that they will assert
themselves, working their way into the open and become a political problem regardless
of what is done to conceal it.
Finally, there is the relation to nature. Humans are parts of nature, of the biosphere.
Some harmony in the biosphere is a further condition for further survival. When we list
this as a basic need and not only as a problem, it is because of an assumption that deeper
down, there is a yearning for some type of closeness to nature attempted expressed in the
word partnership, and incompatible with the major imbalances referred to as depletion,
pollution and population problems. These problems also lead to non-satisfaction of basic
needs, and ultimately even threaten the most basic need for human survival.
But we also need a more direct relationship to nature and close contact, and if these
needs are not very strongly felt in our current society, and not so easily given expression
to, it is because they have been suppressed by that society, not because they do not
exist. Thus, ecological imbalance is seen as something deeper than simply a threat to the
satisfaction of basic needs. It is also a threat to something deeply spiritual, severing ties
to the basis in basic needs.
This catalogue of progressive basic human needs may now also be read as a catalogue
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of expanding frontiers in peace research.
In the beginning peace research was mainly concerned with direct violence, or violence
as an intended human act, quick in execution. But if the basic concern of peace research
was the deprivation of life, then it very soon became obvious that there were other ways
in which human lives were taken, perhaps not so quick and often not intended. But
human lives were nevertheless wasted through hunger and inadequate protection from
the hazards of the environment. However, since this violence was not directly exercised
another concept and approach to violence was needed, and the category of structural
violence served some of that purpose. The concerns of peace research were expanded
from understanding the conditions of reducing direct violence to include the reduction of
structural violence.
Although the focus now became much broader, making it possible to discuss a much
wider range of political problems in general, and those of international politics in particular,
peace research was still staying within the connes of negative peace. It was still a
question of a very modest conception of humans as something kept going, surviving. This
is seen very clearly if one includes under the purview of peace research the basic need for
community with the two components of education and togetherness, not to mention the
near-basic needs for real work, freedom and access to politics.
One might include those under the general heading of self realization, or personal
growth; and such terms and research programs would lead into positive peace. If
peace is seen as a condition for human fullment then there is no reason to place an
arbitrary borderline on the list of needs dening the concerns of peace research to the
minimum conditions of human existence.
Hence, it is argued strongly, that peace research should undergo a second expansion
and be less modest in its concept of the human condition. The expansion from direct
violence to the inclusion of structural violence made it possible to discuss an enormous
new range of phenomena under the umbrella of peace research. The expansion from
negative peace to the inclusion of positive peace should be at least equally enriching.
In addition, this kind of expansion would also bring peace research in much closer
contact with future studies because empirical reality, past studies, oers much fewer cases
of societies where higher needs were satised. For instance, there are societies that oer
a relatively high level of security to its members as well as satisfaction of basic needs,
but only segments of some societies can be said to provide their members with such basic
conditions of human fullment as creative work, freedom and real politics.
How about ecological balance in this connection? It is both a higher order need and
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a deeper need, and as such should fall under the concept of positive peace. But it also
enters as one of the most important determinants in connection with negative peace,
which is only one more reason for including environmental concerns.
In the eld of development studies the term eco-development has already been
coined; maybe one could also talk about eco-peace? It would have something to do
not only with living in peace with other human beings but also with the nature of which
human beings are one, of many, parts.
Actually, as seen from this type of perspective development and peace become
almost synonymous concepts: they refer to a process more than a state of aairs whereby
all these needs become satised, for everybody.
The level of satisfaction, then, should not be measured as elite satisfaction by studying
the level of freedom enjoyed by the top 10%, nor as average satisfaction by studying
average protein and calorie consumption per person per day, but as the level of need
satisfaction for the people, for instance by studying the extent of satisfaction of all these
needs for the bottom 10, 20 or 25%. If a society expands the level of need satisfaction for
the elites, or for the top 25%, even 50% so that the average goes up, keeping constant the
level of non-satisfaction at the bottom, then that society is not undergoing development.
There is no peace; there is violence, at least of the structural, possibly also of the direct,
intentional kind.
So much for the basic idea, that politics should be studied from the vantage point of
concrete basic human needs, and that this should be the point of departure for peace
research. Peace research should concern itself more with new frontiers, with what happens,
or should happen, after basic needs have been satised. In this there is a program of
political action as well as political analysis.
However, neither action nor analysis will stop with this type of catalogue, but imme-
diately proceed to the next questions: why are there non-satisfaction problems, and in
what direction would solutions to the problems be located?
The general view taken here is that the answers to political problems have to be
found in political (meaning power) formations, and their conict formations, and more
particularly in the structures built into human societies and the relations between human
societies. Structural analysis becomes indispensable as a tool for the diagnosis and
solution of problems. This position is a rejection of the idea that there are technical
solutions available for these problems without structural changes.
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Typical examples of such solutions would be:
Problem Typical Solutions
1 Violence Balance of power, Peace keeping forces
2 Poverty Development assistance programs, Trade and Aid
3 Repression Human Rights Commissions, legislation
4 Depletion Renewable Resources
5 Pollution Recycling
6 Population Family planing
All these are technical solutions that not only maintain structures, but sometimes even
reinforce them. If these structures are at the same time the structures that produce the
problems, the technical solutions will clearly be counterproductive. On the other hand, if
a situation is created whereby structures are fundamentally changed, there might still be
a very important scope for such technical solutions. The basic point is to understand
the conditions under which they are productive and not irrelevant, counterproductive, or
even reproductive of the problems they are supposed to solve.
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Appendix: A Framework for the
Analysis of Social Conict
Please use the following link to download A Framework for the Analysis of Social Conict
which was written in 1958 and is now the appendix to this book.
http : //www.transcend.org/galtung/#publications
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