Teleology

Let us now turn to the group level. Can one explain ideologically a group or collective action, using this group’s ends? The answer depends on the kind of group considered. Taking the simplest case, that of the organized group, with institutionalized, collective decision-making, an ‘idiomorphic’ interpretation of its actions can be given. In other words it can be treated as if it were an individual. Thus, there is nothing shocking in talking about the intentions, wishes, beliefs, or decisions as far as, say, the German government or a union is concerned in such and such a way. However one has to specify: 1) that the collective ends are defined and acted on by a managing team with constitutional authority; 2) that the probability of reaching these ends depends on the relationship between the officials and other members of the group, for in this case using a vocabulary borrowed from individual psychology for a collective entity does not lead to a major ambiguity. It is quite different when the ‘idiomorphic’ vocabulary (i.e., assimilating the group to an individual) is used for non-organized groups or groups which cannot be ‘institutionally represented’, such as social classes or groups described as latent (cf. ‘Action (collective)’) by Dahrendorf, groups with members who share a common interest (i.e., apart from social classes, such as consumers, taxpayers, etc.). Take, for instance, the expression: ‘the will of the working class’. Here, either this ‘will’ is voiced by a particular organization with a mechanism for collective decision-making like the Communist Party and such an expression-even if sociologically arguable-has no logical ambiguity, or such a formulation is untenable. The expression then becomes either a simple metaphor or a short-cut to express the idea that each of the members of a hidden group (or a majority of them) are showing the ‘will’ talked about. At this point comes what has sometimes been called the paradox of collective action (cf. ‘Action (collective)’). Marx drew attention to this paradox: in the Eighteenth Brumaire he shows that peasant smallholders do not appear to be class conscious and are not in any case capable of achieving their class interest, i.e., the interest of the ‘possible group’ that they make up, or even the common interests of each of the smallholding peasants. Pareto also explains how the actions of directors of a monopolistic firm are generally of a logical kind, but actions of directors in a perfect competition system are often of a non-logical kind (fourth kind), actions where subjective ends and objective consequences do not correspond. Generally, an enterprise’s director aims to increase his profits by increasing productivity. But in a perfect competition climate, since all the entrepreneurs aim to do the same, they will only make prices go down to the consumer’s benefit without any additional profit to the firms. On the other hand, a monopoly or an oligopoly can increase their profits (Treatise of General Sociology: 159). Thus, in ‘some cases’, a latent group may not be able to serve its own interests. Thus, it cannot then be analysed idiomorphically. This pattern appears when there is a contradiction between the individual and collective interests of the latent group. Of course there are also cases when individual and collective interest coincide. An idiomorphic analysis is then possible and it is also possible to talk of ‘conscience’ or ‘class consciousness’. Thus, while Marx showed that smallholding peasants have contradictory individual and collective interests, it is not the same for other classes.