ABSTRACT
Voluntary association is the hallmark of Western civilization. Western civilization has been stamped by "restless instability" and "long-standing proclivity for revolutionary reorganization. Voluntary associations are not only agencies of defense and integration but also, and perhaps more importantly, demolition teams wreaking revolutionary reorganizations. Western voluntary associations are both defensive and offensive. As a society pluralizes, the presumption is that its sense of justice will outrun the inequalities achieved and defended through voluntary associations. Many portraits have been done of pluralism. It is the "elastic," or "open," or "liberal democratic" society. The political scientists of pluralism seem not to have fared very much better than its normative exponents in making theoretically transparent the processes through which pluralist society achieves integration. "The liberal ideal of society in accord with the principle of freedom is free association." The political theory of pluralism offers an abstract and general explanation in the permanent and contrasting facets of human rationality.
