Table Of ContentSOCIAL AND
CULTURAL DYNAMICS
Transaction Social Science Classics
Vilhelm Aubert, The Hidden Society
Herbert Blumer, Critiques of Research in the Social Sciences
G.D.H. Cole, Guild Socialism Restated
Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order
Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization
Benedetto Croce, Historical Materialism and the Economics of Marx
Albert Venn Dicey, On the Relation between Law and Public Opinion
Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society
Moses I. Finley, Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient Athens, 500-200 B.C.
Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism
G.S. Ghuiye, The Scheduled Tribes of India
Ludwig Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology
Everett C. Hughes, The Sociological Eye
Helen MacGill Hughes, News and Human Interest Story
Kurt Koffka, Growth of the Mind
Walter Laquer, Young Germany
Harold J. Laski, The American Presidency
Gustave LeBon, French Revolution and Psychology of Revolution
Gustave LeBon, The Psychology of Socialism
Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
Helen Merrell Lynd, England in the Eighteen-Eighties
Henry de Man, The Psychology of Marxian Socialism
Harriet Martineau, Society in America
Vilfredo Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy
Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development
George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism
Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism
Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics
William Graham Sumner, Earth-Hunter and Other Essays
John W. Thibaut, and Harold H. Kelley, The Social Psychology of Groups
Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise
Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics
Max Weber, General Economic History
Florian Znaniecki, Cultural Sciences
Florian Znaniecki, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge
SOCIAL AND
CULTURAL DYNAMICS
A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art,
Truth, Ethics, Law, and Social Relationships
Revised and abridged in one volume by the author
PITIRIM SOROKIN
With A New Introduction by
Michel P. Richard
Π Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1985 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
New material this edition copyright © 1985 by Taylor & Francis.
Original edition copyright © 1957 by Pitirim Sorokin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 80-23730
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich, 1889-1968.
Social and cultural dynamics.
(Social science classics)
Reprint of the 1957 ed. published by Porter Sargent.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Civilization—Philosophy. 2. History—Philosophy. 3. Culture.
I. Title. II. Series.
[HM101.S752 1981] 901 80-23730
ISBN 0-87855-787-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 13: 978-0-87855-787-5 (pbk)
Introduction to the Transaction Edition
Michel P. Richard
Although I was not one of Sorokin’s students, I became interested in
his work while pursuing graduate studies, and began to correspond with
him in 1959. During the summer of 1962 I visited him at his home in
Winchester, Massachusetts. Despite failing eyesight and a throat inflam
mation, he was an excellent host, and it was a memorable day for me.
He was obviously pleased with his own accomplishments, but at the
same time he did not appear to take himself too seriously, and he was
also alarmingly blunt about the shortcomings of other leading sociolo
gists who had been his students and colleagues. At the age of 73 he was
still full of energy and seemed deeply satisfied with the course of his life.
The amazing thing about Sorokin’s life is that he managed to survive
it. He was born in 1889 in a village in northern Russia, the second son of
an itinerant artisan and a Komi-speaking peasant girl. His earliest mem
ory was the death of his mother, in the middle of winter, when he was
about three years of age. His father subsequently developed a severe
drinking problem, and at the age of ten Pitirim left home with his older
brother. Forced to make his own living by doing odd jobs, Sorokin had
little formal education until he entered a teacher’s seminary at the age of
fourteen, at which time he also joined one of the revolutionary parties.
In 1906 he was arrested at a rally and spent four months in jail. This
resulted in expulsion from the teacher’s seminary, but Sorokin con
tinued his revolutionary work in the countryside under the assumed
name of “Comrade Ivan.” One of the mass meetings he addressed was
broken up by mounted Cossacks; there were numerous casualties, and
Sorokin fled to St. Petersburg in a state of nervous exhaustion. For two
years he worked at various jobs and attended night school to prepare
himself for the university entrance examinations. In 1909 he was admit
ted to the Psycho-Neurological Institute, but transferred to the Univer
sity of St. Petersburg after one year to escape the draft.
To escape the czarist police Sorokin changed addresses frequently; on
one occasion he accompanied a sick friend to the Riviera disguised as a
student medical officer with a forged passport. Upon his return he re
fused to take his examinations as a protest against the absence of aca
demic freedom, and lost his scholarship. In 1913 he was again briefly
imprisoned for conspiring to write a pamphlet critical of the Romanov
dynasty, and he also completed his first book, entitled Crime and
v
vi SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DYNAMICS
Punishment. The years 1914-1916 were spent preparing for his M.A.
examinations; the reading list prepared by his three professors consisted
of some 900 books in criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitu
tional law.
Sorokin received his M.A. in 1916, and after the collapse of the czarist
regime he was appointed secretary of Prime Minister Kerensky. He also
found time to marry Elena Baratynskaya; the wedding was sandwiched
in between committee meetings. When the Provisional Government
fell, Sorokin again found himself on the “wanted” list for his outspoken
attacks against the Bolsheviks. In 1918 he was arrested and charged with
plotting to assassinate Lenin. Influential friends obtained his release
from prison, but he immediately involved himself in military opera
tions against the Bolsheviks in Archangel. When this effort failed,
Sorokin and a companion went into hiding in a forest for two months.
Finally, to protect friends who were harboring him, he gave himself up to
the Chekha police. He was sentenced to death, but again influential
friends persuaded Lenin that he was a good candidate for rehabilitation.
(His two brothers were not so fortunate; both lost their lives during this
period.)
In 1919 Sorokin returned to his posts at the University of St. Peters
burg and the Psycho-Neurological Institute. In 1921 he conducted a
study of the effects of mass starvation in the countryside, and in 1922 his
doctoral dissertation, System of Sociology, was illegally printed. By Sep
tember of 1922 the Soviet Union had had its fill of Professor Sorokin,
and he was exiled. A series of lectures in Berlin and Prague led to an
offer to visit the United States in 1924, and a permanent appointment at
the University of Minnesota. While there he published several books on
social mobility, rural sociology, the sociology of revolution, and so
ciological theory. In 1930 he was invited to organize the Department of
Social Relations at Harvard University, where he remained until his
retirement in 1959. (Two sons were born in 1931 and 1933, but in his
autobiography Sorokin says very little about his family except to note
with satisfaction their academic accomplishments.) In 1949 he estab
lished the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism, devoted to the
study of positive forces in human behavior. In 1960 he became the first
president of the International Society for the Comparative Study of
Civilizations, and in 1964 served as president of the American
Sociological Association.
According to Carl Zimmerman (1968), Sorokin’s legacy to the disci
pline of sociology includes some 500 articles and about 40 books. His
books have been translated into 17 languages, and a number of books,
dissertations, articles, and reviews have been written about Sorokin and
INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
his work. Since its first year of publication in 1953 through 1978, So
ciological Abstracts listed 72 articles about Sorokin in the subject index,
and this average of approximately three articles per year holds constant
even after his death in 1968. In his final tribute to Sorokin, Arnold
Toynbee expressed the opinion that
no future student of human affairs will be able to bypass Sorokin’s
work. The future student may be a disciple or he may be a dissenter,
but in either capacity his encounter with Sorokin will be a major event
in his own progress.1
By any standard Sorokin’s most important contribution is the four
volume work, Social and Cultural Dynamics. This study occupied
Sorokin and a team of assistants working in the United States and
abroad for nearly ten years. It represents an impressive attempt to apply
quantitative methods to historical materials, and to generate proposi
tions about Graeco-Roman and Western civilization that have predic
tive as well as explanatory value.
The publication of the Dynamics was not only a sociological triumph
but also a literary event. The first three volumes appeared in 1937, and
on May 29 of that year the Saturday Review of Literature featured him
in a full-cover portrait along with a review by the economist Frank
Knight. Between 1937 and 1942 (the fourth and final volume appeared
in 1941) at least 55 reviews of the work appeared in popular magazines
and scholarly journals in the United States and abroad.
Many of the reviewers seemed stunned by what Professor Knight
called “this monster parade of learning.” He described the effect of it as
“staggering”; others called it “astonishing,” “brilliant,” “encyclopedic,”
“extraordinary,” “gigantic,” “Herculean,” “immensely fruitful,” “re
markable,” “revolutionary,” and “terrifyingly impressive.” Sorokin was
compared favorably with Montesquieu, Hegel, and Marx; and from the
other side of the Atlantic Leopold von Wiese commented:
Comtes, Spencers, Paretos und Spenglers Versuch etwa erscheinen
willkürlicher, im Vergleich zu Sorokins Werk. [The efforts of Comte,
Spencer, Pareto, and Spengler seem somewhat whimsical, in compari
son with Sorokin’s work.]2
Other critics, however, were disturbed or exasperated by the Dynam
ics. Crane Brinton referred to it as “socio-astrology” (Southern Review,
Autumn 1937); Ruth Benedict called Sorokin a “modern Jeremiah”
(New Republic, February 2, 1942), and Robert Maclver complained
about his “apocalyptic happiness” (American Sociological Review, De-
Vili SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DYNAMICS
cember 1941). The most vitriolic attack came from Lewis Mumford,
who charged Sorokin with blindness, confusion, puerility, and “lack of
emotional poise” {The New Republic, July 14, 1937).
In an interesting analysis of 30 reviews of the Dynamics published in
the United States, Tibbs (1943) found that 11 were positive, 11 were
negative, and eight were neutral or mixed. He concluded:
Fellow specialists are either severe in judgement or high in praise, with
more on Sorokin’s side than against him. . . . Specialists in other fields
which the work of Sorokin encompasses seem to be lined up against
him rather than for him. . . . Popular reviewers are, more than any
other group, decidely in favor of what the author does (Tibbs,
1943:478).
In short, it seems impossible to be lukewarm about Sorokin’s work.
What is lofty to one observer is arrogance to another. Sorokin is both
painstaking and perfunctory, concise and repetitious, scholarly and pro
saic, platitudinous and profound. He scolds sociologists as well as so
ciety, and he is so committed to the principle of altruistic love that he
stands ready to square off against any opponent. In Sorokin these at
tributes are not really contradictory, they are complementary opposites.
As we shall see, this notion of complementarity is central to an under
standing of Social and Cultural Dynamics, in which Sorokin dis
tinguishes sociocultural systems from biological ones. Unlike biological
organisms, civilizations are not perfectly integrated, and therefore they
do not “decline” or die, as Oswald Spengler would have us believe.
Rather, they undergo phase-movements. The most profound changes
emanate from the cultural value system, rather than from institutional
factors or as a result of the actions of great men. The reason for this is
that the cultural system is more fundamental and more encompassing
than the social system (on this point Sorokin disagrees sharply with
Marx) or the personality system.
Sorokin’s data on Graeco-Roman and Western civilization exhibit a
pattern of recurrent fluctuation between what he calls “sensate” and
“ideational” value-systems. During a sensate period all aspects of life are
dominated by a materialistic world view, and economic and scientific
activities flourish, particularly during the “active” sensate phase. During
the “passive” phase hedonistic values prevail, and in the final “cynical”
stage the sensate mentality negates everything including itself. Idea
tional periods, in contrast, are spiritually oriented, and social relation
ships are familistic rather than contractual. Ideational periods move
from the “ascetic” to the “active” (expansionistic) mentality, but finally
degenerate into “fideism” (a desperate will to believe).
INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION ix
When civilization shifts from one of these “supersystems” to the
other, there is a stormy period of transition marked by increases in the
intensity and magnitude of wars and revolutions, and by general social
disorganization (increasing rates of crime and mental illness, break
down in family structure, etc.). Sorokin’s “law of polarization” states
that during such periods violence and egoistic behavior increase, but
there is a counterbalancing increase in altruistic behavior (love, self-
sacrifice, and mutual aid). At the same time, government becomes in
creasingly coercive during these periods. Sometimes, however, there is a
harmonious combination of the best elements of the two supersystems;
a blend of faith, reason, and empiricism. These “idealistic” periods seem
to be of shorter duration than the other two supersystems, but in any
case the time frame is variable for all three. History does not repeat itself
in detail (as Nietzsche suggested) but only in its general conformations.
But what causes these shifts to take place? Sorokin invokes two princi
ples to account for change. The first is the principle of “immanent
determinism”; a sociocultural system, like a biological system, unfolds
according to its inherent potentialities. External factors can only serve
to accelerate or retard the system’s growth, but they cannot alter the
nature of the system itself. (Sorokin does not give much weight to
cultural diffusion.) The second is the “principle of limits,” which states
that the number of basic cultural forms is small, and that growth cannot
continue indefinitely in one direction. Both the sensate and the idea
tional principles are one-sided and incomplete; the more exclusive and
dominant one principle becomes, the more limited it becomes. Finally,
it exhausts its creativity and begins to wane, permitting its complemen
tary opposite to ascend once more.
The ideational/idealistic/sensate paradigm is based mainly on the
study of art forms, truth systems, and scientific discoveries and inven
tions. The remainder of Sorokin’s data on wars and revolutions, legal
statutes, crime, mental illness, economic conditions, family organiza
tion, etc., are more relevant to the understanding of transitional periods.
Rather than sampling his data, Sorokin attempted an exhaustive clas
sification of art works and thinkers over a 2,500-year span. His assistants
examined and classified over 100,000 works of art as well as all the
major philosphers in the Encyclopedia Britanica (their influence was
weighted according to the number of secondary sources on each
thinker). In the case of armed conflict, casualty lists were obtained for
967 wars and 1,622 revolutions in order to establish the magnitude per
million population.
A painting or sculpture was classified “ideational” if it portrayed sub
lime subjects or supernatural beings, was static and free of adornment,
