A Comparative Study of Social Mobility

Abstract

EMPIRICAL research in social stratification has for long had the implicit rationale that the exposure of inequality was a political good and that over-all social justice would be served by producing this information. This is not a mere accident. Both the critique of capitalism, which came to a head during the depression, and the older utilitarian impulses animating and shaping so much of social science led it to be concerned, in different ways, with an attack upon privilege. The fact, too, that social science in its modern form arose in a society in which the fundamental victory of democracy over a hereditary oligarchy, if not fully consummated, was regarded as a matter of time, meant that there was a politically vital principle and even a political party in that society to which one could appeal in exposing yet remaining bastions of privilege. Even those later developments in social science which deny the possibility of democracy do not transcend the horizon laid down by the utilitarian framework. To be sure, writers in this later tradition, such as Michels, could not attack inequality with the buoyancy of their forebears against whom they were a reaction. Since, however, with a few exceptions they were (and still are) liberal democrats, although one is tempted to wonder exactly on what basis, their reflections and observations about the inevitability of inequality in the decisive respect, that is, between rulers and ruled, could only be made with a certain regret about the facts they felt compelled to adduce. We need not concern ourselves here with the validity of this point of view, e.g., its difficulties in attempting to account, among other things, for the power of public opinion in modern democratic societies.