Some Historical and Theoretical Bases of Racism in Northwestern Europe

Abstract

of a dismal future state in which all human activities are viewed continuously and reient]essly by an all-seeing eye. The basic weakness in this picture is precisely this assumption of the existence of robot-like creatures who, alone, could perform such a function, plus the fact that millions of them would be required to keep the population under complete control. The concentration camp material supports this criticism. Many of the flaws in the efficiency of the concentration camp system were due to the venality of the SS personnel, some of them appeared because of the persistence of humane considerations, and vanity often played into the hands of the inmates. There is another important factor that contributes to the impossibility of instituting perfect social controls that is demonstrated by the concentration camp experience. This also pertains to the human rather than the material aspects of organization. To achieve their ends, the concentration camp personnel had to employ the services of their prisoners. Need for special skills made some of the jailors dependent upon some of the prisoners, a fact that gave these unforeseen opportunities to counteract administrative measures to the advantage of large numbers of inmates. Work requirements, for example, employment outside of the camps, often put prisoners in a position to thwart the controls imposed upon them. The ingenuity of the strategems used by concentration inmates makes for some of the brighter pictures in the otherwise monotonously gruesome record. Any ruling personnel is similarly dependent upon its subject population in one way or another and this dependence insures that control can never be complete. This fact should be of interest to students of bureaucracy, especially to those who draw a lugubrious picture of the consequences of the extension of bureaucratic control in our society. These analysts seem to have overlooked the corrective factors present in any organization by virtue of the fact that what is organized are human beings and not robots. In conclusion we might point out that all of the special topics of the sociology of the concentration camp system can be focused upon one basic issue, namely, the problem of survival in concentration camps. The material abundantly shows that only in rare instances was survival a purely individual achievement. In most cases survival was due to the operation of social factors some of which I have mentioned in the preceding discussion. If evidence is needed in support of a truism, this material clearly sustains the basis upon which sociology itself is founded, namely, the fact that for man, society is a means of survival for the individuals in whom it is manifest, and also, that richness of individual life depends upon the richness of the human relations available and the variety and complexity of social arrangements.