2 - Rationality, welfare and the organic analogy

Summary

This chapter and the next examine the theoretical system that underpins Hobson's analysis of social, political and economic issues. It studies the philosophical outlook that supports his views of human rationality, welfare and society. Hobson's ‘almost mystical attachment’ to the ‘alarming’ organic analogy is much more than rationalising rhetoric. Though today references to society as a ‘social organism’ seem dated, quaint or a little alarming, Hobson built his progressive, new liberal approach to society and social reform on the basis of the analogy. The terminology is now often associated with the ruthless theories of social Darwinism or with Parsonian structural functionalism in sociology. Darwin's evolutionary doctrine did indeed have an immense impact on social, political and economic thought in the nineteenth century. As Freeden has shown, however, the use of a biological analogy and ideas of evolution were by no means limited to social Darwinists. Hobson, for instance, lifted the conception of the social organism from Herbert Spencer, but turned it to the cause of liberal social reform.

Three aspects of Hobson's deployment of organic terminology are considered. First, when his ideas on human rationality and development are considered, we find that ‘organic’ refers to the nature of human beings as biological organisms.