Abstract
A growing number of frameworks for envisioning and enacting public relations posit social harmony as a core goal of the discipline. Such frameworks include two-way symmetry, communitarianism, fully functioning society theory, Isocratean rhetoric, and aspects of the reflective paradigm. A goal of social harmony, however, has been challenged as being overly idealistic, utopian, and incongruous with the competitive nature of human beings and organizations. This article examines the evolutionary biological theories of Charles Darwin and Peter Kropotkin – in particular, Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid – and details their conclusion that the processes of natural selection favor communities built upon cooperation rather than competition. The processes of evolution and natural selection thus provide a scientific foundation for a goal of social harmony within public relations frameworks.
Public relations scholarship currently enjoys (a verb used advisedly) a sometimes contentious but ultimately beneficial state of flux regarding overarching paradigms that, ideally, suggest directions for scholarship and professional practice. The ‘paradigm struggle’ that Botan optimistically envisioned in 1993 now characterizes – and, in the estimation of Botan and Hazleton (2006), energizes – public relations scholarship:
We would expect any field that fails to develop a paradigm struggle to stagnate and even to slip backwards. Public relations will be no exception to this rule either, so just as we should celebrate the emergence of a dominant paradigm in the field [symmetry/Excellence Theory], we should also celebrate the emergence of challenges to that paradigm … (2006: 9)
So extensive and compelling have those challenges been, in fact,
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that Brown (2010, 2012) and Porter (2010) assert that public relations scholarship now is in a ‘post-symmetrical’ period. That appellation, however, highlights the productive flux within the discipline: If we have grown beyond original conceptions of Excellence Theory and its inherent two-way symmetry, where are we? Curtin has suggested four broad paradigms for public relations – ‘post-positivist, constructivist, critical/cultural and postmodern’ (2012: 35) – and she concludes:
[W]e might be more mature than we think if we are willing to accept a diversity of perspectives and their concomitant research values … If we accept this broader conception and that the social sciences do not lend themselves to a grand unifying paradigm, what emerges in public relations scholarship is multiple, competing paradigms embodying different relevant questions to be asked (theories) and different means to be used to answer them (methods). (2012: 31, 35)
Bardhan and Weaver (2011) and Edwards (2012) recommend seeking similarities among the different conceptual frameworks of public relations – trends and patterns that emerge from the ‘contested terrain’ (Cheney and Christensen, 2001) of the discipline.
One such similarity or point of convergence within the disciplinary flux may be the partial confluence of public relations’ ‘social harmony’ frameworks (Marsh, 2011), which include two-way symmetry, communitarianism, fully functioning society theory, Isocratean rhetoric, and aspects of the reflective paradigm.
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Each of the first four of those frameworks posits social harmony as a central goal of public relations, yet each travels to that destination from different theoretical foundations. Given the difference of these frameworks, this fundamental agreement on a key aspect of public relations’ raison d’être would seem to speak well for the legitimacy of social harmony as a core goal for at least one comprehensive vision of effective public relations. However, for those frameworks and for public relations in general, the goal of social harmony often has been characterized as overly idealistic or out-of-step with realistic human – or at least organizational – behavior. In his ‘iconoclastic speculation’ (2005: 550) on trust and public relations, for example, Moloney writes:
PR flourishes in Western-style liberal democracy, which is a polity tending to disorder, founded on open argument between organizations and groups. PR is the communicative trace of their search for advantage and survival in this competitive environment … [D]isbelief about PR as virtuous activity for social harmony is particularly marked in colleagues from a political studies background. (2005: 550, 553)
In Rethinking Public Relations, Moloney adds, ‘PR reflects and generates social competition, not harmony’ (2006: 14).
The purpose of this article is to challenge such charges of excessive idealism and to offer theoretical support for public relations’ social harmony frameworks through the further exploration of the works of evolutionary biologist Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921). In his theory of mutual aid, Kropotkin expanded Darwin’s assertion, in The Descent of Man (1998[1871]), that cooperation, not competition, is the most powerful force in the advancement of species: ‘[W]e may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance’ (1989[1902]: 6). Kropotkin maintained that Darwin’s processes of natural selection and evolution provide ‘scientific truth’ (1992[1925]: 30) for the legitimacy and power of human instincts for social harmony. The positive, as opposed to purely normative, status of Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid may be enhanced, as we shall see, by his advocacy of what could be seen as a ‘mixed-motive’ (Grunig and White, 1992) approach to social harmony; that is, Kropotkin, as an avowed anarchist, was willing and even eager to oppose groups that intentionally worked against the processes of social harmony and mutual aid. This article draws primarily upon Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1989[1902]); Ethics: Origin and Development (1992[1925]); Evolution and Environment (1995); and The Conquest of Bread (1906) as well as Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1998[1871]) and modern critical commentaries on those works (Barnard, 2004; Corning, 2003; Dugatkin, 1997; Gould, 1991).
Social harmony frameworks: Descriptions, theoretical foundations, and challenges
The general concept of social harmony can seem so clear that public relations scholars often use that phrase without definition (Grunig and White, 1992: 39; Kruckeberg, 1993: 30; Leeper and Leeper, 2001: 464; Molleda and Ferguson, 2004: 332; Toth, 2002: 248). Citing the works of British sociologist L.T. Hobhouse, historian J.T. Stuart has defined social harmony as ‘mutual support between two or more elements of a whole’ (2008: 62). Such mutual support on a societal scale, with its inherent ‘ethical’ impulse toward ‘social cooperation’ (Stuart, 2008: 61, 62), is an expressed goal of several frameworks within public relations, including two-way symmetry, communitarianism, fully functioning society theory, and Isocratean rhetoric. 3 Social harmony may also be an outcome, if not a primary goal, of the reflective paradigm. The following paragraphs offer a brief description of each of these social harmony frameworks, including foundational references to harmony; supporting theoretical bases, which, again, differ from framework to framework; and examples of charges of excessive idealism.
Excellence Theory and two-way symmetry
Of the two-way symmetrical model of public relations championed by Excellence Theory, J.E. Grunig has written, ‘With the two-way symmetrical model, practitioners use research and dialogue to bring about symbiotic changes in the ideas, attitudes, and behaviors of both the organization and its publics’ (2000: 32). Of his hopes for the evolution of symmetry, Grunig (2006) adds, ‘I now believe that the concept of relationship cultivation strategies is the heir to the models of public relations and the two-way symmetrical model, in particular’; he envisions such development as being part of a ‘theoretical edifice that I call the strategic management role of public relations’ (2006: 153, 168). In Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management, Grunig and White established role of social harmony within Excellence Theory, citing ‘interdependence’ and ‘social harmony’ as characteristics of the worldview inherent in ‘excellent public relations practice’ (1992: 43, 56, 61).
Excellence Theory draws heavily on systems theory (Bardhan and Weaver, 2011), which ‘emphasizes the interfaces between organizations and their environments, as well as between ellipsis subsystems and the organizational whole’ (L.A. Grunig et al., 1992: 71).
J.E. Grunig (2000) has repeatedly acknowledged and challenged charges that two-way symmetry is excessively idealistic:
[S]cholars have maintained that symmetrical public relations is a utopian ideal that cannot be practiced in reality (e.g., Kersten, 1994; L’Etang, 1995; Pieczka, 1996) … [T]he name ‘symmetrical’ has suggested concepts such as equilibrium, social harmony, equality, mutual goodwill, or ideal communication situations. Obviously, these concepts suggest a utopian society and an overly idealistic vision for public relations … That is why I used the term moving equilibrium … rather than equilibrium, social harmony, or consensus. (2000: 33)
Communitarianism
[P]ublic relations is best defined and practiced as the active attempt to restore and maintain a sense of community … lost because of the development of modern means of communication/transportation … Community building can be proactively encouraged and nurtured by corporations with the guidance and primary leadership of these organizations’ public relations practitioners. (Starck and Kruckeberg, 2001: 58, 59)
The ‘harmony’ inherent in communitarianism ‘is not necessarily at the level of specific issues, where genuine disagreements can and do exist, but at the level of community cohesion and values that, hopefully, will lead to harmony, or at least understanding, on basic underlying values and issues’ (Leeper and Leeper, 2001: 462).
Applied to public relations, communitarianism draws on ‘the Chicago School of Social Thought’ (Kruckeberg and Starck, 1988: 28) as well as the community-building theories of Alasdair MacIntyre and Amitai Etzioni (Leeper and Leeper, 2001).
Hallahan (2004) has succinctly summarized the charges of excessive idealism leveled at communitarianism and its quest for harmony:
This vision of community building extends the meaning of community in a way that might seem idealistic or even naïve. Indeed community itself has been labeled a tragic ideal (Tinder, 1980), nostalgic (Bernasconi, 1993; Cheney and Christensen, 2001), illusionary (Scherer, 1972), or absurdly utopian (Bellah et al., 1985). (2004: 262)
Fully functioning society theory
The fully functioning society theory (FST) of public relations rests on systems, rhetoric, and norm compliance to build relationships. … At its center, it embraces Quintilian’s principle of the good person communicating well as a foundation for fostering enlightened choices through dialogue in the public sphere. FST draws on the norms of exchange whereby community members seek to maximize outcomes and minimize costs of personal and collective association and decision making … An essential requirement for public relations according to this theory is to be a steward (Kelly, 2001) of multiple (the public interest?) interests in harmony and collaboration. (Heath, 2006: 96, 97).
Heath (2006) himself summarizes the charges that the idealism of fully functioning society theory is improbably normative:
Critics often claim that public relations inherently works against a fully functioning society because of a penchant for deception and other base acts: promoting one vested interest against other interests, engaging in irresponsible advocacy, controlling information to the advantage of an interest, lying, spinning, and otherwise betraying the public interest and trust (Stauber and Rampton, 1995). (2006: 94)
Isocratean rhetoric
Isocratean rhetoric is characterized by a quest for … the common good; incorporation of boundary spanning; a moral foundation; and ties to a comprehensive system of education … It is the outcome of a rigorous system of explicitly moral education designed for, as Isocrates says in the Panegyricus, students willing to train ‘their own minds so as to be able to help also their fellow men’. (Marsh, 2003: 351, 357–8).
‘[I]f kings are to rule well’, wrote Isocrates in Nicocles, ‘they must try to preserve harmony [homonoia], not only in the states over which they hold dominion, but also in their own households and in their places of abode…’ (Isocrates, 1928: Vol. 1, Nicocles, 41). Haskins (2004) holds that in Panathenaicus, his final essay, Isocrates compared himself to Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces in the Trojan War, because of his own ‘lifelong literary labors of promoting homonoia, or unity, among the Greek states’ (2004: 95). Poulakos adds that Isocrates sought ‘to address and resolve problems of division and cooperation – in other words, problems extremely pertinent to our own times’ (1997: 1).
As a framework for public relations, Isocratean rhetoric of course draws upon rhetorical theory gleaned from a ‘close reading’ (Jasinski, 2001) of Isocrates’ surviving essays.
Vitanza (1997) has charged Isocrates with gross naiveté for maintaining that social harmony could be built upon rhetorical foundations; he asserts that Isocrates lacked the vision to see the inherent destructive and divisive powers of the communication and critical thinking inherent in the Greek concept of logos:
[Isocrates] places great trust in the logos; he does not seem to think at all that it might misguide him and others … Isocrates gives us no evidence of understanding that the logos as Hegemon (guide, prince) is split … [A]s Isocrates demonstrates (actually, ‘monstrates’) unwittingly for us, an unmeasured view of logos is dangerous … Isocrates trusts naively, for he never suggests that logos might speak though human beings in any dangerous, imperialistic manner … . (1997: 132, 160, 165)
Vitanza claims that Isocrates ‘is an innocent thinking that logos is good’ (1997: 160); Isocrates places ‘naive trust’ (1997: 165) in the ability of logos to engender social harmony.
The reflective paradigm
Holmström (2004, 2009) has defined reflection as ‘the production of self-understanding in relation to the environment’ (2009: 191); it is, she maintains, ‘the core demand on organisations’ (2004: 126). Reflective organizations understand that they exist within a complex and dynamic framework of social needs in which ‘societal legitimation’ (Van Ruler and Vercic, 2005: 239, 263) is indispensable. To earn and sustain such legitimacy, reflective organizations develop the ‘capability of foreseeing potential conflicts between social systems, of evaluating their consequences, and of transforming the reflective observations into organisational learning processes’ (Holmström, 2004: 125). Holmström (2009) attributes the origins of the reflective paradigm to the communication theories of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann.
In the reflective paradigm, however, harmony is more an incidental byproduct than a goal. In fact, Holmström (2004) declares, ‘The reflective paradigm … opposes ideas of harmony and consensus, and analytically uncovers how society learns to cope with its constitutive conflicts’ (2004: 131). Within the paradigm, ‘dialogic interaction with publics’ designed to co-create meaning is openly ‘based more on a battle of interests than on harmony of interests’ (van Ruler and Vercic, 2005: 250). For this reason, in part, the reflective paradigm has escaped charges of embracing an overly idealistic quest for social harmony.
Despite the reflective paradigm’s relegation of social harmony to a possible outcome rather than a goal, Heath and Frandsen (2008) maintain that working toward an expansive enactment of social harmony might well, for an organization, help create the social legitimacy that is the aim of the reflective paradigm:
Is the role of ethical public relations to strive for collaboration and enlightened choices inside and about organizations that seek and perhaps achieve the level of being truly in the ‘public interest’ or the larger interest of many? This position assumes that rather than merely creating harmony between an organization and one or more market, audience, or public that the more important challenge is to foster a functional dialogue so that collectively the best decisions can be made, problems solved, challenges met, harmony achieved, and legitimacy earned. (2008: 354)
Thus, the reflective processes of uncovering and coping with the constitutive conflicts of society, to use the terms employed by Holmström (2004), can foster harmonious relationships that bolster an entity’s legitimacy within society.
If the quest for social harmony can be both a goal and a legitimizing strategy for organizations – or, indeed, for any entity – then we must of necessity confront the contested legitimacy of public relations’ social harmony frameworks and the attendant charges of excessive and unrealistic idealism. The purpose of this article is to bolster the legitimacy of public relations’ social harmony frameworks by turning to evolutionary biology, in particular to the works of Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid acknowledges competitive impulses within human behavior but asserts that natural selection has rewarded cultures based on widespread cooperation rather than individual competition.
Kropotkin and mutual aid
At the same time that Charles Darwin was writing The Descent of Man, a sequel to On the Origin of Species, Russian scientist Peter Kropotkin was exploring Siberia as a commissioned officer in the Russian military (Woodcock, 1989).
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Of his analysis of the competition for survival among animal species in that unforgiving environment, Kropotkin (1989[1902]) later wrote:
I failed to find – although I was eagerly looking for it – that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution … I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution. (1989[1902]: xxxv, xxxvii).
‘Already an evolutionist’, writes historian Daniel Todes, ‘Kropotkin read [Darwin’s] Origin in the Siberian wilderness and found the emphasis on overpopulation and intraspecific competition unconvincing’ (2009: 37).
Kropotkin (1989[1902]) attributed the subsequent revival of his interest in mutual aid to a presentation by Karl Kessler, dean of the University of St. Petersburg, in the 1880s:
Kessler’s idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion – which was, in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man – seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. (1989[1902]: xxxviii)
Inspired by Kessler, Kropotkin published Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in which he seconded Darwin’s assertion, in The Descent of Man, that the quest for social harmony is driven by a powerful instinct for survival that has been developed and reinforced through natural selection (Darwin, 1998[1871]: 128; Kropotkin, 1992[1925]: 15). Kropotkin biographer Brian Morris characterizes Mutual Aid as ‘presenting a wealth of empirical data to substantiate his thesis, namely, the importance of mutual aid in both the life of animals and in human societies throughout history’ (2004: 138). In the later Ethics: Origin and Development (1992[1925]), Kropotkin elucidated his belief that the foundation of modern ethics is the biological impulse, derived through natural selection, to harmonize individualistic and collectivist tendencies.
Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid has won support among modern evolutionary biologists, including Stephen Jay Gould, who concludes, ‘The central logic of Kropotkin’s argument is simple, straightforward, and largely cogent … In fact, I would hold that Kropotkin’s basic argument is correct’ (1991 334, 338). Lee Alan Dugatkin, a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville, writes that Kropotkin helped establish ‘an area of research based on a sound theoretical framework’ (1997: 360). More recently, anthropologist Alan Barnard, a fellow of the British Academy, has concurred: ‘Kropotkin’s optimistic social theory remains applicable’ (2004: 3). Of Kropotkin’s Ethics: Origin and Development, which details his belief that modern ethics originated within the mutual-aid instincts formed by natural selection, English critic Herbert Read declared, ‘No better history of ethics has ever been written’ (Woodcock, 1992: xix).
Like modern advocates of social harmony, Kropotkin understood that his theory of mutual aid was, in the eyes of some critics, ‘Utopian’ (1989[1902]: 228). To establish mutual aid as a part of nature more powerful even than the individualistic tendencies captured in the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, Kropotkin painstakingly clarified three facets of mutual aid: It has a scientific basis in evolutionary biology and the processes of natural selection; it increasingly works with, not against, individualistic tendencies; and it is not equivalent to continuous accommodation – there are some entities, in Kropotkin’s estimation, with which we should not seek harmonious relationships.
Mutual aid as an artifact of natural selection
Twelve years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin, in The Descent of Man, again presented his conclusion that natural selection was the driving force in evolution – but he now courageously extended his theory to the human race:
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[S]ocial qualities, the paramount importance of which to the lower animals is disputed by no one, were no doubt acquired by the progenitors of man in a similar manner, namely, through natural selection, aided by inherited habit … [S]ympathy … will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring. (1998[1871]: 110, 134)
Though Kropotkin transformed Darwin’s term sympathy into his preferred mutual aid, he joined Darwin in attributing the human race’s impetus toward social harmony – defined, again, by Stuart as ‘mutual support’ (2008: 62)
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– to the processes of natural selection:
[Mutual aid] represents the best weapon in the great struggle for life which continually has to be carried on in Nature against climate, inundations, storms, frost, and the like, and continually requires new adaptations to the ever-changing conditions of existence … The instinct of mutual aid pervades the animal world, because natural selection works for maintaining and further developing it, and pitilessly destroys those species in which it becomes for some reason weakened … And the same principle is confirmed by the history of mankind. (1992[1925]: 14, 43)
Both Darwin and Kropotkin maintained that as natural selection gradually cultivated cooperation within a species, mutual aid became a powerful instinct. Honoring the impetus to help one another thus would produce satisfaction; disavowing it would cause pain:
[A]s soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual: and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression … With respect to the impulse which leads certain animals to associate together, and to aid one another in many ways, we may infer that in most cases they are impelled by the same sense of satisfaction or pleasure which they experience in performing other instinctive actions; or by the same sense of dissatisfaction as when other instinctive actions are checked. (Darwin, 1998[1871]: 101, 107)
Darwin, in the words of biographer David Loye, placed ‘an emphasis on moral sensitivity as, above all else, the single most important driving force in human evolution’ (2002: 147).
Both Darwin and Kropotkin, however, eschewed the equation of evolution with moral progress, instead asserting that biological evidence portrays mutual aid and social harmony as a survival strategy. ‘[T]he so-called moral sense’, declared Darwin, ‘is aboriginally derived from the social instincts’ (1998[1871]: 123) – which, again, he insisted, have their origins in natural selection. Kropotkin also steadfastly maintained that concepts of ethics and social duty owed their origins to natural selection; he rejected any notion of their provenance in a religious first cause: ‘Unhappily, the religious teachers of men prefer to ascribe to such feelings a supernatural origin’ (1989[1902]: 283). And like Darwin, Kropotkin held that the gradual evolution of mutual aid within humanity was not a path of continuous progress: ‘We certainly must abandon the idea of representing human history as an uninterrupted chain of development from the pre-historic Stone Age to the present time. The development of human societies was not continuous’ (1992[1925]: 17). Brown has counseled public relations scholars not to equate evolution with ‘evolutionism’, which is ‘a belief system … that the species do not merely change, they improve’ (2006: 207). 7
For Kropotkin, as well for modern evolutionary biologists, such as Gould, who have endorsed his theory of mutual aid, ‘[t]he importance of sociality, of mutual aid, in the evolution of the animal world and human history may be taken, I believe, as a positively established scientific truth, free of any hypothetical assumptions’ (1992[1925]: 30). Evolutionary biology thus helps to provide a scientific foundation for a goal of social harmony within various public relations frameworks.
Reconciling mutual aid and individualistic tendencies
A second barrier to accepting social harmony as a goal of public relations is the challenge of coordinating individualistic and collectivist tendencies, which has long been a central issue within public relations scholarship and practice. In positing ‘collaboration’ as ‘the core value of public relations’, J.E. Grunig (2000: 23) has declared:
[P]ublic relations brings an essential element of collectivism into the commonly individualistic worldview of most Western organizations, and that collaboration, as the core of what political scientists call societal corporatism, is the key element of democratic societies. (2000: 25)
Similarly, in presenting communitarianism as a framework for public relations, Leeper writes, ‘A major part of the programmatic communitarian agenda is … to shift the balance from extreme individualism to more of a community orientation …’ (2001: 99).
In resisting a possible overemphasis on the collaborative tendency inherent in social harmony frameworks, proponents of contingency theory also have highlighted the tension between societal and individualistic/organizational tendencies. Contingency theory places highly individualistic tendencies at a ‘pure advocacy’ extreme on a continuum of relationship-building stances; conversely, it places highly social, collectivist tendencies at a ‘pure accommodation’ extreme of that continuum (Cancel et al., 1997: 31). In ‘the middle of the continuum’ are ‘mixed-motive’ stances that attempt to balance the competing tendencies (Cancel et. al., 1997: 33). Achieving a midpoint balance, however, is difficult:
Referring to the mixed-motive equilibria on this continuum, Murphy [1991] wrote, ‘This balance is often an uneasy and precarious one, arrived at by a kind of bargaining dialogue between an organization and its constituent publics’ (p. 125) … Gray (1989: 247–55) suggested several additional reasons why organizations refuse to collaborate or accommodate publics. The reasons included … societal dynamics, like individualism in America … (Cancel et al. 1997: 34, 49).
In short, even within competing visions of public relations, the tensions between societal and individualistic/organizational tendencies lie at the heart of evolving theory.
Kropotkin was well aware of such tensions. In Ethics: Origin and Development, first published in English in 1925, he wrote:
The chief demand which is now addressed to ethics is to do its best to find … the common element in the two sets of diametrically opposed feelings which exist in man, and thus to help mankind find a synthesis, and not a compromise, between the two. In one set are the feelings which induce man to subdue other men in order to utilize them for his individual ends, while those in the other set induce human beings to unite for attaining common ends by common effort … These two sets of feelings must, of course, struggle between themselves, but it is absolutely essential to discover their synthesis whatever form it takes. Such a synthesis is so much more necessary because the civilized man of to-day, having no settled conviction on this point, is paralyzed in his powers of action. He cannot admit that a struggle to the knife for supremacy, carried on between individuals and nations, should be the last word of science; he does not believe, at the same time, in solving the problem through the gospel of brotherhood and self-abnegation … . (1992[1925]: 22)
Kropotkin referred to these contrasting motivations as a ‘double tendency’ within human beings:
We are enabled to conclude that the lesson which man derives both from the study of Nature and his own history is the permanent presence of a double tendency – towards a greater development, on the one side, of sociality, and, on the other side, of a consequent increase of the intensity of life, which results in an increase of happiness for the individuals … Thus the principal problem of ethics at present is to help mankind to find the solution for this fundamental contradiction. (1992[1925]: 19–20, 22)
In contingency theory, Cancel et al. describe this double tendency as ‘conflicting organization and public interests’ (1997: 38); they cite Pearson’s conclusion that ‘[s]erving client and public interests simultaneously is the seeming impossible mission of the public relations practitioner’ (1989: 67).
Kropotkin’s eventual synthesis of individualism and collectivism is, essentially, a chain of three assertions: (1) Mutual aid is (as we have seen) a powerful human instinct, derived from natural selection; (2) mutual aid inevitably leads to justice; and (3) the justice derived from mutual aid ultimately leads to increasing and increasingly secure individual liberties. This chain of ideas, if accurate, provides one version of the sought-after synthesis of individualism and collectivism – a synthesis, as we shall see, that directly addresses the collectivism/individualism dichotomy identified by Hofstede and cited frequently in public relations scholarship (Choi and Cameron, 2005; J.E. Grunig, 2000; Vasquez and Taylor, 1999). In essence, the justice inherent in mutual aid increasingly identifies and defends individual rights.
Having established the scientific foundations of social harmony in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Kropotkin spent much of Ethics: Origin and Development developing his belief that the eventual enactment of justice was inherent in the enactment of mutual aid:
In the same instinct [mutual aid] we have the origin of those feelings of benevolence and of that partial identification of the individual with the group which are the starting-point of all the higher ethical feelings. It is upon this foundation that the higher sense of justice, or equity, is developed … [I]n proportion as mutual aid becomes an established custom in a human community, and so to say instinctive, it leads to a parallel development of the sense of justice, with its necessary accompaniment of the sense of equity and equalitarian self-restraint. (1992[1925]: 16, 30)
In short, as natural selection increasingly cultivates mutual aid as a powerful instinct, justice, with an inherent balance of individualistic and collectivist tendencies, takes root.
Kropotkin’s synthesis of individualistic and collectivist tendencies culminates in his belief that justice provides the milieu in which individualism can flourish:
[Ethics] tells man that if he desires to have a life in which all his forces, physical, intellectual, and emotional, may find a full exercise, he must once and forever abandon the idea that such a life is attainable on the path of disregard for others. It is only through establishing a certain harmony between the individual and all others that an approach to such complete life will be possible, says Ethics, and then adds: ‘Look at Nature itself! Study the past of mankind! They will prove to you that so it is in reality.’ (1992[1925]: 25)
Within the synthesis that he envisioned, however, Kropotkin remained adamant that individualism and individual rights were not sacrificed to a utilitarian philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number:
[T]he aim of ethics [is] to create such an atmosphere in society as would produce in the great number, entirely by impulse, those actions which best lead to the welfare of all and the fullest happiness of every separate being … A most important condition which a modern ethical system is bound to satisfy is that it must not fetter individual initiative, be it for so high a purpose as the welfare of the commonwealth or the species. (1992[1925]: 26, 27, emphasis added)
Rather, Kropotkin believed that the continuing emergence of justice, which would unite members of society, would foster the continuing emergence of individual rights. Kropotkin’s synthesis of individualistic and collectivist tendencies thus forecasts and supports Holtzhausen’s vision of a postmodern framework for public relations and society in which ‘a vibrant, participative democracy … reconciles freedom and justice’ (2000: 96).
Throughout Ethics: Origin and Development, Kropotkin strove to explain this justice-driven synthesis of individualism and collectivism by placing it within a variety of clarifying contexts. He addressed, for example, the troublesome notion of enlightened self-interest and self-serving altruism that some public relations scholars have condemned as an unworthy foundation for collectivism (Martinson, 1994; Baker, 1999):
There are actions which may be considered as absolutely necessary, once we choose to live in society, and to which, therefore, the name of ‘altruistic’ ought never to be applied: they bear the character of reciprocity, and they are as much in the interest of the individual as any act of self-preservation. And there are, on the other hand, those actions which bear no character of reciprocity. One who performs such acts gives his powers, his energy, his enthusiasm, expecting no compensation in return, and although such acts are the real mainsprings of moral progress, they certainly can have no character of obligation attached to them. And yet, these two classes of acts are continually confused by writers on morality, and as a result many contradictions arise in dealing with ethical questions. (1992[1925]: 24–5)
Kropotkin’s synthesis of individualism and collectivism thus moves beyond the compromise of reciprocity (e.g. ‘I’ll be a good collectivist so that I may reap the benefits of enhanced individualism’). Rather, Kropotkin held that, primarily, humans assist one another because to deny that instinct is to deny who we are; to reject that instinct is to reject the impetus to mutual aid that natural selection has instilled within us. Darwin held that humans assist one another ‘in the same manner as the sense of hunger … induce[s] animals to eat’ (1998[1871]: 108), and Kropotkin echoed that humans act as social beings ‘entirely by impulse’ (1992[1925]: 26). Derived from the processes of natural selection and innate instincts, Kropotkin’s synthesis may reduce our ability to congratulate ourselves when we act selflessly, but it does have the virtue of defending the synthesis against charges of disingenuousness and immature optimism.
Beyond helping to resolve the double tendency/individualism versus collectivism dichotomy within society, Kropotkin’s focus on justice and ‘self-restraint’ (1992[1925]: 30) strongly echoes the two governing values of justice and self-control that characterize an Isocratean framework for public relations (Marsh, 2008). Justice also has been identified as a core value for public relations by L.A. Grunig et al. (2000) as well as by McKie and Munshi, who in Reconfiguring Public Relations: Ecology, Equity, and Enterprise, define equity ‘in a broad sense to encompass issues of diversity, democracy, politics, and justice …’ (2007: 25). Kropotkin thus shows how a core value of public relations – justice – might serve to resolve an enduring tension within the discipline.
Mixed-motive mutual aid: Kropotkin’s rejection of centralized governments
A third barrier to accepting social harmony as a goal of public relations is related to the individualism/collectivism tension that Kropotkin strove to resolve through justice: the notion that social harmony entails an unflaggingly harmonious and accommodative stance toward all publics. Kropotkin’s anarchistic rejection of centralized governments, however, indicates that he preferred a mixed-motive approach to relationships:
With all anarchists, Kropotkin believed that man is good and that external authority is evil. He differed from the main body of anarchists in his emphasis on the natural solidarity, as contrasted with the natural individualism, of men. This instinct is the subject of his best-known work, Mutual Aid. It was Kropotkin’s deepest hope that a way could be found to bring city and country, factory and farm, into a harmonious working relationship. He was open-minded as to the means, insisting only that the state had to be abolished before any other measures could be undertaken. (Fried and Sanders, 1992: 345)
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As we shall see, Kropotkin did not oppose all governments; he could, for example, accept a loose federalism that embraced the independence of smaller constituent communities (Berneri, 1942). Rather, he resisted only ‘the crushing powers of the centralized State’ (1989[1902]: 292), a government form that he believed forcibly usurped the innumerable small enactments of mutual aid that characterized free and harmonious communities. To use the language of contingency theory, Kropotkin’s concept of mutual aid clearly skews closer to accommodation than advocacy – but his rejection of harmonious relationships with centralized governments, coupled with his strong defense of individual rights, shows mutual aid to champion a mixed-motive philosophy. Mutual aid includes the right, again in the language of contingency theory, to ‘prohibit compromise with … a reprehensible public engaging in untruths founded on “wrong” thinking’ (Cancel et al., 1997: 34). As a theoretical foundation, thus, mutual aid does not anchor public relations’ social harmony frameworks at an inflexible extreme of accommodative behavior.
For Kropotkin, the ‘all-absorbing authority of the State’ (1989[1902]: 224) undermined mutual aid through its aggressive aggregation of resources within two broad domains: ‘centralization of functions’ and ‘territorial centralization’ (1989[1902]: 179). A persistent theme in his writings, for example, is the state’s usurpation of the functions of workers guilds, forerunners of today’s labor unions and professional associations (Mattelart, 1996): ‘The guilds were spoliated of their possessions and liberties, and placed under the control, the fancy, and the bribery of the State’s official’ (Kropotkin, 1989[1902]: 226). In Kropotkin’s view, centralized governments – increasingly expanding in territory but contracting in the locus of power – operate in the interests of the rich and powerful: ‘Every State constitutes an alliance of the rich against the poor, and of the ruling classes, i.e., the military, the lawyers, the rulers, and the clergy, against those governed’ (1992[1925]: 259–60). Kropotkin believed that the acquisitive, divisive nature of centralized governments was antithetical to the processes of mutual aid.
Kropotkin traced the historical origins of centralized states to three sources: rulers who desired increased power, wealth, and territory (1989[1902]: 205); ‘merchant aristocracy, which held the cities in the hollow of their hands, supporting alternately the Pope and the Emperor when they were striving for possession of a certain city’ (1992[1925]: 80-81); and, in particular, the Christian church, which – in Kropotkin’s view – having failed in its own attempts to establish a centralized state, gained power by endorsing the similar efforts of others:
The Christian Church, once a rebel against Roman law and now its ally, worked in the same direction. The attempt at constituting the theocratic Empire of Europe having proved a failure, the more intelligent and ambitious bishops now yielded support to those whom they reckoned upon for reconstituting the power of the Kings of Israel or of the Emperors of Constantinople. The Church bestowed upon the rising rulers her sanctity, she crowned them as God’s representatives on earth … . (1989[1902]: 217)
This combination of church and state, Kropotkin maintained, viewed nongovernmental acts of mutual aid – such as the work of the guilds – as intolerable threats to their authority: ‘[T]he Christian Church has aided the State in wrecking all standing institutions of mutual aid and support which were anterior to it, or developed outside of it’ (1989[1902]: 283).
In Kropotkin’s view, government centralization created four overlapping effects detrimental to mutual aid: increasing militarization and international conflict; the fostering of antisocial individualism; the fostering of inequalities among citizens; and growth of social tensions. Of the linkage of centralization and war, he wrote, ‘Only later on [after the 13th century], when separate cities became little States, wars broke out between them, as always must be the case when States struggle for supremacy or colonies’ (1989[1902]: 205). In his biography of Kropotkin, Morris concluded that ‘for Kropotkin, the state, war, and capitalism are intrinsically linked’ (2004: 264).
Kropotkin maintained that centralized governments fostered antisocial individualism in two ways. Initially, individualism and self-sufficiency became a means of defense against ‘tyranny of Capital and of the State’ – a strategy that, ultimately, was ‘the wrong tack’ and led to failure and isolation (1906: 31, 32). Later, as centralized governments grew and suppressed nongovernmental associations, individualism became the residue of an atrophied sense of mutual aid:
The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other … The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people’s wants is now triumphant all round—in law, in science, in religion. (1989[1902]: 227, 228)
As noted above, Kropotkin did believe that individualism, a basic aspect of human nature, could be reconciled with (and advanced by) the social instinct inherent in mutual aid.
A third detrimental effect of government centralization was the growth of ‘inequalities of fortune’ among citizens (1989[1902]: 139). Although Kropotkin’s ordinarily calm, scholarly voice won praise in several quarters as that of an anarchist who could influence, rather than terrify, the masses (Fried and Sanders, 1992: 344; Morris, 2004: 13–14), that tone often swerved toward anger as he described the effects of centralized governments: ‘Nine-tenths of the great fortunes made in the United States are (as Henry George has shown in his “Social Problems”) the result of knavery on a large scale, assisted by the State’ (1906: 49–50). Such ‘private appropriation of capital’ juxtaposed with the widespread ‘poverty of the worker’ inevitably led to the fourth effect of centralization: social unrest (1906: 41). In Mutual Aid, Kropotkin wrote of medieval-city judicial systems, ‘[A]fter the State had stepped in, confiscating the property of the guilds and destroying their independence in favour of its own bureaucracy, the complaints became simply countless’ (1989[1902]: 196). In his biography of Kropotkin, Morris details Kropotkin’s persistent theme that, even within republics, citizens’ rights are won only by ‘extraparliamentary agitation’ (2004: 56).
Again, Kropotkin believed that these four effects of centralization were hand-in-glove with governmental efforts to remove the competing force of private mutual aid:
For the next three centuries [beginning with the 16th century] the States, both on the Continent and in these [British] islands, systematically weeded out all institutions in which the mutual-aid tendency had formerly found its expression … It was taught in the Universities and from the pulpit that the institutions in which men formerly used to embody their needs of mutual support could not be tolerated in a properly organized State; that the State alone could represent the bonds of union between its subjects; that federalism and ‘particularism’ were the enemies of progress, and the State was the only proper initiator of further development … [N]o separate unions between citizens must exist within the State. (1989[1902]: 226–7)
Such an unrestrained condemnation of centralized governments underscores that, even for Kropotkin, the instinct for social harmony did not extend to accommodation with publics holding irrevocably opposed worldviews.
Kropotkin did not condemn all forms of government – only those that, in quests to consolidate land and power, consciously undermined nongovernmental sources of mutual aid. He favored guilds and independent communities, confederated or not, as the historical models most conducive to mutual aid. Of early Venice, for example, he wrote, ‘[E]ach island was an independent political community. It had its own organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and administration, its own forum’ (1989[1902]: 180). Such governmental configurations, he believed, created (‘a close union for mutual aid and support, for consumption and production, and for social life altogether, without imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but giving full liberty of expression to the creative genius of each separate group of individuals in art, crafts, science, commerce, and political organization’) (1989[1902]: 186).
Inherent in these communities were trade and professional guilds, organizations that established business standards and rules of commerce but also grew to foster other social norms such as the arts and methods of justice. Of this model, which he linked to modern labor unions (Mattelart, 1996), Kropotkin wrote:
It answered to a deeply inrooted want of human nature; and it embodied all the attributes which the State appropriated later on for its bureaucracy and police, and much more than that. It was an association for mutual support in all circumstances and in all accidents of life … and it was an organization for maintaining justice – with this difference from the State, that on all these occasions a humane, a brotherly element was introduced instead of the formal element which is the essential characteristic of State interference. (1989[1902]: 176)
Kropotkin, however, was not dogmatic in his advocacy of the city-state and guild models. In Mutual Aid, he concluded that evolving forms of such models ‘would proceed from all of them, and yet be superior to them in [their] wider and more deeply humane conceptions’ (1989[1902]: 222). Such models, in fact, might include organization-public relationships, defined by Ledingham and Bruning as ‘the state that exists between an organization and its key publics that provides economic, social, political, and/or cultural benefits to all parties involved …’ (1998: 62).
Resistance through harmony
Though he did not discount the effectiveness or the likelihood of violence in addressing irreconcilable differences (Kropotkin, 1995), Kropotkin favored resistance through harmony – that is, though a process of establishing, through ‘voluntary popular organisation’ (1995: 99), an irresistible coalition of resistance united by mutual aid. In terms of resistance to centralized governments, for example, he declared:
[W]e believe that if a revolution begins, it must take the form of a widely spread popular movement, during which movement, in every town and village invaded by the insurrectionary spirit, the masses set themselves to the work of restructuring society on new lines … without waiting for schemes and orders from above … The collective spirit of the masses is necessary for this purpose. (1995: 100, 101)
Kropotkin believed that a refusal to seek accommodation with forces of excessive competition was, like mutual aid itself, evolutionary. Resistance began with ‘isolated individuals’ who ‘little by little’ grew into ‘small groups’; eventually, ‘it became impossible to remain indifferent: people were compelled to declare themselves for or against the aims pursued by these individuals’ (1995: 103). Such an approach would seem to follow the same lines as ‘coalition building’ efforts within public relations (J.E. Grunig, 2000; Hallahan, 2001).
Implications for public relations
Simply put, Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid provides a scientific foundation for envisioning social harmony as a legitimate goal of public relations. In tandem with Darwin’s similar belief that natural selection favors intra-species cooperation over competition, the theory of mutual aid helps counter the notion that, in positing social harmony as goal of public relations, frameworks such as two-way symmetry, communitarianism, fully functioning society theory, and Isocratean rhetoric embrace an unrealistic, utopian ideal. Such frameworks may well have flaws that call into question their legitimacy or practicality – but, in light of evolutionary biology, they are not excessively normative in seeking social harmony. Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid thus can help us address concerns such as those expressed by a much-appreciated) reviewer of an early draft of this article, who wrote:
[Public relations] is not for instance actually a ‘striving for harmony.’ Only the most naïve or propagandists would make this claim. This is my problem with communitarian approaches … Public relations is only the pursuit of’ ‘harmony’ if you believe the spin. What it in fact is, is advocacy which tries to stay on the correct side of the ethical contingency of the particular contemporary social milieu which it operates within.
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I would agree that public relations is not exclusively a ‘striving for harmony.’ But given the findings of Darwin and Kropotkin, I would argue that it is not naive or disingenuous to posit social harmony as one goal of public relations. Again, Darwin himself has written: ‘[C]ommunities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring’ (1998[1871]: 110). If he is correct, then a quest for social harmony is an acceptance, not a denial, of basic human nature.
Initial explorations of new theoretical avenues such as mutual aid, however, can raise more questions than they address. One obvious area for additional study is the continuing debate within evolutionary biology regarding whether the study of natural selection can be extended from a focus on individuals, typified by Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, to a focus on larger groups, as in by group selection theory, typified by the works of Kropotkin and Darwin (Corning, 2003). Within public relations research, Greenwood already has recommended consideration of Darwin’s theory of evolution not as simply a theory for social harmony frameworks, but, rather, as a ‘metatheory for public relations thought’ in total (2010: 456).
Another area for future research is the extension of Kropotkin’s anti-governmental views to relevant areas of public relations such as public relations and diplomacy (L’Etang, 2009); nation building (Taylor, 2000); globalization (Sriramesh, 2010); and the effects of colonialism (Freitag and Stokes, 2009), post-colonialism (Bardhan, 2003), and neocolonialism (Curtin and Gaither, 2005). Kropotkin’s belief that centralized governments subvert the natural processes of mutual aid seems applicable to these areas as well as to broader approaches such as postmodernism (Holtzhausen, 2000) and critical-cultural theory (Curtin and Gaither, 2005).
A third area for future research would be continued explorations of Kropotkin’s extensive writings, which, in a compendium published by Black Rose Books, run to 11 volumes. Kropotkin’s contention that centralized governments strive to disrupt nongovernmental mutual-aid relationships, for example, merits additional scrutiny. Finally, seeking additional elements of confluence among public relations frameworks would respond to calls from Bardhan and Weaver (2011) and Edwards (2012) and others to identify areas of general consensus within multidisciplinary public relations scholarship.
Conclusion
My personal reasons for exploring public relations in the light of evolutionary biology are varied. For the past decade, I have sought reasons why Isocratean rhetoric triumphed over competing models, including those of Plato and Aristotle, in terms of the relative success of the students, schools, and impact on consequent rhetorical education (Marsh, 2001). With others who study Isocrates (Poulakos, 1997), I have come to attribute much of that success to his core values of justice and moderation, coupled with his quest for sustained communication and the concomitant solicitation of dissent. Isocratean rhetoric focuses on building harmonious communities rather than winning a debate. My search for why and how such a rhetoric could triumph over more competitive, individualistic models led to psychology and then to evolutionary biology and the formation of human nature. Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid provides a possible avenue toward explaining the relative success of Isocratean rhetoric: Isocrates relentlessly appealed to a human impetus toward homonoia – harmony – that may well be more powerful than competing instincts of divisive individualism.
A second stimulus that led me, eventually, to Kropotkin (and, I hope, beyond) was the publication of McKie and Munshi’s Reconfiguring Public Relations: Ecology, Equity, and Enterprise (2007). Like other academics, perhaps, reared in Excellence Theory and loath to surrender the nobility of two-way symmetry, I was taken aback by the sentence ‘Two-way symmetry may serve a purpose in reassuring some educators, and building disciplinary self-esteem, but the reassurance lacks substance’ (2007: 37). Upon reflection, I had to concede that ‘some educators’ included me. McKie and Munshi (2007), however, were not discarding the aspects of symmetry that I found so appealing, aspects that helped me present public relations to students (and myself) as a profession worthy of their time and effort:
To us it is common sense that, for long term relationships, you treat your partners and prospective partners with respect as to what they say and what they seek and discuss ways to resolve differences. The real difficulties come with how to do that. (2007: 37).
In deciding, finally, to think for myself, I added a ‘why?’ to McKie and Munshi’s conclusion: Why is it ‘common sense’ that respectful cooperation should characterize the process of relationship building? Why should that work any better than an individualistic, advocacy-oriented, power-laden approach? (It was, I discovered, the same question I was asking about the foundations of Isocrates’ success.) For me, Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid represents the beginnings of an answer to that why: With the theory of mutual aid, we can, if we wish, push past contentious notions of should and ought and address the pure why of public relations’ social harmony frameworks.
Traces of evolutionary biology, in fact, already seem to characterize discussions of the ways and means of public relations. Within public relations scholarship, challenges to social harmony frameworks often, consciously or otherwise, evoke natural selection to describe the inevitability of competitive, inharmonious views of relationships. Moloney, for example, uses phrases such as the ‘search for advantage and survival’, ‘competitive environment’, and ‘social competition, not harmony’ (2005: 550; 2006: 14). Cameron defines public relations as the ‘strategic management of competition and conflict for the benefit of one’s own organization – and when possible – also for the mutual benefit of the organization and its various stakeholders or publics’ (Wilcox and Cameron, 2009: 7). If we are to pursue such important injections of evolutionary biology into public relations, we should pursue it fully, casting wide the net to include the belief of Charles Darwin and Peter Kropotkin that, in terms of sustainable human cultures, natural selection favors harmonious, not competitive, instincts and relationships. Indeed, a broader application of evolutionary biology within public relations research would seem to offer a scientific foundation for a goal of social harmony within public relations frameworks. Kropotkin, in fact, closes Mutual Aid with these words:
In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support – not mutual struggle – has had the leading part. In its wide extension … we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race. (1989[1902]: 300)