NATIONAL LAW INTITUTE UNIVERSITY, BHOPAL

THEORIES OF INTEREST
OF POUND
AND THE CONCEPT OF CLASS

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

PROF (Dr) V. K. DIXIT SIDDARTH BANKE
Introduction

Roscoe Pound was the first scholar to analyze jurisprudence with the findings and the
methodologies of the social sciences. Until then Philosophy was undermined by centuries of its
failings to offer such a theory, logic as a tool was discredited by the attempts of Langdell and his
German colleagues. Pound claimed that law is the paramount agency of social control. It has
gradually replaced religion and morality as the basic instrument for achieving social order.
According to him social control is necessary for preserving civilization since its main function is
human control over "internal or human nature," which according to him is absolutely necessary
for the conquest of external, i.e. physical, nature.

Pound asserts that this control over human nature upholds civilized society and deters antisocial
conduct which is at variance with the postulates of social order. Law, as a mechanism of social
control, is primarily the function of the state and it operates "through the systematic and orderly
application of force by the appointed agents." But, Pound adds that law is not enough, it needs
the backing-up of home training, religion, morality and education. Law is a system of precepts
with both ideal and empirical elements, disguised as natural or positive theories.

Pound says that the natural law of each era is essentially a "positive" natural law, an idealized
version of the positive law of the time and place, "naturalized" for purposes of social control
when the force wielded by organized society is not an adequate justification. He confides that the
confusion prevails for the three different meanings of the word law: law as legal order, law as
body of authoritative material, and law as judicial process. The important thing that Pound did
was, he unified all three meanings in his definition. He defined law and its fundamental function
of social control: Law is a regime which is a highly specialized form of social control, carried on
in accordance with a body of authoritative precepts, applied in the context of a judicial and an
administrative process.

Pound confides that law should be an organ of social engineering. Justice is not an ideal state of
relations or some form of virtue. It is a regime of "such an adjustment of relations and ordering
of conduct as will make the goods of existence, the means of satisfying human claims to have
things and do things, go round as far as possible with the least friction and waste." His theory is
based on the corner-stone of "interests." He says that a legal system attains the end of the legal
order by recognizing certain of these interests, by defining the limits within which those interests
shall be recognized and given effect through legal precepts developed and applied by the judicial
process according to an authoritative technique, and by endeavoring to secure the interests so
recognized within defined limits."

According to Pound the need for social control originates from the reality of scarcity. The
scarcity creates the need for a legal system that will classify interests and recognize some of
them. He says that law does not create interests, it finds them "pressing for security". Law
chooses to recognize those which are necessary for the maintenance and furtherance of
civilization. Pound claims that there are three overlapping classes of interests: individual, i.e.
interests of personality, public and social. They are secured through their elevation to the status
of "legal rights"

According to Roscoe Pound, the main features of the sociological school of jurisprudence are:

1. It emphasises the functional aspect of law and not its abstract contents.
2. It treats law as a social institution which is closely related to various other disciplines that
have a direct impact on society.
3. It believes that human experience is the basis of law and that law is designed to meet
dynamic social needs. (This is contrary to the emphases placed on ‘command’ by
analytical positivism and on the past by the historical school of jurisprudence.)
4. It either adopts a pragmatic approach by treating law as an applied science which uses
functional methods to investigate, analyse and solve social problems or else, it adopts a
realistic approach and defines law primarily in terms of judicial precedents.
Social Interest

Social Interest theory deals with the ways people interact with each other as they work toward
individual gain or collective goals. Often, this results in competition as groups or individuals
with conflicting interests attempt to influence events or take actions that are to their benefit. A
variety of social theories have developed in the ongoing attempt to understand how people
negotiate their interests at different levels in society.

Self-Interest: One who acts in his own self-interest tries to achieve personal gain, which can
take the form of political power, financial wealth or can even be to satisfy one's own desires and
drives. Some enlightenment views of self-interest contend that by working toward their
individual self-interests, people improve society on the whole. Others view self-interest as
primarily in conflict with the overall betterment of society.

Class interest: Marxist theories tend to view society as a struggle between socioeconomic
classes who are each trying to vie for its own economic interests. This is known as class conflict.
According to political theorist Karl Marx, the relationship between socioeconomic classes in
society is primarily one of exploitation, as the wealthy use the poor for cheap labor. The poor
must therefore band together to leverage their collective might against the wealthy in order to
fight for their own interests.

Social Interest: If something is done in the social interest, it is exercised for the common good
of society as a whole. Generally, there can be a good amount of disagreement on what exactly
this means depending on views on society's role. For example, people who think society should
make it easier for people to maximize their own self-interest will not agree with others who
believes steps taken toward egalitarianism are beneficial to society.

Special Interest: Special interests are groups or classes of people or institutions that share a
common set of financial or social interests. Special interest groups can range from labor unions,
which leverage their strength in numbers in order to achieve the collective interests of workers,
to entire industries that band together to lobby for policies or regulations that serve their financial
interests.
National Interest: Something undertaken in the national interest is intended to benefit a
particular nation. Usually, this term is used in relation to international or foreign relations in
which the security or economic interests of different nations may conflict. Actions taken in the
national interest, however, need not be in the common good of all nationals, or the social interest.
It can, indeed, be to the detriment of some nationals. For example, a trade embargo imposed in
the name of the national interest may hurt small-business owners who make their living
importing or exporting goods to the embargoed nation.

MARX AND CLASS CONFLICT

It is important to recognize that Marx viewed the structure of society in relation to its major
classes, and the struggle between them as the engine of change in this structure. His was no
equilibrium or consensus theory. Conflict was not deviational within society's structure, nor were
classes functional elements maintaining the system. The structure itself was a derivative of and
ingredient in the struggle of classes. His was a conflict view of modem (nineteenth century)
society.

The key to understanding Marx is his class definition. 1 A class is defined by the ownership of
property. Such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and
to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property there are three great classes of society: the
bourgeoisie (who own the means of production such as machinery and factory buildings, and
whose source of income is profit), landowners (whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who
own their labor and sell it for a wage).

Class thus is determined by property, not by income or status. These are determined by
distribution and consumption, which itself ultimately reflects the production and power relations
of classes. The social conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois property.
Class is therefore a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals.

The force transforming latent class membership into a struggle of classes is class interest. Out of
similar class situations, individuals come to act similarly. They develop a mutual dependence, a
community, a shared interest interrelated with a common income of profit or of wages. From this
common interest classes are formed, and for Marx, individuals form classes to the extent that
their interests engage them in a struggle with the opposite class.

At first, the interests associated with land ownership and rent are different from those of the
bourgeoisie. But as society matures, capital (i.e., the property of production) and land ownership
merge, as do the interests of landowners and bourgeoisie. Finally the relation of production, the
natural opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie, determines all other activities.

As Marx saw the development of class conflict, the struggle between classes was initially
confined to individual factories. Eventually, given the maturing of capitalism, the growing
disparity between life conditions of bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the increasing
homogenization within each class, individual struggles become generalized to coalitions across
factories. Increasingly class conflict is manifested at the societal level. Class consciousness is
increased, common interests and policies are organized, and the use of and struggle for political
power occurs. Classes become political forces.

The distribution of political power is determined by power over production (i.e., capital). Capital
confers political power, which the bourgeois class uses to legitimatize and protect their property
and consequent social relations. Class relations are political, and in the mature capitalist society,
the state's business is that of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the intellectual basis of state rule, the
ideas justifying the use of state power and its distribution, are those of the ruling class. The
intellectual-social culture is merely a superstructure resting on the relation of production, on
ownership of the means of production.

Finally, the division between classes will widen and the condition of the exploited worker will
deteriorate so badly that social structure collapses: the class struggle is transformed into a
proletarian revolution. The workers' triumph will eliminate the basis of class division in property
through public ownership of the means of production. With the basis of classes thus wiped away,
a classless society will ensue (by definition), and since political power to protect the bourgeoisie
against the workers is unnecessary, political authority and the state will wither away.

Overall, there are six elements in Marx's view of class conflict.

 1. Classes are authority relationships based on property ownership.
2. A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations, thus interests.
3. Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests.
4. Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic classes and their
struggle, which eventually absorbs all social relations.
5. Political organization and Power is an instrumentality of class struggle, and reigning
ideas are its reflection.
6. Structural change is a consequence of the class struggle.

Marx's emphasis on class conflict as constituting the dynamics of social change, his awareness
that change was not random but the outcome of a conflict of interests, and his view of social
relations as based on power were contributions of the first magnitude. However, time and history
have invalidated many of his assumptions and predictions. Capitalist ownership and control of
production have been separated. Joint stock companies forming most of the industrial sector are
now almost wholly operated by non-capital-owning managers. Workers have not grown
homogeneous but are divided and subdivided into different skill groups. Class stability has been
undercut by the development of a large middle class and considerable social mobility. Rather
than increasing extremes of wealth and poverty, there has been a social leveling and an
increasing emphasis on social justice. And finally, bourgeois political power has progressively
weakened with growth in worker oriented legislation and of labor-oriented parties, and with a
narrowing of the rights and privileges of capital ownership. Most important, the severest
manifestation of conflict between workers and capitalist--the strike--has been institutionalized
through collective bargaining legislation and the legalization of strikes.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

All social conflicts involve interests. A person's interest is a vector of power; it is his attitude
plus its strength towards producing effects. A social power is a social interest, that is, one
oriented towards other selves. And social conflict is the opposition and balancing of such
interests.
With this understanding, I can relate more specifically my treatment of conflict to prevailing
definitions in the literature. Within the psychological field an interest consists of situation, actor,
goal and object--an "in this situation I want to do this with that." An interest is part of the
dynamic motivational calculus. Its strength is generated by our needs, and its content and
direction are partially learned from experience and culture, and partially rational.

Fundamentally, an interest is an "I want x," where x can refer to a positive good (I want to end
poverty), which involves positive interests, or a negative good (I don't want to die), called
negative interests. Coercion, for example, inextricably links two negative interests (I don't want
the robber to kill me, but I don't want to give him my money).

Now, definitions of social conflict vary as to whether they emphasize antagonism, tests of power,
competition, incompatibility of interests, or mutual awareness of incompatibility. Either part of
or implicit in such definitions, however, is the idea of some mutually exclusive good for which
two people are consciously competing against each other. The good may be a potential marriage
partner, a choice piece of land, a position such as president, or the top grade in class.

There are three kinds of conflicts of interests and, recognizing conflicts as a balancing of powers,
seven conditions for a balance. One kind of social conflict occurs when both individuals i and j
want some x that is a mutually ungratifiable positive interest, that is, the satisfaction of the
interest by one excludes the other (such as conflict over who will be mayor). 7 Their vectors of
power (interests) are opposing. Let me call this a conflict of congruent interests, in that both
desire the same thing. This kind of conflict is often forgotten in the belief that similar interests
and values help avoid conflict. This is hardly the case if interests and values involve mutually
ungratifiable goods.

A second kind of social conflict consists of i wanting x and j wanting not x. A politician may
want to increase social welfare payments, another to decrease them. A child may want candy; her
mother may want her to have none. And a scientist may want to publish his findings in a
particular journal; but the editor may want to reject them. I will call this a conflict of inverse
interests, since the positive interest of one is the negative interest of another.
Finally, a third kind of social conflict occurs when i wants x, and j wants y, where x and y are
incompatible. For example, one American may want the United States to remain capitalist while
another may want it to become socialist; a husband may want to stay home and rest while his
wife wants to go on a family picnic; a student wants to become a poet but his parents want him to
be a lawyer. This is a conflict of incompatible interests.

The common ingredient of these three types is the opposition of interests, of capabilities to
produce effects, and what discriminates between them is whether the interests involve the same,
inverse, or incompatible goods or goals.

How can conflict end in a balance? To use a more popular phrase, how is conflict resolved?
There are seven ways to balance conflicts of interests. The table should be clear by itself, but
some elaboration on Modes I, II, and VII will be useful, since these will be significant in later
discussions of conflict in the social field. One way of bringing opposing vectors of interest into
balance is if both parties connect these vectors to other interests which are in conflict. That is,
some other opposing interests y may also be in conflict. Resolution, or balance, is obtained if the
interests are then exchangeable: j gives x to i in exchange for y, or vice versa. Barter systems are
based on this fundamental linkage between positive interests, and modern money market systems
are exchange systems in this sense. Through any society there are innumerable conflicts of
positive, inverse, and incompatible interests between individuals, crosscutting and segmenting
individual motivations in diverse directions. The market system, in its ability through exchange
to facilitate the easy resolution of individual conflicts, helps prevent their crystallization into
system wide cleavages.

A second mode (II) of resolving conflict is through threats. One party links disjunctively the
positive interest (such as "I want to keep my wallet") to some negative interest. If you don't let
me have x, then I will kill you, burn your house down, or continue twisting your arm. The threat
of imposed or continued deprivation, constituting the negative interest, also transforms the
positive one ("I want to keep my wallet") into a negative one ("I do not want to give up my
wallet"). For it is no longer a question of the power with which i wants x, but rather the power
with which i does not want to give up x to j.
These two are not the same. A desire not to give up x upon demand may be quite stronger than
the desire to have x to begin with. For one thing, our natural pugnacity and self-esteem are
engaged by a threat, thus increasing the power of wanting not to yield x. Secondly, one realizes
that giving up x under such circumstances is a sign of weakness which may encourage other
such threats in the future. This strengthens the will to combat or endure the threat. Nonetheless,
coercion is a time-honored way to resolve conflict, for if the threat of force is disproportionate to
the negative interest of i in not giving up x, i will yield. It is thus that governments have always
extorted taxes from their citizens.

Coercion is a polarizing solution. In an exchange, however, both parties satisfy positive interests.
The resolution is satisfactory to both, otherwise an exchange could not have been voluntarily
concluded. The resulting balance of powers thus stable and specific in being limited to the
interests and people immediately involved. With coercion, the resulting balance is unsatisfactory
to one party, who continues to harbor an interest in overturning it, and is maintained only by the
continued threat of the other. The use of this threat to win x now implies its possible use against
other positive interests of i. Indeed, the successful use of coercion against i creates the potential
for i to ally his interests with others similarly coerced to jointly oppose j. Of course, j is
encouraged to increase his power to coerce this group, which would mean also aligning with
others interested in opposing i's group. Thus, coercion carries within its use the tendency to
divide, to polarize society. It is the agent of class struggle.

There are many ways of resolving conflicts besides exchange and coercion. However, for one
reason or another these may be undesirable or unworkable. One can then abdicate the interest. If
success does not seem worth the cost, x may be left to the other person. On the other hand, one
can resort to naked force. For example, if persuasion, negotiation, and threat of war do not settle
a boundary dispute, then the territory may be militarily captured. While coercive power
balancing and balances do not necessarily involve force (witness the complex everyday social
behavior called driving, regulated by governmental coercive power, without force), the
intentional use of force is usually the result of such balancing or a breakdown in a coercive
balance.
I have classified the confrontation of interests--social conflicts--into those of positive interests,
inverse interests, and incompatible interests. There are two other taxonomies of conflicts, aside
from types of manifest conflict such as strikes, riots, arguments, and so on. One classifies
conflict into the realistic and the unrealistic. Realistic conflict is that of interest, of power,
between parties who are aware of the conflict and are intentionally trying to gratify their
opposing interest. As I define it, all social conflict is realistic, involving an intentional orientation
towards other selves.

Unrealistic conflict is antagonistic behavior resulting from individual frustration, aggression, or

pugnacity. It is reflex behavior released along lines of antagonism, such as a family brawl, a race
riot, or a wild shooting spree. Unrealistic conflict is not social, and I will have little concern
about it in this book.

A second taxonomy divides conflicts by their subject. There are conflicts of facts, of practices, of
goods, and of ideas. How do these fit into my view? A disagreement over a fact, such as whether
a person committed a crime on April 13, 1972, or whether Newton invented the calculus is not a
conflict in my terms unless some conflict of interest is generated. It is possible for people to be
jointly interested in the truth, as are the ideal scientist or scholar. And truth is not a scarce good,
but can be shared without diminishing it by quality or quantity. However, a disagreement over a
fact can engage opposite interests, can involve status or esteem. An arrogant style can invoke a
desire to be right. Or facts can be crucial to deeply held ideas about what is right and wrong.

Conflicts of practices or rules, what is sometimes called conflicts of rights, concern the
correctness or applicability of formal or informal norms. Do regulations governing television
apply to cable TV? Are anti-pornography laws constitutional? Is a part-time worker eligible for
unemployment compensation? Should a significance test be applied to a correlation coefficient
based on a population of cases? Disagreements as to the answers to such questions also can be
decided in a disinterested fashion. However, questions of practice often are imbedded in
normative frameworks, such as whether government ought to be more involved in regulating
society or whether a scientist ought to be governed by methodological rules. Thus, such
disagreements become conflicts of interest--conflicts between the wants, desires, and needs of
the opposing parties.
Conflicts of goods are conflicts of positive, inverse, or incompatible interests. Two people want
the same office; two disagree over a debt; or one wants the Democrats to win an election while
the other wants the Republicans to win.

Conclusion

According to Pound the need for social control originates from the reality of scarcity. The
scarcity creates the need for a legal system that will classify interests and recognize some of
them. He says that law does not create interests, it finds them "pressing for security". Law
chooses to recognize those which are necessary for the maintenance and furtherance of
civilization. Pound claims that there are three overlapping classes of interests: individual, i.e.
interests of personality, public and social. They are secured through their elevation to the status
of "legal rights"

Conflicts of ideas, or ideological conflict, concerns what is right or wrong, good or bad, just or
unjust. Often, what is meant here is conflict between systems of values or norms which underlie
a person being Buddhist, communist, egalitarian, materialist, hedonist, and so on. Such conflicts
are always conflicts of interest. They always involve needs, sentiments, the superego, and a
person's superordinate goal--always engage a person's motivational calculus and his integrated
personality. Conflicts of ideas are pure conflicts of social power.

These historical events and trends notwithstanding, the sociological outlines of Marx's approach
have much value. His emphasis on conflict, on classes, on their relations to the state, and on
social change was a powerful perspective that should not be discarded. The spirit, if not the
substance, of his theory is worth developing.