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science against him. For every prevailing science of society contains,
built into it, a denial-however implicit and unexamined that denial
may be--that there is a self which exists prior to, and is not a deriva–
tive of, social experience. It is at least questionable whether such an
authentic individual still lives, secretly, inside the Organization Man,
except perhaps in the not very helpful way that a thin man may
be
said to live inside every fat man. Whyte may be appealing to a
mythological creature, not merely to one which harkens back to a
different mythological environment.
To profit from a reading of Whyte's book, however, one need not
believe that an invisible church of individuals still exists. His assump–
tions about individuality seem to me, as a sociologist, somewhat dubious;
yet once past his assumptions and into his descriptions, his book remains
very sound sociology. He has a fine eye for noting those suburban social
disciplines-the
K affee-klatches,
the amateur psychologizing, the insti–
tution of the open front door-which repress individuality in the name
of democracy. And he describes equally well the organizational glad
hands that hover, with a power like that of apostolic succession, over
the heads of the young ordinands entering the corporate hierarchies.
Whyte does not attempt to say why the aura of sanctity around
big business organization has enlarged in the postwar decade. Nor does
he explain why all organizations, in particular the trade unions, have
tended to take on this aura. A correct answer to this sort of question
would, I think, erase much of Whyte's neat analytic line between the
sociable Organization Man and the Protestant egoist. The Social Ethic
is not so different from the Protestant Ethic as Whyte makes out. In
both instances, the practical aim is the same: success. The conditions
of success have changed, and therefore the character traits that are at
a premium for success have also changed. But the end has not changed.
That same sensual man against whom Weber inveighed, able to work
as devotedly as the Protestant without the same incitement, has been
further organized into new methodical routines of self-advancement.
The ethical egoism of the Protestant has flowered into unremitting
sociability, under the sunlight of an expanding economy. And it is not
at all clear that the Organization Man does not have a certain ethical
advantage over his ruthless Protestant predecessor. He mixes more
pleasure with his business, and takes his pleasures in a less furtive way.
He has regard for his health. He is kind to his children. He is reasonably
happy. He is a far more civil creature.
Perhaps the most interesting material in Whyte's book is on the
straitjacket of tests into which applied psychology is trying to fit the
