SOCIOLOGIST IN THE HOUSE
307
shown that countries characterized by relatively strong Communist
movements are not generally characterized by relatively high rates
of personal deviance . . . More precisely, if Australia, Canada,
Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland,
the United Kingdom and the United States, are ranked by size
of the Communist vote in the first election after 1949, and if they
are ranked by proportion of suicides in 1949,
the rank order cor–
relation between suicide rate and Communist vote
is
-.26.
If
the
same countries are ranked according to rate of homicides rather
than suicides,
the rank order correlation between proportion of
manslayers and of Communist voters is
-.08.
If
these countries
are ranked by proportion of alcoholics and of Communist voters,
the correlation is -.38. We may conclude that there is
no evidence
here for a positive relation between conditions that favor mass
deviance and those that favor personal deviance
...
(Kornhauser
op. cit.
pp. 91-92, author's italics throughout.)
We may also conclude that a sense of reality (not to mention a
sense of humor) is not among the prerequisities of this kind of
"research." Otherwise it might have occurred to the author of the
passage just quoted that there is something seriously wrong with
a method that enforces such absurdities as trying to compare
suicide rates and voting behavior. What would Professor Korn–
hauser say if it were suggested to him that to the average person
in the industrial belt around Paris, voting Communist seems a
perfectly ordinary thing to do, rather like going to the comer
bistro
for a drink, and not in the least comparable with cutting
one's throat or swallowing arsenic? Would he brush such ohjec–
tions aside or would he mentally tag the critic as a potential
subversive? Probably both.
We pass from one brand of academic day-dreaming to
another, slightly less respectable. Our target so far has been the
correlation-to use professional language-of sociological research–
mongering and accelerated de-control over ordinary reality. With
our final specimen,
Power and Morality,
by Messrs. Sorokin and
Lunden, we take leave of sense altogether and enter a realm where
the mind ranges freely over subjects as remote from each other,
and from any conceivable relation to the ostensible theme of
discussion, as the philosophy of Yang Choo and the suicide of
Ivar Kreuger. Here, for what they are worth, are a few extracts,
