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Appendix 3. Note on Principle of Cumulation 1069
o£ education or health are slow to be achieved, and their eflfects back on the other factors
are in turn delayed, which slows up the whole process of cumulation^ The system regu-
larly develops under a great multitude of different outside pushes^ primarily directed
against almost every single factor. The actual pushes go in both directions, thus often
turning the system around on its axis as it is rolling. Ideally, the scientific solution of
the Negro problem should thus be given in the form of an interconnected series of
quantitative equations, describing the movement of the actual system under various
influences. That this complete, quantitative and truly scientific solution is far beyond
the horizon does not need to be pointed out. But in principle it is possible to execute,
and it remains as the scientific ideal steering our endeavors.
This conception of a great number of interdependent factors, mutually cumulative
in their effects, disposes of the idea that there is one predominant factor, a “basic factor.’^
This idea—^mainly in the form of a vague conception of economic determinism—has
been widely accepted in the writings on the Negro problem during the last decade.
As we see the methodological problem, this one-factor hypothesis is not only theoretically
unclear but is contradicted by easily ascertainable facts and factual relations. As a
scientific approach it is narrow.®
The theoretical system of dynamic social causation we have selected corresponds more
closely to the practical man’s common-sense ideas about things than it does to the appre-
hension of reality met in many scientific writings on the Negro problem. The social
scientist tends to rely too much on static notions and a priori to give too dominant a
role to a “basic factor.” The professional philanthropist, the Negro educator, the Negro
trade unionist, the leaders of Negro defense organizations like the N.A.A.C.P., the
Urban League, or the Interracial Commission, and, indeed, the average well-meaning
citizen of both colors, pragmatically applies this same hypothesis.*’ To use once more
* The usual economic one-factor theory is available in two extreme versions, depending
upon the type of political teleology involved: (i) a radical Marxist version, where the
expectation is an economic revolution which will change everything and even eradicate race
prejudice} (2) a liberalistic version which does not expect an economic revolution and
which—as the assumption is that no significant change can be brought about except by
tackling the ‘‘basic factor,” the economic system—is pessimistic about any type of induced
change. There are all sorts of intermediary positions and also compromises toward recog-
nizing that factors other than the economic one have some influence. But the one-factor
theory always implies a fatalistic tendency and prevents a rational conception of interde-
pendence and cumulative dynamic causation. See Appendix 2, Section 3.
**
The best formulation of our hypothesis available in the literature is, thus, to be found
in a book by a practical man writing without scientific pretensions but out of lifelong
experiences: “There is a vicious circle in caste. At the outset, the despised group is usually
inferior in certain of the accepted standards of the controlling class. Being inferior, members
of the degraded caste are denied the privileges and opportunities of their fellows and so are
pushed still further down and then are regarded with that much less respect, and therefore
are more rigorously denied advantages, and so around and around the vicious circle. Even
when the movement starts to reverse itself—^as it most certainly has in the case of the Negro
—there is a desperately long unwinding as a slight increase in good will gives a little
greater chance and this leads to a little higher accomplishment and that to increased respect
and so slowly upward toward equality of opportunity, of regard, and of status.” (Edwin R.
Embree, Brown America [1931], p. 200.) To this it should only be added that even if the
unwinding process is working with time lags so is the opposite movement. In spite of the
time lags, the theory of the vicious circle is a cause rather for optimism than for pessimism.
The cumulative principle works both ways.
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