Associationist Anarchism

The Three Types of Human Relations

The first problem of sociometry consists of reducing the multiple forms of human relations to a few existing types. Let’s try to resolve this problem.

Whether we go back into the past with our consciousness, or try to project it in the farthest future, we only meet three types of possible relationships between men, regardless of the names we give them or manners in which we consider them.

These relations can be the following:

1° When one man finds himself in a state of subordination to another. In this case, he will be politically and morally annihilated: all his faculties belong to the other.

2° When one man finds himself the master of another. In this case, he will consider himself the proprietor of all the activites of that other.

3° When one individual is in a relation with another in such a manner that he appreciates the personality of that other as if it was his own.

We cannot accept the possibility of any other type of relation. You can torture your brain as much as you like, but the fourth type will not appear. Despite the simplicity of this conception, it is only with difficulty that it establishes itself in the minds of men.

The majority can hardly accept the existence of anything but the two extremes: masters and slaves. The average mentality has no knowledge of the third type of relations; it required the gigantic intellect of a Proudhon to explain it to us very clearly.

As difficult as it is to discover this third idea of relations, it is not the greatest difficulty. What is [really] difficult is to find living examples that allow us to distinguish the three situations.

— Léon Tchorny.