everything could eventually be understood and explained scientifically. Sociol-
ogy, as the latest and most far-reaching of all sciences, characterized the age.
Society could now be properly planned, and institutions consciously devised or
retained and modified to serve specific functions. In this belief Comte is not far
removed from the advocates of ‘scientific socialism’, except that he rejected
materialismfor intellectual determinism and was also more than a little
conservative once he got down to details. For example, he attached enormous
importance to the family, as conservatives have always done; but unlike earlier
conservative thinkers he held that it could now be seen as a rationally
functional element in a planned society. Similarly, he attached great importance
to religion as a source of social stability; but having dismissed theology as an
irrational manifestation belonging to the first age of society, he tried to
promote a scientific ‘religion of humanity’ which functioned like, and indeed
resembled in its ritual, orthodox Catholicism without God.
Though it is easy to deride Comte now, the breadth of his vision, his
erudition and his developmental approach were quite new, and established
once and for all the idea that large-scale theoretical explanations of society
were possible. Elements of Comtian thought can be traced to later writers who
retain a serious academic standing, notablyParetoandWeber.
Confederacy
A confederacy, or confederation, is a political system originating in an agree-
ment made between several independent entities that wish to retain a high
degree of autonomy. The idea of confederalism is usually contrasted with that
offederalism, which also involves independent entities but in which the
central authority has a considerable degree of power which may be capable of
expansion, for example through interpretation of the federal constitution. In a
confederacy, by contrast, certain specified powers are surrendered by the
component units to the central government, and all other powers remain with
the original states. Probably the best known example was the Confederate
States of America, ‘the Confederacy’, formed by the Southern states that
seceded from the USA. The name, and the organizing principle, were
deliberately chosen to emphasize the difference between the Confederacy
and the United States, where the growth of federal power was felt by South-
erners to threaten their institutions, above all slavery. The subsequent Civil
War resulted in the destruction of the Confederacy. In origin the USA was a
confederacy: the Constitution of 1787, written after the American War of
Independence, deliberately chose a full federation, partly because of the
experience of the weakness of confederal government during the war.
Confederacy