STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS 173

nents produced new kinds of disequilibrium, even as they reduced old-
kinds.1

Dynamic disequilibrium is roughly analogous to the condition of a
building that is continually becoming outmoded but is also continually, if
belatedly, being rebuilt. The rebuilding is, however, undertaken on a
piecemeal basis; and by the time that the plumbing is modernized, the
lighting and heating equipments have become further out of date; by the
time that the latest in heating equipment has been installed, the plumbing
has become antiquated and the roof has fallen into disrepair. Thus in
Western societies the introduction of the factory system of goods fabri-
cation threw out of balance the entire system of class organization, the
existing forms of work organization, and many other elements of pre-
industrial society. During the course of a hundred years many organi-
zational and ideological adaptations to the factory method of production
were worked out. Trade-unions were one of the new organizational
forms. But long before the trade-union form was perfected, continuing
changes in the methods of production began to outmode that form of
organization. The industrial union, a new form of labor organization
more in keeping with the newer forms of production, then began to
appear; but since trade-unions have persisted, the consequence has been
more rather than less disequilibrium. And, no doubt, long before the
industrial type of union organization completely supplants the trade-
union form, changes in other aspects of our society will render the
industrial union obsolete.

Static Disequilibrium.—The condition of dynamic disequilibrium is
produced by disproportionate rates of change in various elements of the
functionally interdependent component systems of a changing social
structure. Such disequilibrium may be progressive in that it may grow
more rather than less acute in the course of time. But as long as the
lagging elements do change in the direction of equilibrium, there remains
the prospect that ultimately the trend toward equilibrium will catch up
with the trend toward increasing disequilibrium and the social structure
will approach stability. When, however, malfunctioning structural ele-
ments are for whatever reasons preserved more or less intact, the resulting
disequilibrium is static rather than dynamic; for the society, or that
aspect of the society that is involved, is unadaptive.

By rough analogy, again, a society in a state of static disequilibrium is
somewhat comparable to a building that is continually growing more
outmoded but is never being repaired or modernized. In time such a
building not only becomes obsolete in all its parts but uninhabitable.
Historically, many societies have followed a somewhat comparable

1 For some current illustrative material, see W. F. Ogburn, "Our Times" (Amer.
J. SocioL, vol. 47, pp. 803-815, 1942).