Plural Cosmopolitanism after WW1: Herbert Adolphus Miller and the Beginnings of Tomorrow

This paper addresses the future-oriented arguments of the ‘forgotten’ US pragmatist sociologist, Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875-1951). He was committed to science as the basis of action, and he considered his political activities to be continuous with that science. He was directly involved with social reform and the progressive movement in US politics, a movement that was in retreat after WW1. The political climate may not have been propitious, but ‘science’ would provide for a different politics to come, and, in an unfavourable present, a politics engaged with the issues of tomorrow remained necessary. Unusually, even for progressives, Miller was committed to race equality in the US and globally. He was one of the few white sociologists to address issues of colonialism and empire, drawing out the interconnections between domestic race relations, immigration and international relations. In two important books, Races, Nations and Classes (1924) and The Beginnings of Tomorrow (1933). He argued against European (and Japanese) overseas colonialism and supported anti-colonial revolutions (including in central Europe). He warned against the pathologies of nationalism and new forms of oppression of minorities. In this context, the future that Miller described as both possible and necessary, was at odds with the future conceived in the mainstream politics of his time. The dominant view (including progressives) was of a future global order organised through the ‘benevolent hegemony’ of an American, British and French domination. It is this order that has now broken down and whose divisions Miller addressed. His future is our present and his diagnosis remains prescient, as the problems he described continue to divide peoples both nationally and internationally.