 The dialectical pattern here concerns the developing relationship between a particular subject and object: the individual, on the one hand, and their social role and community, on the other. By a dialectical progression is meant only a movement from a stage characterised by a relationship of ‘undifferentiated unity’, through a stage characterised by a relationship of ‘differentiated disunity’, to a stage characterised by a relationship of ‘differentiated unity’. There are no further claims made here about the necessity, the naturalness, or the prevalence, of such progressions (Cohen 1974: 237).