First edition of Cooley’s last major work of theoretical sociology. If Social organization was a book about free will and the potential or predilection for upward movement in economic systems, such as in the ‘ascendant’ capitalist class, the most significant idea presented by Cooley in Social process was the possibility for ‘degeneration’. Free will, existing within the limits of social systems, allows for humans to regress as well as progress (hence the neutral term ‘process’), especially if they are encouraged in that direction by social institutions themselves. Through this lens of degeneration Cooley approached the economic ideas of his earlier works: value, class and poverty.