Politics, character, and culture. perspectives. 9780313228636, 0313228639

Citation preview

Politics, Character, and Culture: Perspectives from Hans Gerth t

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Edited by Joseph Bensman, Arthur J Vidich, and Nobuko Gerth

Politics, Character, and Culture

Portrait of Hans H. Gerth by Julia Grafin Pourtales (nee Gerth) in 1963.

Politics, Character, and Culture: Perspectives from Hans Gerth Edited by Joseph Bensman, Arthur J. Vidich, and Nobuko Gerth Contributions in Sociology, Number 41

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London, England

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gerth, Hans Heinrich, 1908Politics, character, and culture. (Contributions in sociology, ISSN 0084-9278; no. 41) “Bibliography of Hans H. Gerth”: p. Includes index. 1. Sociology—History—20th century. 2. Social psychology. 3. Knowledge, Sociology of. 4. Gerth, Hans Heinrich, 1908. 5. Weber, Max, 1864-1920. 6. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. 1. Bensman, Joseph II. Vidich, Arthur J. III. Gerth, Nobuko. IV. Title V. Series. HM19.G44 301’.09’04 81-13426 ISBN 0-313-22863-9 (lib. bdg.) AACR2 Copyright © 1982 by Joseph Bensman, Arthur J. Vidich, and Nobuko Gerth. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-13426 ISBN: 0-313-22863-9 ISSN: 0084-9278 First published in 1982 Greenwood Press A division of Congressional Information Service, Inc. 88 Post Road West Westport, Connecticut 06881 Printed in the United States of America 10 987654321

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Copyright Acknowledgments For permission to reproduce materials, we are indebted to the following: Personal communication. Originally read at a memorial meeting of Gerth’s friends held at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, May 1979. Used with the permission of Don Martindale. Chapter 2, Interview with Hans Gerth by Matthias Greffrath in Die Zerstorung Einer Zukunft, translated by Jeffrey Herf. Permission given by Jeffrey Herf and by Sanford J. Greenberger Associates for use in the United States and by Das Neue buch Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag Gamb. H. 1979, excerpts pp. 59-95, for use in the rest of the world. Chapter 5, “Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940,” by Hans Gerth with Patricke Johns-Heine. Reprinted with the permission of Nobuko Gerth and Patricke Johns-Heine. This essay appeared originally in much revised form in Public Opinion Quarterly 13 (1949): 105-13. Chapter 11, “A Marx for the Managers” by Hans H. Gerth with C. Wright Mills, was originally published in Ethics 52, no. 2 (January 1942):200-15. Reprinted by permission of Nobuko Gerth. Chapter 14, “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos,” by Hans Gerth with Saul Landau. This first appeared in Studies on the Left 1, no. 1 (Fall 1959):7-14. Copyright © 1959 by Studies on the Left. Reprinted by permission of Nobuko Gerth and Saul Landau. Chapter 16, “The Reception of Max Weber’s Work in American Sociology,” by Hans Gerth, translated by Nobuko Gerth. this essay was originally published in Shiso, pp. 174-182, May 1963 (No. 467), Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo. Reprinted by permission of Nobuko Gerth and the publishers, Iwanami Shoten.

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CONTENTS Portrait of Hans H. Gerth, frontispiece Tables

ix

Introduction

xi PART I

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH SOJOURN IN EXILE 1. Hans Gerth: A Modern Intellectual Exile by Arthur J. Vidich 2. “Wie im Marchenbuch: ganz allein . . Gesprach mit Hans Gerth “As in the book of fairy tales: all alone ...” A Conversation with Hans Gerth trans. by Jeffrey Herf

3

14

PART II

BY HANS H. GERTH SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 3. Appearance Values 4. Public Opinion and Propaganda 5. Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940 6. Youthful Rebellion in the United States

51 61 72 104

WEBER AND MARX; HEGEL AND KANT 7. Subjective Intentions and Objective Meaning in Hegel, Marx and Weber

115

CONTENTS

viii

8. 9.

Charisma, Bureaucracy and Revolution Max Weber’s Political Morality

123 131

ON IDEAS AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE 10. The Theory of Verdinglichung and Bourgeois Law 11. A Marx for the Managers 12. On Communism THE 13. 14. 15. 16.

139 149 164

SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE INTELLECTUALS The Intellectual in Modern Society 177 The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos 190 Reflections on American Intelligentsia 199 The Reception of Max Weber’s Work in American Sociology 208 PART III

HANS GERTH’S CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY 17.

Hans Gerth’s Contribution to American Sociology by Joseph Bensman

221

Bibliography of Hans H. Gerth

275

Index

“

285

TABLES

I. Occupational Distribution of Heroes by Magazines and by Periods: 1921-1930, 1931-1940 II. Percentage of Different Settings by Locale for Each Magazine and by Periods: 1921-1930, 1931-1940 III. IV.

75 77

Percentage of Specified Themes for Each Magazine and by Periods: 1921-1930, 1931-1940

78

Types of Rewards of Virtue by Magazines and by Periods: 1921-1930,1931-1940

79

V. Types of Rewards for Specified Virtues: 1921-1940 VI. Saturday Evening Post Success Themes: 1921-1930, 1931-1940

80 89

INTRODUCTION This book arose from the memorial meetings held in New York and Boston after the death of Hans H. Gerth on December 29, 1978. At these gatherings, students, colleagues and friends of Gerth reviewed the contributions he had made to their lives and recalled the ideas that had animated his intellectual career. Our interest in Gerth’s intellectual legacy led us to discover that he had left some 2,000 pages of unpublished manuscripts, dating from 1930 to the very eve of his death. When we examined these manuscripts, we found that they contained numerous ideas Gerth had only hinted at in his published works. In our judgment these ideas were original contributions and had an intrinsic value far beyond those one might expect in a con¬ ventional review of a life work. It was for this reason that we decided to edit and publish this volume. The abundance of manuscripts presented us with difficult decisions in selecting the specific essays to be included in this volume. Gerth’s interests and writings included not only sociology, history, philosophy, political science and economics as academic fields but also films, literature, popular and serious music, painting, poetry and the myriads of ways ordinary people present themselves to themselves and to each other in their workaday lives and in crisis situations. His unpublished writings mirrored the scope of these interests. Although we were familiar with the range of Gerth’s knowledge, we were stunned to discover a Gerth that we hardly knew. For during the 1960s, Gerth had continued his exploration of the relationship between the ideas of Weber and Marx and had made new substantive contributions that we believe have not yet been expressed by other scholars. Some of these essays are presented in this volume in the section entitled “Weber and Marx; Hegel and Kant.” In addition, Gerth wrote a number of essays

xii

INTRODUCTION

that extended his critique of American sociology far beyond that contained in his well-known essay “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos,’’ which he wrote with Saul Landau in 1959. The analyses found in “Reflections on the American Academic Intelligentsia” and “The Reception of Max Weber’s Work in American Sociology” are far more penetrating and powerful than the critiques made by other sociologists during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Finally, we were surprised to learn that throughout his life Gerth continued to work on problems of the sociology of knowledge, a field to which he had addressed himself first in the early 1930s as a student of and assistant to Karl Mannheim. Some of these essays were new to us, and all of them contain ideas that are quite distinct from those presented in Mannheim’s works. A last source of our new insight into Gerth’s thought are his essays dealing with his reflections on Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, as well as on Western Marxism, bureaucratic Marxism and on Asiatic or oriental despotism. The earliest of these essays was written in 1930 when Gerth was twenty-two years old, and the latest, written in 1961, is a comprehensive review of the changing character of Marxism under the impact of the Russian Revolution, Lenin and Stalin. Gerth’s emphasis on Marx and Weber reflected not only his sociological interests but also his attachment to Enlightenment ideals, especially political liberalism, and his concern for the future of German and European democracy. These commitments led him to analyze the political and military dynamics of world communism and world capitalism, always with special reference to Russia, the United States and Great Britain. His interest in these themes appears in many of his essays and expresses his identification not only with Max Weber as an intellectual and scholar but also with Weber’s passionate concern for the future of a democratic Germany. The essays in this book include ten previously unpublished papers, the full-length version of a paper originally published in a condensed version, and two previously published papers. In choosing these essays, we selected those that expressed Gerth’s later ideas and work, but we also included some early essays that we felt touched on some basic themes with which Gerth was concerned throughout his life. These include social psychology, mass communications, and the use of coercion and manipu¬ lation by the mass media and bureaucracies in modern society. This latter theme points to Gerth’s central interest in rationality and its counterpart, mass irrationality, whether or not it is spontaneous or controlled by either democratic or totalitarian centralists. Despite our initial hope that this volume might present the basic themes and the breadth of Gerth’s work, we have no illusion that we have captured the totality of his interests and knowledge. At a later date we hope to publish other essays by Gerth that extend or fill out the parameters of the ideas that are only suggested in this volume. A

INTRODUCTION

xiii

Gerth’s unpublished manuscripts were in various stages of completeness. Some were partially edited by him, and others were not. Others were transcriptions of lectures and were not prepared with the idea of subsequent publication. Still others were materials that Gerth had prepared only for classroom distribution. We have indicated the source of each manuscript in a note at the bottom of the first page of each essay. Our tasks as editors included making corrections and emendations in the manuscripts so that they could be published. This work entailed checking dates, names and places, historical references and producing a fully edited, finished style. In some cases, it involved changes in the sequence and place¬ ment of paragraphs in order to develop more clearly the theme of a given essay. In a few instances we have expanded illustrations of an idea but have tried to use only those illustrations characteristically used by Gerth. Where major emendations have been made we have indicated them in textual notes. In doing this work we have attempted to present Gerth’s ideas with accuracy and fidelity, although at times we may have departed from the verbatim transcription of his oral or preliminary presentations. In these cases, we have done so because the flow of ideas, images and colloquial expressions was so rapid and explosive in his original drafts and in transcribed and dictated essays that only a reader fully accustomed to Gerth’s verbal style could grasp the thematic unity of his work. To the extent that we have altered Gerth’s manuscripts by editing, the responsibility is our own. Since some of Gerth’s essays were incomplete with respect to exact citations and sources of references, we made every effort to complete them. In all but a few instances we were successful. We are convinced that the omissions that remain do not alter the substance or accuracy of the points Gerth made in those essays where documentation of sources remains incomplete. Don Martindale encouraged and supported this project from its inception to its completion. We thank him for the invaluable advice he has given to us during all stages of our work. Jeffrey Herf translated Mathias Greffrath’s German radio interview with Gerth and generously gave us permission to use his work. Judith Marcus Tar reviewed and helped us to edit this translation and was unstinting in her efforts to render a faithful translation. Joyce Ferman edited and typed an earlier draft of this interview. Richard Gerth and Ranier Hilterman provided the original translation of the essay on “Intellectuals in Modern Society” without which we could not have edited the manuscript for publication. Eleanor Hakim assisted us with editorial advice and carefully edited the final versions of the essays “Hans Gerth, A Modern Intellectual Exile,” and “Hans Gerth’s Contribution to American Sociology,” written respec¬ tively by Arthur J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman.

xiv

INTRODUCTION

Throughout our work on this project, including the planning and organ¬ ization of the memorial meetings in New York and Boston, Daria Martin of the Department of Sociology at the New School for Social Research provided the administrative and secretarial assistance necessary for the completion of this book. We wish to thank the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research for its generous support of this project. We also wish to thank Paul Cantrell, Daniel Gassman, Lydia Gassman, Jacques-Paul Marton, Derrick Norman, the late Henry Pachter, George Schwab, Gary Ulman, Zoltan Tar and Philip Yanowitch for technical assistance at various stages of our work and Jim Russell for offering a number of suggestions. Finally, we extend our thanks to Daria Martin, Estelle Cooper, Daniel Guss, and Rhea Bensman for the patience and care with which they typed the manuscript in its various drafts and to Patricia Carda, Greenwood Press, for her painstaking editorial assistance. Joseph Bensman Arthur J. Vidich Nobuko Gerth

PART I

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Sojourn in Exile

.

1

HANS GERTH: A MODERN INTELLECTUAL EXILE ARTHUR VIDICH

Hans Gerth was a towering example of what a life dedicated to the mind can be. He was unable to compromise with the truth as he saw it, and he was outspoken in voicing his opinions to the world. His unwillingness— perhaps even inability—either to tolerate or to practice hypocrisy, cant, deceit, pretense, or sham left him with few defenses against those who did, but this made him all the more an example of intellectual integrity. Those who were his students remember him not only as their greatest teacher but also as one of their first links to cultivation, culture and the intellectual amenities of civilization. He died on December 29, 1978, in Germany, the country in which he was born and educated and from which he fled into exile during Hitler’s regime. It was the country that had formed his mind and shaped his per¬ spective on the world; it was also the country that rejected what he stood for. Those who knew Gerth can understand why the Fascists would not tolerate him, and why he could not and would not submit to their regime. Although he had been too young to study with Max Weber, he had been old enough to locate himself in and expose himself to the great cultural and intellectual movements of Weimarian Germany. He used these move¬ ments as a basis for creating and sustaining himself. The personal friend¬ ships and intellectual style he formed during the late 1920s and early 1930s remained with him throughout his life. Rudolph Heberle ma^e this point in a letter responding to the invitation to attend the Hans Gerth Memorial Seminar: Delivered on the occasion of the Hans Gerth Memorial Seminar held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the national meetings of the American Sociological Association, August 29, 1979, Boston, Massachusetts.

3

4

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Hans Gerth . . . came to me in January 1933 to serve as assistant on a research project which resulted in two publications: From Democracy to Nazism and Landbevolkerung and Nationalsozialismus. He was especially good at collecting material on Nazism and related social movements and their ideologies. He also had a very good time in interviewing all sorts of people in villages and small towns in the summer of 1933 when one had to go about it in a roundabout way. He was especially adept in the interpretation of what people said, analyzing the revealing symbolisms in their language. After he and I emigrated, we had . . . occasional contacts, always stimulating.1

Even early in his career Gerth displayed his uncanny capacity for getting to the meaning of what was said. His ability to decipher “vocabularies of motives” is one that we have all observed and marvelled at. We all remember occasions when he supplied us with precise answers to questions that we could barely formulate; somehow he could decipher what we were thinking even faster than we could verbalize it. Having had such an experience with him, we could understand what Weber meant by his method of verstehen, and we could begin to appreciate the meaning of Weberian analysis. When he left Germany to go first to England and then to the United States, he took with him an intellectual stance and joined the larger emigre community of Weimarian intellectuals, Social Democrats,' Frankfurtian Marxists, and social scientists. That group included, among others: Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt, Hans Speier, Paul Kecskemeti, Kurt Wolff, Leo Lowenthal, Theodor Adorno, Gerhard Meyer, Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer. During his years in America, Gerth remained a part of that emigre community and with it helped to bring to the United States its finished and unfinished intellectual work, its methods of investigation and its political orientations. From the 1930s to the present day, that community has deepened and intensified the intellectual, cultural and political life of America. The longer these emigres have lived here, however, the more they have become a part of this country and the more their culture has been lost to its country of origin. While Gerth was in America, the emigre community sustained his connection to cosmopolitan culture. He, in turn, supported and reinforced it with his own work and teaching. His interests in music, painting, etching, architecture, poetry and literature did not diminish until the day he died. As a political intellectual and an analyst of social policy, he was ready always to offer his analysis of the great social, political and revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a sociologist and social historian, he combined and integrated his early education in the works of Weber, Marx, Freud, Simmel, Mannheim with his later education in their American counterparts such as George Herbert Mead, Thorstein

A MODERN INTELLECTUAL EXILE

5

Veblen, Harry Stack Sullivan and Kenneth Burke. Although his book Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions, which he wrote with C. Wright Mills, illustrates his capacity for working with the theories and substance of complex mixes of social and historical thought, it does not convey the personal vitality which he brought to the intellectual world of those who knew him. He once said that “Max Weber belonged to a generation of universal scholars,” and he went on to analyze the “sociological conditions for the scholarship of the kind he [Weber] displayed.”2 Among the conditions he noted were: A gymnasium education which . . . equipped him in such a way that the IndoGermanic languages were but so many dialects of one linguistic medium. An unusual combination of specialized subjects. ... He was at the same time a well equipped economist, historian . . . philosopher . . . , and sufficiently acquainted with the literature of theology to handle it expertly. “A certain type of fruitful leisure” made possible in the German University which “gave the German docent time for research during the years when the American academician is overburdened with teaching,” and by a “timely inheritance.” The relative lack of pressure for “practical” and immediately “useful” knowledge conditioned by a strongly humanistic atmosphere, allowed for the pursuit of themes remote from the practical demands of the day. The intellectual traditions and the accumulated scholarship of Germany, especially in history, the classics, psychology, theology, comparative literature, philology and philosophy gave the late-nineteenth century German scholar a pre-eminent base on which to build his work.3

Seen in retrospect, these conditions read like a set of specifications that Gerth developed for his own intellectual ambitions. Although he never managed to free himself from the need to hold a job, he seemed to have read everything and to have been able to talk on any subject. He could place any problem, small or large, into a marvelously large and flexible framework that always amplified the perspective from which to see the problem. In a period when academic specialization between and within subjects grew with astounding speed, Gerth’s intellectual curiosity knew no boundaries. He never compartmentalized psychoanalysis, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, linguistics, mass communications or the natural sciences. For our generation, those who came to know him realized the moment they first met him that they were in the presence of a scholar the likes of whom they were unlikely to meet again.

6

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Gerth’s relationship to Weber was complex, but there is no doubt that he measured himself by Weber’s standards of scholarship. Thus, he, like other contemporary Weber scholars, faced the problem of how to deal with the standards set by Weber. Contemporary scholars who have set themselves in this relationship to Weber have done so out of a deep respect for his intellectual powers and his magnificent sociological achievements. By the same token these thinkers have had problems when they have measured their own work against his. The problems have been particularly acute for those who were placed by their generation in a father-son age relationship with Weber, and they have been only somewhat less acute for those placed in grandfather-grandson relationship. In their attempts to cope with their own relationship with Weber, scholars have responded in different ways. Some of these responses have been: 1. to borrow selectively from Weber’s work while dismissing or ignoring major portions of it as being obsolete. Such a scholar may then claim that his own work supersedes that of Weber; 2. to work wholly within Weber’s books, articles, and monographs to such an extent that the scholar loses his own intellectual identity. Such a scholar appropriates the work of the master into himself and takes it as his moral responsibility to protect the master from misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and vulgarizations committed by others. The original work is canonized and only requires a watchdog to protect it from potential deviationists and critics; 3. to attempt to absorb Weber’s framework with the intention of extending it beyond Weber only to discover that he has become prisoner of Weber’s work and can no longer define his own problem. Frequently such a scholar escapes from his imprisonment in Weber’s “iron cage’’ by transferring his “soul’’ to other masters; 4. to impute to Weber’s work a formal system and a methodological rigor and then to codify and systematize Weber’s basic concepts. Such codification and systematization enables the scholar to escape the power exercised over him by the substance and historicity of Weber’s work. The net result is a destruction of the spirit of the master’s work in the name of a science conceived solely as composed of rigorous concepts and exacting codification. Because he had never met Weber, who had died when Gerth was twelve, and because his own father had died when he was still a child, none of these was Gerth’s solution. Presumably, Gerth felt that he could adopt Weber as a surrogate father but on his own terms, feeling neither a need to compete nor a resentment stemming from dependency. Yet, in realizing his intellectual

A MODERN INTELLECTUAL EXILE

7

indebtedness, he felt a strong obligation to be loyal. It is clear to those who know Gerth’s work that his commitment was to both Weber’s work and his personal and intellectual style. I was never so impressed by this as when, while preparing these remarks, I reread his introduction “The Man and His Work,’’ to From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Parts of this biography of Weber read almost like an autobiographical statement. It is perhaps at the level of the poetic quality in Weber that the similarity of Gerth to Weber is most apparent, especially in those parts of Weber’s works that were translated by Gerth. For example, here are two statements that capture the tone of urban life, one is Weber’s statement translated by Gerth and the other was written by Gerth himself: The Greek shining the Yankee’s shoes for five cents, the German acting as his waiter, the Irishman managing his politics, and the Italian digging his dirty ditches. With the exception of some exclusive residential districts, the whole gigantic city, more extensive than London, is like a man whose skin has been peeled off and whose entrails one sees at work. In New York City some people taxi home at night from Madison Avenue offices to Sutton Place apartments. Others leave a factory loft in Brooklyn and subway home to an East Harlem tenement. In Detroit there is Grosse Pointe, with environs, but there is also Hamtramck, without environs. ... In Moscow, leading party members ride cautiously in black cars along well policed avenues to well policed suburbs; other people walk home from factories to huddle in cramped apartments. And in the shadow of swank Washington, D.C. apartment houses, there are the dark alley dwellings.4

The tone and feeling found in these statements well illustrate how Gerth, writing for himself in English also worked in the style that he found and translated in Weber. Gerth was profoundly influenced by Weber in both his attitude toward the world and in the sociological problems with which he concerned himself. In confronting his work in America, Gerth had to find a way to introduce Weber’s sociology in its own terms to American students and to apply his own sociological analysis to the problems of the world he confronted. Gerth’s response to this task was to teach Weber’s work while at the same time applying it to an analysis of the problems of his own world. So complex was this mixing of Weber and Gerth that frequently it was difficult to separate what was Gerth’s from what was Weber’s. As students we sometimes assumed that what Gerth was teaching was already established in German scholarship, especially Weberianism and Marxism. It seemed to come so easily to him that one almost could assume that he was only a conduit, a voice that was bringing to us old and deeply rooted intellectual traditions with which the best of American intellectual

8

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

traditions could not compete. It was easy to make that mistake because he did his work so artistically and so naturally. Only later did we learn that most of what Gerth had taught us was not in Weber or Marx at all. Without our knowing it, he had been doing an original and unique analysis of central tendencies in the institutional transformations of the modern world, an analysis which was based not only on Weber and Marx but also on Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, Goethe, Burkhardt, Mommsen, Simmel, Trotsky, Pierce, Veblen, G. H. Mead and others. The lectures on such subjects as mass communications, religion, the Protestant sects, bureaucracy, the American rural community, ethnic groups, class structure, social strati¬ fication, the arts and film, capitalism and socialism and the social structures of Japan, China and India were his own interpretations of the modern world. As we grew older and as we went more deeply into the sources used by Gerth, we began to discover that what he had told us was indeed an original and priceless sociology of the modern world. In one sense, it is a pity that much of what Gerth had to offer was best elicited by a live audience, for having once said what he had to say, he seemed to lose interest in writing it. As a result we have only a fragment of those great spontaneous lectures, works of art in their own right, which by chance were recorded by students or, for example, by Nobuko Gerth, during Gerth’s lecture tour in Japan in 1962 through 1963. Don Martindale in the following short memoir captures Gerth’s power as a lecturer: In 1940 I took a class in social stratification given by a young German refugee scholar named Hans Gerth who had recently joined the sociology department of the University of Wisconsin. It was an unforgettable experience. The first lecture was an act of freely associated fantasy. I could discern no structure of argument or theme. Each idea that turned up suggested others, and the lecturer raced on with mounting excitement from one to another, like an ecstatic deprived child turned loose in a toy shop. The lecturer was tall, slender with flashing dark eyes, wavy hair, and a bold facial structure. Among other things the lecturer talked about the relation between a social elite and the operating personnel of an upper-class establishment. The elite itself, he observed, could afford to behave casually, speak informally, and go about in casual, if not sloppy, dress. As he spoke of these things it was evident that the lecturer spoke from the point of view of the elite; he conveyed the impression of casualness, informality, and elegant sloppiness. However, it seemed such behavior on the part of the elite was only possible because footmen, chauffeurs, maids, and butlers carried out their duties with utmost formality and snobbery (the lecturer drew himself up to full height and looked down his nose with disdain as he reported this). And suddenly the lecturer was a butler admitting that in their private moments, butlers, too, were human. He was reminded of the scene in one of the operas in which the butler is putting away the master’s suit and, treating the master’s cane as if

A MODERN INTELLECTUAL EXILE

9

it were a sword, duels with the suit, revealing his basic ambivalence about his gentleman. And so the lecture went from one item to the next, flying through the air on an imagination like a swinging trapeze in breathless, dizzying display. The bell rang. The lecturer gave no sign of having noticed it. Students grew restive, gathered their books together, shuffled their feet, still no sign. Some, finally, began to break for the door in order not to be late for their next classes. As if awakening out of a dream, the lecturer broke off, it seemed, without finishing the sentence. During the lecture the majority of students had experienced a mixture of bewilder¬ ment and frustration. They sat with notebooks open and pens poised, realizing that something momentous was happening but unable to find a beginning or a stopping place—some had been unable to take a single note. During the lecture a powerfully built young man sitting near me, however, had no trouble. He watched the lecturer with bright, hard, appraising eyes and, though never missing a word or gesture, was taking quick careful notes. On the way out of class we found ourselves side by side. I observed, “That was the most extraordinary performance I have ever seen.” “Gerth,” he replied, “is the only man worth listening to in this department.” So it was that I made the acquaintance of Hans Gerth and a scholar who would one day call himself C. Wright Mills.5

It was this style that made him one of those teachers who leave lasting impressions on their students. That great teachers in this age of mass communications and specialized academic scholarship are not particularly rewarded or publicly recognized does not diminish the intellectual value of artistic teaching or the benefits gained from it by both teacher and students. It was Gerth’s destiny to spend thirty of the prime years of his life in the United States and most of these years as a teacher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. There, throughout his years as a professor, he was both the cultivated cosmopolitan scholar and the analyst of the world in which he found himself. To be sure, as he would say, he wrote several scholarly monographs, translated substantial portions of Weber’s writings and wrote a number of unfinished papers. Yet, it was as a teacher that he left an indelible mark on this country. Because he was an intellectual emigre, he found himself, as a teacher, in the position of being a foreigner with a Weberian-Marxian perspective, educating Americans, many of whom were the children of immigrants, about a society they could barely call their own. In taking on this task, the attitude he assumed was the same one that he described as Weber’s when Weber visited America in 1904: “enthusiastic and detached, [possessing to] an eminent degree the ‘virtue’ which Edward Gibbon ascribes to the studious traveler abroad, that ‘virtue’ which borders on a vice; the flexible temper which can assimilate itself to every tone of society from the court to the cottage; the happy flow

10

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

of spirits which can amuse and be amused in every company and situation.”6 So it was that for Gerth nothing in America went unnoticed, no matter how kaleidoscopic the scene or how complex the political spectrum; he attempted to absorb it all and to communicate it to anyone who would listen. One of Gerth’s best descriptions of himself can be found in his description of Weber’s concern “with the decline of the cultivated man as a wellrounded personality in favor of the technical expert, who, from the human point of view is crippled. Weber’s own work is a realization of his self-image as a cultivated man concerned with all things human.” And nowhere did he describe his own attitude more precisely than when he said of Weber: “He deplores the type of man that the mechanization and routine of bureaucracy selects and forms. The narrowed professional, publicly certified and examined, and ready for tenure and career. His craving for security is balanced by his moderate ambitions and he is rewarded by the honor of official status. This type of man Weber deplored as a petty routine creature, lacking in heroism, human spontaneity and inventiveness: ‘The Puritan willed to be the vocational man we have to be.’ ”7 For more than thirty years and in many graduating classes at the University of Wisconsin, Brandeis University, Columbia University, Frankfurt University, The University of California at Berkeley and The City University of New York and for countless informal seminars in Madison, Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Frankfurt, he presented himself as he was: spontaneous, learned, chivalrous, totally without restraint in tossing out and giving away his ideas, at times morose and self-pitying and with age increasingly bitter about the narrow-mindedness and unnecessary anti-intellectualism of the academic bureaucrats. Yet the spirit was there to the end. When I visited him in Glashuetten in June of 1978, he had been reading and copiously annotating the memoirs of famous former Nazis whose policies and decisions had sent him to America. Late in the evening, we settled down to a discussion of the changing balance of world naval forces and to the possible causes of World War III—a discussion in which he, of course, did all the talking. It is no wonder that generations of students from the American Middle West, West and East sought him out and put their intellectual futures in his hands. It is a dubious proposition to speculate what fate Gerth might have had, had the Nazis failed, and had he not been exiled. His encounter with American bureaucracy, academic or otherwise, was surely less traumatic than that he would have experienced in pre- or postwar Germany. More importantly, his exile provided him with an opportunity to observe the vortex of world affairs during a period when the United States was making its national claim to world supremacy, much as Weber lived through a similar period when Germany raised its claims to European political and cultural superi¬ ority. Seen in this light, Gerth had an advantage that Weber did not: it

A MODERN INTELLECTUAL EXILE

11

was not necessary for him to be a committed nationalist; he could have a detachment that Weber lacked, a broader view of the contemporary world, which led him to describe himself as a democratic socialist and to believe that socialism could resolve the major problems of capitalism. In turn, American students, apart from those who for whatever reasons were parochial in outlook, were bedazzled by this intellectual missionary of cosmopolitan world culture. The best and the brightest of them had never seen anything like him; Susan Sontag exclaimed when she heard he had died: “I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met him [she was under twenty at the time]. Without him I wouldn’t have been taken into Weimarian culture—I wouldn’t have read Walter Benjamin or known about Hannah Arendt.”8 During the years of his stay in America, he always found students, beginning with C. Wright Mills and Don Martindale, who were worthy of his time and effort. Moreover, the more he gave forth to them, the more they expected, the more he was able to reach into that mysterious reservoir of his mind to come up with things that even he did not know were there until some question brought them forth. No students ever needed their teacher more than Gerth’s needed him and vice versa. It was from him that they learned what it is to be a teacher. As a partial recompense, his students have left their mark on American letters, history, sociology and culture, for his appeal to students was never restricted to sociologists alone. If anything, his influence has been greatest among such social historians as William Appleman Williams and Harvey Goldberg and among such social critics as Susan Sontag, Saul Landau, Stuart Ewen and Dore Ashton. He showed them that they need not be afraid to think and act according to their convictions. These generations of students spanned the late years of the Great Depres¬ sion, World War II, the G.I. Bill, McCarthyism, the Korean War, the cold war of the fifties and the resulting great expansion of the American univer¬ sity system, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the first years of detente and the Cambodian-Kent State spring. Each generation of students that met Gerth knew him partly through his response to the world events of its own student days. Collectively, they reflect the stages and phases of Gerth’s life in America; thus, these students form layer upon layer of archeological extensions of Gerth, now scattered throughout American culture. Volatile and responsive, quick to pick up emerging political nuances, irreverent but never to a fault, irrepressible, cultivated, and a master of American slang, Gerth educated this polyglot batch of American students who, in turn, were the community he created for himself during his exile. Considering that Germany would have tolerated him much less easily, America gave him an arena in which to express his great vitality and intel¬ lectuality. Could there have been a better place for the prototype of the

12

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

exile to be an exile? It was, in short, a stroke of luck for him and for his students that they had each other when they did. When he returned to Germany in the early 1970s, he entered another exile, this time in Frankfurt and Glashuetten, the suburban town where he lived—a charming, comfortable enclave of international businessmen and corporate managers. At Frankfurt the radical students who had earlier purged themselves of Jurgen Habermas considered Gerth to be a reactionary, for that generation lacked a sense of history and was unaware of its own intellectual legacy. Gerth held a chair as a professor, but there were no receptive students, making the chair a meaningless symbol. His German colleagues in sociology were mainly from a younger generation for which the Nazi period constituted a huge intellectual gap in historical continuity. They were unaware of his role in America and for the most part did not even know that he was in Germany. Gerth, for whatever reasons of his own, did not extend himself to let them know that he was there. Perhaps this was unfortunate because by the early seventies a new generation of German sociologists trained in England, Germany and the United States had redis¬ covered their own pre-Nazi intellectual legacy. Although the Frankfurt School had seemed to dissipate itself, the return of Horkheimer and Adorno served to bridge the pre- and post-Nazi periods. Theodor Heuss, the president of the country, thought of himself as a student of Weber’s and was especially interested in bridging the pre- and post-Nazi intellectual traditions in the social sciences. To that end, he worked to sponsor a chair at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. It was to be held each year by a visiting German social scientist who was a representative of the new generation. This chair, which came to be known as the Heuss Professorship, was occupied by such German scholars as Jurgen Habermas, Renata Maintz, Friedrich Tembruck, Peter Ludz, Heinrich Popitz, Urs Jaeggi, Wilhelm Hennis, Niklas Lehmann, Reinhard Kreckel and Wolfgang Schluchter. As an exile in his own country, Gerth did not qualify as a candidate for this chair. There were so many dimensions to his marginality that in the few years remaining to him there was no way for him to connect himself to the new generation of German intellectuals. Later in the 1970s when Rainer Lepsius was president of the German Sociological Association, he contacted Gerth, as well as other returned emigres, and awarded him an honorary life membership in the association. As Lepsius himself had lived overseas for many years in Brazil and Spain, he had a special awareness of the position of the emigre. With nazism receding from memory, the older generation of emigres acquired the special quality of being living embodiments of a lost past. In 1978, Gerth was interviewed for German radio by Mathias Greffrath, who belonged to the German student generation of the late 1960s and who has since published

13

A MODERN INTELLECTUAL EXILE

Gerth’s interview along with those of such fellow emigres as Gunther Anders, Marie Jahoda, Leo Lowenthal, Karl August Wittfogel, Toni Oelsner, Adolph Lowe and Alfred Sohn-Rethel.9 This interview, Gerth’s last public statement, gave him an opportunity to reflect on his life as a scholar, emigre, German, and American and to define himself to a new generation of German sociologists. During these last years in Glashuetten, American students from almost all the stages and phases of his life in the United States continued to visit Gerth and to learn from him. It was perhaps a fitting irony that the house in Glashuetten became an American outpost. In spite of time and place and without regard to audience, Gerth remained what he had always been: a self-contained university in exile.

NOTES 1. Personal Communication, April 1979. 2. From Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (N. Y.: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 23. 3. Ibid., pp. 23-28. 4. Ibid., p. 15; and from Hans Gerth and G. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions (N. Y.: Harcourt Brace, 1953), p. 306. 5. Personal Communication. Originally read at a memorial meeting of Gerth’s friends held at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, May 1979. 6. Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, p. 15. 7. Ibid., p. 50. 8. Personal communication, May 1979. 9. See Mathias Greffrath, ed., Die Zerstorung einer Zukunft: Gesprdche mit emigrierten Sozialwissenchaflern (Rowoht: Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979).

.

2

“AS IN THE BOOK OF FAIRY TALES: ALL ALONE A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY HERF

The following is a translation of “Wie im Marchenbush: ganz allein. ...” Gesprach mit Hans Gerth [“As in the book of fairy tales: all alone. . . .” A Conversation with Hans Gerth].* The interview is a part of a book of interviews with German social scientists who emigrated during the Third Reich, Die Zerstdrung einer Zukunft, edited by Mathias Greffrath (Hamburg: Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979). Mathias Greffrath conducted the following interview in Glashuetten, West Germany in 1977. Greffrath: Several years ago you returned to West Germany after having lived and taught in the United States for over thirty years. Why? Gerth: At the time, I was called or asked by the cultural minister of Hessen to come back. Why? I don’t know if you’d call it homesickness or curiosity for new experiences, as Caesar once put it. I cannot really give you an adequate reason for my return. Greffrath: When one is homesick, one is supposed to have specific notions of what one expects to find upon returning.

interview with Hans Gerth by Matthias Greffrath in Die Zerstdrung Einer Zukunft, translated by Jeffrey Herf. Permission given by Jeffrey Herf and by Sanford J. Greenberger Associates for use in the United States and by Das Neue buch Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag Gamb. H. 1979, as excerpted, pp. 59-95, for use in the rest of the world. We wish also to thank Judith Marcus for reviewing and in some instances revising and correcting the translation and Joyce Ferman for typing an earlier draft of the manuscript.

14

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

15

Gerth: My ideas were not, of course, wholly innocent. I kept up my ties to Germany. I came back for the first time in 1947 and lived through a bit of what many people have forgotten long ago: hunger, emaciated bodies and men who fought over the ash trays of American army officers because cigarette butts were as valuable as gold. Consequently I had some not exactly humorous conceptions concerning the Germany that has remade itself again. Greffrath: At that time, what kind of a future did you expect for Germany? You were sent here as an official observer of the American State Department. Gerth: When you saw the suffering here, it was impossible to really think of a future at all. Among the American officers with whom I came into contact, there were two categories: Puritanical moralists—moral man in immoral society—who desperately, and with great effort, sought to somehow bring order and restrain chaos in a country threatened with collapse. But before the currency reform (1949) it was really impossible to do that. This chaos was perhaps also the catastrophe that made coming to terms with the [Nazi] past so difficult. And there were the others . . . the French officers in the Black Forest, who took all the furniture in the castles in which they were living piece by piece back to France ... or American generals who feathered their nest and bought villas in Italy. And the future. ... I don’t really want to say that one could foresee in what direction things would develop. You see, when one witnessed the small meetings of the parliaments in the states composed of at least 70 percent civil servants, you couldn’t entertain any great illusions. They were sitting in these parlia¬ ments because the allies had declared them to be of “stainless character.’’ There were always enough people who were never actually members of the Nazi party [who could receive a certificate from the officials in charge of de-nazification]. The whitewash was obvious. All this offered a good picture of what was to be expected. Greffrath: Would you have returned then if you had received an offer? Gerth: Probably. My mother was living in Leipzig then, and actually I had always thought that after the war I would return. Indeed, I had hoped to do so for a long time. I came back to Frankfurt, but they didn’t want me. I had not, after all, become famous. I couldn’t talk with my former teachers— they were all dead. So I left Frankfurt: there was nothing else for me to do. Greffrath: In the 1920s you studied sociology in Heidelberg and Frankfurt. What made you choose to study sociology then?

16

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Gerth: Well, let me tell you very briefly my biography—as it might be on a job application. I was the naturally talented kid of a poor but honorable widow and came from a small town, Kassel. I went to Heidelberg because I discovered in the city library an essay entitled “Politics as a Vocation,” written by a certain Max Weber. I read it and was very enthused about it. I wanted to study with him. When I came to Heidelberg, I learned that Max Weber had died seven years earlier—but the news had not yet reached Kassel. Who was this Professor Weber supposed to be? Instead I studied with Arnold Bergstrasser and had my first seminar with him, giving a paper on Ferdinand Lassalle. The result was a strong recommendation by Bergstrasser to see Professor Mannheim and a request that I be allowed into his seminar. I did just that and was allowed into his seminar. Gradually I attached myself to Mannheim, and as you can see from his dedication, I did some useful work for him: found and collected footnotes, Marx quota¬ tions and served as his unofficial assistant. When Mannheim was overrun with students he sent them over to me one by one. Then I went for a cup of coffee to the cafe on Ludwigplatz and asked the gentleman to join me there. We were a kind of coffee house intelligentsia. Mannheim used to sit in the same cafe, working there. I sat at another table, and after a while he would give me a few pages of Ideology and Utopia, and I would write notes in the margins. At that time being a student still had a human aspect to it. To study meant a way of life; one discussed intellectual problems and concerns such as a recent essay by Schumpeter, for example, sitting in a cafe or walking together. Greffrath: In those years, Mannheim was discussed because of his book Ideology and Utopia, a book that you later called “Mannheim’s ideology of the free-floating intellectuals.” In what sense was it an ideology and to what extent was it an expression of the period in which it originated? Gerth: By “free-floating intelligentsia” Mannheim meant educated and cultured people who were not tied to any party, Weltanschauung, or political groups, and who, precisely due to this detachment, were possibly more able to think these problems through than people who for any motives— political or economic—belonged to a goal-oriented undertaking. The theory advanced the idea that it was possible to be detached from everyday con¬ cerns. It also included being bound to forms of thinking or intentions of a group nature which, if I may say so, tend to make people stupid. The price for [the] security which people experience in their office, party, or political group is bought at the price of putting on ideological blinders. They take a definitive stand on a position and feel comfortable and integrated in a group, even though they might be fuming mad at the others. Hence, due to

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

17

this very need for security, they are not ready or able to let themselves see the problem from any other point of view. On the other hand, it is the thoughtful or contemplative types of detached and not so intensively engaged intellectuals who are able to consider seriously and ponder not only one but two or three positions within a public controversy. This was a conceptual framework that Mannheim and others put forth at a time when the National Socialist party for the first time received over 30 percent of the vote. It was a tremendous surprise when the Nazis’ electoral strength leaped from 2.8 percent to 30 percent based upon a mixture of hero worship and antiSemitism. And that was only the beginning. Greff rath: In that situation, such a theory reminds one of the need of singing out loud while walking in the frightening darkness. Gerth: I agree. The interesting thing, of course, was the complete—how should I put it—naivete in not even taking a close look at the National Socialists. There was a vegetarian restaurant on Borsenplatz. I went there with a couple of students, but we were afraid to walk down the stairs because the Nazis had gathered there in a group and were swearing and insulting us—presumably because we were Jews. Now I don’t look partic¬ ularly Jewish, at least I don’t think I do. And I’m not Jewish. But that didn’t make any difference. We were all Jews, and the word “Jew”— “Basta Jew!”—was a slogan and term of abuse that came in handy then. Greff rath: Was anti-Semitism very strong among students? Gerth: The Nazis I just mentioned were not university students. That’s why I mention this restaurant on the Borsenplatz. There was a Nazi meeting going on, and the Nazis just wanted to have some fun at the expense of the students. Greffrath: In other words, these were social relations to which Mannheim’s theory, as an ideology of planners, of political managers, of people who were called on to rationalize political decisions, hardly applied any more. Gerth: Yes. It was a desperate hope for continued discussion, for dialogue— as if nothing but discussion was involved in historical processes. Greffrath: In other words, the theorist who took as his starting point the connection of thought to social interests, who saw interests as primary and ideas as derivative of these interests—as a result of the desperate historical situation landed in a position which held that thought was the power that could make everything better.

18

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Gerth: Not thought. Discussion. Mannheim wanted to sustain conversa¬ tion. Only as long as there was conversation, discussion, etc., was every¬ thing not completely lost. Greff rath: Isn’t that an ideology? Gerth: Sure. This aspect of Mannheim’s work is the weakest and most short-lived. In my view, Mannheim’s works which seek to lay out in a purely analytic manner this or that mode of thinking are brilliant pieces of sociological work. They’re imaginative and offer new perspectives on historical figures and situations. It pays to read them again today. Greffrath: You studied later in Frankfurt. What was your attitude toward the Institute for Social Research? Gerth: For a few years I was sort of undecided about what to do and hung around more with Mannheim students. I did, however, go to Horkheimer, Adorno and Fromm’s seminars for about a year. Henryk Grossmann was also there but they did not get along very well. It was a pretty exceptional thing that a musicologist and composer like Adorno and a philosopher like Horkheimer directed a Marxist institute, as it was then referred to. But that is what they did, since 1930, and it was considered to be a very revolutionary thing. Greffrath: A large portion of the left liberal, socialist intellectuals in Frankfurt came from the Jewish upper or middle class. Could you give an explanation for this striking affinity between the Jewish educated and cultured bourgeoisie [.Bildungsburgertum] and radical theory? Gerth: I must confess that as a student I simply was not conscious of hanging around with Jews or partaking in an atmosphere that was influenced by Jewish intellectualism. This kind of “racial consciousness,’’ as it was later called, was first drummed into my head by the Berlin laws which were handed down when I was working on the Berliner Tageblatt and where I also had contact with many Jews. That one was supposed to be careful not to be seen with Jews was something that was forced upon me artificially, from the outside. This formation of consciousness, the awareness of a distinction between Jews and non-Jews was really something new for me. Nineteen thirty-three—that was a new world. Greffrath: What were the main themes in sociology then?

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

19

Gerth: At that time, in the eleventh hour before the end of the Weimar Republic, the great vogue was to examine what bourgeois intellectualism really had been. Mannheim held an important seminar on liberalism with Adolph Lowe, Arnold Bergstrasser and Paul Tillich. It was an enormous production: eighty people were in the seminar. Of course, that was small compared to the 500 students who sat in on Sombart’s seminar, but then Sombart was doing everything very properly. Tillich, Bergstrasser, Lowe and Mannheim were known as Social Democrats and couldn’t get such a production together. Greff rath: Today, when one reads your dissertation on liberal thought it sounds—in undertones—very much like a swan song to that tender bud called liberalism that once existed in Germany. Gerth\ Yes, well ... I studied this tender bud only in the period from 1770 to 1830. There was a generation of people who lived just before the development of political parties in Germany. Most important was the fact that this generation (born around 1770) was ecstatic over the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and danced around the maypole—Holderlin and others. They took their stance just before . . . the fall into party ideologies and the problems of the modern world. And the interesting thing is that in these years from 1770 to 1830 the whole arsenal of arguments and ideas, big and small, were worked out, put forward, published and so forth—the arguments and ideas that the German bourgeoisie lived off for half a century. Book publication expanded up to the 1830s, then fell off, and it wasn’t until 1878, when the electric age was just beginning and the map of Europe was undergoing big changes, that book publishing reached the level of the 1830s. It’s very interesting that the German bourgeoisie was able to manage for such a long time with the ideas of the Hegelian period, 1770 to 1830. Greff rath: Also interesting is your effort to apprehend the bearers of liberal ideas as part of the superstructure of an ascendant capitalist society by tracing the origins and the occupational placement of the liberal intel¬ ligentsia as pastors, tutors and librarians of the principalities. It appears as if liberalism was not the superstructure of capitalist society but rather preceeded it, that these ideas originated in the crevices of feudal remnants and that a free-floating intelligentsia developed between social formations before the defeat of feudalism and before the advent of capitalism. Can one go so far as to say that liberal ideas and bourgeois capitalist society stand in contradiction to one another?

20

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Gerth: I really don’t know. In any case, no bourgeois revolution occurred in Germany. They all collapsed, although there were repeated attempts until finally the liberal civil servants under Bismarck helped to create all the necessary technical institutions needed to support capitalism. It was liberals who put the Reichsbank and other things together. The problem was that the liberals never achieved a political victory. And it is interesting—interesting, that is such a romantic term—but it is characteristic that a small minority of Jews in nineteenth-century Germany made advances that were not to be compared with those of Jews anywhere else. It is perhaps not yet, or no longer, the time to say something like that. But when you consider the caliber of those guys coming out of the ghetto—up to Walter Rathenau and all those other big guns; and then in addition, when you consider the Viennese, the great composer Gustav Mahler: in German speaking culture— not including Switzerland—everything seemed possible. Take for example: Bienenfeld’s book, Die Deutschen und die Juden. It was written by an old man who published it just before the end of that catastrophic year 1938-39. A forgotten book. He writes, with abundant examples, that every country gets the Jews that it deserves, and then he says: The fate of the Jews in Germany (excuse the word fate but they actually had one—they’re dead) was a fantastic accomplishment of intellectual emancipation and social advance beginning around 1830. And what was decisive was the successful struggle in the 1830s of German Jews for access to the Gyftinasium. That started it all. For without an education in a Gymnasium there would have been no possibility of studying at the university; Lassalle and Karl Marx and people like that would have been unimaginable without the preconditions that . . . allowed them to assimilate into the apparatus of culture and education. In Poland, the Jews weren’t able to do that. Those Polish Jews who yearned for higher things traveled to Germany and helped make possible the world reputation of nineteenth-century German academia. It was a very specific constellation, really, in which the German universities— from Humboldt to Rathenau and Mommsen and some other intellectual heroes like them—saw very special accomplishments in that century. This will never happen again, but it existed then. Greff rath: Were studies such as your dissertation or the liberalism seminar of Mannheim, Bergstrasser, Tillich and Lowe infused with a consciousness that the Weimar Republic was just about at its end? Gerth: I don’t know who or how many people had specific illusions. There were people who nurtured their illusions a little longer based on what was happening in Berlin. After the Nazis took power, people used to say: “Oh, in four weeks there will be another economic collapse, bankruptcy, etc.”

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

21

People had the most idiotic notions concerning modern totalitarianism in power—as if nazism would behave like an ordinary cabinet in Weimar— in which twelve governments were used up in twelve years. After returning from England [in 1930], I became pessimistic. The kind of discussions that were being conducted on Bockenheimer Landstrasse—for example, one in which Wilhelm Reich gave a speech in a Frankfurt restaurant. . . . my God, it was absolute fantasy. There was Joseph Dunner trying very hard to form a united front among students. One was formed, in fact, but the word came down from the party headquarters to reject it. Greff rath: Were you politically active in those years? Gerth: Yes, I was in the Roten Studentengruppe [Red Student Group], but I participated without real hope. I did it, so to speak, “in spite of every¬ thing.” Greffrath: You spoke before about the important role of the Jews in German liberalism. If I remember correctly, this aspect of liberalism didn’t emerge in your dissertation. Gerth: Correct: that was intentional. I eliminated everything in the dis¬ sertation that would have made it impossible for me to get a degree in Frankfurt. My teachers had fled. Thus all names were carefully eliminated— even the usual polite academic references—so I could get the dissertation passed. I had to write a petition to a Mr. Rust, the cultural minister in Prussia: I would be most grateful if he would, in view of the fact that my teachers had been dismissed, appoint someone else to examine me so that I could hand in my dissertation, which, although I studied under Jewish teachers, I had completed entirely on my own. In 1933 I took my doctoral exam with a new adviser, Krieck was his name—with a rolling “r” and a roll of the drums after every sentence. I called him up, and three days later I took the exam. I didn’t know him, but he had become the rector of the university in Frankfurt. He had taken a leave during summer vacation. I went to Frankfurt after trying everything for several months: I tried to get a Mr. Peterson, an expert on Stefan George, to work with me on my disser¬ tation. No dice. Then I went to Gottingen to Alfred von Martin: “Yes, the gentleman asked for a leave of absence, and I assume that he won’t return.” And then there was a Mr. Lewalter in Hamburg, I also tried to interest him in my dissertation. “With whom did you write the thesis?” he asked. “With Karl Mannheim.” “Oh ... six weeks ago I joined the [Nazi] party. I don’t think it would be opportune to work with a student of Mannheim’s. . . .” That was the Mr. Lewalter who had written a very interesting essay on

22

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

ideology that appeared in 1930 in the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. Those were my three lamentable efforts. Greffrath-. And Krieck, the Nazi, didn’t have these reservations? Gerth: Not at all. It was probably the first doctorate that had been presented to him. The oral examination was no problem, although it was a bit strange because he probably hadn’t really read my thesis. Greffrath: So you could not have hoped for a position at the university? Gerth\ No. It was moving in a funny way: One of these gentlemen, Pro¬ fessor Marr, really wanted to help me. He asked: “Don’t you belong to any group?” “No, I don’t.” “Hm, you should at least join the SA.” He wanted to help me, but I was deaf to such suggestions. Greffrath-. Did you consider emigrating then? Gerth: No, not then. Perhaps I still had those illusions too: “in four or six months the economy would collapse, etc.” You could classify people according to those who thought the collapse was a matter of weeks, and to those who thought in terms of half a year. But why didn’t I go? First, I had a beautiful fiance. Second, one doesn’t gladly leave one’s fatherland, or motherland, if you prefer. One is bound to one’s own language and would rather speak one’s own language, which one can speak well, rather than a learned language, which one always speaks or writes badly. In addition, we heard through the press and in letters how hard things were for the refugees . . . how hard it was to find any kind of a job even as a secretary. So it was not exactly attractive to leave Germany if you didn’t have to. I once wrote letters from Kiel to try to get to London but nothing came of it. I got a position in Kiel before the beginning of the Third Reich as a research assistant with Professor Rudolf Heberle. The assistantship was financed by Rockefeller. It was withdrawn in 1934. Heberle admin¬ istered the position as the son-in-law of the eccentric old Toennies, who in 1931 stood on stage with Thomas Mann and other eminent intellectuals at the congress “Das freie Wort” [The Free Word] a few minutes before its door was closed. Today the whole thing appears to me like a surrealistic drama. In 1931 one should have thought more about train tickets, baggage and foreign addresses than about the “free word.” Having lost the position in 1934, I went to Berlin as an unemployed man without first-class refer¬ ences. Berlin still appeared at that time as the freest city in Germany.

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

23

Greff rath: How was it that you came to work on the Berliner Tageblatt? Gerth: I received a recommendation from Graf Bernstorff, the former assistant ambassador in London. After we had a short talk, he sent me to his old friend Scheffer who was then the editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt. After sounding me out in a short conversation, Scheffer had me write an essay. That was one of the shock tactics he used when he was looking over new people. “Go home and write an article for me on the theme of George Bernard Shaw and the world, Hans Gerth and Europe.” I am still proud of that article today. I went to Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and we had a long conversation. Then I went to the cafe on Potsdamer Platz, stuffed myself full of news reports, went into seclusion and composed Opus No. 1. It was an analysis of the politics of the League of Nations and European power structures. I argued that since the first world war, a French hegemony had existed in Europe and that England was mainly interested in preventing, as much as possible, any impact of European politics on events occurring outside Europe. Thus England was very prepared to assist the German Republic’s struggle against the French military apparatus and occupation and against the flood tide of France’s efforts toward hegemony in Eastern Europe, in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In my view the question was: When Germany got back on its feet econom¬ ically, would it exert pressure on the fragmented situation in Europe and, sooner or later, would the English assistance play a role? That is, I was asking who was going to be sacrificed. Thus the perspectives of the Nazis did not seem to me completely unrealistic, that is, to advance in southeast Europe, in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, to move into the whole area of the Danube. Greffrath: What was your motivation for going into journalism at that time? Gerth: I wrote to earn money in a situation of overproduction of intellectuals. Any halfway decent position was besieged by candidates who would have done anything to make some money. It was a bloated apparatus, a heap of intellectuals just like today: swarms of intellectuals, students and over¬ crowded universities. In Germany, then the most important industrial nation in Europe with 66 million people, there were 132,000 university students. The Frankfurter Zeitung wrote about the overcrowding of the universities but never about too few professors or about building more universities. Germany, with a population of 60 million in the middle of Europe just couldn’t build more. There was a large group of unemployed intellectuals who didn’t know where to go. The answer was: work camps!

24

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

First it was the labor front and later concentration camps. In twelve years, 20 million people were pumped through those camps. That’s the way things were in those days. Greff rath: Was the Berliner Tageblatt like the Frankfurter Zeitung an effort to put out a fig-leaf sort of newspaper in which one could covertly express liberal views? Gerth\ Yes, of course. Hence the circulation went down to 60,000 copies a day. Greff rath: And you were.. . . Gerth: I made a sufficient fool of myself so I could be sent from one branch to another. I began in foreign affairs. That gave me a stomach ache. Writing became increasingly difficult. Then I wrote things like birthday congratu¬ lations for English politicians. Greffrath: Was it possible to do anything more in the “Feuilleton” section? Gerth: It was always a war of wits, meaning to be able to outsmart, work or think faster than the machinery of censorship, which, if it had time would say: this topic is taboo. But when it was already in the press and typeset, it was printed. But that was actually always precarious. Greffrath: The Berliner Tageblatt was a daring, peculiar undertaking in that period. Gerth: . . . personal property of Dr. Goebbels, who was always being photographed with the Berliner Tageblatt in his hand, cherishing the moment. Greffrath: Did you see your journalistic work as a form of political op¬ position? Gerth: Yes. There was always a public. I am still today of the opinion that even in a public sphere completely controlled by a totalitarian regime there exists a kind of nostalgic public which reads between the lines and always has a greater understanding of the situation than do those who are reading about it abroad, including the refugees for whom the connections and the intellectual content become thinner and thinner over time. Even when, decades later, one reads one’s own work, it is no longer understandable why one thought it was so important at the time or why one felt such fear

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

25

when it was published. The astounding thing really is the manner in which a process of deflection takes place in which one’s axis of orientation gradually shifts. Greffrath: In other words, the writer becomes his own censor to a certain degree? Gerth: Basically. Margret Bovari is preoccupied with this question, the question of lying. . . . She thinks it is unavoidable. In my view that is not the case. I don’t agree with her. I am not aware of having lied. In any case, I might not be typical, for after two years I, too, was on the outside, while she remained of service for a longer time.1 Greffrath: Did you feel that this work was foreign to your career aspirations? Gerth: Yes. It was, in any case, not what I thought I was destined to do. Greffrath: What finally led to your departure from the editorial staff? Gerth: I really don’t know how that came about. In any case, I guess I had become a bit costly for the editorial board. I had already had to disappear once before on an overnight’s notice for six weeks to Denmark—it is all quite uninteresting—because I reviewed a film. Ordinarily the review would have been the job of Mr. Hjalmar Schacht’s nephew, but he, instead, gave me the ticket to the film and the task of writing it. I was taken in and went to see the film. The same evening I phoned in to the paper my review from the Kurfurstendamm. It was a really awful film, totally without merit, a big exaggerated anti-Semitic affair. And I dictated: “At the end one sees the hero with his pregnant girl friend, Mia, standing on the steps of a monu¬ ment. ...” My view was that if this amuses them, they’re getting their money’s worth. And on the same day, when I was coming out of the movie theatre there was a crazy spectacle. The Cafe-Tischlein on the Ku’damm was being destroyed by toughs. People ran out of the cafe, tableware and dishes were flying all over the place, and in the center of the street a totally silent mass of people looked on as spectators. That took place in 1935 or 1936.1 got out of Berlin fast, traveled to Denmark and from there wrote a report on the Danish cooperative trading system. Greffrath-. Can you give an example of something you wrote then? Gerth: Yes. I’ll read to you from a review. It concerns a new edition of the Brockhaus-Encyclopaedia: “The changes that are apparent from even

26

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

a quick glance make it obvious that a totally new work is emerging. The treatment of individual fields follows the intellectual and political meaning of the new Germany. Jews are now characterized by race: Eduard Bern¬ stein, for example, is described as a ‘Jewish Marxist hostile to Germany.’ Similarly the articles on Alfred Adler, Bebel, Vocation, Bavarian People’s Party make it apparent that between the 1924 edition and the current one lies not only twelve years but a whole historical epoch: the National Socialist revolution. Even if one does not weigh every word, editorially, the con¬ tributions are not as well coordinated with one another as is desirable in a lexicon. Of course, that is perhaps not immediately attainable in a com¬ prehensive new edition. For example, we read in the article ‘Peasant’ that ‘through the conscious derision of the peasantry the concept of the dumb peasant was created by Jewish literati working hand in hand with the Jewish press.’ Now the concept of the dumb peasant is certainly older than are the Jewish literati and their press. Under the catchword ‘peasant poetry’ a bit later it reads: ‘Already with Neidhart von Reuenthal [at the beginning of the thirteenth century] the peasant is portrayed as a coarse boor who in literary satire up through the sixteenth century is contrasted to the chivalric, and, later, the bourgeois world. Even a poet as bound to the Volk as Hans Sachs, represents peasants in his works in a distorted and untrue manner. . . .’ On the other hand, under the essay ‘Culture’ [Bildung] aside from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, all works of Professor Krieck’s are mentioned and Kerschensteiner’s Theorie der Bildung, the work of a radical school reformer. We expect[ed] to find Alfred Rosenberg’s Mythos des 20 Jahrhunderts here. Indeed one hopes that such unevenness—over which there is much room for argument—will be avoided in the coming volumes so that the National Socialist lexicon will be flawlessly organized.” Greff rath: Were you held responsible or called on the carpet after writing such an article? Gerth: Not necessarily. I had, after all, stressed the National Socialist accomplishment: I had used the word “flawless.” There was an article in the Volkischen Beobachter, an attack on Hans Christian Anderson. As a child I loved him dearly and wrote: “Whether we are speaking of Kant, a son of a cobbler, or of Christian Anderson, the son of a shoemaker from Odense, the Geist does not need proof of Aryan background.” At the time the Nazis wanted Anderson to appear as the illegitimate son of a FrenchJewish schoolmaster, who had lived in Odense. I wrote about these kinds of things with little sarcastic comments. Greffrath: Was the irony, so evident in your articles from this period, the weapon of an individual fighter?

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

27

Gerth: Yes, a private pleasure if you will. It was an existence of an in¬ dividual fighter. Why? I had connections to Neu Beginnen.2 In 1935, Lisel Paxmann’s parents received her ashes without any explanation. She had a relative, General Milch, who worked with Goering in the aviation ministry, but that didn’t help her at all. He couldn’t even afford to have a wreath sent. She was taken off a train going from Prague to Berlin. She was the domestic leader of Neu Beginnen, and she paid for her political activity with her life, if one can talk about equivalents, or payments, and so forth, at all. Greff rath: How dangerous was it to write such articles? Gerth: After the Roehm purge especially, things were rather gloomy and difficult in journalism. But in one way or another one could still get by.

Greff rath: Was there a preliminary censor? Gerth: Yes, but only in special cases such as that of Hindenburg’s swearing in. And there it was very bad: not a single comma was allowed to be wrong or the censors would get nasty. Greff rath: You did some scholarly work in these years as well . . . you wrote a brochure on modern psychology. Gerth: Yes, but this essay on modern psychology was just an occasional piece. The occasion that stimulated it was an essay which I had published in the Berliner Tageblatt: “Sind Traume Schaume?”3 an article I wrote on the occasion of Sigmund Freud’s eightieth birthday. “We absolutely must have that,’’ Scheffer said. Why? Because 60 percent of the readership then was non-Aryan and the paper had to do something to remind that segment of the public of Freud’s accomplishments. Besides, psycho¬ analysis was not officially forbidden. I had the peculiar task of hinting somehow at psychoanalysis without mentioning it by name and of bringing it to the attention of the public. Hence the title “Sind Traume Schaume?’’ a typical inspiration of Scheffer’s. The subtitle was “Bericht iiber die Tiefenpsychologie” [Report on depth psychology]. It was a sort of short history of psychology in Germany which asked the question: how was it that all of modern psychology was rooted in German-speaking culture, from Rorschach to Freud and his offspring. Freud was never promoted beyond the position of assistant professor during his life even though, during the twenties, he made the University of Vienna more famous than its whole faculty together.

28

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Geffrath: Was there a shared self-conception among the newcomers to the editorial staff of the Tageblatt: Bovari, Beer, Korn, you? Was there a consensus in the sense “we are fostering resistance”? Gerth: No. One would not talk about these things. There were only indirect instances of recognition, such as the following: There was an old Social Democrat among the typesetters. When one among us rushed through the glass door with a wet proof which had been quickly corrected in half an hour, he came and grinned: “Nice day. Beautiful weather, isn’t it. . . .” That was all, but it spoke volumes, although no one had said anything objectionable. Greffrath: Wasn’t there a specific incident that led to your dismissal? Gerth: The glory lasted for only one or two years. I don’t know for sure, but I think it was due to some infamous dirty tricks by my colleagues on the editorial staff. Although I can’t pass judgment on them, I didn’t trust them. One evening around midnight, Scheffer invited me to drink a glass of wine with him. In reply, I said: “O.K., I see it coming already, the wine is too good.” “Yes,” he said, “things can’t go on anymore in the way they have up to now.” That was it. There wasn’t any specific article that led up to my being fired, though something was always happening. When I was in Denmark, I wrote an article about the Handwerktag [a day to honor craftsman] in which I brought together all kinds of things from the honoring of the cobbler son’s of 1848 up to the most recent Handwerktag. That was a little brash. The paper would receive letters: “Your Jews are becoming influential again” and similar complaints from vigilant and attentive readers. Something like that was going on all the time. Perhaps that was why Scheffer couldn’t keep me on any more. I don’t know. He recommended me to the Berlin office of United Press. Greffrath: Was Scheffer a kind of bourgeois opponent of the Nazis? Gerth: Yes, there was a generational difference between us, a gap that he couldn’t bridge. But he had a certain cosmopolitan experience, and hence he couldn’t allow himself to go along with such dirty business as, for example, murdering a general in broad daylight. Just as the general opened the door to let the SS in, bang-bang, they shot him. Then his daughter came, and when she saw her father, she wanted to flee in panic, then: bang, they shot her too. Finished. That must have been in 1934 in connection with the Roehm business. After the night of the long knives, Scheffer ordered me to stay. As the others had left, he said: “Gerth, stay here please for a little while

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

29

until it is light.” He was incredibly scared. The Roehm putsch was going on all around us. They also picked up Franz von Papen that night. Greffrath: How did something like the Roehm putsch leak out at all? Gerth: By accident. I was in Lichterfelde, a pretty suburb of Berlin, on a Saturday. Unfortunately there was a large SS detail there. Around noon that day, just before the paper was ready to go to press, we had received an ominous dispatch from Munich at the Berliner Tageblatt, which we put on the first page: “Shots in Munich.” That evening I visited a friend who lived in Lichterfelde, and as I was going back to the subway station, a bunch of people were standing near it and talking. “What’s up?” “Someone’s coming.” And then came heavily armed SS guys through the turnstile with heavy machine guns. They had come in the plush-sofa, the first-class express train from Munich. These were incongruent: a bourgeois luxury train car and in it a uniformed mob with machine guns. It was a scene which for the first time made me really feel terror in my bones. The incongruence was between what I actually saw and what, nevertheless, was unimaginable in honest, bourgeois Lichterfelde. The SS troops had come from Munich and had been shooting and massacring and God knows what else. Greffrath: Were there places where you could meet with close friends, where one could talk straight? Gerth: Yes, that happened too. In Kassel, there were a few students from the university who often held parties and invited mutual friends. In Berlin, Lisel Paxmann once took me to a party where someone imitated Hitler. But social get-togethers no longer had a political function. They simply gave one a warm feeling of not being alone, and were good for mutual support and encouragement. Isolation is naturally always a great burden. It is like solitary confinement when one goes around with the knowledge that one false word or false movement, such as taking a forbidden text out of one’s pocket—due to carelessness—they can pull you in. Greffrath: Was the atmosphere like that in the office of the Tageblatfl Gerth: Yes, with a few exceptions. Day to day things went like this: I would meet a gentleman from Kassel in the hall; I would greet him, say hello and immediately it would occur to me “How can I get rid of this guy? He should not be seen with me. He is a Jew, and he looks like one.” The elevator operator was a super-Nazi. The man’s name, the Jew that is, was Finkenstein. He came from Alsace, was a merchant in gold fillings and

30

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

had settled in Kassel. He was a kind of patron of radicals, a “Radikalinski.” I met him in his villa in Kassel, where he lived like a patrician: the gramo¬ phone played Shaliapin, and Persian rugs were everywhere. We talked on his terrace about the election results after the fall elections of 1932: they showed a small setback for the Nazis. A small coterie of intellectuals— anxious, troubled, weighed down—met at Finkenstein’s and talked with each other about where things were headed. They included an upper bourgeois lady from the city lyceum and the chairman of the Communist party in Kassel, Ernst Lohagen, whose name I heard when I returned to Germany in 1947. He had become a gauleiter, a political leader of a district of Sachsen, during the Third Reich, though not for a very long time. After a year he had disappeared in some vile fashion into a factory where he had to work again. He was, as they said, “safely” liquidated or given the axe. I’ve never heard what did become of him. He was a nice guy, no intellectual, rather an apparatchnik, if you will. After I fled Germany, my mother gave him my neckties. I used to borrow Communist pamphlets from him, mostly the “classics.” My sister hid them under the coal in the basement. I think she risked her life unnecessarily, for they weren’t really worth taking such risks. But she did it anyway. Artists from the academy in Kassel, with whom I spent a lot of time, also come to the soirees at Mr. Finkenstein’s. There was, for example, the poor but honorable widow with her kid in school and a rented room. She was also an artist. They took me along and explained to me how one must really look at modern painting. Take a look in the room there. I bought some pictures there, that I could barely eke out of my book budget. There’s a Heckel and a Kathe Kollwitz, naturally. Kollwitz is, in my view, a great artist, even though she is devalued today in certain circles. And Nolde naturally. After the interview take a close look at his pictures. There aren’t so many around. Naturally when the lights go out, an all-out war breaks out over these heroes of such different persuasion. But I was very tolerant then. I was able to hold Nietzsche and Karl Marx in one embrace; with painters it was even easier. Well, this man who visited me at the Berliner Tageblatt in 1934 or ’35 was the gold filling merchant from Kassel. So I said to him: “Listen, I’m in a frightful rush. Let’s meet in Potsdam, at the last station on the S-Bahn line. We can go for a little walk.” He agreed, and I met him there. And I then had what turned out to be the bad habit of jotting down for myself during the quiet hours some of the language regulations issued by the Nazi propaganda ministry.4 In fact a bitter struggle went on in each of the daily press conferences where we were always told that much too much of the news was reaching the foreign press. The stuff I had with me that day belonged to the “forbidden news.” I had a whole package of “language instructions” which I gave to the guy from Kassel and said: “Here you

31

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

have something interesting. For God’s sake leave me out of the game. [Bring] them some place where they’ll be useful.” And several years later in 1938, I received a small postcard. “It is requested that you be present between this and that time in this and that place,” followed by a series of numbers and figures and so forth. As a journalist I knew right away that it was the political police. And then you had a week or two to behave nervously perhaps under close surveillance. At least you believed you were being watched, even when they didn’t go to the trouble. I had worked the night shift at the United Press and was at odds with life in general for I hadn’t had breakfast. There [at my interrogation], without breakfast, I sat across the table from a gentleman who asked me very politely, too politely: “So, you are Mr. Gerth from United Press?” And then a very slow chess game began until he got to this question: “Do you know a Mr. Finkenstein or Finkelstein in Kassel?” “No, the name is not in my address book. ...” Well, after a half an hour he took out of his drawer a subpoena from the district attorney in Kassel directing me to appear before the court. So, Mr Finkenstein had “sung.” I don’t know what the poor guy had to endure before he died. He had confessed to everything and apparently made great efforts to produce another fall guy. In other words, they beat him to a pulp, and in his anguish he told them whatever he knew about me. I haven’t ever told anyone these things before; you’re privileged. I do not think that you should advertise this story, but you can judge better than I how it will affect other people. Greff rath: Did this interrogation cause you to flee?

i

Gerth: Yes. When I was finished at Alexan^erplaz I went immediately to Kiel. My wife-to-be gave me her train ticket! She had wanted to visit her mother but stayed behind in Berlin. She got rid of all dangerous books and anything in any way dangerous from my apartment. She hid the stuff in the telephone booths of the neighborhood. Everything had to be done very fast. She then traveled to Leipzig, to my sister’s place, to clean up everything there, and finally to Kassel to my mother. It was very exciting. And I spent the night in Kiel with a lawyer who later was on the federal court in Karlsruhe. He said—I remember it as if it happened today— “Poor creature, you’re shaking. What’s wrong? First let’s go to get some¬ thing good to eat.” Then we went to the rathskeller in Kiel. During the next morning something really incredible happened. My passport was due to expire. I had to have it renewed. Just before my “examination” with the police I had been in England and therefore had a visa in my passport. The next morning I met a gentleman at the lawyer’s office who earlier had once worked for the Volkische Beobachter. After the Roehm putsch, the lawyer had helped him disappear by getting him

32

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

a job in the torpedo project in Eckernforde. He was safe there for the time being. And this man—probably a left-winger in the SA, I don’t know for sure—was the resident expert in Eckernforde in “correcting papers.” He spent one or two hours with my passport and made a nine out of a three. That was very good. It gave me time to come to America. And then I went to England via Denmark. I stayed in Denmark a few days to recover from the border crossing, long enough only to collect enough courage for the next step which produced more palpitations of the heart than anything that had happened up till then. At my arrival in England, there was a very painful interrogation from an English border guard to whom I had to explain why I had no return ticket. I could hear myself speaking, as if every word fell into a very deep well. For this customs officer was a very important man. He was responsible only for the people he allowed in, never for the people he kept out. Thus, a colossal number of things depended on these ten minutes; and my heart leaped up into my throat. This was a man on whom my life depended, and for all that, the questioning lasted only half an hour. Everything was up in the air—depending on whether or not this worked out. If you got through . . . fantastic! But let’s forget it. It was nothing more than a border crossing, but my God, a lot of people didn’t make it. Look at Walter Benjamin in Spain. He got over the border, but the guards came and caught him. He didn’t have the resources anymore to calmly turn the pages of his newspaper. Mannheim, for whom I once wrote footnotes, was in London then, and he, in turn, was familiar with a refugee committee. It was made up of Jews from Oxford who proudly placed their labor power and their knowledge in the service of good causes. And let me tell you it was very hard for them because I was not a Jew. For in that kind of operation it was really dreadfully important whether or not one was Jewish. If you didn’t belong you felt as if you were in a book of fairy tales: “all alone. ...” I had received the money for the trip from this foundation. The main goal was: How could I get to America? I had to leave England. I was allowed in only under the condition that I wouldn’t try to establish myself in England or anywhere in His Majesty’s empire—and that included India and Australia. I wasn’t even allowed to go there. I was in the world without a visa. I didn’t really want to go to America because my bride was still in Europe, and I didn’t know what would happen to her. I could remain in England for only a few months; and the task of the committee aiding refugees was only to prepare me for the visit to the American consulate. I’ll never forget that visit. They said to me: “Listen, when the man asks you: ‘And how is it that you have such an impressive account at Barclay’s Bank?’ (I had it for only two days—the refugee committee had arranged it), “then you say to the man: ‘Sir, under the circumstances (learn it by heart, young man), I beg leave from having to answer that question.” And that’s how

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

33

it happened. Whereupon (then it was very stylish, Donald Duck was still new, to wink) he winked and I winked, and then he signed the papers. That was all I wanted. So somehow or another it worked out. I gained a quick and sudden insight into this very surrealistic world, only for a short but very intensive time. All kinds of impossible and unforeseen situations continuously came up due to my background or to something else. Later, In Cuba, it was also crazy. I wanted to go from New York to Canada to extend my visa. No dice. So I had to go to Cuba which was the only port of passage open for the little mice, and in Cuba there were already a lot of people waiting. Many people had started restaurants there. I made myself useful by doing transla¬ tions for those who also waited. Well, then I was younger, and that is obviously helpful for maintaining an all-around elasticity of the soul. But there were also a lot of people who said: “No, now I can’t go on like this anymore.’’

Greff rath: You emigrated late. At that time, were there any job possibilities at all for intellectuals in America?

Gerth: There were two possibilities. I could try through United Press to get back into journalism. I didn’t want to do that. I always saw journalism as a kind of emergency aid. I wanted to go back to the academy. So I didn’t bother with United Press at all but visited the New School for Social Research and met Hans Speier again, Emil Lederer and others, including Hannah Arendt and Gunther Stern. I had often been a guest at their homes in Frankfurt. But when I presented myself to Arendt and Stern and greeted them, they turned around and left. As far as they were concerned, I was a Nazi. They had lost respect for me because I had worked for the Berliner Tageblatt after 1933. Well, very nice. I wasn’t able to get over that for years. I then went to Speier, a former assistant to Mannheim in Heidel¬ berg, who had been very good to me. I did so, so that he would protect me from such attacks. I showed him what I had written in Germany when I was working on the Berliner Tageblatt, and he—thank God—offered to help me. As a possible gift for a future birthday for my wife, I had glued together a collection of my newspaper clippings. Speier read these and certified that I was, so to speak, “house-broken” [stubenrein], and not someone infected with the Nazi’s sickness. I am also indebted to Speier for his recommendation to the University of Illinois.

Greffrath: Your first publication in the USA was the essay on the Nazi party?

Gerth: Yes. I had material from the labor front that was not available

34

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

on the market. In it the party stratification was presented, in terms of career and job categories: Workers, peasants, civil servants, etc. I correlated this material with the election percentages of the NSDAP. Thus one could determine on a percentage basis which groups were dominant in the party. At that time, the most widespread view among sociologists was that whitecollar workers, the descending old middle class, plus young people who had no career or job experience (and who had not been integrated into a trade union organization) made up the bulk of the National Socialist party. The depression was thought to be the main cause for the upswing of the Nazis.

Greffrath\ Were these social groups inherently attached to national socialism and to its ideology, or were they attracted to the party because there was no other party that concerned itself with these groups?

Gerth: That was not a significant factor. After all, what was the main experience of these groups? “The Savior’’ [Der Retter\ was written on all the posters. That theme was dealt with in a strictly personalized way. Political problems were considered only as personal issues. They really needed a superman to save them from despair. It was the old religiosity transformed into secularized hero worship. That was the ace card that Hitler was able to play. Joachim Fest has once again placed this aspect of national socialism in perspective very nicely. As far as Hannah Arendt was concerned, in this essay I committed the crime of interpreting national socialism as having a split personality. Perhaps it is a mortal sin; but this is how it appeared to me: on the one hand, national socialism was a pure bureaucracy in Max Weber’s ideal typical sense. All forms of thinking along a military model applied to the Nazis whose intention it was to restructure the nation. Half the nation was supposed to stand at attention, holding either a spade or a gun. On the other hand, it was a charismatic organization not only in the sense that the great Fiihrer was an extraordinary hero who everyone followed but also in that everyone was a “Fiihrer’’ all the way down to the local block guard. They were all endowed with charisma, that is, they were ready to perform in an extraordinary, not everyday, manner for the glory of the movement. The whole party structure was based on these two motives: on the one side, standing at attention; on the other, the readiness to actually take on any possible risk, daringly breaking out of daily routine and not waiting for orders, but on the contrary with the utmost energy accelerating the journey towards death. This, however, was a model that combined charisma and bureaucracy, one that was prohibited in Weber’s analysis. Charismatic leaders and bureaucrats must hate each other like fire and brimstone. On the other hand, the Nazis offered them together. These considerations

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

35

seemed helpful to me in understanding all sorts of problems within the Nazi movement, problems which one could not get at without—if you will— such conceptual convolutions. This includes the fact that nothing else but violence stood at the disposal of the leadership. In this light the actions of the SS can be understood; for example, the shootings at Lichterfelde. Herr Hitler himself was drawn to similar behavior—storming into Roehm’s bedroom with a pistol and arresting him. Imagine that. The leader of one of the great states of Central Europe didn’t send the police into that bedroom— No, he did it himself! The next day I was sitting at a friend’s place in Lichterfelde. We heard salvos every ten minutes finishing off somebody and each one of the salvos was punctuated with “Heil Hitler.” Greff rath: And was your heresy theoretical or political? Gerth: I don’t know. Hannah Arendt put a footnote in her book on totali¬ tarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she criticized me indignantly because I held that nazism was also a charismatic phenomenon. She knew Greek and while in Marburg had studied theology. She remained loyal to the concept “having the grace of God”; for her, however, it was only the Kaiser to whom the term was applicable, not Hitler. Greff rath: You didn’t remain in New York—where your colleagues from Germany were—where you could work together. Rather you landed in Madison, Wisconsin. I assume not due to your free choice. Gerth: First, in New York all the seats were taken. And second, anyone who fled from Germany as late as I had, had to reckon with a certain amount of mistrust. After all, I had been fingerprinted. Those who came after 1939 had to have fingerprints made, hand over their cameras and be able to support their case at the FBI. It was all very official. You received a receipt and considered yourself lucky that you hadn’t disappeared in a camp, like the Japanese on the West Coast. Greffrath: Couldn’t you validly claim that you fled for political reasons? Gerth: You couldn’t even think of maintaining your rights. Later, there were real gestapo-like episodes in Milwaukee. After the war I was lucky to get my citizenship at all. The case came to court. About a hundred hungry and thin people were sitting there. I was the last. The district attorney called me on the carpet: “You’re supposed to have said that the German army was the strongest army in Europe, etc.” And then I said: “When the Germans marched into Paris with bands playing, there were a lot of people who shared that opinion.” There was a long report in the hands of the court

36

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

from many people who denounced me for no special reason. They were simply dumb and could not interpret what I really said. There were also some really sinister denunciations: “you were supposed to have said in this lecture ...” etc. You know, however laughable all this sounds in retrospect, however good it may be for anecdotes . . . don’t forget that in hearings such as this your life is always hanging in the balance. Either you’re going to be deported, or you become a citizen. Either you keep your job, or you lose it, which is no small matter for an academic. What is he supposed to do then? Make watches? What can he do? And if you have small children— I had two; one was born when the war broke out, the other when it ended. In short, it weighs on you when you go through those kinds of procedures. Greff rath: What kind of people denounced you? Gerth: Colleagues. Honorable colleagues at the University of Illinois. They were motivated by patriotism and didn’t want a “Nazi spy” in their midst. Greffrath\ And you were first confronted with all this after the end of the war? Gerth: Right. The wheels of justice grind slowly. Greffrath'. In the first fifteen years in America you essentially published translations of Max Weber. Why? Out of resignation? Gerth'. Not at all. It goes back to a simple story. What else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t even gain access to Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, in order to introduce Mr. Krenek, the composer, to him. Krenek was in Wisconsin one summer. He was giving lectures which I frequently attended as it was a chance to learn something about modern music. I would have liked to take Krenek along and introduce him to Frank Lloyd Wright whom I knew. It would have been an outing for the day for which I needed permission. I sent my wife who was cleverer than me, more imposing and eminent looking, and perhaps more accommodating than I would be with such civil servants. But it didn’t work. It wasn’t allowed. I was the finger¬ printed enemy alien, that is, to be blunt: under city arrest. For five years I was not allowed to leave the city without special permission. What are you supposed to do then? So I sat down and started to translate Max Weber . . . always afraid that something could happen and that I’d have to go to a camp and my wife and children would be sitting in Madison. She didn’t get an office job in the university. During McCarthyism that was out of the question.

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

37

Greffrath: Couldn’t your rather eminent and successful colleagues in America help you? Gerth: I didn’t have any good friends then. I got to know Otto Kirchheimer only later. So these years in Madison focused really on the little things: the intimate sphere of the home, love, children, period . . . and work, work, work. Greffrath: What did you teach in Wisconsin? Gerth: Really everything. If a colleague was ill or was on leave for a year, I would usually teach his course. In the afternoon I taught officers—sixteen hours a week—who were supposed to be sent to Germany, and every so often, there were forums in the evening: What is Mussolini going to do now, or something like that. It was endless. I could only be grateful that someone had given me a job at all. That’s how the University of Wisconsin saw it as well. I didn’t always see it that way, though. When I think of the questions that the district attorney read to me at the naturalization hearing, I can imagine what must have been brought forward without my having ever heard of it. One was dealing with people who proudly described themselves as American Fascists and who came out with anti-Semitic phrases. And on the other hand, I was suspected of being a Nazi spy! In the midst of all this, translation was a way of passing the time, improving my English, and after the Weber material was published, it took on a momentum of its own. Greffrath: Thus, Madison was a diaspora after all? Gerth: Only during the war years when I was a fingerprinted enemy alien. Later Krenek visited often. Rudolf Kolisch, Schoenberg’s brother-in-law, a violinist who held his bow with his left hand because he had lost a finger on his left hand as a child and thus had to relearn to play, lived next door. We had a small group: Marshall Glasier, a painter and student of George Grosz who was old-fashioned and a bit older than me, also was part of the circle. Mies van der Rohe’s wife, who directed a dance company in Wisconsin, visited the Kolischs often. The milieu was like that for decades. Greffrath: So that was really a European island. . . . Gerth: Indeed it was. Other people didn’t pay attention to me, thank God. Greffrath: After the war, were you subjected to surveillance . . .?

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Gerth: No. There was alarm and excitement on the faculty concerning whether or not McCarthy would proceed with his march through the academic institutions, and if he would take a good look at his home state. But he didn’t do that, and I found that very clever. The mere threat produced a greater fear. You could see it. I sensed it when I was permitted to publish this volume on the First International.5 Greff rath: Did you once again, as on the Berliner Tageblatt, have to speak in code [Sklavensprache]? Gerth: Yes. It was serious business. There were spies among colleagues and students who for a few bucks wrote reports for interested gentlemen. Greffrath\ Have you learned from American sociology? Gerth: A great deal. I’d say one learns with a certain degree of humility that one is only one among many workers. It’s inevitable when you recognize that there are about 6,000 organized sociologists in the United States, working in the context of an incredible fragmentation into subjects and fields. It drives the arrogance out of you. Greffrath: Was this practical, or perhaps better put, everyday sociological orientation something new for you in contrast to the German theoretical tradition? Gerth: Consider the following: People say, especially in America, that German sociology really doesn’t exist. That it is only babble, philosophical babble. These people don’t realize that, for example, while Americans are busily “discovering” the city, one has only to take a look at the Statistical Yearbook of the City of Berlin (from 1860 to 1900) to learn that this discovery had been made before. There was a new book every year. It is a statistical almanac in which you can look up how many horse-drawn cabs disappeared due to the introduction of electricity and the like. You can’t get that kind of information for America. It doesn’t exist. Why is that so? Because German liberals and rather well-trained social scientists moved into the municipal bureaucracy and produced these fantastic volumes, volumes that we didn’t know about at all when we were students. They were readily available in the collections of every municipality. From them you could get “the facts” about German cities. Thus, you didn’t have to wait until the production of these American potboilers on urban sociology. Greffrath: Well, yes, but there has been a parallel development in Germany

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

39

for decades. On the other hand, there is an enormous collection of facts. Alongside of that is a theoretical sociology which often neglects these facts. Gerth: I wouldn’t be so harsh. In these old Berlin statistical yearbooks you can find reflections of a theoretical nature, apart from the purely technical-statistical themes. For example, you can read thoroughly theoret¬ ical reflections on population problems, but the stuff is simple, practical, and everyday. It doesn’t belong to the higher spheres of the pure Geist, in which sociology, like every other discipline within the educational cosmos [Bildungskosmos], is trying to demonstrate that high culture exists within the social sciences and that they (the social sciences) are not only a utilitarian mishmash good for encyclopedias. This separation of a narrow cultivated scholarship [Bildungswissen], which fostered philosophical theorems and elevated contemplation, removed from the concrete empirical interventions of a civil servant was very typical for Germany. It led to the view in America that a working social science, actually interested in everyday problems, had never existed in Germany and that empirical social science began there in 1945. That is simply an expression of ignorance. Such science always existed in Germany in the municipal bureaucracies. The Americans didn’t have an academically trained municipal bureaucracy, at least they haven’t had it until recently. Today in large cities such as Chicago or Milwaukee the situation is just as good as it was in the Germany of the statistical year¬ books. The American municipal statistics deal with the slaughter houses or retail beer sales by Schlitz. It’s true though that the peculiar separation between the world of everyday affairs and the so-called highbrow knowledge which existed in Germany never existed in the same sense in America. Greff rath: In the book that you wrote with C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure, you tried to find a way to get beyond the dichotomy between grand theory and mindless empiricism which . . . was characteristic for sociology at least in the United States. Coming, as you did, from the German theoretical tradition, weren’t you drawn to the American systembuilder, Parsons? Gerth: Structure and function, Spencer ennobled by Parsons. . . . One pants through these typologies and schemas, and what is the result? Parsons systematizes and builds a system just as earlier philosophers did. This kind of reduction of sociology to logical categories which Shils and Parsons encouraged ... I can’t read it any more. Greff rath: But nevertheless this theory created an incredible furor in American sociology. . . .

40

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

Gerth: I don’t think that is so. People pay their reverence and go on doing their own thing, but that it made such a big furor, no, I don’t think so. It became apparent fairly quickly how unreal, how skeletal this conceptual scheme [Begriffsaufturmerei] was whenever one was dealing with an actual, historical social structure. There is always so much happening there that doesn’t exist in these books. So, when I think about it, I prefer the Viennese positivism of Paul Lazarsfeld. Lazarsfeld said: “What do you prefer, classical music or popular music? If you don’t want pop music, what would you prefer? Symphonic poems or chamber music?’’ Then you make your little schemas, and when you figure out the margin of error, you can advise the radio firms as to what kind of albums they should play. To do that you need only a timetable: morning, noon, early afternoon, evening. Then you can hand it over to the various mass media, and they can plan the soul with music. You can do the same with literature: “Trivial literature or good literature?” “Good trivial literature? We don’t have any.” And so forth. Yes, it will be exactly the same way here, all these stations will be served and then your interior will be, as it were, furnished. This kind of thing is spread¬ ing out like a fan, at least it is in America. Sociology becomes an attachment to something else: medical sociology, industrial sociology, etc. In this way all possible minute questions of milieu [Milieufragen] can be worked out. Thus, one can say exactly, in a hospital or somewhere else, who will have breakfast and when they will have it, with Wheaties or without ... so one can coordinate all this with agriculture. What a dream, a planned economy, 1984, where you can particularize and have information over everything, push buttons, with limits of error. It will come. Greff rath: You paint a black utopia? Gerth: No, it’s not at all cynical. How else do you want to do things with these enormous urban masses? In my view, it can’t be done in any other way. Greffrath: And Marx with his vision of a “union of free individuals,” was he a romantic? Gerth: Marx envisaged society to be like an express train in which everyone has a reserved seat. There is only one problem: we have a conductor to take care of that: he tells you where to sit. The whole thing works like a post office, or like a railway if you want to be dynamic about it: forward. Thus what men have called the necessities of life gradually become meaningless and unnecessary. Greffrath: And what will be the focus of life instead?

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41

Gerth: Everyone will have a reserved seat: Leisure time! Then the big question emerges: What do I do with it? And the problem is that it will become unproductive. If you organize leisure time along the lines of a democratization of all possible cultural goods, well, that sounds quite beautiful—but nothing will be created by doing that, not a book, not culture, nothing. Records will be played, but that will not lead to the composition of pieces of music. Greff rath: And in our leisure-time society are we living off that substance that was created sometime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Gerth: Oh yes, that’s true in any case. Thus, today, you can choose only between Herbert von Karajan and some other director... as technicians of the presentation of 200-year-old music ... it’s pumped through the population until it is worn out and used up. Greff rath: You did say that you are opposed to grand theory and philosophy of history. But what you’re developing here is basically the notion “merrily and briskly forward into barbarism. ...” Gerth: How so? No, I’m referring only to someone who lives in affluence, lives comfortably. With the affluent society we get leisure time. Only the German soul remains unhappy in it; the German soul will be abolished. Greff rath: And your German soul? Gerth: I don’t have one ... I haven’t had it for a long time. Greffrath: And why do you continue to do all this, the pictures, the books, the grand piano? Out of habit? Gerth: Perhaps. I don’t know. Greffrath: Well, the way you are talking now, you make it sound even more pessimistic than Adorno did when he was at his most dismal. Gerth: How so? Greffrath: You paint a scenario of a perfectly organized society in which I would not want to live, and I assume in which you too wouldn’t want to live. Herr Kaestner, where is a positive moment? Gerth: Yes, the positive. . . . Look—Just ask yourself how many individuals

42

PERSPECTIVES ON HANS GERTH

are really miles and miles away from even a little affluence. Millions and millions. Greff rath: Meaning that it will be dreary and cheerless only for the few intellectuals who imagined that it could be some other way? Gerth: Yes. But they can slave away as teachers and as helpers for those who haven’t made it yet. Greffrath: Doesn’t the negative utopia you’re developing here terrify you? Gerth: On the contrary. Why? Greffrath: I thought I detected a cynical undertone. Gerth: I beg your pardon. It will take quite a few decades to arrive at even half of what we here today call a little happiness. You, me, this whole small stratum of so-called intelligentsia, we are envied by millions still. Go to Asia, there you’ll see something! Go to India, where the average yearly income is perhaps eight dollars. Greffrath: Are these problems that can’t be solved in a capitalist system? Gerth: Are they? I don’t know. . . . Greffrath: I start from the fact that in China, as opposed to India, no one starves any longer. Gerth: Yes, that is interesting. It appears that since 1949 the Chinese have, after all, succeeded in gradually emerging from the worst. I haven’t been there, don’t have much to say about the situation. I’m no expert like Karl August Wittfogel. . . . Greffrath: Wittfogel would grant that things in China are better. He would say: “Social totalitarianism.” Everyone has enough to eat. The only thing lost there is freedom. Gerth: Freedom is lost there? That is, in a way, very funny. Since when have the Chinese been so captivated and bewitched by freedom? Perhaps they really don’t have the comfort of the soul that comes from dreams of freedom. Greffrath: The global analysis of Character and Social Structure argued

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

43

that there will be three or four big power centers in the world and that in one way or another they will become ever more totalitarian. Would you formulate the analysis that way today? Gerth: I don’t know . . . no, I wouldn’t put it that way. It isn’t necessarily so. It would necessarily be that way only if things should approach a situation analogous to war. Greffrath: I don’t mean totalitarianism in the sense of Nazi totalitarianism. In Character and Social Structure you rely very heavily on the theory of bureaucratization and basically continue the Weberian view of society. That is, that the Moloch bureaucracy in its many forms cannot be avoided and that the free space for the individual is becoming ever smaller. Gerth: Well, the last point, yes, of course, but—look, I don’t go along with these worldwide consequences of a “new Egypt.’’ That is one of the great liberal fears of the nineteenth century. Wholly transformed structures of bureaucracy may emerge. Bureaucracy is not something eternal, as if one would be encased in cast-iron armour. There are other, newer forms of administrative entities and performances that do not have to occur in the Prussian-militarist, bureaucratic form. For example, since the 1930s American agriculture has been covered with a system of county agents which extends over the whole continent. And one can talk with them: “What can I do with this pulp? I have this much corn.’’ The agent is simultaneously an adviser and credit grantor for the government. In this form, bureaucratic administration is practiced in an absolutely civilized form. Really it’s a bit like “my older brother.” It’s a kind of governmental bureaucracy and administrative accomplishment such as I’ve never seen in Germany. Or consider such things in city administration as social work. Since the 1930s there has been in America at least a series of new bureaucracies in which administration is carried out in a civilized way and in a bourgeois-democratic spirit. Out of this administrative attitude a really transformed structure of society could emerge, one in which the defects could be ironed out in a civilized manner with public assistance but which, nevertheless, could be centrally managed. It will work assuming that the distribution of subsidies is not practiced arbitrarily as if money were, flying all over the place. Now if you combine this with the trade unions as the chosen agents of the work¬ ing class, then I can very well imagine a future social order which looks very different from what we have experienced, especially and above all, if it is combined with a planned economy. There are a series of observations in Mannheim’s last, posthumously published book concerning bureaucracy and social welfare which are very wise and not at all that mistaken.

44

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Greff rath: In the last chapter of your book you said that the tendencies towards dissolution and disintegration in American society were comparable only with the process of disintegration of medieval society, which extended over many centuries. How does this time perspective look to you today? There already has been mention of the “ungovernability” of American society. Gerth: Ah, what we have are only short waves, seasonal fluctuations which the economists thrive on. Look, there is a crisis on the labor market, in the educational system, and so forth. The great capitalist society has stomach aches all over its body as we experience these Kondratieffian waves. These symptoms can cause a lot of problems, but they do not amount to the “disintegration of society.” Those are nothing but big words. Greff rath: So, capitalism will be around for a while. . . . Gerth: And how. Greffrath: Can one say that Character and Social Structure is still based on a liberal position which seeks to strengthen the individual against the superstructures which administer and manipulate him? Isn’t there a fear lurking behind the pages of the book that someday the individual could be totally manipulated by this society? Gerth: Is society capable of doing that? Greffrath: I read that in the book as an open-ended question. Gerth: Yes, therefore I ask again: Can society do it? I don’t believe that at all. Greffrath: But the process of atomization of men, of their isolation didn’t end with National Socialism. It has proceeded further. Gerth: Yes, it continues. The operation of the market economy, of uni¬ versal competition, sees to that. You see it in the educational system, in the perplexity of the managers who want to hold on to pale and vapid residues of culture, who want to hold on to those residues in the midst of the general din which has become the norm today. I don’t know if this is the general fate of industrial society in the long run. I don’t know. Look at the density of the population of Holland and the other northwest European industrial societies on down through the plain of the Rhine, a huge industrial landscape. It is a condition of society in which sociology could and should be the trump card. It could become a science of education and orientation.

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

45

But it hasn’t become that. Rather the old split has once again persisted in sociology. That is, the split between a natural scientific branch with all of the techniques of administration, etc., that are possible and on the other side, a few—if you want to put it this way—old residues of culture [Bildungsresiduen\. A sort of feeble old bag of knowledge that has been dragged along. Greff rath: You mentioned before your constitutional pessimism. Is that a stance that one takes up as a defense against disappointments? Gerth: You see I grew up as a Socialist, was a young Socialist and have been a Social Democrat. And it is not very easy when you see nazism so merrily ride by, see Herr Hitler on postcards. Aren’t you familiar with these colorful postcards? At the Berlin art exhibition of 1934—good art and awful art—there was an enormous picture of Herr Hitler with a suit of armour. It really was him. I was there with Max Lieberman, the old Berliner, and he said: “Come, let’s get out of here. I’m afraid I’m going to get sick.” Max Lieberman was eighty years old then. Greffrath: And what does it mean for one’s theoretical and private position, if you have to bury such hopes? Gerth: You give up on excessively comprehensive and speculative theories, such as, “where are we going,” etc., and you restrict yourself quite a bit. You learn to say “perhaps,” and you write a lot off. It has been a dis¬ appointment, too much of the cake, more than you can take. You learn to see what you don’t know and how much you don’t know. Look, once again we have people who are becoming “futurologists” like Ossip Flechtheim. He studied or did his doctorate in Heidelberg when I was there. Excuse me, I don’t go along with this futurology stuff. I don’t know about it. I think that the future is a rather rocky landscape. If you plan a city, that’s something that you can really work on, something that, in my view, makes sense. Then you ask yourself: How many people are supposed to sleep, live, eat and work there. Then you can have some dreams . . . about how you’ll accommodate people, what the neighborhoods should look like and so forth, everything that the Russians have gone through since the 1920s. German architects traveled to Russia and offered advice. This kind of planning is extremely meaningful and has been practiced now for decades. Greffrath: But skepticism in the face of grand theories.. . . Gerth: Yes, emphatic skepticism toward the grand theory. In the present world situation, it is a disturbing but widespread form of mental illness

46

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that people feel drawn to a powerful theory, sit complacently upon it, and act as if they have a master key which explains the whole world. Either they reel off particular mathematical formulae and refer to a typology from Lazarsfeld or Hempel/Oppenheimer and declare with insolence and piety, “this is sociology, everything else is babble”; or they make an effort to treat sociological knowledge like a kind of map with the help of which all of reality can be accounted for intellectually. Greff rath: You’ve managed to never belong to a school or a great theory, be it Freudian or Marxist? Gerth: I’ve never been able to get enthused about such schools or sects. What always suited me the best were essays like Mannheim’s, although I can’t do that kind of thing. No, I’ve always remained a man in the middle [.Zwischenmensch], between nobility and bourgeoisie, between proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. When I was a young Socialist and took off from school because it was May 1—that existed in the Weimar Republic, you know—I think I was the only upper level student in Kassel who came to his classroom teacher with an excuse like that and who invoked the Weimar constitution in support of the request; I was permitted to go. With a red flag, I proceeded to the head of my young workers’ singing group and demonstrated. Greffrath: With shawms? [A musical instrument, precursor of the oboe.] Gerth: No, that was the Communists. The worker youth of the SPD couldn’t play them at all. The Communists played the shawms. Greffrath: Can you imagine what one feels when today the shawm orchestra still marches by on May 1? Gerth: Yes? “And higher and higher, the hand firmly on the wheel. . . .” It is moving. . . .Yes, they can produce this surrealistic atmosphere in East Berlin. . . . Greffrath: I’m talking about West Berlin. Gerth: Oh, they do that in West Berlin? Greffrath: Yes, the SEW. Gerth: What does that mean?

A CONVERSATION WITH HANS GERTH

47

Greffrath: Socialist Union of West Berlin. Gerth: Ah so. . . . There is such a thing? Socialist Union? West Berlin? My God, no! It’s enough to make you cry, when people think like that. Yes, what do you say to that? Not much really understood—no?—nothing learned and nothing forgotten. Greffrath: Have you been sorry that you’ve returned to Germany? Gerth: Yes, it’s sad. I have no friends here. A few, of course, and they come by to visit sometimes. One said to me he thought Spengler was right after all, was a great guy and so forth. I couldn’t say anything: I was simply dumbfounded. Excuse me. Yes, when I see something like that I’m sorry that I returned. I even prefer my American friends then. Even within the context of my very Germanic disposition, really! It’s always the Jews who still remember and write once in a while, but it’s terrible. Adorno called this the “damaged life.” My God, he never had any real idea of just how damaged it can be.

NOTES 1. Margaret Bovari, Wirlugen a//e(01ten u. Freiburg, 1965). 2. Neu Beginnen was a social democratic resistance group made up mostly of younger Socialists who, like the Austrian revolutionary Socialists, thought that the Nazi dictatorship would last for a long time and wanted to stay together in order to be cadres for the “time after.” See Gunther Weisenborn, Der Lautlos Aufstand (Frankfurt am Main, 1974). 3. “Are Dreams Merely Shadows?” Schaume and Trdurne rhyme in German, hence the satire in the title. 4. At the daily press conferences of the propaganda ministry, the Nazis instructions— recommendations and prohibitions—were given to the editors. “All writers whose job it was to read the daily regulations, and afterwards copy them down, had to swear under threat of prison and later execution, not to divulge anything about their content. In addition, the representatives of the newspapers at the press con¬ ferences were obligated to destroy the stenographed notes of the oral instructions after they had finished using them.” (Margaret Bovari, Wir lit gen alle, p. 540.) 5. In 1958 Gerth published the protocol of the Fifth Congress of the First Inter¬ national. See The First International Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872 with Related Documents, ed. and trans. Hans H. Gerth (Madison, Wis., 1958).

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PART II

BY HANS H. GERTH

Social Psychology

*

3. APPEARANCE VALUES Men appear to one another in three major ways. They may wear uniforms, costumes or may follow the changing styles of fashion. Uniforms, unlike costumes, are dress styles which have developed with the bureaucratic armies of the modern state. They are imposed dress patterns and are not necessarily the private property of the wearer, though officers are generally required to provide their own dress and bear the costs of such attire. On the whole, however, uniforms, like garrisons, weapons and other equip¬ ment, are the property of the state. Moreover, uniforms tend to obliterate individual differences in appearance, yet they emphasize differences in rank between officers and enlisted men and between grades within each category of bureaucratic personnel. They also stress functional differences between the navy, army and air force. Thus, the functional differences between the armed forces lead to differences in appearance. No individual has the right to remodel the uniform at his own pleasure. When, during World War II, some U.S. Army soldiers who were on furlough in Saint Louis had their uniforms tailored to the style of zoot-suiters (uniform coats were adapted with padded shoulders and lengthened, and pants were redesigned with unduly narrowed trouser legs), the military police could hardly believe what they saw even as they arrested the violators of the uniform code. The soldiers obviously were more willing to follow a fad in fashion than accept the discipline of army regulations. Similarly, older generations of Europeans may recall with a smile the Berlin shoemaker— the Captain from Kopenick. In 1906, during the days of the German Kaiser, a shoemaker, while walking through a Jewish quarter of Berlin, saw a Prussian officer’s uniform in a secondhand clothing store. He Written in 1965 for classroom distribution to students in a course entitled “Collective Behavior." 51

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purchased and then changed into it in the store, discovering when he reappeared on the street that in the eyes of others he had become a new man. Passing soldiers saluted him, and military formations passing by goose-stepped at the sight of him. The “Captain” was pleased with the result. In response to his new found “promotion” he stopped a small army detail one morning and marched it to Kopenick, a small town near Berlin, where he and his troops occupied the town hall. He imprisoned the mayor and ordered the municipal treasurer to give him a statement of the town’s finances. Toward noon he dismissed his troops and in patriarchical fashion gave them enough money from the municipal treasury to buy beer for themselves. The Berlin vernacular of the shoemaker and his easygoing joviality added a helpful touch of authenticity to the shoemaker in his new role. The news of this swindle reached the Kaiser and European society and produced hilarity. Carl Zuckmayer in 1911 wrote a stage play about the incident and called it a German fairy tale. Subsequently it was made into a film which elaborated on its theme of the effect of the confusion between outward appearances and social reality. Millions have since enjoyed the story at the expense of German bureaucracy and militarism; all this was accomplished by exploiting a relatively simple insight into the function of the military uniform. ^ In addition to their use in military organizations, uniforms are often employed in large-scale goverment bureaucracies as for example with German and Japanese railroad personnel and American subway conductors. Bureaucracies in medical organizations such as hospitals distinguish their ranks from orderly to chief surgeon by their respective uniforms. Similar distinctions are made among nurses, especially in their headdress. Private bureaucracies also use uniforms designed specifically for them, for example, airline hostesses, miners, meter readers, doormen and ushers. In modern history political groups have developed uniforms of their own; the political haberdashery of Fascist black shirts, Nazi brown shirts, the white shrouds of the Ku Klux Klan, and the leather jacket of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and its veterans are but a few examples. The historical process of the development and the diffusion of uniforms stands in contrast to the fashion process. Uniforms are relatively stable over time and are centrally imposed according to functional units and rank gradations in bureaucratic organizations. In contrast, the fashion process, as may be recalled, got underway among European upper class and court society during the Italian Renaissance. The diverse sumptuary laws and the legal and conventional barriers separating estates in societies undergoing rapid changes in stratification prevent the homogenization of populations and make experimentation in appearance values a privilege and monopoly of high status groups. Moreover, each artistocratic and

APPEARANCE VALUES

53

ruling family developed its own private livery uniform for its servants, retainers and troops. Appearance values among high status groups can have especially explosive political potential. An example is the diamond necklace of Marie Antoinette, the Austrian-born queen of France. Edmund Burke described her in his Reflections on the French Revolution in 1791 in a famous passage ending with the words, “Alas, the age of chivalry is gone.” The diamond necklace had become to the sans-culottes the symbol of the wasteful splendor of the nobility. The former also defined themselves in terms of dress. Marie Antoinette had failed to recognize the power of the new democratizing tendencies; by flaunting the luxuriousness of the diamond necklace, she contributed to the French Revolution. Bourgeois society entered the stage sans culotte and with its triumph prevailed over prescribed aristocratic, legal and conventional barriers of dress. The breakdown of these rigid sumptuary patterns of stratification obliterated fixed boundaries between social strata on the basis of appearance values. Under these new tendencies toward democratization and individuality, appearance values became strictly dependent on the differential purchasing power of diverse income groups in a market-oriented society. In this process, the long-term tendency has been for the transmission of high style to descend from the upper strata downward. In the Western world, the standards of male attire have been set by various Princes of Wales and by such British dandies as Beau Brummel and Oscar Wilde; some were the experimenters with dress styles and others the models for emulation. Ramsay MacDonald, the British prime minister, when appearing on the international stage, dressed partly for the purpose of helping the cause of British tailoring. By the 1920s, during the League of Nations meetings in Geneva, he could rival the Prince of Wales as “the best dressed man of Europe.” London tailoring, Savile Row, was thus able to establish a fashion lead for men which has lasted to this day. For America the Brooks Brothers’ suit was considered indispensable for a national hero, as illustrated during the 1920s when Charles Lindbergh arrived with his airplane in Paris. The American embassy personnel in Paris hustled the young man quickly away from the awaiting cameras to the American embassy, where they had him change into a Brooks Brothers’ suit. This changeover was carried out before presenting Lindbergh before the cameras of the international press. The American diplomatic corps was deeply concerned with defining the American image as Brooks Brothers through the appearance of its new national hero. Experimentation in men’s dress is far more pervasive and faster in its turnover in America than anywhere else in the world. In other areas tradition plays a greater role in preserving styles of the past. It may be appropriate at this point to remember a reverse principle

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of appearance value—the principle of deliberate understatement of dress style by men in high office. Adolf Hitler demonstrated this when he appeared aboard the German pocket battleship Deutschland where he was photo¬ graphed dressed as a “common man” in trench coat and without a hat during a visit of Admiral Horthy of Hungary. This deliberate understate¬ ment made Hitler stand out in the crowd among the richly uniformed admirals and dignitaries of the Third Reich. On this occasion, he followed the principle of shabbiness, a corollary to that of overstatement, and by so doing succeeded in establishing his identity with the masses of the population. This same method was used as a deliberate pattern of understatement by such overpowering men as Lenin (especially when compared to Generalissimo Stalin in full regalia) and Mao Tse-tung standing in his colorless military tunic devoid of medals and insignia before the background of an assemblage of Chinese villagers wearing colorful regional folk costumes. The utmost simplicity of this deliberate understatement of workaday clothes may be just as effective for the outstanding man as the reverse pattern of medalbedecked kings, lords and conquerors. Clothes are what they are only before a background. The German feudal student fraternities of Bonn and Heidelberg during the Kaiser’s days preferred their members to follow the principle of shabbiness in dress while away from home. The same principle would seem to guide the Tokyo University student of old with his deliberately shabby black student uniform and pocket towel (tenugui) hanging from his hip pocket. The elect student of the University of Tokyo did not play up his aspiration to high office in government or big corporations. In old Prussia the principle was mehr sein alsscheinen (more than meets the eye). In America, at least up to the advent of the Gilded Age, the Puritan motto for upper-class comportment was, “plain living and high thinking.” During the Gilded Age in the United States, the development of the opera, the invention of the coming-out party for the debutante and the emergence of “the American heiress” as a representative figure in society signalled a change in appearance values. The reaction to all these plutocratic, antidemocratic tendencies in appearance values was the muckraking of such social critics as Thorstein Veblen, who, in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class,' criticized the new consumption patterns of the emerging American plutocracy. Miriam Beard, in her book A History of the Business Man,2 especially the chapter on the Gilded Age, supplies us with vivid images of the new consumption patterns of the newly rich. The new upper classes of America’s Gilded Age closely calibrated the expression of their appearance values to the vastness of their wealth, and, as Veblen noted, they particularly established these values by their use of women as display pieces for ornate and expensive dress, jewelry and decoration.

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Bourgeois society during the nineteenth century emancipated upper-class and, later, middle-class women from any workaday life. The married woman of these classes became the housewife who was insulated from market competition. All menial functions, household routines, and childrearing were left to a household staff. The lady of the house was restricted to the function of symbolically representing its glory and family prestige. At best she could undertake the backstage psychological management of the husband. The narrowing of the roles of these women to the almost exclusive expression of appearance values was partly responsible for their rebellion against this role and contributed to the emancipation movement. The emancipation of womanhood, her conquest of the vote (Wyoming, 1876; New York, 1920), brought with it educational and occupational changes that radically altered feminine appearance values. As a white-collar worker, the saleslady appears on the floor of the department store, on the subway during rush hours, and generally as a competitor of her male counterpart. In this process fashion has engulfed all nonuniformed persons of the Western world. Only occasionally have voices of protest and “culture criticism” appeared, such as Critique of Mom Culture by Philip Wylie. For women, the fashion cycle, broadly speaking, can have two extremes: women may wear a low-cut neckline and lower the tubular covering of hemlines. The lower the neckline, the longer the dress. In premotorcar days, for stately processions in court society, a train was added to the dress. The seat is usually maximized, sometimes to the extreme as was the case in the days of the Empress Eugenie and Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canel. When the cycle is reversed, the neckline is raised, as was the case with the “sweater girl” in the United States of the late thirties and with ladies’ blouses during the early 1900s. The hemline ascends and allows a greater part of the leg to be displayed. The stocking or the sheath that envelopes the leg becomes ostentatious and expensive. Similarly, during the 1960s, the days of the mini-skirt, the postwar literature about the breast fetish disappeared. Together with a deemphasis on the breast and a focus on the legs, goes a diminution of the width of the skirt and an emphasis on the seat and upper thigh. The cyclical character of these style changes provides the foundation for endless variations on the themes of breasts, waist, hips, thighs and ankles. After World War I there was the fashion of the flat-chested and masculine-hipped figure, angular in posture, cigarette smoking and wearing a deep-seated round hat. This vamp image of the 1920s displaced the Gibson girl of pre-World War I with blouse, waistline, and half-long skirt, the style of an early white-collar girl. The economics of fashion have been analyzed by Nystrom,3 who shows the reasons and factors accounting for the concentration of feminine

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fashion leadership in Paris. The historically decisive basis for this position was the prestige of the largely haut bourgeois nineteenth-century French court society under Napoleon III. The glitter and ostentation of this court was attractive to the rich tourists of the world, especially Latin American, European and American upper classes. One need only read the memoirs of the U.S. ambassador to France during the Paris commune of 1871 to realize how the communards were shocked by his sense of sartorial re¬ spectability. Only later did the Americans free themselves from narrow conventionality in dress styles. When they did so, they too looked to Paris for guidance in fashion tastes. Other factors contributing to Parisian dominance include the historic availability of small shop craftsmanship, which had existed since the reign of Louis XIV, and a hat and textile industry with the unique asset of the midinettes. Paris provided a ready market for appearance values in the stage life of the French theater and the boulevard settings of cafe society. Needless to say the public life of the boulevard, the coffee house, the dance, the concentration of students, the prestige of French painting from the seventeenth century on to this day, place an extraordinary emphasis on what appeals to the eye. In Paris a great many people felt the need to be on stage at all times, to be seen and to play a role before spectators. If the pictorial artist may be called an experimenter in visible values, then Paris offered him opportunities for his craft as no other city in the Western world. The skill of the French textile and dressmaking industries, the stage life of the boulevard and theater and the availability of a monied bourgeois class recruited from all over the Western world all helped to account for the location of fashion leadership in Paris. Georg Simmel was among the first to make the insightful observation that fashion moves on the moment it is successful.4 It is then diffused in vulgarized and cheapened form. Simmel analyzed this process of change in fashion in terms of basic motivations. First, the wish to be different accounts psychologically for the readiness to discard the old as obsolete and to desire the new. Second, a contrary wish to be like everyone else is adduced to explain the readiness to conform to the new—the eagerness to keep up with Joneses. These contradictory social motivations result in the fear of being both old-fashioned and out of fashion; hence, they supply the momentum for continuous changes in fashion. To a considerable extent Simmel correlates the innovation process in fashion diffusion with social stratification based upon income and property. For the past, this might seem to be correct; but if we look somewhat closer, it seems that in our own times Simmel’s observation would require some modification. In an age of the motion-picture camera and television, with the ubiquitousness of the photographic image, all persons whose workaday

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life entails the pressure to make a good first impression are self-conscious about their appearance. An author such as Erving Goffman verifies this in the very title of his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.5 But while we all may be aware of appearance values, it is now possible to achieve desired effects in many different ways. For example, department store salesgirls attempt directly to imitate their betters in appearance. It is for that reason that prestigous department stores will give all personnel discounts for their in-store purchases of fashionable wear. The salesgirls will compete on the floor for customers largely by making a pleasing and winsome first impression on anonymous crowds of shoppers, for job security depends on her sales volume. One of the major components of her success will be her skill at making a good but fleeting impression on a customer. It is for this reason that the salesgirl or, for that matter, the young, metropolitan, white-collar girl, almost regardless of occupation, will invest an unduly large proportion of her income in makeup, accessories and clothes, all reflecting appearance values. Strata who are economically far superior in name, wealth and job security enjoy greater freedom from the pressure of making a good first impression and can afford to be more relaxed with regard to appearance values. They thus can be casual with regard to fashion. Only the wealthy woman can afford to wear old-fashioned clothes. Her claim to deference from socially lower strata is made on bases other than what is currently fashionable. When she reaches into her once fashionable and originally high-priced leather bag to get her purse and in so doing inadvertently reveals a half dozen expensive bracelets and chains dangling from her wrist, the fashionable dressed saleslady will soon realize that money talks and that she still is only a saleslady. C. Wright Mills in his book White Collar6 analyzes this staged life of the white collar salesgirl. He notes especially her aspirations and these illusionist aspects of her existence on stage, the dismal and impoverished private existence, and the backstage agony of frustration and denial forever covered up by her occupational discipline that requires her to keep smiling. The elite of urban white-collar women are uniquely related to the celebrities in the world of spectator sports and films. The model, the woman artist, the rising young actress, all these are of special concern to manufacturers of the haute couture and to elite cosmetic houses. All stardom in the metropolitan mass leisure world implies a professional image maker, and these image makers focus their attention on the stars and the celebrities whom they help to make while being made in turn by their creations. We now have the public relations counselor at the side of or behind virtually every commercially useful image projector whether it be the rising actress, the administrative assistant who marries her wealthy boss, or the ex-beauty queen who endorses lipstick. The world of uniforms and the fashion process exhibit special features

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in those situations where they coexist with traditional national costumes and regional folk costumes. Japanese ladies and girls, for example, during the festive New Year’s days will appear in kimonos. In spite of the emergence of a modern Japanese textile industry since the 1870s, the Westernized uniforms for school children and university students, military and railway conductors, and even the increased participation of Japan in the worldwide fashion process, the Japanese kimono and traditional conceptions of femininity have not yet been nor are likely to be eliminated. The same may be said for the Indian sari and the Scotch kilt. In societies where dramatic transitions in economic and political insti¬ tutions occur, change in fashion seems to be accompanied by a nostalgia for traditional varieties of folk costume, art, dance, ceramics, musical instruments, songs and other art forms. Collections, exhibitions, and picture books of traditional symbols will be diffused throughout the society during such times of transition. In totalitarian societies such nativist survivals of folk materials will serve as aesthetic and emotionally appealing material for the romantic glorification of nationalistic aspirations. National Socialist policies in Germany during the 1930s covered up the organization of a national agrarian cartel by the romantic glorification of blood, soil and the peasant. Lederhosen, alpenstocks, and feathered hats accompanied the revival of Wagnerian opera, myths of Nordic heroes, gods and medieval burgers, Hans Sachs, Siegfried and Brunhilde. There are currents of “American folk nativism” in music, dancing and guitar playing, which offer to youth a sometimes romantic escape from the rationalized, com¬ mercial and competitive life of the metropolis. Peasant blouses, shirts, jeans, railroad attire, Stetson hats and boots become part of both individual and commercial appearance values. In 1936 just at the time when the Don Cossacks vanished from Russia, Stalin included Cossacks on horseback for the first time in the October parade, thereby celebrating their customs and costumes. Only now when the Chinese cotton industry is powerful enough to crush any preindustrial domestic textile work of the peasantry, is Mao Tse-tung presented in a gigantic mural in Peking before the masses of colorfully painted peasants garbed in costumes of an impressive regional variety and exuberance. We can speak of a national costume as being alive in a given society when the tempo of change is so slow that the difference between what the grandmother wore and her grandchild wears is so minute as to be unnoticeable. When change in appearance values occurs faster, we speak of fashion. In the world of costume, the decisive sentiment is: “What was good enough for grandpa is good enough for me.” Costume belongs to the stable traditions and traditionalism of agrarian societies. The basic sentiment underlying all traditionalism is filial piety—the respect for old age, the love of family heirlooms, of antiquarianism. It is the root of all

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conservatism. In a pecuniary world of technological and industrial change and chronic warfare, these sentiments crumble. The legacy of the past in terms of folklore and costumes becomes a world of staged illusionist effects that are easily manipulated for political purposes. It is remarkable that in certain crisis situations in Western societies where traditionalism is weak, a fetishized cult of nudity emerges. Nudity eliminates all “artificial” appearance values in a quest for purity. In Germany from the early 1900s to the 1920s, nudism allied itself with a cult of vegetarianism and with a general cult of the return to nature. It has also played its role in German youth movements and in regressive movements of twentieth-century art. It was of great influence in the emergence of modern dance under Isadora Duncan. We can also point to the connection between these diverse vogues and cults of nature and modern organized and fashion¬ able recreation and sports. There is, for example, the spread of skiing since the last decades of the nineteenth century from its original home in Norway and Switzerland to the rest of the world within half a century. The different sentiments and attitudes toward nature which are part of such movements are not without consequence for man’s attitude towards his bodily image. Thus, we witness the extraordinary accomplishments of Olympic stars whose performances are measured by the stopwatch. They strive to accomplish the outer limits of the physical capacities of the human body and forever push these limits forward to surpass the records of the past with ever new record-breaking performances. In the past, the ancient Greek upper-class Olympic competitors in track and field were the only men in the Western world who used their well-trained athletic bodies ostentatiously and without shame. The presentation of their deities in the nude in sculpture as images of divine nature and the uninhibited presentation of young men in the sports arena made the gods somewhat more human and man more divine. It is this very un-Christian, pagan world of classical antiquity which still survives as a sentimentalized world in Western art since the renaissance of Western secular humanism. The ancient Romans dressed in their togas would look upon the Graeculi with disdain as circus performers and gladiators. It has been rightly observed that it was symptomatic of the difference between Greeks and Romans that the Romans translated the Greek word exstasis as superstitio. What appeared to the Greek as a supreme moment of man’s being, to rise beyond himself, was for the sober-minded rational Roman administrator a form of incom¬ prehensible madness. Such ancient cleavages in values underlying appearance and physical self-presentation still pulsate through Western civilization. They are of especially great significance in the expression of the passionate and the irrational and of their stylization in art forms such as the dance, music and poetry. They also appear as the beau geste of the French and the Spanish

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in contrast to the rational sobriety of an Anglo-Saxon upper-class modern gentleman cultivating the image of self-control and matter-of-factness. Ultimately, values underlie man’s appearance and their stylization through dress. These values themselves become the ultimate objects of our concern as social scientists. That the industrialization and commercialization of Western civilization has largely succeeded in homogenizing the populations of nations is an object of inquiry, not propaganda. NOTES 1. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York, 1961). 2. Miriam Beard, A History of the Business Man (New York, 1938). 3. Henry Paul Nystrom, Economics of Fashion (New York, 1928). 4. Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago, Ill., 1971). 5. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y., 1959). 6. C. Wright Mills, White Collar (New York, 1951).

4. PUBLIC OPINION AND PROPAGANDA America has become propaganda conscious. From all sides we see attempts to deal with a new configuration of techniques, promoters, publics, institu¬ tions and processes which, when they meet, we label “propaganda” or “public opinion.” America is only now catching up with this new and dramatic fact of life. In Europe, especially Germany, the cultivation of public opinion through propaganda by centralized propaganda machines has become an estab¬ lished institution. Its institutional setting includes the ministry that specializes in the conscious creation and the scientific management of political symbols and the instant diffusion of organized propaganda campaigns, designed to influence the course of domestic and international politics. The effectiveness of such modern propaganda in old urban and highly educated nations, like Germany, startled the whole world and made the United States especially conscious of the power of the entire social, cultural and organizational complex within which propaganda is embedded. Compared with what we now know as the planned propaganda campaign, the phenomenon treated in textbooks on public opinion seems to be idyllic. Compare the speech of the revolutionary intellectual in Paris in 1789 before a relatively small crowd of eye-and-ear witnesses and the broadcast speech of Hitler which enabled him to reach at least the 74 million Germans of Greater Germany—children in the schools of Hamburg and Vienna, students of Kiel and Munich, housewives in big cities, land laborers in East Prussia and miners in Westphalia. He could reach the ears of all these in a deliberately created and timed situation. But his message did not reach only the German people; anyone who had access to a radio could listen in. This text was written for a course given in the late 1930s before the beginning of the out¬ break of World War II. 61

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Even those who did not want to hear or see could not avoid exposure to a few sharp sentences or a slogan or a close-up of Hitler, if they happened to see a newsreel when they went to a movie house to see a Hollywood film. No member of modern industrial society can escape or evade propaganda altogether. We are reached whether or not we want to be, but how we choose to face this situation is left to the individual. That propaganda in some form, by some media and technique and for some purpose can reach practically everybody is one of the most startling developments of modern society since World War I. The propaganda campaign is not altogether new. During World War I every country taking part in it established, at least for its duration, cen¬ tralized propaganda agencies. These machines were directed only partly against the enemy. Their aim was also to organize the nation for war—to make the populace mentally fit for a common fight, to integrate all the inumerable and unrelated motives to fight under one banner, and to achieve this coordination of personal and social impulses for a period of years. It was during that time that the modern technique of propaganda was largely invented and partially developed. Hitler started from that experience, but he was the first to make unrestrained use of these techniques in the internal affairs of a nation. He combined a number of already developed techniques with others invented in Italy and new ones added by Goebbels. The result was that Germany exhibited techniques that differed from those that emerged in Italy or Russia. We should like to stress this fact for two reasons:

1. Germany was already a fully urbanized and industrialized nation by 1930, like England and the United States. Seventy percent of the German population lived in cities and towns, and only 30 percent were rural dwellers. The reverse of these figures was true of Italy, which had not as yet reached so great a stage of industrial development and urbanization. Russia and Italy were still only in the initial processes of industrialization and urbani¬ zation. Some observers derived their theories of fascism or communism from the backwardness of the countries in which these movements drew their adherents and theorized that one-party states are types of domination which can only spring up and be maintained in so-called “backward” countries. Germany’s case proved them to be wrong. 2. After the victory of National Socialism in Germany it became obvious that a modern industrialized nation can be ruled by fascism and that neither long-standing traditions nor even the experience of a military dictatorship, as the one that carried Germany into defeat in World War I, are a safeguard against fascism.

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The example of Germany makes the problem of the one-party state and propaganda more difficult and urgent since one cannot claim that the Germans are inherently uncritical, simpleminded and naive or that they cannot read, write or think. References to so-called “national character” do not explain much because if we understand the German in terms of his Prussian, presumably eternally military mind, his obediency, his lack of courage and capacity for selfdetermination—i.e., the pattern of the old German monarchy—then it is difficult to understand the German Republic. Besides, with that kind of explanation we can hardly understand why Italy turned Fascist even earlier. The Germans would never consider the Italians as equals in terms of military traditions. The example of Germany makes it obvious that under certain conditions there exists the opportunity, or at least the objective possibility, for any nation to develop some form of fascism. And it is America’s realization of this possibility—whether it is likely or unlikely in a particular case is not important—which now makes America propaganda conscious. You need only look around yourself for evidence of this new concern. Publishers are printing book after book on the subject. Libraries are becoming devoted to collecting literature on all forms of propaganda. Insti¬ tutes of propaganda analysis have been founded, and The Public Opinion Quarterly is devoted to research in this field. In Princeton and in New York a whole group of researchers including Frank Stanton, Paul Lazarsfeld, Leo Lowenthal and others are engaged in research into radio, the film, literature, illustrated magazines and newspapers. These sources are being studied under new perspectives only partially pioneered by Walter Lippmann in his famous book Public Opinion, written in 1922.' There is a new, keen awareness that whatever else may be the function of these media, one of their functions is to be carriers of propaganda. We find ourselves in the ironic situation that we must study by scientific means a host of unscientific modes of thought. The importance of the subject is further evidenced in the fact that the world is divided between nations maintaining a relatively free framework of public opinion and those ruled and guided by centralized, monopolistic propaganda machines. It is not very comforting to be aware of this disparity in the utilization of propaganda. As a result, our feeling of security in world affairs has vanished. The post-World War I period is closed, and we may be entering another prewar period. Whether we are or not is not for us to decide. There remains, however, a widespread feeling of insecurity in Europe as well as in America about a future world conflict. Many people imagine that we are driving in a fast train toward an abyss and that there is no driver standing at the engine to prevent a calamity. This insecurity

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reflects the absence of a common center of responsibility for the interplay and coexistence of nations. For instance, the belief in the League of Nations as an organization capable of providing a sense of security from war is dwindling quickly, and world leaders themselves are unsure of their relations with each other. We know that in such times, the use of techniques of propaganda for coping with undefined situations may have a decisive effect. The further realization of such historic parallels strengthens again the tendency to become conscious of propaganda. What is the reason for the disquieting feeling the man in the street has when he thinks of these propaganda controlled nations? It is undoubtedly the feeling that one can never know what is going to happen next. A sudden change in the propaganda line can cause yesterday’s state of affairs to be suddenly transformed. The man on the street may find it hard to make such sudden adjustments in his image of the world. He also must face the tremendous disparity between the technical development of the means of communication and the way they are used. Through the film the world becomes visible to a degree never before imaginable. Through the radio, the telephone, the cable, the press and its vast international organization, we can hear, see and read about things happening in the remotest parts of the world, as well as those taking place on the other side of a town. Time, distance and place do not seem to matter. The techniques of communication facilitate the possibility for the development of coherent^ images of the world and a coherent knowledge of practically every topic and event. At the same time both the man on the street and the world at large are frequently surprised by quick, unforeseen political decisions and events which alter political maps of the world almost overnight. How is this possible? The answer requires us to recognize the amazing degree of secrecy and the concentration of power and responsibility in the hands of a few men who are responsible only to God and their own con¬ sciences. These leaders have neither institutionalized responsibility nor are they controlled by constitutions. They are self-legitimating rather than subject to restrictions by other forms of legitimation. Publicity and propaganda also involve the questions of privacy and secrecy. They are closely related social processes. One may give external affairs great publicity and home affairs very little, as was the case under the censorship of Metternich during the restoration period after the downfall of Napoleon. Similarly, under prewar Russia czarism and under National Socialism in Germany, secrecy and privacy in domestic matters are maintained by publicizing foreign affairs. Censorship is only one means of securing secrecy. Other techniques include the naked lie, the concealing ideology, the gaining and deflecting of public attention and emotions by the use of scapegoats, the monopoli¬ zation of access to the means of communication, and of course, the use

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65

of various means of social control over those who are tested and found worthy of using these techniques. The use of secrecy on the part of those in power finds its counterpart in the secret activities of those striving for power. Since there are no constitutional rights to disseminate information in one-party states and no room for legal opposition, illegal activities prevail. These range from spreading rumors, distributing secret news to building up secret societies. We must ask what is the character of the secret society? By what techniques are they formed and what is their function and place in such a society? Where there is secrecy there is the spy. What kind of a social type is the spy and the counterspy? What is denunciation, and what is boycott? These are some of the questions necessarily connected with the sociological analysis of propaganda monopolies in one-party states. Yet these topics are not the exclusive properties of one-part states. Secret societies exist in all types of societies, and they do not always have revolutionary aims and purposes. The role and structure of secrecy in a society depends on its opposite, the structure of publicity in that society. Ultimately, what is secret and what is public depends on the specific social and political structure of a society. Thus, the Italian Camorra of rural Sicily, formed during the first half of the nineteenth century in Naples, differs from the secret conspiracy of professional revolutionists under Russian czarism; and this type of conspiracy differs in turn from those offering secret resistence to fascism. This phenomenon of secrecy is startling in that one of the characteristics of modern society has been to draw increasing numbers of people into politics. We may view the whole history of the press—since the invention of printing and since the early seventeenth century when the periodical press was started—as part of the process of the political integration of society. Because of these developments, an ever-growing number of people have been brought into politics. The press took up the fight against the secrecy of the court, against the secrecy of the parliaments and against secret diplomacy. The publicity given by the press always meant a diminution of secrecy, and it also meant the growing possibility for the rationalization of politics insofar as it made possible the coordination of opinion between leaders and led. The importance of this process was heightened with the extension of the vote since this meant that new social strata were allowed to participate in political life and to influence the formation of governments. The historical role of the press, and one of its great achievements, has been to organize the masses of modern society for political participation and integration. But this same process of democratization of politics has also meant that rational discussion is increasingly replaced by the attempt to form and manage the emotional attitudes of the electoral masses. These processes of manipulation can be observed in democracies as well as in one-party states. The breakdown of secrecy by the press has been ac-

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companied by the invention of modern methods of propaganda and control. There is a great difference between the liberal-democratic state of the early nineteenth century, ruled by a well-to-do and educated bourgeois society, and the bureaucratic constitutional state of today, with voting privileges for all adults who become at the same time emotionalized masses and an electorate. In our times, the propaganda campaign has become the typical technique of public politics. In fact, the broader the base of the social classes who are the objects of appeal and whose support is sought, the more propaganda campaigns become rationally planned. The very process of democratization results in the necessity of dealing with and guiding the emotional attitudes of the electoral mass. Moreover, the process of management and guidance of attitudes leads to efforts to calculate them and measure their tendencies. Such calculation lends itself to statistical measurement, and sociological researchers, among others, are eager to develop more and better methods to measure such tendencies. We are eager to find “yardsticks” for the measurement of public opinion in order to see how strong are certain underlying attitudes. The aim is to gain rational control of what seems to be irrational and sur¬ prising in the interplay of competing political propaganda campaigns. We have devised methods of measuring attitudes toward newspaper content and of measuring the content of radio programs, films and newsreels. New methods of measuring the attitudes of the readers, spectators, listeners and interviewers are continuously developed, yet there are still wide horizons left for research to approach. We realize more and more that rational consciousness is only one factor in determining human behavior and that reason is not always, in fact is seldom, the strongest factor. The development of psychology, especially the psychology of unconscious motivations coupled with social psychology, makes it possible to understand more of the mechanisms of attitude for¬ mation. We are aware of the identification of the followers with their leader and of the role of symbols, stereotypes, myths, legends and scape¬ goats in propaganda. It is in this field where we encounter the theory of irrationality and political myths as developed by Sorel, Pareto and Nietzsche, and vulgarized by professional fascist propagandists like Goebbels and Rosenberg. The total complex of problems in modern society connected with the interplay of propaganda, public opinion, the means of communication and secrecy contrasts with medieval Europe where the techniques of commun¬ ication were primitive. Medieval Europe was a rural society made up of autarchic units, localities, tribes, each one with a common state of mind. Everyone knew his place in the community; everyone knew his fellows and accordingly his own place. In this kind of society, the events which became

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interesting were marriage, death, childbirth, accidents and other events of a personal nature. All were local events, knowledge of which spread from mouth to mouth. There was no point in reading about what was already known. Yet there were extraordinary events which happened outside of this enclosed world, and they were startling because they were “unheard of.” They appeared to be “miracles” because they could not be interpreted in those categories derived from everyday experience. Such events were wars and other catastrophies of all kinds. How were events recorded? Most could not read. They learned about these distant events from special types of “reporters”: professional travelers—the wandering musicians and poets would sing songs about these frightful catastrophes. They also told of what they saw in distant countries, perhaps of strange fantastic animals. The eagerness of their listeners to hear of strange events led to the use of overstatement in their reportage, producing a more poetical and exaggerated drama to stir listeners’ fantasies. Memory is a remarkably inaccurate medium without the support of fixed units of time and place and without the requirement to provide reliable sources or the means of recording one’s observations. In addition, em¬ bellished reports and stories would receive greater praise the more fantastic they were. Accuracy made no difference to the community because the reports of distant places and events had little effect on its life. On the contrary, the storyteller would have greater success if he satisfied popular imagination and if he provided for astonishment. There were thus two mental spheres in such a static rural community: one, a very strong sense for facts as far as they are tested and experienced in everyday life. The peasant is a hard-boiled, unsentimental realist in this local, narrow and concrete sphere of the immediately visible. Separated altogether from the field of direct experience and immediate concern is the distant dream world that is filled with notions of fantastic animals, strange events, heroes with supernatural gifts and powers and a special sphere of magic. It was to this world of daydreams and magic that the storyteller appealed if he wanted to be successful, and his report would be under¬ stood in these categories of magic thinking. The element of news, as we know it in the modern sense, would be indistinguishably mixed up with magical or poetical elements. They were ambiguous as news, having the character of modern rumors. It would be impossible to check up on the distant original storyteller who first formulated the news. It would also be impossible for him to give the exact date of the event. It was impossible to locate the event in objective time and space, and if the storyteller were asked the source of his information, he might have to refer to someone who had told him, and the questioner could not be sure about the original source. Yet the descriptions of men and events in the story would likely be very concrete and specific.

68

HANS H. GERTH

He might describe the place where the characters in his report were sitting—the room, the chairs, the hair color and dress. He might have given a description of gestures, voices and exact words. He might report of whispering and raised voices at specific moments. The concreteness within the story is conceived and located, and its development is colorfully descriptive and embellished with detail, but this expresses the categories of descriptive observation that the peasant would employ in his peculiar, restricted, local world. The more autarchic such local rural communities were, the less social intercourse existed between them, and the less social mobility existed within them. By the same token, the traveling stranger would be received as an outsider with all the privileges which the guest has in such communities. The frame of mind characteristic of such traditional communities existed for centuries, and even now in those isolated communities whose situation has not been fundamentally altered by the influence of urban institutions, the same state of mind still exists. This mentality has not created a special literature of its own. Only the existence of the mentalities of urban classes which produced its own literature brought on a different state of mind. Some representatives of these urban classes idealized and romanticized the past, thus asserting the older culture against the new. One outstanding representative of this traditionalist attitude is Justus Moeser, who during the eighteenth century was a secretary'of the corpora¬ tion of noblemen of the county of Osnabrtick. Moeser is worth mentioning because German romanticism and conservatism are rooted in his thought. It is no accident that after the ascent of national socialism a growing interest emerged in his emphasis on the peasant, on the simplicity of rural life and on his attack on abstraction and theoretical and analytic thought. Under National Socialism a whole Moeser literature sprang up complete with biographies, research and exegetics. The idea of a return to local patriotism and to a Burkian kind of conservatism based on the values of preindustrial society seems to appear wherever traditional values and ways of life are being overwhelmed by social, economic and political development. Despite the shrillness in its defense, traditional society in Europe contained within it the elements leading to its own transformation. There are three elements in traditional European rural society which fell outside of its framework and which helped to subvert it. These were: 1. The holders of secular power such as the Kaiser, the kings, the princes and the counts. Insofar as they ruled over more than a local, rural com¬ munity, they required some form of explicit, rational and literate admin¬ istration. 2. The Catholic church with all the affiliated organizations of orders and cloisters and with its hierarchical, almost bureaucratic, structure and

PUBLIC OPINION AND PROPAGANDA

69

European-wide extension also was subject to the necessities of rational administration. 3. The growing towns which increasingly required a rational administration for the regulation of commerce. These three groups facilitated the invention and rediscovery of methods of communication that were essentially different from the poetical story, the ballad, the fairy tale, the legend and the rumor. They were within their sphere opposed to magic. Those who held secular and ecclesiastical power needed accurate in¬ formation about what was happening at distant places in their jurisdictional areas of control. In addition, the burger needed information about what was happening on the commercial markets because these ultimately decided the price of his product. He needed accurate information about transpor¬ tation facilities and those factors which affected or influenced his trans¬ port and market chances. He was also affected by wars and wanted reliable information about the factors that make for wars and crises. In this respect his interest coincided with the interest of political rulers. But, of course, interest in receiving information is not the same as an interest in publishing such information or in the circulation of news. It was specifically on this point that the interests of burgers and rulers diverged and frequently clashed. Moreover, it is here that political despotism, based upon secrecy and managed news, and those who want full publicity have fought each other through the centuries. But the processes of information control and propaganda run even deeper. Even since the process of secularization started during the Renaissance movement, when free human reason and rational argument became the ideal and observation and verification by experiment became the foundations of modern science, there has been steady progress in rational thinking in all fields. Old modes of magical thinking were then depreciated and criticized by a growing number of progressive intellectual groups. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, positivism and pragmatism are terms that describe some of the phases and periods of this growing process of rationalization which occidental mankind experienced once it left the dream world of medieval thought. Sapere aude! Dare to think! proclaimed Kant when he phrased the slogan of the Enlightenment movement. To be sure, there were small groups constantly clinging to older modes of thought, trying to compete with growing rationalism in order to defend themselves and their passe modes of life by developing and promulgating irrational philosophies. Edmund Burke’s critique of the rationalism of the French revolutionaries and the romantic movement as a whole are only two of the best known examples. Current examples of these irrational tendencies are occultism, spiritism, and the magic practices still carried on within urbanized

70

HANS H. GERTH

society. Sometimes these spread like fashion, achieve chic or become a movement, and then they ebb, often to be replaced by new forms of ir¬ rationality. For the first time in Occidental history, since the Renaissance freed the human mind, irrationalism has become triumphant in Germany, and Adolf Hitler has gained control over a nation of 74 million people. Since the Nazi regime, none of the great universities of the Western would have thought it appropriate and honorable to send representatives to the cen¬ tenaries of universities such as Heidelberg and Goettingen, which for centuries have been outposts of scientific progress and intellectual achieve¬ ment. It has formerly been possible to interpret occasional outbreaks of irrationalism as “temporary setbacks” of merely local or provincial importance. Such a view now appears to be naive in the light of what has happened in Germany. Indeed, fascism is a revolution of singular importance, a major break from, perhaps a reversal of the long trend toward reason and science. We are at the end of a period that started with the Renaissance. If it was the totalitarian control of the Catholic church which upheld the monopoly of all means of intellectual communication and education during medieval times, now it is the totalitarian state which achieves it. These changes, their implications and their bearing on the whole civilized world now make America conscious of propaganda and give a' new stimulus to investigations in our field. I have tried to provide a brief historical background to our concern with propaganda and to present some of the major questions which ultimately guide our research in this field. In such a quick sketch, a slow step-by-step analysis or the development of clear-cut scientific definitions is necessarily missing. I have not explicitly defined propaganda or even a lie or an ideology. I have treated all these definitions as if they were clear and selfevident. It would be equally difficult to provide short unambiguous defi¬ nitions of such terms as a newspaper, a pamphlet, a periodical or “public opinion.” What, after all, is public opinion? Is it published opinion? What is news? “All the news that’s fit to print” says the New York Times. Is there news not fit to print? Newspapers, in fact, print only part of the material they receive daily. Part of it goes straight into the wastepaper basket. Part of it will be set and cast but not appear in print. Part of it may even be printed, but after minutes of the press run, the editor may take the story out. Is such editorial control censorship? If so, it is not clear where or when it ends. Equally ambiguous is the meaning of the freedom of the press. The National Socialist Press Law was designed to secure the freedom of state and party opinion against the influence of the publisher and the pressure of the advertiser. The convinced Fascist argued against capitalist control of the press. The critical journalist invaribly also complains

PUBLIC OPINION AND PROPAGANDA

71

about the pressure of these controlling forces. A great many Washington correspondents are convinced that their papers do not represent accurately the views and news they transmit to their papers. Objectivity in press work is also problematic as is “unbiased” news. Are terms such as “fact,” “slogan,” “symbol,” “stereotype,” merely ideal types? These problems and questions are not solvable by philosophical hair¬ splitting or by defining in infinite detail a continuous gradation of shades of meaning. What we need for better understanding of these problems are facts that have a sociohistorical character. For example, we may work with old newspapers like the Boston Newsletter which appeared in 1704 as the first American newspaper, with handbills which appeared during the War of Independence such as a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine, with circu¬ lation figures, biographies, and with the reports of governmental investi¬ gative commissions. Yet we cannot go into every detail to gather facts simply for the sake of gathering them. We can and must pose major theoret¬ ical problems and investigate them in their appropriate historical setting in order to understand their own context. We can also discover which questions and problems are still open and where we can find the further material and literature to study them. The general principle with which we approach our research questions will be to look out for those groups who have direct access to the very means of communication. The basic question is: who controls the means of communication, how and by what means, for what ends are they controlled and to what publics are they addressed? But these are not merely research questions, i.e., academic issues. They reflect the very problematic and ambiguous way the press and all mass media reflect the tensions and the power structure in modern mass organized, bureaucratic society. NOTE 1. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1922).

5. VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1921-1940 Analysis of the content of mass periodical fiction rests not only on the assumption that magazines direct appeals to specialized audiences, but also that we can infer from them certain social-psychological characteristics about the audience.1 The magazines in the following study were chosen precisely because each, in some measure, was specialized in its appeal to audiences and because each, in a sense, gave a given thematic aspect of the national inheritance an intensive treatment. Psychologically, the gratification of the reader is obtained by his or her identification with a hero, in the hero’s vicissitudes and in his achievement of final rewards. Since the reader identifies himself with a particular hero model, the fictional hero—together with his social status, his qualities, and his achievements—becomes an important vehicle for the expression of social values. Heroes and heroines thus become the carriers of specific American values and traditions. It is not our task to explore here that complex interaction between reader, writer and publisher which results in the reader getting what he wants and wanting what he gets. Instead, we shall focus on the typical clustering of stories around a few modal themes: a clustering which suggests that the themes, once stabilized, express national traditions and values tacitly supported by all. Details of these traditions, however, become modified in their presentation. In critical cultural periods even the most enduring values do not remain unchallenged. During such periods we can inquire about changes that Written with Patricke Johns-Heine. This essay is a full-length version of a study originally published in condensed form in Public Opinion Quarterly 13 (1949): 105-13. Used with the permission of Nobuko Gerth and Patricke Johns-Heine. 72

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

73

occur: Are the values foresaken or are they retained? If they are retained, we can inquire how they are reconciled with objective reality. The time span of our study, the 1930s with its crises of the depression and imminence of war, may be contrasted with the golden age of the 1920s. The impact of these crises may have affected American value systems as they were reflected in periodical fiction published between 1921 and 1940. We shall discuss some of these effects below.

METHOD OF THE ANALYSIS For purposes of content analysis a schedule was drawn up which included the following items: occupation, age and personal characteristics of hero and heroine; setting of the story; plot summary. We asked: Does the occu¬ pation of the hero correspond to that of those who read about him? What regions and locales become associated with typical heroes, and to what extent do the settings and heroes become stereotyped? Is the hero successful or unsuccessful, and for what reason? What moral qualities are positively or negatively evaluated? What is the denouement, since “the happy end” reveals the final evaluation and reward of the hero? Each story was classified according to its thematic content. Some of these themes were consistently applicable to all magazines, but others were almost exclusively relevant to a single magazine, thus, religious themes and portrayals of exceptional persons were predominantly confined to the Atlantic while themes of nostalgic return—though occasionally in other magazines—were largely found in Country Gentleman. Only one or at most two themes were tabulated for each story. This apparent reduction of the content of the story to one or two themes did not limit the flexibility of our analysis since the magazines themselves presented a very limited range of themes. Complexity of the story was usually achieved by varying the immediate context in which the action occurs, i.e., the use of exotic settings or new situations in various combinations. For example, a simple romantic theme occurs in a domestic setting in which hero and heroine meet, fall in love, and eventually marry but only after a sister competes for the same love. This theme is restated in another story in which hero and heroine meet in Spain and fall in love; but the hero, despite his enchant¬ ment with the Spanish lady, returns to the original woman in America whom he cannot forget. The second story introduces a symbol of national preference in association with the basic love theme. Again, where two themes are intimately related, we frequently find that happiness in love and successful achievement in work are linked and treated interchangeably within the story. Love may appear as a reinforcing reward (the hero wins both the heroine and job advancement), or, love may appear to be a

HANS H. GERTH

74

“cause” of success: success could not have been achieved without the inspiration of the beloved one. However, our tabulations of themes are unilinear: They do not combine the relationships which are established between entirely different thematic categories. Thus by our method of content analysis, we could classify a theme as focusing on success, nostalgia or virtue, but not combinations of these. However, our category of success may actually contain within it specific combinations of themes. Thus, the success themes classified as “reward:deference” (see Table III for our classification of themes) are success themes in which the reward is due consistently to the moral virtues of the hero. On the other hand, the achieve¬ ment subcategory combines success with social ascent as the reward for achievement and refers to the specific skills of the hero. It is not combined with other virtues. In short, our categories of classification are for the most part mutually exclusive. Our sample of magazines was chosen so as to include representatives of various types which enjoyed large circulation. From the magazines of so-called general circulation, we chose the Saturday Evening Post; from the household and women’s group, the Ladies’ Home Journal; from the farm group, the Country Gentleman; from the “class” magazines, the Atlantic, and from magazines close to the pulp group, True Story. Peak circulation for these magazines was first reached in the period from 192§ to 1930, and, after circulation setbacks during the depression peak circulations were attained again in the years from 1937 to 1940.2 Proportionate regional circulation of the magazines remained relatively stable, as did circulation in cities of different sizes.3 A random sample was taken of the issues from 1921 through 1940. The sample included four issues per year of each monthly and five issues per year of the weekly (the Post). From each issue two stories were randomly selected. The total number of stories selected per magazine was: Atlantic, 153; Country Gentleman, 151; Ladies’ Home Journal, 160; Saturday Evening Post, 200; and True Story, 64.4

THE HEROES In Table I the occupations of the hero models are summarized.5 In it we see a general shift away from the business model to the professional. This shift is even more impressive when the business category is broken down in such a way as to separate business executives from other business-industrial categories. Even Country Gentleman, with its increase from 18 percent to 35 percent for the whole business group (and a corresponding decrease in the farmer as hero model), follows the general trend of decreasing repre¬ sentation of the business executive. If we glance at the agricultural group of

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

75

heroes, we see first its notable decrease in the farm journal and a corres¬ ponding increase in heroes employed in business-industrial fields but not business executives. This shift may indicate a change in focus of that magazine from a farm to a small-town audience. In the Atlantic the increase in agricultural heroes is unique and is related to certain thematic emphases of this journal which will be mentioned. TABLE I Occupational Distribution of Heroes by Magazines and by Periods: (1) 1921-1930, (2) 1931-1940 Ladies’ Home Journal

Business-Industry* Executive

(1)

(2)

32% 25%

(1)

Atlantic

(2)

42% 38%

(1)

(2)

23% 16%

Saturday Evening Post (1)

(2)

38% 32%

Country Gentleman (1)

(2)

OO

Occupation

True Story

35%

(26.3) (19.5) (25) (23) (12.9) (1.4) (28.2) (18.6) (12.2) (8.9)

Professional

24

22

42

40

24

21

18

29

11

15

Agricultural

5

6

—

6

10

19

9

9

35

18

Public Service

3

4

16

6

4

6

9

6

8

None Specified

25

32

—

6

24

29

19

10

14

15

All other

11

11

—

8

13

11

10

11

16

9

Total %*

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

76

77

12

50

70

70

99

97

71

79

Total number of heroes

2

*Percentages have been rounded to whole numbers. The figures given within parentheses for the executive category have not been included in the percentage total. An expanded version of this table is given in note 5 at the end of this chapter.

In general, both heroes and heroines tend to be younger than the reading audience, and this youthfulness is, in most cases, even more emphasized in the second decade of our sample. Thus, Post heroes in their twenties increase from 38 percent to 46 percent by the second period; and a slight increase (36 percent to 38 percent) is found for heroes in their thirties.6

HANSH. GERTH

76

These differentials are even more striking in the case of heroines and women readers, despite the fact that women readers generally tend to be younger than men readers. The audience of True Story is closest in age to its heroines: according to estimates 41 percent of adult women readers are eighteen to twenty-four years old.7 In Ladies’ Home Journal, where approximately 60 percent of the heroines are in their twenties in both periods of our sample, an estimated 45 percent of the women readers are thirty-five or over. Heroes and heroines in the Atlantic are considerably older; so in all probability are the readers of the Atlantic.8

THE SETTINGS The most distinctive feature of the settings in which the stories occur is their nondescript character. By far the largest number of stories take place in an undesignated locale and in an unspecified region of the United States. The metropolis is certainly the most frequently named locale, and is the favorite of the Post. The small town is least frequently given a name. The category “town” is the vaguest, being apparently an attempt to reach the “average American town,” and it is found most often in the Ladies’ Home Journal. Hero models and themes tend in many instances to bear close relation to locale. A hero representing small town virtues is, of course, most frequently placed in the small town, just as the titan must be placed in the metropolis. Thus, when the hero model of the Country Gentleman changes, the farm locale declines to less than half its former representation. The slight shifts to rural and town locales in the Post also relate to modified themes. These trends in changes of locale are indicated in Table II.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THEMES It is assumed that the most frequently appearing themes in each magazine reflect the themes which appeal to its readers. A total classification of all major themes and their related subthemes is listed in Table III. Our dis¬ cussion of themes for each of the magazines will refer to the classification and distribution of themes as described in the table. In our analysis we will focus on such general themes as romantic love, image of home, basic virtues, status symbols, and social ascent. For example, as illustrated in Table IV, the virtue category describes the simple personal virtues or vices of heroes and heroines that were rewarded or punished within the story. Virtues are more important in the second period and they receive emphasis in terms of the basic appeal of the particular magazine. Thus virtue is linked with love (and to some extent, psychic security) in the women’s journals and with success if emphasis is placed upon status (the Post).

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

77

In all the magazines, as indicated in Table V, the most important rewards for specific virtues are those for love or marriage or personal happiness. Personal happiness is an especially notable reward, for most frequently it appears as a symbol to be assumed or taken for granted by the reader. The fact that many virtues go without specific objective rewards (such as job

TABLE II Percentage of Different Settings by Locale for Each Magazine and by Periods: (1) 1921-1930,(2)1931-1940

Ladies’ Home

True

Journal

Story

Atlantic

Saturday Evening

Country

Post

Gentleman

Location

(1)

(2)

(D

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

Farm

3.8

11.4

8.3

1.9

9.2

17.6

6.0

10.0

46.5

20.0

11.3

10.1

—

7.7

14.6

12.2

12.0

5.0

9.9

15.0

8.8

12.7

25.0

28.8

16.0

17.6

17.0

14.0

11.2

22.5

56.3

41.8

25.0

44.2

12.0

25.7

26.0

31.0

15.5

16.3

Metropolis

8.8

16.5

41.7

9.6

16.0

8.1

30.0

31.0

2.8

8.8

Suburb

2.5

3.8

—

—

8.0

6.8

4.0

5.0

—

24.0

12.2

3.0

4.0

12.7

Country Small Town Town

—

3.8

2.0

—

1.4

—

Indeterminate Aboard Boat,

Other TOTAL

—

1.3

Plane 8.8

2.6

—

100.3 100.2 100.0

3.8

99.8 99.8

11.3 6.2

100.2 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.1

TABLE III Percentage of Specified Themes for Each Magazine and by Periods: (1) 1921-1930, (2) 1931-1940* Ladies’ Home Journal

Theme

True Story

Saturday Evening Post

Atlantic

Country Gentleman

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

Success 10.4 Reward: Ascent via Achievement 1.0 Marriage 5.2 Luck Reward: Deference 4.1

12.3

14.3

7.0

4.8

12.3

23.5

33.3

13.3

21.3

1.1 3.4

14.3

6.2 —

14.4 3.0

2.4 1.2

2.0 4.0

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

7.2

—

1.4

3.6

6.2

6.1

10.4 .74 1.5 20.7

4.1

2.2

—

—

6.0

2.5

3.8

2.2

Virtue Duty Courage Simple goodness Loyalty Honesty Diligence Generosity Unpretentiousness

16.6

16.8

16.8 1.2 6.0 6.0 1.2 1.2

16.0 2.6 3.7 3.7 3.7

15.9 .75 2.3 3.0 3.0 2.0 .76" 1.5 1.5

Love

35.4

—

Nostalgia

—

1.0 3.1 3.1 1.0 2.1 2.1 4.2

Love in Marriage

6.2

Illicit Love

—

— —

4.5 4.5 1.1 1.1 4.5 1.1

5.6

28.6 23.6 1.4 2.8 — 4.2 9.5 5.6 1.4 —

—

—

—

—

14.3 4.8

7.0 1.4

37.0 33.3 11.2

—

1.2

9.7

15.2

18.2

7.1

20.0 30.2 5.2 1.2 2.2 4.8 2.9 6.0 1.5 10.9 5.2 3.6 .74 2.4 2.2

1.2

32.3 4.0 6.1 6.1 3.0 6.1 2.0 1.0 3.0

32.6 21.5

13.3

20.2

3.7

3.6

1.0

—

—

—

1.2

—

—

2.4

—

—

2.5

9.1

7.4

7.3

10.1

.74

3.6

—

2.4

2.0

—

—

—

— —

1.2

1.2 1.2

19.5

14.4

13.5

9.5

16.7

10.8

7.4

3.8

—

4.8

8.3

1.2

—

—

16.8

11.1

—

—

Religious

1.0

—

—

Crime

2.1

2.2

9.5

Adventure

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

Animal

—

1.1

—

—

—

4.9

—

Personal Type Portrayals

6.2

3.4

4.8

4.2

8.4 20.9

3.8

.74

Child Portrayals

5.2

1.1

—

—

6.0

6.2

1.5

1.5

—

—

2.4

1.2

.76

—

—

—

1.2

4.0

—

2.4

—

Locale Portrayals

—

Social Issues

2.1

1.1

—

2.8

6.0

2.5

2.3

3.7

—

—

All Other

10.4

11.2

—

5.6

6.0

9.8

2.3

5.2

2.4

3.0

TOTAL THEMES

96

89

—

21

72

83

81

132

*Due to rounding of numbers, figures do not add up in all columns. 78

135

83

99

79

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

TABLE IV Types of Rewards of Virtue by Magazines and by Periods: (1) 1921-1930,(2) 1931-1940

Ladies’ Home Journal

Reward

True Story

Atlantic

Saturday Evening Post

Country Gentleman

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

1

1

—

1

—

1

1

2

2

3

—

—

—

1

—

—

—

5

3

4

Personal happiness: For self From helping others

5 1

8 2

— 1

5 3

1 4

2 2

8 6

4 4

7 1

6 4

Retains or Wins back Love of Spouse

—

1

—

1

—

—

—

—

—

—

Love and/or Marriage to others

6

2

2

5

1

—

3

2

10

10

—

—

—

—

—

1

1

1

—

2

Money or Gifts

1

1

—

—

1

1

1

—

2

1

No reward

1

—

1

—

2

2

—

—

—

1

TOTAL

15

15

4

16

9

9

20

18

25

31

TOTAL VIRTUE THEMES*

16

15

6

19

14

13

21

27

25

31

Job or Job Advancement Respect of others

Wins Friendship of another

*The discrepancy between Total and Total Virtue Themes is due to the fact that virtue themes stated negatively (i.e., as “vices”) involve punishments and therefore are not tabulated here. In Table III all virtue themes were tabulated as if they had been stated positively. A total of twenty-three themes which involved a lack of the above-specified virtues introduced various punishments. The most common are “loss of status” and “specific loss” of money, of legal case, of job, and so forth.

HANS H. GERTH

80

advancement, a sum of money or respect from other persons) and yet are nonetheless extolled, usually indicates that they are assumed as intrinsic virtues which are satisfying either to one’s self directly or because they lead to actions which help others so that one has done the “right thing.” The happiness of the hero or heroine is unmistakable, but that happiness, seen as a reward, remains in the same measure, ineffable and thus not measurable. Closely related are those stories where virtue brings “no reward.” In all of these but one (a story in which the virtue of the hero was not recognized by others) the virtuous act of hero or heroine results in death, thus presenting the highest glorification possible. Our listing of reward symbols is not exhaustive. It would, of course, be impossible to tabulate all the virtues which appear in all the stories; only stories with a moral virtue as a major theme are listed here. TABLE V Types of Rewards for Specified Virtues: 1921-1940

Reward

Duty

Simple Dili¬ Good¬ Courage ness Loyalty Honesty gence

Gene- Upretenrosity tious

A

Job or job

3

3

1

1

—

1

1

1

1

—

11 4

8

1

2

8

10

—

—

6

1

—

—

2

—

—

—

—

2

4

12

7

4

2

5

4

—

1

—

2

1

1

—

—

Money; Gifts

1

1

2

2

1

1

-

-

No Reward

1

3

1

1

—

—

—

1

Advancement

2

1

6

3

_

4 1

5 6

Retains or Wins back Love of Spouse

—

Love and/or Marriage to Other Wins Friendship of Another

Respect of Others Personal Happiness: For self From helping others

9

Many of the stories deal with the past and focus on national heroes, the settlement of the Middle West, the Civil and Mexican wars, the wild West and Indians. Most of these stories appear in the second period of our

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

81

study, 1931-40. Their appearance at this time might well be interpreted as an extolling of the past, a way of avoiding or escaping the discussion of depression-related social issues. The depression is scarcely mentioned and appears as a reference only five times in the Post', twice in the Journal (once as a major theme); seven times in the Country Gentleman (the single most freqent context is that where the farm appears as an economic refuge). Related to the depression in the same way is the idealization of the farm (which for Ladies’ Home Journal tends to have an historical character). In Atlantic, however, the themes tend to focus on special characteristics of farm life—peace, quiet, hard work. The farmer as a hero model, and farm life itself appear as intimate and intrinsic features of American life: The farmer is the most individual, the most free, the most “virtuous”—a romantic vestige of the American frontier.

THEMES IN THE WOMEN’S MAGAZINES For both women’s journals in our group and for both sample periods, the basic theme is that of love. It appears as the major reward, the love relation presumably being the best and most worthy thing in life. On the one hand, the status of the housewife or the prospective housewife, her sense of fulfillment, and her personal happiness are directly bound together with the person she has chosen to love. On the other hand, it appears to be a way of magnifying the importance of the woman’s role. Exemplary of the latter is that the classic success story is not an important theme in these women’s journals. Successful marriage, it is true, is a constantly reiterated theme, but it is important to differentiate this from, say, a typical success story involving ascent through marriage (the Cinderella theme), stories which we found in our sample but only in insignificant proportions. The successful marriage is more commonly the sensible rather than the spectac¬ ular marriage. These stories admonish the woman to marry on the grounds of specific intrinsic qualities in her mate which she presumably can bring out by influence or by inspiration. Hence the role of the woman in creating the successful marriage or the happy home is given enormous importance; presumably it is the qualities which the woman brings to the relationship that are decisive. Most problems or conflicts dealt with in the women’s magazines are presented from the perspective either of the loving heroine or the housewife. In both magazines, there continuously appear variations on such themes as the woman’s attempt to retain her spouse’s love and the kinds of conflicts that develop because a wife is forced to compete with relatives for the exclusive love of her husband. The love relation is presented as the only good and worthy thing in life. The loved marital partner is the haven to which one returns after straying. In the Journal, a good example of national

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nostalgia appears in combination with a love theme and points to the way in which the two themes may be merged. The hero is stranded in a German town at Christmas time; lonely, he organizes all Americans in the hotel for a celebration. His real comfort comes from meeting the charming heroine; here, his longing for home becomes fundamentally a longing for her love, which he eventually wins. We shall comment later upon the frequency with which many love themes are accompanied by longings for those things associated with “home,” which in turn become expressed as a longing for love. It is clear that “ascent by marriage,” if we judge by its infrequency in the stories, is not of great importance; love and marriage constitute their own rewards. Reward in this case is the conviction of inner happiness, rather than success in the form of a marriage of ascent. Thus, either winning love or winning a marriage partner is a reward for the heroine on the basis of personal qualities, virtues or, occasionally, the performance of specific services (such as when the heroine nurses the hero through a severe illness which, in turn, becomes the ultimate manifestation of love, resulting in her winning the eternal love of the hero). Another alternative to the marriage of ascent is found in the “sensible marriage” which is closely associated with the inner virtues of the hero. The sensible marriage becomes an admonition to marry not the outer man but the inner, the reward being greater happiness. This admonition can, of course, cut in a number of directions. It may suggest that one marry within one’s own class, or it may suggest an emphasis on the intrinsic qualities of the person. From this standpoint, the ambitious woman may forfeit an eminently successful marriage (or else rationalize the fact that she did not make it) and base her hopes on the basic qualities that her partner possesses. She may hope to bring out these qualities by influence and by inspiration. In turn, this greatly magnifies the importance of her role. Marriage failures do not occur in these stories, but the role that the woman plays in creating the successful marriage or the happy home life is predominant. She may marry modestly or well, but the qualities that she brings to the relationship are decisive. Concerning love patterns, there is a tendency in Ladies’ Home Journal to fall back upon fairy and fanciful stories as a way of heightening either love themes or moral parables, themes which are otherwise quite prosaic and commonplace. This escape into the fanciful introduces new trappings for themes otherwise constantly reiterated. But just as the reality level may be changed, so also milieu may be transformed, and the function of either variation is comparable: both introduce the strange and the exotic. The fanciful, the exotic, even anachronisms and whimsicalities, exaggerate values and introduce such qualities as abstracted from everyday problems. Such stories succeed in distancing the reader from those problems at the same time that the “escape” is directed toward acceptable values.

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The story of the hero models presented in Ladies’ Home Journal is in large measure told by reading Table I, which lists occupations of heroes for the period of the two decades. The social role of the hero is highly stereotyped, but the change that occurs is a shift to new business and professional fields, which is not indicated in the occupational table. In both periods, if we simply match-list the hero classification with the themeclassification, the predominant grouping is that of business or professional man with love or love-in-marriage themes. But in the second period, the occupation of writer, for example, becomes movie or radio script writer, and new models such as movie director or producer, band leader and government bureau chief appear. Nevertheless, the themes and the concerns remain the same; they also remain linked to business or professional models and hence to the same general socioeconomic group, although new specific occupations are represented. But the success story is not a major theme of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Approximately 60 percent of all themes for both periods are love and virtue themes. Nonetheless, the success pattern runs throughout the fiction, but rather than being a central theme, success is a precondition for love and virtue. It is ascribed to the hero model in the same way in which favorable personal traits are ascribed and taken for granted. From the status of the heroes, it is clear that the lives thus portrayed are scarcely poor in the material sense. We may well concern ourselves with the meaning of the rich background scenes provided in these pages. For while this women’s magazine does not circulate in very low income groups, it has been estimated that as much as 61.4 percent of its circulation is among families in the income group $l,000-$3,000; 26.8 percent to families living on an income under $2,000.9 If such escapes into the lives of others occur, how does such a journal rationalize the discrepancy between the material wealth which most of its heroes and heroines possess and the lack of wealth of its readers? We may take a variety of themes to show how such escapism provided a basis for the identification between reader and hero and heroine. It would appear that while otiose living conditions are in themselves elevated and admired, they are also essentially disparaged. This is done in the following ways: (a) By retaining these conditions as background upon which the essential drama (of love and virtue themes) takes place. These two features are not antithetical: the rich are brought “close to home” by showing that such problems exist for all alike. (b) By the typical Cinderella success theme in which not only are such values depicted as essentially desirable, but in which those values are treated as if they were available to anyone possessing the appropriate personal qualities; the Cinderella story is, obviously, unendingly popular. Here the

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original disabilities taken as the point of departure vary from tomboyishness, shyness, to lack of the proper “social qualifications” for mixing with the group of persons into which the heroine enters. (c) If relatively modest and unpretentious surroundings are given as the background of action, these may be lauded by relating them to the superior virtues that accompany them: happiness, absence of conflict and strain. The alternative technique is either to depict in derisive fashion the life of the extremely wealthy (these are rare; we have no separate classification for them), or, more commonly, to use the story technique of the “poor little rich girl.” The latter typically suggests both glorification and consolation to the reader. It is the love complication which invariably proves most trying; the reader is presumably to be comforted that she need sustain neither the interference of a tyrannical mother anxious for the proper marriage nor the difficulties which the heroine herself suffers in finding the proper husband. (d) Finally, basic virtues upon which happiness is predicated may be emphasized, in which case the highest success in marriage is not important; yet the heroine must at least marry “well.” Thus, some stories involve love and marriage as a reward to a heroine for her goodness and kindness to a child, or the reward follows upon the heroine’s willingness to take a job and work rather than depend upon others. The romantic love motif is the basic preoccupation of Ladies’ Home Journal and requires further commentary. Love certainly does not appear as a specific quest, i.e., heroes and heroines are rarely motivated specifically to secure a love-object. The preoccupation suggests, however, that the converse is true of its audience which presumably finds satisfaction in love-fiction. At this point, the denouement of plot with invariable regularity becomes all important. The stories have a happy end for the heroine, through the reward of love or marriage which are brought about by accident or luck. The happy ending held up for Ladies’ Home Journal readers coincides with their needs either for the actual or substitute realization of the security that comes through “true love.” In part this need may be to escape from the insecurities experienced by the single working woman;10 in part it may be a desire for a sense of belongingness and the psychic security that accompanies it. The Ladies’ Home Journal does not hold up the promise of a happy return to the familial home. It glorifies the values that accompany the love relationship and more especially, the values that accompany marriage (the real refuge and paradise). “Home” is where the beloved one is; hence the frequency with which strong nostalgic elements become associated with love themes. For example, love for the heroine may become associated with an atmosphere of home, and this atmosphere then

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becomes the basis of the attachment. Or hero and heroine may return to their common home, at which point a miraculous reconciliation is effected between them. We also find a nostalgic search for the “first” love, or for the love one has lost. The satisfactions associated with the feeling of belongingness ordinarily connected with home become expressed as a longing for love. It is clear that for the housewife reader of the Journal,n much can be found which points to their own problems or conflicts, models of exemplary behavior, and ultimate satisfactions derived from marriage and from the woman’s role as homemaker. Accordingly, we find characterizations of the woman as martyr to home, husband, and children, and that the woman is treated in a variety of roles such as home manager, lady, and companion. From such depictions, a woman may be expected to be happy in the degree to which she exemplifies qualities corresponding to her role. For example: The mother may be depicted as a martyr to her children who, with age, can be less and less depended upon to bring comforts to her. They grow away from her. She is a martyr because she is left alone; and even were it possible to make increasing claims upon them, she instead withdraws for the sake of the child’s happiness. The mother may be depicted as a martyr to her household—i.e., to its drudgery. In the few cases we have of this, the spirited wife usually rebels, takes time to “live,” and becomes the happy wife. The “good wife” may be the clever wife, either in the social sense (she effects adjustments or solves familial conflicts) or in a business sense (she aids her husband in business, solves the problem of the living standard of the family, etc.). The “good wife” becomes the efficient manager and the graceful hostess “without, apparently, lifting a hand.”

But if the magazine stresses virtues and appropriate rewards or points up specific models of the good woman and wife, it also addresses marital problems. These include everything from petty disagreements between the marriage partners to the problem of age and retaining the love of the spouse. Approximately one-half of the heroines in the Journal’s fiction are married, and in approximately 12 percent of the stories, children enter as a part of the plot.12 The most frequent role which the child plays in the stories is that of the good friend, a peacemaker, a savior of parents’ souls. The child becomes the confidant of the mother. In True Story, in contrast to the other magazines in our sample, the heroes and heroines are most distanced from the audience to which they are meant to appeal.13 While the themes remain those of love and virtue, most of the stories are saturated with moral strictures which are presented as external to the hero or heroine. Abstracted virtuous qualities themselves

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become basic, and it is concrete situations or actions not characters that provide the basis for moralization about these virtues. The worthiness or unworthiness of the actors is not at issue; rather, what is at issue is the consequences of their actions, their effect upon the heroes and heroines. The hero models remain on the periphery, and it is the dramatic unfolding of events that is focused upon. Like the Journal, the hero models are presented descriptively and most of their qualities are highly stereotyped. In both journals, as a consequence, success does not enter as an important theme, but some measure of achievement becomes a descriptive taken-forgranted attribute in the same sense that some characteristic feature such as the hero’s height or hair color is descriptive. This characteristic feature is never worked out in the plot, therefore making all the heroes quite un¬ realistic. The heroines, as might be expected, are somewhat better differ¬ entiated for an audience which is largely female. The result of this treatment is a sense of unreality which is pushed even further by the discrepancy between the presumed attributes of the hero, including his relatively high social status, and his actions which are depicted realistically in the story. It would appear that the themes presented to the True Story audience can only be presented by stereotyping the hero in this way. But the resulting disparity between the social characteristics of the hero and his behavior means that psychological problems close to the reader are nonetheless distanced from her.14 Just as the problems of the housewife may become transposed, moral and family problems also become transposed for the True Story audience; in the latter case the transposition contains the additional appeal of the scandalous. In the first period (1921-30), ten out of the twelve heroes are in business or professional occupations. In the second period (1931-40), approximately forty of the fifty heroes are in these occupations.15 In combination with these hero models are the three most frequent themes of virtue, love and crime. In the second period, the love-in-marriage theme is much more important than love themes focused on single heroines.16 Illicit love, mostly adultery, occupies a place to be found in no other periodical, and crime themes are relatively more important in True Story than in the other magazines. In True Story, punishment is more frequent than reward. Heroes and heroines suffer from the fall from virtue or for immoral actions and they do so under extraordinary retribution. The very least that is suffered is loss of the beloved, but characteristically, the consequence of immorality is suicide, physical injury, loss of social status or alienation from children and friends. To the extent that True Story exalts temptation, it also counteracts its anticipated pleasures with such severe punitive symbols that the reader must, in principle, elect the narrow path of virtue as the only correct choice. Physical violence is frequent in True Story and is probably related to the

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easy comprehensibility of clear-cut punishment and aggression. The readers’ psychic frustrations also find outlet through, in turn, the strong sense of dignity or honor attached to wife, home, children, and reputation. This fiction hence deals with family problems of importance to the audience such as alcoholism, crime, marital infidelity and control over children. The working wife had problems in retaining the love of the spouse. Providing companionship is always the wife’s obligation. Last, there are the problems of remarriage and of winning the affection of stepchildren. True Story raises and supplies a moral solution for almost all romantic and familial problems. Themes of virtue such as loyalty to spouse and generosity toward others appear most frequently. For example: The steadfast loyalty of the heroine to her husband who has virtually deserted her later wins him home again and guarantees the heroine’s happines.. The generosity of a mother’s care and love for her deformed child is rewarded by love and marriage to the doctor-hero. The selfishness of the hero in “getting ahead’’ leads to a series of events culminating in the death of his beloved wife, after which the hero reforms. His later acts of generosity toward others lead to greater satisfaction, and the hero’s happiness is restored. The disloyal wife of a minister-hero runs away from her family, deserting her children for a successful career. In the end she sinks lower and lower; suffers shame, anguish, and great loneliness.

In our sample, True Story has the largest proportion of housewives as heroines. Of the few single heroines who appeared, the favorites are the clerical or sales person; the teacher and the nurse are the only professional heroine models. In these stories, children and their roles are important.17 While there are no stories in which the child is treated as a generic model, children actively figure in the plots of approximately one-half the stories in the sample. In two stories the child enters as the savior of the parent; in one the child enters as murderer of the mother’s lover and avenger of a mother who is about to be deserted by the lover. In another the child is instrumental in reshaping the course of his parents’ marriage. The most common theme by far is one in which the child becomes the objective image of the parent’s sense of responsibility. Frequently we find the motif “for the sake of the children” combined with the admonition, “The sins of the father shall be visited upon the children.” The pride and happiness of the father who is bound to the lives of his children also demands from him exemplary conduct. The fact that the child enters as an ego ideal is reinforced by using the child as an instrument of reward or punishment. The disloyal and unfaithful mother finds herself shunned and isolated by her children. Longing for her children,

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she is reduced to spying on them since she cannot announce herself to them. Aspiring parents who tyrannically rule their children’s lives are punished by the alienation and revenge of their children. The function of the themes we have discussed is the systematic magnifi¬ cation of the woman’s traditional role precisely as her public role is changing: acclaim is given the model lady, wife and mother and remains dominant in the face of competing current claims. It is significant in this regard to compare these traditional treatments of the housewife to that given the “career woman.” Unlike stories in True Story, for example, the heroine in the Journal, for example, is never punished so that she loses all she has struggled to achieve, though she bears extraordinary burdens. The heroine models may be eminently successful, but they suffer for that success. And, they suffer in the sphere in which the housewife and mother is presumably most secure, namely, in relationships involving love and affection. The partner and the loved one are the haven to which the heroine returns. The security of love implies a rootedness and a sense of belonging. Nostalgic love themes in which home is where the loved one is, are common; and the sense of belonging, ordinarily associated with home, may be expressed simply as longing for love. In the Ladies’ Home Journal these models are defended and buttressed by simple middle-class virtues such as loyalty, fidelity, unpretentiousness; and love is commonly the reward of virtue. In True Story, transgression of the moral code results in extraordinary suffering. In the Journal the positive symbols of safety and security predominate; in True Story negative and harshly punitive symbols. It is the difference between threatened loss of social position (“what people will think”), of such vast symbolic import for the middle-class reader, and the threatened physical injury where not middle-class status but lower-class physical and moral integrity are imperiled. Controls operate at different class and symbolic levels, but the values remain the same.

CHANGING SUCCESS STORIES IN THE POST The Saturday Evening Post focuses upon, and provides a description of, the success story in current American magazine fiction. Our analysis points to certain striking changes in hero models and themes during the two time periods. We are still accustomed to think of the success story as the achievement of upward career mobility, but the transformations of the meaning of success themes in the Saturday Evening Post within the periods studied resulted in a very different emphasis. We differentiated success themes in terms of the reward. In the first period (1920s) the reward symbol is typically that of social ascent, its basis

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being specific achievements. By the 1930s, however, the predominant reward symbol is recognition or deference received from others. Its charac¬ teristic basis is moral virtue that is rewarded by the love and esteem of others. Sometimes the reward is tangible; but never does it result in upward mobility marked by wealth, success, status. The proportion of classic success themes does not change significantly in the total number of themes, but within the broader success category social ascent becomes secondary. For the Post, the proportions are as follows: TABLE VI Saturday Evening Post Success Themes: (1) 1921-1930, (2) 1931-1940 Reward

(1)

(2)

Ascent

17%

13%

14

10

3

1

via luck

—

2

Recognition

6

via achievement via marriage

21

This change also represents a shift in emphasis away from the “titan” success theme in which the hero is exalted for his own genius over and above other group values to the “little man” success theme in which the reward symbol is due the hero as the bearer of specific group virtues. The “local boy makes good” type is, of course, the other favorite theme. This, too, is contained in ascent stories and predominates in the first period. But again, unlike the little man stories in which role fulfillment and accompanying virtues are glorified, the hero transcends one or another role to attain greater things. In the titan stories the hero is usually represented as “lonely.” It is for this reason that we frequently find elaborate romantic love themes associated with him. The titan is alone in his world because only he understands the risks that he is bold enough to take or because only he can know the extent of his vast responsibilities for the success of his enterprise. He is, in fact, overburdened by these responsibilities and finds escape in love. Usually the titan-hero is confident and is aware of precisely how and why he must make his next business move. The story usually presents a realign¬ ment of power relations through which the hero with little elaboration, moves directly to a remarkable victory. For example, a movie producer engineers a complete reorganization of the firm and after having risked “stealing” a star actress from a rival studio finds himself head of the

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company. Dramatic conflict is heightened by the fact that only the hero knows the proper business moves. Moreover, he makes them while repairing the errors of his business associates. The reader is left with the impression that the hero has carried out a private battle against the competing company. Again, titanism may be introduced in the plot by portraying the hero’s extraordinary skill for initiating and organizing the actions of others. The following story summary illustrates the love-escape of the hero. A business magnate escapes the encumbrances of his metropolitan life by going away to a small town where in peace he may dream of the woman to whom his heart belongs. The photograph he keeps of this dream girl who is the wife of another man is stolen from his room. At once, the hero sets into action numerous agents: detectives, police, secret agents from Washington arrive upon the scene to rescue the photograph. In the end a ruse is uncovered by which the dream girl has promised to divorce her present husband and marry another suitor, the one who has rescued her picture from the hero. The heart of the hero is crushed.

“Small town boy makes good” stories comprise another type frequently found in our first period sample. A small-town ballplayer becomes a nationally renowned professional player. But in Hollywood he approaches the brink of disaster. The femme fatale enters the scene. The hero, failing to win her, rapidly deteriorates; his failure is reflected also as a professional failure. A sports manager enters as deliverer, saving the hero for the ball team by arranging a rewinning of the heroine. The hero is on his feet again; with victory in love comes further professional success. A small-town boy becomes the town’s leading and most promising citizen. After inheriting a sum of money, he is suddenly driven by great ambitions. He secures a prominent position in the local bank, and thinks of venturing into the insurance business. He squabbles with local business notables but successfully passes over their opposition.18

Just as the titan was invariably represented by the businessman in the first decade, so the favored little man models were the sailor or the farmer. By the second sample period we find a different model emerging: the worker. Salesmen, clerks and policemen are the subsidiary preferred types during this decade. In addition we find that the category “public service” remains relatively constant in both periods. These nontitanic hero models remain the bearers of two salient virtues: duty and courage. The titans are invariably businessmen, representing the acme of human achievement, while public servants represent the pillars of the social order. The virtues of army or naval officials are virtues presumably typical of their whole group, to be publicly praised. The devotion to duty of the public officer, bound in his guardianship of society, is usually glorified in crime stories. Policemen

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enter as hero models in crime stories only twice; however the cop is some¬ times pictured as an inept fool who, nonetheless, stumblingly acts for the best.19 The businessman who was the bearer of success values during the twenties is eclipsed by diverse professionals in the thirties (especially writers and reporters, engineers and professional entertainers), a fact which probably mirrors objective social possibilities of ascent. The “little men” presented in the Post possess virtuous qualities for which they are rewarded. Thus, the success of little men renders only a modified exemplification of individualism. The little men as hero is success¬ ful, but he emerges only because he possesses and therefore represents the basic virtues of his social group. A new exemplary type is introduced on the basis of rewards; his achievements are not startling, they are “little victories,” perhaps nothing more than a ruse in which the villain and all that he represents suffers downfall through which the hero then may win a job. A typical story is of a life struggle on board ship, in which the hero, a “little guy,” “a skinny little lad with guts,” becomes the hero, is rewarded by a better job at the end of the story. This is the ideal “little man” theme. The farmer, as the bearer of certain traditional values, such as work and honesty, plays a similar role and is found in Country Gentleman. The farmer represents a particular virtue and is posed against a villain who may represent either a particular vice or one associated with the way of life of the city. While the Post circulates largely in metropolitan areas, we have to account for this counterappeal which rejects the central values of urban achievement, and idealizes the hero model most removed from its basic virtues. Yet its appeals do not stand in isolation. Thus, for example, its heroes include, beside the farmer, a number of small town characters, sometimes clerks, sometimes salesmen, sometimes workers, who also are untarnished by strivings for ascent and who understand a loyal, generous, kindly action. Conversely, all stories dealing with pretentiousness, ostentatious living, or snobbishness are those associated with the metropolis. As for locale, the farm and with it the small town is exalted as represen¬ tative of a whole way of life. It is significant that the typical conflict within the story is between the essential human goodness of small-town types and a metropolitan moneyed elite: unpretentiousness against pretentiousness, and smallness versus power. In short, those values lacking in the metropolis are the ones stressed in the depiction of small town or farm life: the latter exemplify the good while the city remains the vessel of evil. We may assume that this is gratifying not only to those who live in towns and villages, but also to those persons who have recently migrated from farm or town to city and who have sentimental associations which find fulfillment in the Post.20 We may well reflect upon the passing of the symbolic titan, for he

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clearly belongs to another scene and another time. He is no longer the embodiment of mass longing and mass aspiration but seems to have left the stage in favor of a more prosaic and traditional model representing the safe and the familiar. It is not simply that passing time and diminishing opportunity have made completely unreal the classic Dreiserian hero who had his counterpart in mass periodical fiction. Rather, it is an attempt to perpetuate certain roots or myths of American life. This is done by bringing the scope of fantasy in mass fiction into greater harmony with readers constantly made aware of the “closing of the frontier.” Hence it may be regarded as an attempt to give a compensating sense of independence and individual significance when the basis of power and prestige seem to have become firmly centralized and entrenched. The little man is, then, the familiar standard-bearer of democratic values. It is, perhaps, not accidental that this transformation began in the depression years, even if it did not end there. In those years traditional virtues were invoked with weary optimism; the “good heart” was supposed to replace “big money” in symbolic value, especially to deny the reality of the opposite.

THE SHIFT OF THE COUNTR Y GENTLEMAN Just as new types of fictional appeals imply changing lines of gratification in a public which has not itself ostensibly changed in composition, so also our content analysis reveals the attempts to reach new audiences and hence a new pattern of circulation. The Country Gentleman may be cited in this instance. Between our sample periods we find a major shift in hero models and an increasing differentiation of hero types. And we find a corresponding shift in locale; a shift from farm to small town or village. It seems in fact to indicate that a new public is being deliberately sought for in small towns and villages.21 Major transitions in themes began before 1930 when nostalgic themes, which appeared more than twice as frequently in the first period, are replaced by success themes, which are almost doubled in the second period. Love themes are also almost doubled in the second period and virtue themes remain relatively constant in both periods. Analysis of success themes indicates that the ascent theme is not stressed, whereas the success story which has as its outcome the reward of acknowledg¬ ment or deference from others is recurrent. In the first period, success models are not titans but small businessmen, and in the second period, the success models became either small-town businessmen or professionals. In the professional group in both periods we meet no writers; artists are represented as actors or musicians. Doctors and lawyers are presented as stereotypes, and the most favored professional is the engineer.

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The success image which appears to be gratifying for this audience is that of the “little man winning out.” Whenever the hero model is contrasted with another figure, it is the “lowly” hero who is chosen as the carrier of laudable and, therefore, rewarded virtues. The counterpart of the pro¬ fessional in other magazines is, in the Country Gentleman, the public official. This may mean only a personification and a glorification of the policeman whose virtue is, apparently, that of performing a public service. In other contexts the hero models are the engineer, the ship captain, and the army pilot who represent semipublic and technical occupational per¬ formance. This notion of public service which is expressed in fiction as the performance of duty, a duty which results in “helping others,” is enhanced by the fact that his action is brought close to the lives of the readers. The virtues of the highway engineer are understandable because he is responsible for clearing the roads in winter; the “cop” is always the savior of traditional values that are encroached upon by urban and metropolitan frauds. But the principle of service may be expanded only within limits. It does not include all public service occupations, and few of the standard professionals are represented as performing heroic feats of service. The doctor and lawyer enter mainly as familiar props, although in some cases, the lawyer is identified with other public servants who deliver the wicked to justice. The increase in business hero models in the second period is most notably an increase in clerical and sales workers and in skilled or semiskilled occupations in industry.22 The latter jobs require techniques with which farmers are familiar, or skills which they have acquired in work on the farm. Perhaps the decisive feature of these hero models is that their experience actually deviates little from that of the farm audience. Probably this is due to the relative uniformity of the audience which in turn enables the policy of the magazine to remain clear-cut. By the same token, certain basic values remain consistent, enabling the hero models to remain closest to the old values. The specific values of farm work and the farm way of life which were a major concern in the fiction of the first period, were, to be sure, transposed from the farm locale to small-town characters who could be found anywhere in the United States. The extolling of the agrarian way of life in the period 1921 to 1930 is expressed as the nostalgic longing for the farm and for all that it represents, including farm work, parental home and place of the beloved. The hero, separated from the farm becomes the wanderer, just as the hero or heroine in the love theme wanders in search of the loved one. Before returning home, he suffers infinite travail. But what would be subjective longing in true nostalgia is instead expressed objectively in the plot as an external con¬ dition or obstacle which renders life away from the farm unendurable. The obstacles to subjective satisfaction are those of “city life” in which the hero is hurt or cheated. He longs for the “true community” of rural life. Whether

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or not the heroine follows him home, the superiority of the rural milieu also proves to be worthy of her. Stories of nostalgic return are occasionally varied by an introduction of the theme of “the farm as refuge’’: because of the superiority of rural life, the hero cannot leave the farm behind even though he has planned to return to the city. Or in another variation, the hero may return to the farm for a final visit before leaving for good. At the ultimate moment he finds he cannot leave and remains on the farm. Such themes are usually clinched by associated elements: the beloved heroine is on the farm, or the farm as the parental home becomes revealed as the source of the security and sentimentality identified with the idea of the traditional way of life. The other ways of emphasizing rural values are most various, and nostalgia is but one theme. The “traditionalist” theme is another. In one story Bohemian peasants are urged to retain what is truly their own cultural heritage and to accept from the United States only that which is technically superior, farm machinery but not bric-a-brac. Farm values reached beyond the borders of the United States. We find stories of local esprit de corps and of the virtues of familial ties, especially those involving filial or sibling loyalty, and also of work. The latter specifically stresses diligence and the ability to stick-to-it. The fact that farm values become expressed as specific virtues attached to heroic models leads to certain similarities in the way virtue is treated in the different magazines. For example, loyalty to friend and family appears as a theme in all magazines, but the major loyalty theme of the Ladies’ Home Journal is that of the loyal wife’s service, while in the Country Gentleman this theme is given no more weight than that of filial loyalty and the loyalty between brother and sister. While the virtue of the honesty of the employee is lauded and given symbolic reward in Country Gentleman, the themes of pretentiousness-unpretentiousness are present in all the journals. For the other periodicals in our sample, pretentiousness is associated with osten¬ tatious living, but while this occurs in Country Gentleman, it is no more important than is the pretentiousness of cultural snobbishness which is treated as if it reflected fraudulence of character because it intimates spuriousness. For Country Gentleman the best is the intrinsically simple, that is, whatever lies close to man’s heart. All the rest, from the intel¬ lectually abstract to any claim of knowledge of the arts, is but superficial veneer. With such unambiguous thematic lines drawn in this magazine, the virtues associated with different hero models are quite clear-cut. Performance of duty which is accentuated in the second period is a virtue attributed to the engineer, the ship captain (who knows his job and does it well), the coast guardsman, the army pilot, the conservation corps official, and police inspectors. In the earlier period, the duty theme is expressed through the legal or symbolic personification of the policeman or the “cop” as hero. In the second

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

95

period, duty is expressed in additional ways; it appears in a fraud story in which a police inspector poses as the honest simpleton and so secures a job from a promoter of small-town “rackets”; the villains, of course, are then delivered to an unseemly end, and the “honest faced inspector” becomes the savior of the exploited small-town populace. Again, the hero is a “cop” who aids a clever girl in conducting the downfall of her archenemy— a city racketeer seeking control of all truck-garden businesses in the city. On a somewhat different level an income tax collector enters as a father con¬ fessor to a delinquent citizen who is overwhelmed by guilt and by the potential magnitude of the crime to which his delinquency has led. An account of the heroic activity of a state conservation corps inspector illustrates the inspector’s commitment to the virtues of rural life. The change in the image of the public servant is almost complete, first as the protector against urban crime and later as the dispenser of services to farmers. The new success model of Country Gentleman is ascendant only in the degree to which he is clever, or capable of winning out by small ruses, or in winning rewards because of the virtuous qualities he possesses and not because of exceptional achievements. Yet a virtuous quality of some sort continues to pervade the actions of the hero. Thus, although his immediate success is not solely the result of intrinsic virtues, his actions still must have some “virtuous” consequences. A peddler pulls a ruse on a businessman, profiting from the scheme and incidentally aiding another in his business ventures; at the same time the villainous businessman is punished. A crippled mechanic wins a reward for catching criminals. With the reward money plus the inspiration of the heroine, the promise of future admission to engineering school is presented.

If the virtuous quality alone is the basis of success, we find such themes, for example, as the courageous purser of a ship winning a job advancement from the company head who is on board; or a highway engineer’s remarkable performance of job duties is rewarded by a better job. This maintaining of basic virtues as against high-status values and the image of rapid ascent, becomes a more deeply imbedded feature of this fiction. The theme shift is clear. Beyond the specific values of farm work and farm life, lie values which are transposed from the immediate milieu into national values. The carriers of these values were at first farmers. Later they became small-town types of various occupations. It seems apparent that in the first period Country Gentleman was still crusading against the shift away from the farm, and this accounts for the dominance of the nostalgic theme, a theme which consisted of the sentimentalization of the

HANSH. GERTH

96

parental farm home and its associated values. By the second period, that shift had already been accepted, and the major concern remained the propagation of values which were at first a part of rural living. With the overwhelming growth in size of cities and with the growth in prestige of the metropolis, the policy of the magazine changed to focus upon the small town which, along with the farm, was to remain the soul of American life. We find the crucial shift expressed in a decrease in themes involving nostalgic return to the farm (there was a minor recrudescence of such themes during the depression) and the replacement of those themes by success stories which glorify the little man and his virtures. TRENDS IN THE A TLANTIC For the Atlantic, perhaps the most apparent and consistent relationship exists between theme and age of readers. At one extreme are several stories which are focused entirely upon the heroes’ experience of growing old, then anticipation of death, the experience of love late in life and the superior wisdom of older people. Similarly, the emphasis—in the first period—on religious themes seems to have been destined for older readers. All of these associations with age are possible, but, of course, over¬ simplified. In relation to religious themes, for example, it may be mentioned that the 1920s were, after all, years in which general religjous discussion dominated a substantial part of the intellectual scene. The notable frequency of religious themes in the first period requires further commentary. A number of them are closely associated with larger social issues. For example: A Negro mother in anguish at the funeral of her elder son who died as a result of criminal activities is comforted by the mystic vision of heaven which appears to her younger son during the funeral ceremony. A young Polynesian native, bound by religious compunctions, refuses to reveal an ancestral cult-cave for a price. A missionary’s wife, hitherto contemptuous of native religious belief, is influenced by an Indian mystic and her character changes. Similarly, polemical issues center about the following themes: agnosticism versus belief, immortality, stories of mystic vision and miraculous works. These religious-mystical themes are related to the period during which basic religious values in America were being reconsidered and religion was becoming liberalized. It is, in part, this general discussion that we find reflected in Atlantic fiction themes.23 Circulating among professional groups, these stories seem to appeal to persons with “liberal” and “tolerant” attitudes toward religious phenomena and religious belief. Hence the polemical nature of many of the stories and the appearance of extraordinary mystic acts or works. A number of these religious stories occur in the most diverse locales and regions, and have a strong exotic character, appearing in such settings as Polynesia, Russia,

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

97

India, Arabia and Persia. The stories which have an American setting also include unexpected characters for the enlightened readers of this “class” magazine: a Negro mother, a cowboy lay-preacher, and a Southern fundamentalist in Union Square. Apparently, liberal and tolerant readers found these stories informative. Finally, it seems equally clear that a number of such religious-mystical themes are destined primarily for older readers. Occasionally we find heroes for whom religious belief is primarily a concern born of old age, or we find a story which includes a miraculous association between the death of a hero and a natural phenomenon that seems to be linked to the event of his death. The relationship between the age of Atlantic readers and the types of stories appearing is a much more general relation¬ ship. Thus we find some five stories which are focused entirely upon how the heroes experience growing old. This predominance of religious-mystical themes almost disappears in the second period. Apparently, in accordance with the general trend of the times, an almost complete transformation of interests occurred in the direction of social issues. The treatment of such social issues, however, takes on a special character. The difference between the category social issues in the first period and in the second is not great, but in the other magazines, social issues were treated purely from the standpoint of the persons oriented to them. We receive definitions of such issues as war, revolution and political campaigns through the eyes of a single person, the hero model; the plot material concerns the vicissitudes of the hero, his values and his actions. In Atlantic fiction, however, the character of the social issue, and the sharpness of it, is entirely submerged in portrayals of single roles, not individuals, per se. Typical of what we classified as social issues in Atlantic are: (a) the alignment of a number of revolutionary leaders in a revolutionary situation: a tract for the times of integrity and nonintegrity in politics; (b) social policy: how a disciple deserts a political leader in the conviction that his political policy is incorrect; (c) Indian administration policy in the United States (conflicts between the administrators and the Indians). While the total number of such social issues is not large, most of them are reabsorbed in the form of moral and personal conflict and characterizations; this was especially important in the second period of the study. In going beyond the conventional range of hero models, this fictional treatment in Atlantic proceeded two dimensionally. In the first place, a wide variety of hero models has been introduced. In the second place, by way of rendering such models presentable to a public to whom, ordinarily, such heroes would seem strange or alien, the stories ultimately assume the form of intensive personal analyses. In both cases, the aim seems to be that of disseminating information about certain social characters or role positions. Hence, these new models become the bearers of social issues and problems.

98

HANS H. GERTH

Thus, we have a representation of the hero in his peculiar social situation. We do not find class conflict portrayed in the pages of Atlantic, but we do find portrayals of working-class people. The intensive personal and sub¬ jective treatment of the stories leads, however, away from the distinctive social issues that might be associated with the hero model to a stress on his unique and eccentric characteristics. The emphasis upon the unique assumes two forms. On the one hand, while the point of departure may be to describe the social role of the person, it immediately goes beyond his “outer shell” to depict his essential, human qualities—his inner self, his loves, hates, strivings, conflicts. On the other hand, depending upon the character presented, the depiction may be one of sheer eccentricity. For example: A New England schoolmaster, extraordinarily strict with his students, is shown through exemplary acts of kindness to be, after all, essentially human despite extreme perfectionism. Or, a housekeeper leaves her job, finding it unbearably “peaceful.” There follows a portrayal of her life as one continuous escape from a childhood permeated by the rigorous, religious domination of her mother. Her escapes take the form of marrying a criminal and electing to work in an insane asylum. The lady cannot endure quietness and peace and requires continuous noise, excitement and activity.

Among completely eccentric types we may point to others such as the life characterization of a monk, a spinster, an Irish psychotic, a “black troubadour.” The inclusion of a number of house servants is a good example of the fictional uses which are made of roles which while being socially different, nonetheless fall within the range of experience of the housewife readers of this monthly; in this instance, the attempt is to point out the uniqueness of the domestic servant who might otherwise be judged as commonplace.24 It would appear that by the second period interests were secularized and expressed in social issues. Their emergence perhaps reflects a current psychological vogue, and its end seems to be the depiction of the unique and eccentric (e.g., the peculiarities of the monk, the spinster) in general as well as what is simply different from one’s own social position (the domestic servant or the workingman). In both periods the most frequent hero model is the male professional, and in both cases it is trained professionals such as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and clergymen. Business occupations decrease in the second period, a decrease being entirely due to the falling off of the executive. In the second period, there is a significant increase in the number of heroes with agricultural occupations. In Atlantic the basic value of human relation-

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

99

ships—such as romantic love—and basic virtues, are usually represented, either positively or negatively, through the portrayal of the hero. However, the virtue themes are more complicated. They range from simple, virtuous qualities associated with the teacher, to representations of virtue through a fairy story of the “ugly duckling with the golden heart” or a Paul Bunyanish legend exemplifying loyalty to friend. Loyalty to friend and family was found in all magazines as an exemplary virtue, and Atlantic tells us nothing new about it. But a virtue such as performance of duty proves in Atlantic to be a crucial testing ground for the appearance of something new. Thus, the duty stories appearing in the second period include a colonial official in India emptily performing his duties, while cultivating the desire to be a writer on the side, and a priest experiencing a brief interlude of private questioning over whether or not he has done the correct thing in administering the last sacrament to a woman whose husband objects to it. In the Atlantic's treatment of virtue themes, it becomes clear that as soon as simple moral qualities are left behind our categories of virtue cannot embrace the new complexities of duty. The picture of the businessman tends to emphasize his inner sentiments; he is not a model of success. While we find some typical success themes in this journal which involve either professional achievement or “little man” successes, these appear largely in the second period. The farmer model signifies the idealization of farm life as representing the basic values of American life. For the Atlantic, the professional is the hero model in quite the same sense as the farmer is for the Country Gentleman. When we find major changes in models or themes in the Atlantic we may ask what changes in the situation of the professional stratum may account for such shifts. Thus, farm locales and farmer heroes showed a unique rise in the second period. Farm life is depicted as intrinsic to American life. Here, particularly, the depiction is replete with historic associations and becomes the romantic vestige of the American frontier. But it may also be regarded as an appropriate refuge in the sense in which romanticization of the rural has always been a dominant intellectual stream of America. The aspiration of the middle-class professional— who by that time was decisively cut off from his or his parents’ place of origin—has not uncommonly been that of escaping to a farm or semirural milieu on weekends and, finally, of retiring to it.

REFLECTIONS OF SOCIAL TRENDS As our sample indicates, post-World War I expansiveness and optimism, long identified as the most archetypical of our national characteristics, gave

HANSH. GERTH

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way in the 1930s to more traditionalist values, presumably under the impact of economic depression on the one hand, and political pessimism on the other. These values were reflected by emphasis on the group-defined role and conventional virtues. Heroes and heroines, rather than transcending localized and conventional roles, became vehicles for retaining longestablished values—the good wife and mother of the women’s journals and the little man who wins out for the Country Gentleman and the Post. Hence, too, the titan principle and with it the local-boy-makes-good theme, both of which point to self-realization over and above conventional group definitions, become increasingly passe. The decline and surpassing of these classic success themes is paralleled by a rise in the idolization of the little man as the favored hero and the small town as the favored locale. The fictional emphasis moves from the struggle for power of a self-made elite to these traditional symbols of democracy. One may expect that such changes as these will be reflected in other mass entertainment media. The importance of the results of an analysis of content lies less in any isolated significance it may have for the medium under study, than in the fact that the models are constantly reiterated and reappear in other media. They become ubiquitous mass symbols; themes from popular periodical fiction are often transferred to movies and radios and popular culture with its quickly standardized and repetitive formulae assumes the aspect of mass advertisement.25 It suggests that mass media offer only a limited range of models and themes at any one time and that these themes are subject to change under the stress and vicissitudes of external events.

NOTES 1. The authors are indebted to the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin for the funds which made this study possible. It was completed in 1942. 2. See N. W. Ayer and Sons, Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, Phil¬ adelphia, Pennsylvania. 3. The proportions were determined from data published by Standard Rate and Data Service, Chicago, Illinois. 4. The True Story sample remains incomplete due to the difficulty of obtaining back issues. Sample adjustments were necessary for both Country Gentleman and Atlantic in the period 1921-24. 5. Table I is a condensation of a table which appeared in the original manuscript as follows:

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

101

TABLE I (Expanded Version) Percentage of Heroes in Specified Occupations For Each Magazine and By Periods: (1) 1921-1930,(2) 1931-1940*

Saturday

Ladies’

Occupational Categories Business-Industry Executive Clerical-Sales Skilled and Foremen Unskilled Professional Artists Writers Scientists Sportsmen Agricultural Planters-Ranchers

Public Service Government Police Army-Navy

True

Journal

Story

(1)

(2)

(1)

31.6

24.7

41.7

26.3

19.5 3.9

25.0 16.7

—

—

1.3 3.9 —

1.3

23.7

22.1

—

3.9 3.9 13.0 1.3

6.6 17.1 —

(2)

Evening

Country

Post

Gentleman

Atlantic

(1)

(2)

32.0

18.3

35.4

18.6 5.2

11.2

—

8.9 10.1 13.9 2.6

11.2

15.2

(2)

38.0

22.9

15.7

38.3

32.0

12.9

1.4

2.0 4.0

2.9 2.9 4.3

4.3 4.3 5.7

28.2 7.1 3.0

41.7

40.0

24.3

21.4

18.2

28.9

8.3

1.4 4.3 17.2 1.4

1.4 1.4

—

8.0 10.0 20.0 2.0

17.2 1.4

4.0 6.1 4.0 4.0

5.2 11.3 10.3 2.1

6.0

10.0

18.6

9.1

5.7

2.0

12.9 —

6.1 1.0

—

—

—

33.3

—

(1

(2)

(1)

—

3.1 5.2

2.8 4.2

2.8 —

1.3 —

7.0 1.4

13.9

9.3

35.2

17.7

1.0 8.2

5.6 22.5 7.0

3.8 10.1

—

5.2

6.5

—

1.3 3.9

2.6

—

3.9

—

4.0 2.0

—

—

—

—

1.4 7.1 1.4

2.6

3.9

16.7

2.0

5.7

4.3

6.1

9.3

5.6

7.6

—

2.6

—

—

5.7

2.8

—

—

2.0

—

1.4

5.6

2.6 5.2

—

—

—

4.0 2.0

1.0 5.2 3.1

—

—

—

—

—

OO

Farmers Farm Laborers

Home

2.6

1.3

8.3 8.3

Royalty

5.2

2.6

—

—

4.3

—

2.0

2.1

—

Domestic Servants

1.3

1.3

—

—

1.4

4.3

2.0

2.1

2.8

1.3

—

2.0

—

—

—

—

4.2

1.3

Adventurers

—

—

Illicit

1.3

1.3

—

—

2.9

1.4

3.0

3.1

—

—

Other

3.9

5.2

—

6.0

4.3

5.7

2.0

3.1

8.4

6.3

25.0

32.5

—

6.0

24.3

28.6

19.2

10.3

14.1

15.2

76

77

70

70

99

97

71

79

None Specified TOTAL NUMBER OF HEROES

12

50

*Due to rounding of numbers, figures do not add up in all columns.

102

HANS H. GERTH

6. In a survey conducted by D. Starch for Macfadden Publications, the average age of adult male readers of the Post was computed as 36.8. From Basic Data Sheet E-7, Men-Women, Magazine Effectiveness Report, Division of Marketing and Research (N.Y.: MacFadden Publications, Inc., 1937). 7. Ibid. 8. We have no direct supporting data; but see Paul F. Lazarsfeld and R. Wyant, “Magazines in 90 Cities,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1, no. 4 (1937). The circu¬ lation of the Atlantic was found to be directly related to percent of the population over forty-five in the cities examined. 9. From the survey conducted by Starch, Magazine Effectiveness Report, Basic Data Sheet D-7. 10. In a study conducted in a “typical American city,” 22.5 percent of Ladies’ Home Journal readers were gainfully employed. Most of these may be assumed to be single women. See Magazine Homes and Branded Merchandise, V. I, a survey conducted by MacFadden Publications, Inc., 1937 (quoted from Section II of the study). 11. Ibid. It was found that 73.1 percent of the women readers were housekeepers. 12. In the study previously cited (Magazine Homes and Branded Merchandise), 42 percent of the families reading Ladies’ Home Journal had “a mother of children 14 and under.” 13. According to the Starch report (Magazine Effectiveness Report) 50.4 percent of True Story circulation is among families with an income under $2,000. 14. A similar mechanism is used by Ladies’ Home Journal when, in emphasizing a particular theme, it chooses a mythical or fanciful hero model to carry that theme. 15. In the “typical city” magazine study (Magazine Homes and Branded Merchandise) 72.5 percent of the reader-families were headed by men who were manual workers. 16. Ibid. The same study indicated that 70.5 percent of the women readers were housekeepers; 25 percent were gainfully employed; 4 percent “kept house and had another occupation” besides. 17. A considerably higher percentage of family readers of True Story (as com¬ pared with the Journal) have “a mother of children 14 and under.” The McFadden study includes the estimate 53.5 percent for True Story readers. 18. Other love themes, with a strong nostalgic character, appear in association with the businessman-hero. A highly successful business manager recalls a love of his youth and realizes his longing for a similar love. The plot is an elaboration of his finding that love, i.e., in delirium, the hero fancies the heroine is “calling” to him; when well, he finds her in his own apartment building! In another story, the hero reflects upon his marginal position “in society,” for he has climbed there. His sense of frustration is intimately bound with whether or not a long-loved millionaire lady, now widowed, will marry him. The heroine rejects him. The hero, a wealthy and famous antique dealer, ruminates that his life without her is like an “imitation.” 19. Only four out of a total of 22 crime themes were detective stories. Most of the crime stories center about the recounting of a specific crime. Most carry us to the downfall of the criminal, but only six of the total number introduce the apprehension

VALUES IN MASS PERIODICAL FICTION, 1920-1940

103

of criminals by public officers. Three introduce legal trial; none an elaboration of the punishment of the criminal. 20. As a counterpart, the characterizations of Hollywood appearing in the Post may also be cited. To be sure, Hollywood represents the land of promise and opportunity, but it is bounded by much that is evil. Glorification and depreciation of this city appear in the same story. For example, Hollywood life—with the attraction of “easy money,” a life also of frenzied ambitions—is twice opposed to fulfillment through love; it is pictured as seething with personal competitive drives for “the best” and as the city of extravagance. Finally, it is also depicted as a city of frustration in which a hero, demoralized and about to lose his job, kills a movie producer in a fit of drunken rage. The Hollywood stories are fairly evenly distributed throughout the two periods. The themes cited are taken from the 1930s sample. 21. Although not a totally new one, since many farmers retire to small villages and towns. 22. See n. 5 for a breakdown of these occupational categories and changes in their percentages between the two periods. 23. See H. Hart’s “Changing Social Attitudes and Interests,” in Recent Social Trends (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933), ch. 8. The Fundamentalist agitation brought a rise in the number of articles on religion from 1925-28; after this period there was a general decline in the number of such articles. The later interest is in spiritualism and psychical research, a trend likewise reflected in the Atlantic. 24. The examples quoted above of type portrayals are selected from both periods, though the plurality of them appears in the second. 25. Cf. James T. Farrell, “The Fate of Writing in America,” in Literature and Morality (New York: Vanguard, 1946).

6. YOUTHFUL REBELLION IN THE UNITED STATES Youth entering the university is a privileged minority, but today it is burdened with social and personal responsibilities and demands as never before. We live in an age of chronic warfare, sometimes local, but which twice during this century has been global in scale. The last global hot war has been continued into a global cold war which features economic and propa¬ ganda warfare, the latter often expressed in images of love and hate for potential and actual allies as well as for enemies throughout the world. At the same time, we live with the fear of being taken to the brink of the abyss where some chance spark may touch off the atomic war from which there will be no return. Added to this are repeated scares like the one after the explosion of the hydrogen bomb at Bikini, trivialized yet memorialized through the bikini bathing suit, which led to the discovery of uncontrollable fallout and its deadly potential. The means of military destruction have reached the level where they can produce total world destruction. Social change now proceeds with such great speed that time shrinks to instants, and the world becomes smaller as space is overcome by electronics and guided missiles. In this world milieu, President Johnson has proposed lowering the voting age to eighteen years of age. The president’s proposal bespeaks of the eagerness to give youth the political recognition which it deserves. Shall a young veteran who yesterday has flown a multimillion-dollar airplane over A talk delivered at the University of Wisconsin Student Union, Madison, Wisconsin, in 1966, when youthful resistance to the Vietnam War at the University of Wisconsin was intensifying and President Lyndon B. Johnson had proposed that the voting age should be lowered to include eighteen year olds.

104

YOUTHFUL REBELLION IN THE UNITED STATES

105

a city come home and humbly ask his father whether he may possibly have the family car for the evening? One of the many strains in our social, economic and political system might well be mitigated if youths were to be given a sense that they share in the decisions that determine their fate. It is hard for older generations to realize that a lower draft age also means a rising prestige for youth. In an age of chronic warfare and swift technological change, the standing and prestige of youth is bound to rise. Older generations are likely to become socially and culturally obsolete more rapidly, especially if they are committed to the technologies, skills and habits of mind of the past. Yet the disadvantages of the older generations do not automatically accrue as advantages to youth. Youths may have legal equality with their elders, and they may have social privileges still unheard of in places such as India, Japan or China, but industrial society has burdened them with two major life decisions that assume that they have more personal resources than they actually have at their disposal: 1. Youths must choose their own occupation and often, to a large extent, the education leading up to it; and 2. They are left the decision to choose their own marriage partner and, if things go well, lifelong companion. These are decisions which loom on the horizon almost immediately after the years of adolescent sexual experimentation and the attempts of youths to imagine and find themselves as adults. Moreover, youths now grow up into belief systems which are many centuries old and which stem from situations and societal contexts which are not contemporary. Nevertheless such creedal systems belong to our natural world view, which we all learn in childhood and accept as matters of faith, both religious and political. We may even learn to “love your enemy” which may cause some strain for the youthful crusader. It is one of the central facts of our time that many young men and women cannot tolerate the disparity between the older belief systems which they have absorbed and actual behavior they witness in their world. Youths, especially, having hardly lived down the turmoil of adolescence and having barely found their identity behind whatever social role the workaday world demands, must now develop a new awareness of themselves and an awareness of what to hope for and what to expect of themselves and others. Not infrequently, many in early adulthood find themselves in a situation which looks to them like a second adolescence. This experience of how to “grow up” becomes for them the challenge of their university years.

106

HANS H. GERTH

They are most often exposed at the university to a broader universe of ideas and of options than they ever experienced at home. Some will never worry about such intellectual and philosophical problems and take the straight route to vocationalism. They may take course work in a specialized field having only instrumental, efficiency values, and their intellectual capacities and experiences have nothing to do with questions of values such as of the beautiful, of the good, and of the true, in whatever sense it is one may wish to “know” the truth. Instead, their concern is with “true or false,” the criterion of truth being merely the factual. In this persepective education is a matter of impersonal know-how and does not touch on the hardly stabilized area of self-identity and the doubt about or the subsequent re¬ construction of the natural world view which many saw threatened during adolescence. The American university system with its system of examinations and tightly scheduled class routines allows for such rational and controlled vocational adaptations. There are, however, others—and this is a tiny minority—who are attracted to disciplines preoccupied with the world of things and the relationships men have produced among themselves, whether in quest of the beautiful and the good or in the workaday world of man’s making. It is in the human¬ ities, the social sciences and some areas of medical science that they find these issues. They pay attention to cause and effect relations, but mainly they have to develop their own understanding of the meanings underlying their conduct; why is it that this occurs and not something else? These concerns reach into the realm of creeds and touch on the system of institutionalized beliefs. Now, public thoughtways have three major functions: 1. They may integrate groups and individuals who share personal or mutual understandings along the centrally imposed party line which is rigid and publicly sanctioned. This is characteristic of all totalitarian regimes from Thuringia, Germany, to the China Sea. In such regimes, the freedom of opinion rooted in a free man’s conscience does not exist. Deviations from the proclaimed image of reality and the party line are dangerous and bespeak of disloyalty. When open, competitive discussions exist between persons, they are limited to the ways and means of implementing the preordained party line. 2. Public thoughtways may provide the individual with personal meaning and a sense of purpose within the organized sectors of society from political parties down to the family. 3. Public thoughtways may elaborate and channelize shared memories, hopes and aspirations, and they may legitimate a given structure of power relationships.

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But since we believe in democracy, public thoughtways do not embrace all that we feel and think. Democracy permits a free competition of ideas in the marketplace and hence expands the number of groups that can articulate and voice their viewpoints, aspirations and demands. Free speech means above all the freedom to disagree with the elected government and to say so. This brings with it difficulties when a nation such as ours is at war and rent by internal cleavages and dissent. Now, if youth has any specific attribute, it is that of candor, outspoken¬ ness and courage. It has an aversion to the fake or fraudulent front and possesses an appreciation of the authentic and the true, often without regard to consequence. During an intellectual and social crisis such as we are now in, many youths will go through intellectual crises. This is quite a natural phenomenon. When such crises occur, two processes which require self-mastery will operate: 1. The creedal system of one’s native and formative environment will be intellectually and emotionally challenged. Some will experience a relative detachment from the “natural” taken-for-granted world view of their hometown and family as a grand emancipation—a freeing of the spirit—and they will gain the sources and strength of character to move confidently toward unknown shores. 2. Others will also experience a sense of alienation from old friends and family and may possibly fall into and suffer a state of drift and malaise. They will look for ways to remove themselves from their on-going personal and intellectual commitments, to “drop out” of society, to use the current expression. The processes of youthful withdrawal from society are not new to the Western world. They may take one of two forms: one active and the other apathetic. Both are highly conspicuous because they carry within them a protest against the world as it is. In the United States at the present time, one way is the way of the beatnik or hippy and the other way is that of the New Left. The route of apathetic withdrawal from life leads to a privatization of the self, an eagerness to retreat to some island of unconcern. The posture of rejection of the world “as is” is summed up in the image of the “rat race,” meaning a competitive struggle for success in this world “as it is.” What is sought after are extraordinary psychic states through the use of toxics. In other periods the fighter sought to achieve states of frenzy by the use of alcohol, which lowers the threshhold of conventional inhibitions and reaction formations. The ecstasy of the fight heightened by alcohol could result in an exhaustion that would be total. Much more dangerous and habit-forming than alcohol are certain drugs taken in quest of apathetic

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ecstasy or hallucinatory visions. De Quincy’s Memoirs of an English Opium-Eater belongs to the books cited in psychiatric literature as a “classic” description of apathetic withdrawal.1 Frequently such withdrawal goes hand in hand with religious mysticism and with efforts to achieve states of “oneness with the universe.” In Oriental civilization, Taoism is an example of a religion where reaching such states of oneness is regarded as the ultimate experience of life. Such religious mysticism has not been central to the Western world, but the vogue of Orientalism has emerged since the end of World War II and is now one of the alternatives that youths have experimented with. The retreat from the “rat race,” has attracted a remarkably large number of contemporary youths. The openness of American society and the eager¬ ness to try something new, to be fashionable, to take a chance, to experi¬ ment and try out possible avenues for transcending workaday life and its routines has led to the formation of a scatter of cultish milieus. All sorts of possibilities for sex and toxics and sentiments to form pseudocommunities in privatizing circles of island builders offer themselves to those who wish to escape conventional bounds. Yet established society and its law enforce¬ ment officers seek to ferret out and crush these already self-defeating activities. Lawrence Lipton in his book on Venice West, California, entitled The Holy Barbarians, has described this milieu. A simple recital of the captions he uses under the photographs in the book suffices to evoke the images of this youthful world: “where a disaffiliated, dedicated poverty is a way of life in the pads of the holy barbarians. ...” “and anything with a paintable surface is the artists’ canvas and anything, including nuts and bolts, is a material for ‘junk sculpture’.” “and the poet stands up to his typewriter on a packing case amid today’s wash and yesterday’s dishes. . . .” “or beats out his own rhythms on the conga drums, like Dionysus in the Greek Bacchanalia. ...” “and makes a ritual of listening to the jazz combo. . . .” “with poetry and jazz in a new holy reunion of the arts. . . .” “or listening to a poetry reading is all part of making the scene.”2

The withdrawal from the world is expressed not only through the use of drugs and sex but finds a basis for its expression in art, literature, poetry and music. The entire youth movement is closely related to the American “cultural explosion” and to the shift of the center of the art

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market from Paris to New York. The commercial market in art, music, sound and drugs has helped to produce extreme or marginal situations which have facilitated withdrawal behavior and island-building on very shaky foundations. It goes without saying that those who inhabit these milieus and circles protest against what after World War I was called Babbittry after Sinclair Lewis’ novel Babbitt, which savagely satirized small-town Protestant conventionality and hypocrisy.3 It has become one of the permanent features of modern society since the Napoleonic age that intellectuals live and work alienated from the workaday life of the masses that make up society. Since Murger’s novel La Boheme, such intellectuals have been called Bohemians when they reject the workaday world as philistine.4 These same Bohemians also appeared in the interstices of European nobility and ascending bourgeois wealth where they took the form of dandies: Oscar Wilde is possibly the best known example in this country. America experienced this phenomenon as early as the nineteenth century, but only since World War I and especially since H. L. Mencken, writing about the booboisie in The American Mercury and Notes on Democracy, has there been an intellectual gadfly willing to take on all conventional proprieties. Many American Bohemians after World War I— in the aftermath of Attorney General Palmer’s prosecution of the editors of The Masses—whether musician, literati or artists went to Paris where they lived as expatriates. It is of great significance that nothing comparable occurred in the United States after World War II. Still, American society knows a so-called internal emigration of its own. The term “internal emigrant” was originally used to describe the life in seclusion as tolerated deviants of non- or antiNazis in Hitler’s Germany. The philosopher-psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, who had lived in Heidelberg up until 1949 and then emigrated to Basle, Switzerland, is the best known internal emigrant. In the United States some of the old left became internal emigrants in the McCarthy era, silenced by fear of persecution and isolated from one another. That this internal emigrant existed has only recently become apparent as some members of these older generations of the left have attempted to find ways to link themselves to the new radical cultural and political movements. Parenthetically, it may be worthwhile to briefly point to the role of the desperado as one of the options of youth who are in despair and disillusion¬ ment. In the United States during the depression we had John Dillinger and Baby-Face Nelson. Hitler and Mussolini were more ominous examples of desperadoes who applied their energies to politics. In their counter¬ revolutionary upsurge after World War I they became the mythmakers and exploiters of twentieth-century mass society. The techniques they developed for the stirring up of mass hatreds against their target, a powerless and well-assimilated minority group are now too well known. Their depreciation

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of all reason through racial theories and a hodgepodge of irrationalist mythologies proved successful among a desperate and despairing German middle class in quest of a redeemer. In four fateful years these movements of desperadoes were swept into office. In a nation of divided loyalties and with no direction, many resolved their crisis of conscience, their agony and repeated disillusionment over a lost war and Kaiserism and their unrealis¬ tically elevated hopes of legal or formal democracy by plunging into the National Socialist movement. The middle classes through a bottomless inflation, after only four short years of relative prosperity, experienced the abyss of the Great Depression—mass unemployment and the spread of violence. Their answer to expropriation by inflation was hero worship as the solution to all problems. The rest, too, is history. Those who wish to see fascism or nazism in student militancy and activism in this country are wrong. The pseudosocialist and pseudo-anticapitalist demagoguery of these European movements are the reverse of the major tendencies of the activist New Left. Fascist thought was thought against thought. It was mobilized for the creation of irrational Fuehrer cults against democracy. The New Left, as far as I can see, seems to ask for more democracy, for a participatory democracy and for the invigoration of democracy by compassionately assisting Negroes, for instance, to overcome institutionalized race prejudice and segregationist practices of southern and northern society. They are rebelling against institutionalised hypocrisies and fighting “credibility gaps.” While fascism represented the war parties in Hitler’s Germany and in Italy, the student activists fight for peace. There was never a more despicable phrase than “peacenik” directed against youths drafted to risk their lives in a war. There are many who would not accept the Vietnamese War as a just cause. Neither fascist nor peacenik is an appropriate image for the New Left; both smack of propa¬ ganda slogans designed to discredit politically active youth. In a society where the mass media train children for the brutal fantasy life of omnipotent supermen in outer space or for a frontier of horesemanship and gun smoke, we should not be overly alarmed about the excesses and strains expressed in campus life. To be sure, vandalism and senseless destruction, disruption of institutional life on campuses has been and will have to be curbed. The sit-in, the blockage and other techniques of non¬ violent coercion have their limits. Student political leaders will also have to learn that sensational “happenings” may have boomerang effects on followers and on public opinion. They will have to learn that cool judgment and sense of proportion are indispensable qualities in power contexts. Still it would be a great injustice to forget or to minimize the great efforts made by highminded students in support of the southern Civil Rights movement. In 1963 students went to the South to assist the movement, working hard

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in Alabama, in Georgia and Mississippi for voter registration. In 1964 about 800 of them went to the South to work in improvised “freedom schools” at the risk of their lives. Two students along with a black Mississipian working on the same project were killed by southerners who opposed the work they were doing. We should not underestimate the courage displayed by students who exposed themselves to such risks in the interest of living up to their ideals. Over the years, students’ political projects have shifted and the issues and foci for political action have changed. It is important to remember, however, instead of retreatism and privatization, instead of pseudocom¬ munities and island-building, these youth have been actively involved in public political issues, in sharp and outspoken criticism of racist oppression and institutionalized hypocrisy. Needless to say, their conduct has been awkward at times; and their bad, often foul, language has been readily available for exploitation by their opponents who play up whatever blunder, shortcoming and liability the student movement might have had. Still, in spite of errors, mistakes and lack of sophistication, in comparison with the not-too-distant late adolescent sports of panty raids and goldfish swallowing by overgrown collegiate children of yesteryear, their opting for serious political work, for compassionate devotion to worthwhile public causes, merits praise. These newer forms of political activity have come as a surprise to university administrators and boards of trustees. In the past, the campus has protected itself from external depredations and internal unrest. The intense intervention of police administration to guarantee the civic security on the campus is certainly new. On the American campus, now, actively committed young men and women confront the academic administrator and adult society in general. Students who have grown out of and beyond their “natural” milieu and its creedal legacy have found their way into an intellectual universe that is anti-capitalist and opposed to bourgeois culture. These are the young men and women who have become activists. Older generations of Americans often used to receive their overall image of American society from abroad. De Tocqueville, Lord Bryce and Andre Siegfried are the most important and successful authors who assessed this new and continent-wide society taking shape behind the westward moving frontier, a frontier that was forever expanding and displacing Indians. We fought Mexicans and Spaniards and arrived in Hawaii to defend our new military and naval frontier across the Pacific, protecting new politicoeconomic dependencies, whilst the older empires of the British, Dutch, and French went down. The late C. Wright Mills provided in his books on The Power Elite, White Collar, and The New Men of Power, a new image of America.5 His

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books were successful internationally and were widely discussed because they presented America to itself from the viewpoint of one who saw it from the inside. Americans could realize that they had come of age, and faced the problems of a mature society. A recent follow-up study of the American upper class by William Domhoff entitled Who Rules America? is like the work of Mills, concerned with socioeconomic and educational inequalities.6 Domhoff reaches the conclusion, after a tabulation of assets and liabilities of the top 1 percent of the adult population, that from 1922 to 1953 .2 percent of the “spending units” own 65 percent to 71 percent of the publicly held stock in American industry. Whatever the exact figures may be—and they may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding stock ownership—Domhoff writes, “Our conclusion is very similar to that drawn by Mills: ... at the very most, 0.2 or 0.3 percent of the adult population own the bulk, the pay-off shares of the corporate world.”7 “For ourselves,” Domhoff concludes, “the income, wealth, and institu¬ tional leadership [of this group] . . . are more than sufficient to earn it the designation ‘governing class.’ ” Paul Sweezy, a Harvard-trained economist and Marxist labels it the “ruling class” whose rule is based upon the national corporate economy and the institutions that that economy nourishes. It manifests itself through what the late C. Wright Mills called “the power elite.” The New Left has taken this theme ok the inequalities in American society to its heart and opposes it in an equalitarian mood and posture. Needless to say, anticapitalist thoughtways are as old as capitalism, and rebellious movements have punctuated the course of Western nations ever since the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in England. For 150 years, America has been the great exception. For example, when Marxist intellectuals sought to propagate their message of socialism in the United States beginning in the 1870s, they were soundly defeated. The gospel of Social Darwinism with its special combination of laissez faire business ideology and Puritan asceticism won out over purely political appeals. In contrast to Europe, no self-segregated, class-based political party of Socialists could ever triumph; and liberalism blended with Social Darwinism whenever immigration threatened the ethnic homogeneity of earlier settlers and their descendants. The closure of immigration after World War I through a quota system changed the image of America in the eyes of the world. Exclusionist acts against the Chinese and other Asians softened only after World War II. America began to concentrate on the “assimilation” of its immigrants; but it was clear to the world that this country was no longer an open frontier society. Agriculture accounts for fewer and fewer of the gainfully employed—less than 6 percent of the 76 million who hold jobs—and the factory in the field has replaced the

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family farm. There is no longer a ladder of ascent for the middle classes through agriculture. Now the middle classes send their children to colleges and universities to acquire the skills necessary to make that ascent and to become successful. This is a new phenomenon in America, and this generation of youth will have to face the problems of that phenomenon. No doubt there are many options and opportunities open for the hardworking and industrious student. One should not waste one’s time or become the dropout or become an educational failure who falls by the wayside. Since our commercialized leisure and fun morality holds such an all-pervasive grip on our time and attention, permit me to conclude with the Roman adage: “Res severa verum gaudium est,” “Mastery of the difficult and serious task constitutes true enjoyment.” NOTES 1. Thomas De Quincy, Memoirs of an English Opium-Eater (New York, 1899). 2. Lawrence Lipton, The Holy Barbarians (New York, 1959). 3. Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (New York, 1922). 4. Henri Murger, Die Boheme; Szenan aus dem Pariser Kunstlerleben (Leipzig, 1909). 5. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York, 1956); White Collar (New York, 1951); and The New Men of Power (New York, 1948). 6. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967). 7. Ibid., p. 45.

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Weber and Marx; Hegel and Kant

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7

SUBJECTIVE INTENTIONS AND OBJECTIVE MEANING IN HEGEL, MARX AND WEBER Karl Marx was not a strict materialist in his conception of human psychology. His materialism, though opposed to idealism, is not anything like Bentham’s conception of the “materialist” minded individual seeking hedonistic pleasures and sensuous gratifications. Marx criticized Benthamite utili¬ tarianism as an overall theory of human behavior, specifically its felicitous calculus, as no more than the projection of the shopkeeper’s mentality into world history. To Marx it made no sense to assume that Napoleon’s attempts to conquer Egypt and Russia were based upon these kinds of calculations. Nor did he think that Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon could be explained by this kind of calculus. The use of a schema involving the supposed balance between pain and pleasure seemed to Marx to be appropriate only to “rational men” who, under capitalism, take calculated risks in the marketplace. Profit and loss calculation, he argued, was relevant only to the understanding of the motivations of merchants but not to the psychological processes of other kinds of decision makers. Marx saw human nature as an “ensemble of human relations” that was conditioned by specific historical and social constellations. He thus could not see any strictly linear evolution governing man in history. Rather, human progress was full of paradoxes and contradictions. Each forward step for mankind entailed not only conflict but created obstacles and pitfalls to further progress.

Mankind becomes the master of nature, but man becomes the slave of man or of his own meanness. Even the pure light of science can seemingly radiate only before A paper prepared for classroom distribution in March 1965 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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the black shadow of ignorance. The only result of all our inventions and progress seems to be that our material forces are in conflict with intellectual life and that human existence becomes transformed into a stupefying material force.1

Marx’s dialectical reasoning is here quite apparent. Rational progress in knowledge, the “pure light of science,” rises against an opposite back¬ ground of ignorance but seems to create a new mass stupidity. The con¬ tradictions between material forces, which are endowed with intellectual life, and human existence, produce a new “objective” material reality. These apparently paradoxical statements ought not to be taken as the conceits of a neo-baroque style of writing. They are Marx’s deliberate elaboration of his conception of the course taken by human existence in the age of machine technology during which men become wage slaves. Despite the fact that science, i.e., human knowledge, is a dynamic factor in the transformation of society, the emancipation or liberation of men from the new forms of wage slavery, he argues, is by no means a problem of knowledge alone. The first proposition of secular socialism rejects theory as merely theory, as merely the ideal; for the achievement of true freedom requires, in addition to an idealistic will, very tangible material conditions.2

From the above, one can conclude that Marx is a “naturalist” who focuses and elucidates upon tangible and material conditions that operate in the processes of historical development. He continues; It is the mass of men who believe in the need for practical, material revolutions even for the sake of conquering the time and the means required for a preoccupation with “mere theory.”3

This dialectical conception of progress entailed for Marx contradictions between an advancing science and technology and nature, a contradiction that for him was the means of constructing that second nature that civilized life requires if the hazards of direct, primary nature are to be overcome. An example of this, for Marx, is the sense in which Benjamin Franklin constructed the lightning rod in order to disarm nature’s angry gods of their power to harm men by bolts of lightning. Marx thus presents us with an image of a man-made world interposed between man and his primary nature; but new dangers and disasters continue to emerge so long as man does not learn to control the world he so creates. Marx’s theory of progress is thus very complex, since every step in the process of man’s rule over primary nature occurs at the risk of his becoming enslaved in a secondary world of his own making.

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All communist and socialist writers have taken for their point of departure the observation . . . that all of the advances of the spirit thus far have only been against the masses of mankind . . . and that the latter have been driven more and more into dehumanized situations.4

To be sure, Marx sketched the continuity between various historical, social structures, but he saw them as subject to economic laws which require specific forms of conduct and behavior from all men who play roles in given historical social structures. Such structures, like Mediterranean slave ownership in antiquity, European and Japanese feudalism or modern capitalism and its various subtypes, all have or have had disastrous short¬ comings and problems which they could not (or cannot) solve. The result is a decline and usually the transformation of the respective social structures. Marx elucidated this theme in a case of ancient Greece and Rome. In the ancient stages of Greece and Rome, compulsory immigration assumed the form of the periodical establishment of colonies. This was a constant feature of their social structures. The entire basis of these states was built upon a definite restriction of population. A population figure was set and must not be exceeded lest the very existence of the ancient civilization be endangered. Since the application of science to material production was entirely unknown, the way to maintain civilization was to be few in number; otherwise the free citizenry would become subject to physical labor, making them into virtual slaves. Absences of forces of production made the citizenry dependent upon a given numerical equilibrium with slaves, which must not be disturbed.5

Engels in the Origins of Private Property, the Family and the State further described the decline of this slavery-based antiquity. He based his description upon contradictions that existed within the social forces of production and the “habits of mind” that slavery engendered in free men. Slavery no longer paid; therefore, it died. But dying slavery left behind its poisonous sting in the disdain for productive labor on the part of free men. This was the dead-end street without a way out in which the Roman world got stuck; slavery was economically impossible; the labor of free men was morally ostracized. The one could no longer be the basic form of social production. The other, that is free labor, could not yet be that basic form. Only a complete revolution could be the possible solution.6

In examining the processes of the transition of Rome from that of an economy based upon free labor, Marx discovered the emergence of certain elements in Roman law that were completely formalistic. The celebrated legal structures of Roman law, its courts and trial procedures, while formal¬ istic, were to him merely a form of chicanery.

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The history of agrarian law proves that the ancient Roman oligarchs were the inventors of chicanery and of legal procedure. They introduced the first procedural chicanery into legislation.7

While Marx saw in antiquity the restriction of population due to the lack of sufficient productive forces and the necessity of compulsory emigration as a result of slavery, Weber in his essay on “The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilizations”8 saw the opposite process unfolding. [In that essay, slavery was viewed as far more efficient economically than the labor of freemen. Rome declined, to simplify Weber’s argument here, because of the migration of its population to the periphery of its empire, thus weakening its core, the city of Rome and its market, monetary, legal, administrative and military systems. The development of autonomous, virtually self-sufficient colonies at the periphery had been undertaken initially by the younger sons of aristocratic families who, after a successful war, attempted to found new lineages by taking up land at the frontier and there operating highly efficient slave-manned estates. These latifundia became increasingly independent and outside the reach of Rome. Rome began to fall, according to Weber, when the empire ceased to expand during the Pax Romana of the Augustian age and thereafter. The lack of warfare and military victories diminished the number of captive slaves available to man these estates, and natural population growth was^ insufficient to replace the population of slaves. Without personal freedom, no slave population, according to Weber, is able to replace itself. To maintain their “colonies,” Roman estate owners, now increasingly free from the control of Roman law, reduced free men under their control to serfs and elevated slaves to the same condition, beginning what was to become feudalism. Marx’s analysis of the relationship between population size, emigration and the forces of production under conditions of modern capitalism was closer to Weber’s discussion of the ancient world and exactly the reverse of the relationship Marx saw operating in the ancient world. Marx argued that under modern capitalism: Not the want of productive forces creates the surplus of population, but it is the increase of productive forces which demands a diminution of population and eliminates the surplus of population by famine or by emigration. The population does not press on the productive forces but these forces press upon the population.9

Population size thus becomes a “dependent variable,” and the man-made world with its epochal, historical structures has separate, peculiar popu¬ lation laws that prescribe for each epoch what is for that epoch its optimal

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and what is [its] surplus population. Capitalism similarly has its own inner laws which include the continuous, dynamic expansion of its forces of production. The capitalist mode of production has an inherent tendency toward the absolute development of its productive forces, quite aside from the value of capital and the included social values or of the societal conditions under which capitalistic production takes place. On the other hand, the maintenance of the existing value of capital and its utilization to the utmost degree (that is to say, the ever speedier growth of the value) is its goal. Its specific nature is oriented to existing value as a means for the utmost utilization of this value. The methods by which this is attained include the decreasing rate of profit, the depreciation of existing capital and the development of new productive forces at the expense of already existing productive forces.10

Marx’s formulation here is one of the productive or creative destruction of capital and of all other forces of production; but it is even more. In it the old Marx, like the young Marx, is committed to Hegelian dialectical logic as a method. Marx, in one of his letters to Engels, commented on the rejection of Hegel’s philosophy in Germany as follows: The gentlemen in Germany (with the exception of the theological reactionaries) believe that Hegel’s dialectic is a dead-dog. In this regard, Feuerbach is much to be blamed.11

This, of course, does not mean that Marx was an uncritical Hegelian. He was a materialist, a “Marxist” in his own right; in his Poverty of Philosophy he ridiculed Hegel’s concept of the weltgeist, an autonomous and abstract higher reason. As impersonal reason has no base outside itself upon which it can stand, no object to which it can juxtapose itself nor a subject with which it can link itself: it is forced to turn a somersault to posit itself and to compose itself.12

Marx presented essentially the same argument in a less satirical and more philosophic vein elsewhere. Hegel’s conception of history presupposes an abstract “absolute” Spirit. It develops in such a manner that mankind is merely the mass which carries the Spirit with greater or less consciousness. Within empirical and esoteric history, Hegel thus allows a speculative history to proceed. The history of mankind is then transformed with the abstract Spirit of mankind transcending real man.13

In rejecting the intellectual abstractness of an ideal spirit, Marx retains the image of an all-around personality that is the goal of the human enter-

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prise. This normative utopia in the sense of the classical German humanism of Goethe is obvious in the works of the young Marx. Only within a community does the individual receive the means to develop his creative talents in an all-around manner. Only in the community does personal freedom become possible. In ersatz communities, [so far in the state etc.,] liberty has existed for only those who have developed themselves within the conditions of the ruling class and only insofar as they were members of this class. As it repre¬ sented a unity of one class opposed to another, for the dominated class the community was not only an entirely illusory one; but it represented new shackles. In the true community of the future, the individual, through his associations with others, will immediately receive his freedom.14

Marx saw, within the succession of history, the emergence of reified communities. In his day he cited the nation-state as one. These, to him, were spurious organizations which contained a great variety of anthropo¬ morphic qualities. Marx’s ideological analysis aims essentially at under¬ mining this process of anthropomorphic projection, whether it be of the state, the business “community” or—in our time—such an abstract col¬ lectivity as the United Nations. In this debunking of ideologies, Marx was not only in advance of the intellectual progress of his time but also of the actual course of human freedom. The special focus of recent Marxian analysis is to raise the question as to whether Marx saw the problem of the alienation of man as a psychologi¬ cal process specific to modern capitalist society or, at least, as a special condition of a society engaged, in part, in the production of commodities, that is production oriented to markets and to pecuniary exchange. Marx saw the division of labor when combined with power as the primary cause of the stultification of men. The patriarchical relationship in which artists and journeymen stood to their masters gave the masters a dual power. On the one hand they exerted a direct influence over the entire life of the journeymen and, because it was a true bond for the journeymen who worked with the same master, this unified them in opposition to journeymen with other masters and divided them from each other. Finally, apprentices were joined to the existing order by their very interest in becoming masters. . . . We find, therefore, in the medieval artisan, still an interest in their special work and in skill at work which could increase in a certain, narrow-minded artistic sense. Every medieval artisan could, therefore, find his entire fulfillment in his work. He had to work in soulful servitude, and he was subsumed under his work far more than is the modern worker. The modern worker is indifferent to his work.15

Many contemporary romantic writers, in commenting on the alienation of the modern worker from his particular workplace on the assembly line, overlook the idea that, for Marx, it was precisely this alientation from

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“special work” that placed the worker on the road to human emancipation and toward a freedom from internalized bondsmanship and from servitude to things-in-themselves. In this connection it may not be inappropriate to turn to Max Weber, who had his own way of profiting from dialectical formulations in which social organizations have historically objective consequences quite apart from and opposed to subjective intentions of their participants. The organization of free labor and the guilds in their occidental medieval form was certainly—quite against their intention—not only a handicap but also a preliminary step to the capitalistic organization of labor which could not have been dispensed with.16

Weber here has constructed an ideal type of a form of social organi¬ zation based upon its long-run consequences regardless of the subjective intentions of the actors involved. In short, Weber was not necessarily bound in his substantive analyses by his methodological writings on verstehen. Overarching objective meanings discernible in the processes of history often transcend the subjective intention of the actors in their own time. Weber, at this point, attributed to the medieval guild organization of labor virtually the historically teleological function of preparing the way for capitalism; a function and an economic system that medieval man could not have imagined. To this extent Hegel’s philosophical legacy seems to live on in Max Weber’s work in opposition to Weber’s manifest neo-Kantian methodology and philosophic convictions.

NOTES 1. David Riazanov, ed., Karl Marx als Denker, Mensch und Revolutions (Vienna, 1928), p. 42. 2. Franz Mehring, ed., Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (Stuttgart, 1923), 2: 197. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 2: 185. 5. David Riazanov, ed., Gesammelte Schriften von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels (Stuttgart, 1920), 1: 116. 6. Friedrich Engels, The Origins of Private Property, the Family and the State, p. 154 [German edition not cited]. 7. Riazanov, Gesammelte Schriften, 2: 310. 8. Max Weber, “The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilizations,” The Journal of General Education 5 (1950): 75-88. 9. Riazanov, Gesammelte Schriften, 1: 117. 10. Karl Marx, Capital, 3: 231 [edition not cited].

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11. August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein, eds., Der Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Engels und Karl Marx: 1844 bis 1883, n.p., 4: 110. 12. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy [edition and page not available]. 13. Mehring, Ausdem literatischen Nachlass, 2: 186. 14. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York, 1939), p. 74.* 15. Ibid., p. 46.* 16. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie (Tubingen, 1920), 1:236. *The citations provided here are different translations from those provided by Gerth in the text, the original translations being either Gerth’s own or unavailable to the editors.

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8

CHARISMA, BUREAUCRACY AND REVOLUTION Weber’s theory of charismatic leadership may well be placed in the general tradition of nineteenth-century liberalism. This tradition includes Carlyle, Lecky and Nietzsche, all of whom stressed the role of the individual, the genius or hero, in history. In this connection, it is not without interest to peruse a short essay by Lord Bryce on “Obedience.”' Bryce raised the question of the relatively frequent appearance in the Orient of figures of enormous grandeur, figures like Genghis Khan and other rulers of great empires. In the Occident, perhaps with the exception of Charlemagne and Napoleon, such figures seem to be lacking. In explanation, Bryce suggested that in contrast to oriental despotism the West produced a structure of law governing diverse societal relations. Western law arose after the emergence of feudalism and continued to develop during and through the rise of the plurality of modern states. This emerging law covered status relations and obligations, corporate freedoms and “liberties,” markets and a variety of contractual relationships, and congeries of economic and social groupings including social and ecclesiastic organizations. These manifold expressions of law seemed to Bryce to provide plu¬ ralistic obstacles resistant to the rise and sway of any single figure of continental or supercontinental stature. In describing the slow, cumulative process of history Max Weber pre¬ ferred Carlyle’s words: “Thousands of years have passed before thou couldst enter into life and thousands of years to come wait in silence that thou wilt do with this thy life.”2 Weber quoted Carlyle at the end of the speech on “Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany,” delivered at the Saint Louis Universal Exposition in 1904. He, however, characteristically shifted Carlyle’s reference in this context from that of the individual to the A lecture given at the University of Tokyo, Japan, in December 1963.

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national collectively. Weber repeated this quotation in an essay on “Russia on the Verge of Westernization.”3 At the outset, we wish to state, despite the current vogue of scholarship on Weber’s work, that Weber’s conception of charismatic leadership and his theory of “leaderless” versus “executive” democracy have nothing to do with the rise of Hitler. Weber was deeply committed to democratic values and constitutionalism, though he was a constitutional monarchist. Carl Schmitt, a sophisticated political theorist of National Socialist orienta¬ tion, in 1928 ascribed to Weber’s famous articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung of 1917 “great influence upon the authors of the Weimar constitution” and considered them to be “a remarkable source for the theoretical evaluation of this constitution.” He correctly referred to Weber’s ideas as “resting on the ideal of the democratic selection of leaders” and assessed them as “the only strong ideology which was still available for parliamentary goverment.”4 We see no reason for doubting that Max Weber, like his brother Alfred, would have been a “November criminal” in Nazi eyes. Weber had donned his military uniform to appear in defense of Ernest Toller before a military tribunal in 1917. Toller, the famous Jewish poet and playwright, faced death for having been president of the short-lived Communist Bavarian Soviet Republic. Weber’s pleading before the tribunal resulted in a commu¬ tation of Toller’s death sentence. Weber also scorned and fought antiSemitism and racist arguments in sociology and in German life in general [see “Max Weber’s Political Morality” in this volume for a more detailed presentation]. Toward the end of World War I, the drift of events had been so swift and the discontinuities in German history so great that Weber’s defensiveminded nationalism seems difficult to understand by a younger generation. Weber, in common with his generation, took for granted a great many things which we, after the advent of totalitarian regimes, simply cannot do. Weber, for instance, looked toward czarist Russia with great anxiety and concern. He had been obsessed since 1906 with the possibility that the world, including Germany, might be dominated by Russia together with the Anglo-Saxon powers. But he also felt that the Russian intelligentsia and freedom fighters were committed to the values and aspirations which Western Europeans had taken for granted for centuries. Weber had already been convinced that in prerational periods virtually all societal phenomena could be characterized as either traditionalistic or charismatic. Given this belief, Russia in revolution provided him, a sympa¬ thetic outsider, with the opportunity to discern charismatic aspects of the Russian revolutionary Left. In one of his essays, “Russia’s Sham Constitutionalism,” Weber wrote in 1906:

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The fight for freedom in Russia reveals, according to conventional standards, few characteristics of greatness which could directly appeal to the emotions of the non-participating observer. This results, first of all, from the fact that the issues at stake have largely lost their novelty for us in the West. If we disregard the agrarian program, which is difficult to understand, the revolutionary demands seem to lack the originality they had during the times of Cromwell and Mirabeau. Insofar as these demands are purely political in nature, they, in fact, lack all novelty. For us, they are mostly trivial like the demand for daily bread. There is an additional factor at work. Truly “great leaders” to whom men from afar could attach deep interest are absent on both sides. The political publicists and “social experts” who are available are no more leaders than are the most courageous “practical” technicians of revolution. All of this results in the impression that revolution is an epigonal phenomena. All ideas under discussion by all participants are, not only in fact but in their verbal presentation, “collective products.” Moreover, spectators from afar and especially from politically and economically satiated nations are unable to discern in the masses the mighty enthusiasms and grandeur of individual fates, unreserved idealism, stub¬ born energy and the rise and fall of strong hope and shattering disappointment among the combatants. Over these is the veil of programs and collective action. The stark drama of individual fates, to the outsider, is an indecipherable tangle. The incessant encounter with savage murder and arbitrary, cruel action occurs with such frequency that even atrocities have begun to be taken for granted. Modern revolution, like battle in modern warfare, has become divested of the romantic charm of the cavalry skirmishes of the past. Modern revolution now appears as a mechanical process, the joint product of the intellectual labor of laboratories and workshops that are objectified by tools and cold cash and expressed in the in¬ cessantly heightened tension and the exchange of nervous energy between leaders and led. To the eyes of this spectator, at least, all seems a matter of technique and strong nerves.s

Three underlying theoretical dimensions seem to inform Weber’s analysis of the 1905 Russian Revolution. First of all, aesthetic, romantic expectations of revolution seem to hover as a backdrop to the quoted passage. These are reminiscent of genre paintings of the nineteenth century. In such paintings, a heroic figure might surmount the barricade with flag and gun in hand, as in Delacroix’s Marrianne. But such heroic leadership figures and original ideas of a personal, charismatic kind are now absent. Second, as opposed to such personal and emotional imagery, the present that Weber referred to was depreciated as epigonal, derivative and collective. To Weber, this collective rather than individual element meant the impersonal, the bureaucratic and the machinelike. Finally, and perhaps most relevant, Weber deemed that the revolutionary goals stated in terms of natural law were “old hat” in the West, where they had long been taken for granted. For Weber, the “Westernization” of Russia entailed either the decay or destruction of an obsolete Diocletian czarism. The autocratic regime of a vainglorious czar appeared to him merely as the satrapies of a bureau-

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cratic collectivism. He observed a similar phenomenon in weaker form in the German Kaiser’s position and conduct. In short, one could conclude that Weber “missed” charisma, even as he witnessed the decomposition of an old regime and revolutionary upheaval with leaders and the organization of police and conspiratorial revolution¬ aries at work. In sum, his deprecatory argument amounts to a denial of originality and novelty in the revolution. These are attributes of the genius that include originality, spontaneity and creativity. Modern revolution entails an overemphasis of the collective, organized element. The revolu¬ tionary process is depersonalized no matter how many individual fates are involved; and even victimization appears to become routinized. Revolution also entails bureaucratization and rationality. “Bureau¬ cratic centralism” is at work both in the ancien regime and in the extreme Left. In 1906 Weber stated this anxiety by evaluating Peshekhonov’s Jacobin defense of the omnipotence of the state as a “dubious foretaste of a centralist bureaucratic development which Russia might too readily take under the influence of radical theoreticians.”6 Weber’s comments on the rational character of modern revolution with its impersonal committee-conducted staff work and on the similarity between modern warfare, police work and underground revolutionary conspiratorial work are paralleled by Trotsky’s words: A

Historians and politicians usually give the name of spontaneous insurrection to a movement of the masses united by common hostility against the old regime, but not having a clear aim, deliberated methods of struggle or a leadership consciously showing the way to victory. This spontaneous insurrection is condescendingly recognized by official historians—at least those of a democratic temper—as a necessary evil the responsibility for which falls upon the old regime. The real reason for their attitude of indulgence is that “spontaneous” insurrection cannot transcend the framework of the bourgeois regime.7

What appeared as negative to Weber, the mechanical, impersonal and rationalized, was positively characterized in Bolshevik literature as the rational, systematic and efficient workmanship of a new type of man, the “professional revolutionary.” The latter, as conceived by V. I. Lenin, was assigned his role in a rigidly disciplined, “democratic-centralist” party in his early pamphlet What is to be Done. To Trotsky revolution was more an art than a profession. In his “Art of Insurrection,” statements like the following abound: Insurrection is an art, and like all arts it has its own laws. . . . When headed by a revolutionary party the soviet consciously and in good season strives toward the conquest of power. Accommodating itself to changes in the political situation and the mood of the masses, it gets ready the military bases of the insurrection, unites

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the shock troops upon a single scheme of action, works out a plan for the offensive and for the final assault. And this means bringing organized conspiracy into mass insurrection.8

Weber’s comments on the Russian Revolution demonstrate his hesitancy in applying his concept of charismatic leadership to modern revolution. He rather seemed to give historical restrictions to the concept. These restrictions would confine charisma in its diverse forms to bygone historical eras and situations: The age of prophecy has passed; the age of the hero is gone together with single combat by the knight on horseback; and the age of the individual revolutionary leader with his personal following has passed since the French Revolution. In order then to understand Weber’s approach adequately, it is, of course, necessary to read and appreciate more than his analyses of the “Protestant Ethic” and “Ancient Judaism,” however important these works are. These works concentrate most, in the corpus of Weber’s empirical work, on his sociology of religion, on charisma, prophecy and the role of the individual religious leaders. To understand Weber’s work as a whole, we would also have to understand Weber’s conceptions of modern capitalism as a total structure and the dynamic character of that structure. Basic to this conception would be the quantitative expansion of all societal elements in and under the sway of capitalism: population growth, urbanism, the expansion of all factors of production, plants and capital, transportation and administration. At this macrosociological level, Weber does not appear to be guilty of the conceptual atomism that Talcott Parsons attributed to him in the critical strictures contained in his introduction to Ephraim Fischoff’s translation of Weber’s Sociology of Religion which is itself a key chapter of Economy and Society. In the larger work Weber said:

Capitalism staged its victory parade against the protest and not rarely over the direct resistance of the clergy. Its support, the bourgeois middle classes, and the upper bourgeois strata have increasingly emancipated themselves from their his¬ torical ties to hierocratic forces. . . . Now, all traditionalist-minded strata are threatened by capitalism and the power of the middle class. They take to flight into the shadow of the church. These include the petty bourgeoisie, the nobility and even the monarchy. The latter have felt threatened since the age of the alliance of self-assured princely power with capitalism is over. The desire of the middle and bourgeois strata for power is a dangerous threat to them. The middle classes discover an identical course the moment its own position is endangered by the onrush of the working classes from below. The church itself has accommodated itself to capitalism once the latter has come to sit in the saddle of power.9

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Weber here appears to interpret religion and ecclesiastic organizations, various class orientations and the inferred psychological attitudes of all of these as varying functions of a larger capitalist social structure that is forever changing. Such a “functional” interpretation of the totality of capitalist social structure may be further illustrated in the following quotation: The restriction of all feudal, conspicuous pomp and irrational consumption promoted capital accumulation and the ever renewed recapitalization of property to yield profits. Innerworldly ascetism as a whole, however, promotes the breeding and glorification of the vocational man, as required by capitalism and bureaucracy.10

In such a “functionalist” perspective, Weber does not hesitate to use an implied concept of an anticipated totality that has certain “requirements” and “needs” and which seems to call forth in the ongoing historical process whatever will meet these “functional requirements.” Thus, “capitalism during the time of its emergence required workers who, for the sake of conscience, were available for economic exploitation. Nowadays capitalism sits in the saddle and can compel their will to work without otherworldly rewards. ”11 Weber emphatically asserts an overwhelming determinism in stating: The capitalist economic order of today represents a tremendous cosmos into which the individual is born and which for him, at least as an individual, is given a de facto unchangeable structure [Gehause] in which he has to live. It compels the individual, insofar as he is enmeshed into the market nexus, to submit to its norms of economic conduct. The entrepreneur who constantly resists these norms is unfailingly elimi¬ nated economically as is the worker who will not or cannot adjust to them. The latter will be laid off. Present day capitalism, having attained supremacy in economic life, trains and, by means of economic selection, creates the economic subjects— entrepreneurs and workers—it requires.12

Weber’s emphasis on workaday industrial capitalism is unmistakable. He distinguishes this type of specifically modern capitalism from other types of capitalism. The latter, political, booty, venture and pariah capitalism are age-old and have existed at the margins of great agrarian civilizations all over the world. Weber considered such forms of business activity irrational in comparison with modern industrial capitalism. The latter, like bureaucracy, seems to be the embodiment of formal rationality and was destined to spread over all continents. The revolutionary process, to Weber, could only implement this drift to bureaucratization and industrialism, both vehicles of rationality. There have been genuine revolutions in the past; but a revolution of the same qualitative upheaval as Puritanism, i.e., of Cromwell and the Protestant sects, or as the French Revolution was to Weber hardly conceivable.

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Bureaucratic, managerial organizations are increasingly industructible and irreplaceable. Revolutions thus become coups d’etat of a Bonapartist nature, changing the bureaucratic elites but no longer changing the course of history. Russia, Weber felt, would recover from the turmoil of defeat and re¬ volution and would resume her bureaucratic-centralist course. She would be organized on an industrialized militaristic basis and would exert great pressure on Germany, which would be organized similarly. We have presented this summary of a Weberian thesis in order to show that Weber’s conception of charisma had a specific historical setting that bore the limited stamp of its times. Weber felt that the historical importance of pure charisma was receding. In fact, he noted that Robespierre’s cult of pure reason during the French Revolution was the last appearance of such charisma in history. In addition to this substantive and philosophic conception of charisma as a radical, innovative factor in world history, Weber used the idea of charismatic leadership as a component in a generalized typology suitable for the analysis of specific components of the most diverse power structures. To Weber empirical reality was always mixed and nearly always composed of elements of diverse structures that had to be respectively elaborated. Thus the sharpness in which the pure type of charisma is conceived vanishes in empirical history. Through depersonalization, routinization and the various solutions to the problems of charismatic succession, charisma tends to become in the modern era not an attribute of revolutionary innovation but one of conser¬ vatism and social stability. Thus the dynastic succession of royalty and nobility, buttressed by heredity, kinship and lineage charisma, provide sanctions to given distributions of property and the legal order. A religious aura, the charisma of office, may come to be attached to public office, as preeminently occurred in the Lutheran countries of Europe, where the head of the territorial state became the head of church. The result was Caesaropapism. In other countries on a worldwide basis, the charisma of office legitimates and sanctifies the bureaucrat and bureaucracy as that “rational” structure which increasingly dominates the world.

NOTES 1. James Bryce, Essays on History and Jurisprudence, Vol. 1 (New York, 1901). 2. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946), p. 385. 3. Max Weber, “Zur Lage der Burgherlichen Demokratie in Russland” in GesammeltePolitische Schriften, ed. Johannes Winkelmann (Tubingen, 1958), p. 33.

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4. Karl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (Munich and Leipzig, 1928), pp. 335, 341, 347. 5. Weber, “Politische Schriften,” in Gesammelte Politische Schriften, p. 105. 6. Ibid., p. 48. 7. Cited in C. Wright Mills, The Marxists (New York, 1962), p. 271. 8. Ibid., pp. 272-73. 9. Johannes Winklemann, ed., Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tubingen, 1956), p.722. 10. Ibid., p. 810. Italics added by editors. 11. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie (Tubingen, 1920-21), fn. 4. Italics added by editors. 12. Ibid., 1:37.

9 MAX WEBER’S POLITICAL MORALITY Since World War II, Max Weber has become as influential and contro¬ versial as Karl Marx was before the conversion of the latter’s thought into dogma by one-party socialist states. Karl Jaspers, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher, saw in Weber “the philosopher of our time.” Others have called him the bourgeois Marx. If labels are necessary in this age of slogans, we might call him “the Jeremiah of Imperial Germany.” Ever since his visit to the United States in 1904, Weber deeply feared that Germany, and hence Europe, might well become divided under the respective influences or suzerainty of the United States and Russia. Yet “his existence,” to quote Jaspers again, “was support for all those who face the future without illusions, who are active while life is granted them and who are hopeful so long as not all is lost.”1 Germany is a country with a history of repression, discontinuities and the forgetfulness of its own past. When, in 1959, the German Sociological Society celebrated the first half century of its existence, not a single paper was devoted to its founder and most preeminent member. But at the fifteenth meeting of that society in May 1964 a storm of controversy raged over Max Weber and his legacy.2 Talcott Parsons celebrated Max Weber as the debunker of illusionist habits of thought and as a sociological realist without ideologies. Wolfgang Mommsen, the author of Max Weber und die Deutsche Politik, on the other hand, criticized Weber for being a theoretician of “national” and “power” politics. Mommsen thus implied that a politics not concerned with power is possible. It is indeed one of the liabilities of an impotent German liberalism to dichotomize and polarize Gesinnungspolitik and Machtpolitik, the politics of conscience and power. Lecture given at Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1964. 131

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The latter was attributed to an evil Bismarck and the former to a morally superior, but politically impotent, liberalism. Mommsen is reported to have surpassed even Raymond Aron, who in his criticism evaluated Weber as a Social Darwinist, justifying imperialism and the plebescitarian rule of a charismatic leader. Weber thus allegedly prefigured fascism and Hitlerism. Similarly Herbert Marcuse tended to telescope history by stating “the seizure of power by the bourgeois class means the democratization of the still pre-bourgeois state. The political immaturity of the German middle classes, however, raises a cry for caesarism. Democracy corresponding to capitalistic industrialization threatens to tilt into plebescitarian dictatorship; bourgeois rationality calls forth irrational charisma.” As in the case of Marx, one can, a few decades after his death, read into Weber’s work diametrically opposed points of view. Some intellectual historians and ideologists take the position that since this is true they can avail themselves of whatever is useful in their predecessors’ work for their own use and consign the rest of the work to oblivion. Thus Nikolai Bukharin in his text On Historical Materialism acknowledged the “mass of valuable” material Weber’s work provided him. Against Marxism, Weber raised the essential objection that Marxism was reductionist, that it views and interprets all cultural phenomena as being expressive of and determined by economic processes and class struggle. Weber rejected this view and maintained the position of causal pluralism in the attempt to explain social and structural phenomena. As an example, Weber argued that European feudalism arose in response to the threat of the armies of crusading Arabian horsemen invading France from Spain. Weber attributed the rise of the economic basis of feudalism, i.e., economically expendable, rent-based manorial landlords, to the extensive confiscation of church lands by Charles Martel. Martel did this for military reasons. He needed an army of economically expendable but self-equipped knights. These were to displace the then current peasant militia. In arriving at such an explanation, Weber used the concept of an “unanticipated totality,” the idea of structural whole, an ideal type of feudal society, which had specified “requirements.” He thus posited a teleological completion of the dimensions entertained in his initial concept. The same historical phenomenon can be seen as the product of an infinite number of causes, all of which in their own right lead together, often to unwilled and unanticipated consequences from the standpoint of their original intentions. Yet when we look backward from the known result, we can see, as in the case of the rise of feudal society, the concatena¬ tion of a series of causes leading to a common result. In a purely causal analysis, a thousand and one senseless events, decisions, ideas and subjective intentions would seem to lead to utterly fortuitous and contingent results.

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And in a purely teleological perspective these would serve the purely unitary ex post facto ends of the theorist. This teleological perspective stood behind Christian teleological faith as it was secularized by Hegel in his philosophy of history and his Phenom¬ enology of the Mind. Hegel felt himself to be contemplating the end of history, which he conceived as the progress of man toward reason and freedom. Hence, with the French Revolution and, later, the British Reform Bill of 1832, little of qualitative importance remained to happen before the end of history was achieved. Time, i.e., history, was fulfilled: the world spirit had all but completed its work. This Hegelian way of thinking entailed two assumptions. A distinction was made between mere intelligence and reason. Mere intelligence meant only insight into the value of instrumental efficiency and the concatenations of cause and effect. Mere intelligence entailed only the knowledge of segments, aspects, of reality and never a conception of the totality of man’s fate and experience. Knowledge of the totality requires, under this mode of thought, more than segmental causes of events: it requires an understanding of the meanings of man’s estate as a whole. Hegelian philosophy was, in addition, not oriented to cosmology and nature, not to the objective time of the celestial universe but to time as man experiences it in human history, in his life cycle and in the time spans of social collectivities, including the family, national states and social and cultural systems. It is the time of human memory and hope. While the objective time of the celestial universe is often called chronometric time, time as experienced is called Kairos, historical time, i.e., the time of human decision. Thus nations have their own heroic time and stretches of time when nothing essential seems to happen or even when time seems to shrink and stand still. During crucial time periods, as during revolutions and war, when national identity and cohesion seems to be at stake, very much seems to happen in so short a time period that time looms large in memory and in the collective organization of memory that is historiography. Weber, following these aspects of the Hegelian legacy and absorbing a century of work in German social science, saw the diverse causal chains of history culminating in two master trends, rationalization and bureau¬ cratization. Progressive rationalization had led to industrialism and to the formation of large-scale bureaucracies in increasingly complex business organizations and in the nation state. The latter was the framing organization of the unitary territorial political organization. He conceived of capitalism as embodying two central dimensions. The first was based upon the organization of legally free labor oriented to the profitable production of goods and in their exchange in a market. Second, he saw capitalism as a preindustrial and universal phenomenon oriented

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to and depending upon political opportunities for profit. The first type accounted for the institutionalization of man’s workaday life. It required, Weber emphasized, a rationally calculable and enforceable law, a dynamic technology and science and, hence, the elimination of magic and the disso¬ lution of kinship cohesion. Weber was convinced that the emergence of capitalism could not be adequately explained in terms of purely economic factors such as the availability of precious metals during the Age of Discovery and the availa¬ bility of free labor through the dispossession of the English yeomanry during the enclosure movement when landlords shifted from crop raising to the grazing of sheep. Weber felt a specific type of man was necessary for modern capitalism to emerge, one who was sober, rational minded and given to hard work. Magical gifts of grace, i.e., religious dualism in standards had to be abolished in favor of a single standard of Puritan asceticism and devotion to a work¬ aday life in order to remake the world. Ostentation derived from, among other things, success at work had to be depreciated. This included the devaluation of luxurious living, the reinvestment of funds in rent-yielding landed estates, in race horses, and the purchases of Italian violins during the grand tours of the scions of aristocratic families. What counted was profitable reinvestment in productive enterprises. Piety was the God-willed service to give homeless men and vagrants the God-willed ^opportunity to prove themselves in their daily life as God-fearing servants pursuing their calling. Weber’s still controversy-provoking study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, served at the beginning of the century to make essen¬ tially these points. His comparative studies of ancient Eastern civilizations, especially of India, China and the Near East, seemed to fortify his thesis. While in the oriental civilizations, some individual factors were more favorable to the development of capitalism than in Europe, there was always one or more essential factors lacking. Especially lacking was the training of men for an ascetic vocational way of life in the workaday world. In contrast to this rational workaday capitalism with its demand for sober rationality, political capitalism, Weber’s alternative type of capitalism, was age-old and could be found throughout history all over the world. Political capitalism is oriented to securing profit opportunities from government. Examples are the “tax farmers” of ancient Rome, the privileged chartered company like Warren Hastings’ East India Company, the venture and booty capitalism of Pizzaro, Columbus, the Fuggers, Cecil Rhodes and the purveyors and purchasers of American government during the Civil and post-Civil War era. Political capitalism, Weber felt, was in his era staging a grandiose revival on the basis of industrialism.

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Weber, in the style of classical liberalism, separated politics and economics. He was, however, convinced that the merger of politics and economics was unavoidable in eras of chronic warfare. He further feared that this merger would continue during his time with no accountability to publicly elected and sufficiently strong parliamentary leaders. He strongly criticized emerging romantic glorifications of the “corporate state.” He thus criticized fascism before it emerged. “Propagandists of anti-parliamentary ideas,” he wrote, fancy that the state would then be the wise agent controlling business. The reverse holds. The bankers and capitalist entrepreneurs, so much hated by them, would become the unrestrained masters of the state. Who in the world is the state besides this cartel machinery of large and small capitalists of all sorts, organizing the economy when the state’s policy-making function is delegated to their organi¬ zations? . . . The profit interest of capitalistic producers represented by cartels would then exclusively dominate the state.3

To Weber, the only practical way of organizing an industrialized nation under a democratic constitution was through the competition between the complex bureaucracies of corporate capitalism and mass organized trade unions, farmers and congeries of other class interest groups, all under a rational civil service controlled by a relatively strong and competitively selected party leadership. It is often forgotten in our telescoping of time that Weber wished to see a powerful executive leader in control over the army and supported by the only party with strength in 1919, the Social Democratic party. Weber knew Friedrich Ebert, the saddle maker from Heidelberg who became the first president of the Weimar Republic. Weber’s concern was to make the office of president strong enough to safeguard the newly achieved democratic constitution. He also wished the German Republic to have a sufficiently strong central core to ensure national cohesion at a time when the particularism of the separate states of Germany threatened to dismember the nation. Finally, Weber hoped to safeguard Germany from Russian domination. Karl Marx considered Russia to be the main menace. This posture of both Weber and Marx was in the tradition of the democratic liberalism of 1848 and was opposed to the policy of Bismarck and the Junkers. Weber’s attitude to the executive reflects the change in German liberalism away from such older models as British constitutionalism and French parliamentary democracy to that of the American solution of presidential responsibility. This, in turn, reflected Weber’s conception of democracy. Weber considered the personal regime of the Kaiser a great misfortune and a primary cause of policy blunders contributing to the imperialist division of the world. In 1919 Weber examined German political life with a critical eye in order

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to assess the prospects of democracy. He was a monarchist who felt that hereditary kingship had the advantage of removing the center of national identification from competitive struggles for party leadership. He was a nationalist when young but ended as a left-wing liberal and as a politically homeless man. He sympathized with the Socialists without being a Socialist, yet he criticized them for lacking imagination and passion. He dismissed the Communists for lacking political realism and, despite their heroic, utopian but self-deluding posture, for wishing to transfer Leninist con¬ ceptions of politics into the entirely different political context of Germany. When the Berlin Soviet, the council of workers and soldiers, was constituted, the soldiers of Potsdam voted for their officers as delegates. The soldiers were peasants and accordingly monarchists, conservative and God-fearing haters of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the founders of the German Communist party. Their delegates were not even allowed access to the speaker’s platform at the meetings of the Berlin Soviet. But Weber considered their slogan, “a united front of workers and soldiers,” a deceptive imposition based upon the Russian situation as applied to a German context which had radically different class and loyalty constellations. The election results in Germany as recorded in the census volumes, published since 1871, would record the relative success of democratic monarchist parties during the 1920s and even during the Great Depression. These would bear out the conclusion that Weber had a* more realistic appreciation of the facts of German political life than that of even high-minded Communist intellectuals. One of these was Ernest Toller, who returned from the war in which he, a Jew from Silesia, had volunteered. Toller was a talented Communist poet and playwright who in a short time became famous. At the end of the war, when the Communist party established a Soviet Republic in Bavaria, Toller was its president. A Bavarian regiment returning from France made short shrift of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. A thousand Bavarian Communists were convicted by a military tribunal and executed. Toller was one of those arrested. Max Weber addressed the military tribunal and succeeded in snatching Toller from the fusillade. Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke made depositions for Toller, and French Socialists pleaded on his behalf, but the soldiers of the tribunal had undoubtedly never heard of Mann and Rilke, nor would they be impressed by French Socialists. Weber, on the other hand, donned his officer’s uniform and presented himself to the tribunal as an officer of the Imperial Army. He surely knew how to address them. Weber wrote to his wife Marianna, “I had hardly spoken more than ten minutes when the tribunal broke out into laughter. I knew I had won.” Weber as a young man had been a first-rate jurist and served in the Berlin courts. He knew how to prepare and plead a case; and Toller’s death sentence was commuted to confinement in a fortress. In 1933, Toller fled

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Germany and came to the United States via Holland but committed suicide in despair in 1939. Toller was one of the many veterans who were students before whom Weber delivered his famous lecture “Politics as a Vocation.” The Toller defense is only one incident that demonstrates Weber’s freedom from anti-Semitism. His circle at Heidelberg included Georg Lukacs, Emil Lederer and Georg Simmel. He repeatedly fought against anti-Semitism and Pan-Germanic ideologies on the public platform, in the press and before the German Sociological Association; and he repeatedly opposed the Social Darwinist racist interpretations of the events of the time. He considered race, the constancy of nature, a reductionist idea infinitely worse than the reductionism of such Marxists as Karl Kautsky. The latter, Weber allowed, adduced at least a meaningful, changeable order of things into intellectual discourse. Yet, as we have noted, Weber argued that propositions about causal significance of economic factors had to be determined in their respective situations. As a total explanation of man’s estate, economic determinism was to him simply metaphysics. Weber’s overwhelming fear from 1904 onward was that “world power might be divided between the decrees of Russian officials on the one hand and the conventionalism of Anglo-Saxon society on the other with, perhaps, a dash of Latin reason thrown into the latter. To divide world power thusly meant to control the future of cultural development.” The impending defeat of Germany caused Weber to reread the Bible and to write his essays on ancient Judaism. Weber saw King Solomon’s aspi¬ rations to act on the stage of world politics with an economically weak base as a vanity comparable to the Kaiser’s megalomania during the postBismarck period of his “personal regime.” The great prophets of doom of the fourteenth to eighth centuries B.C., therefore, intrigued Weber especially. In them he discovered the birth of conscience, the inner-directed man. Unlike Freud, he saw this internal mechanism as an acquisition of the mind emerging in a specific historical and social situation of anguish and not as the product of an archaic, prehistoric past based upon the supposed frustration of a band of brothers-in-crime, committing parricide while vying for the love of their mother and subsequently creating the incest taboo. The Old Testament prophets, whom Weber identified with, acted as solitary men in the name of God. They served as the conscience of their people and their time. They found the inner strength to stand up against false prophets who made their living off religion and who did not have the religious conviction necessary to sacrifice themselves, if need be, for it. John the Baptist made such a sacrifice in the face of temptations of a dancing Salome. Von Hoffmannsthal and Richard Strauss placed the drama of the prophet and his temptress on the opera stage during this

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period of Weber’s life. But Weber identified most with Jeremiah, the prophet of doom. He envisioned in anguish, in “Politics as a Vocation,” the future of his people as one of a “polar night of darkness. ’’ Yet Weber did not believe in hero worship nor in a Russian savior. He felt that the age of prophecy was forever past as that of charioteering, military heroes and heroism. Similarly he believed that charismatic heroes and saviors belonged to preindustrial societies that had neither rational bureaucracies nor democracies. Weber felt that the revolutionary “cult of reason” taken by Robespierre during the French Revolution was the last genuine form of charisma that had emerged in charisma’s fateful course through history. Neither Bismarckism nor Bonapartism appeared to him as genuine charisma. Weber considered modern charisma to be a deception, an apolitical appearing phantasmagoria created by despotic men who were out of step with the demands of an age that was in the process of fundamental democratization. These processes included the downward leveling of feudal nobilities into agrarian capitalists who retained feudal pretensions. It included the upward rise of a broad, literate level of working men in an age of bureaucratic industry and mass armies. Weber was vehemently opposed to academic men who increasingly exploited their privileged academic positions as pulpits for political proph¬ ecies and world views. In the face of this trend Weber advocated the “value neutrality of science.” He fought against special pleading in the classroom before captive audiences of intellectually helpless and disarmed students. Weber attempted to separate the role of scholar from that of political man. Dying in 1920, he was spared the nightmare of the Great Depression, the rise of totalitarian fascism and nazism with their personality cults of il Duce and Der Furhrer and their despotic armies and total war. He died with these words on his lips: “The real thing is the truth.” NOTES 1. Karl Jasper, Max Weber: Politeker, Forscher, Philosoph (Munich, 1958), p. 7. 2. Gerth did not provide footnotes in the original, rough, version of this manu¬ script. Yet the references in this essay to Parsons, Mommsen, Marcuse and Aron obviously refer to Proceedings of the 15th German Sociological Congress which met on May, 1964 in Heidelberg. The German version of the proceedings was published as: Max Weber und die Soziologie heute, Otto Stammer, ed. (Tubingen, 1965). An English translation was published as: Max Weber and Sociology Today, ed. Otto Stammer and trans. Kathleen Morris (New York, 1971). The sources for references to Jaspers and Bukharin were not indicated in the original manuscript. 3. Source not available. The quotation, however, appears to be a different translation of a paragraph on page 1423 of Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 3, ed. Guenther Roth and Clauss Wittich (New York, 1968).

On Ideas and Social Structure

■

.

10

THE THEORY OF VERDINGLICHUNG AND BOURGEOIS LAW In dealing with Marxism, one finds oneself in a difficult situation: There are nearly as many Marxisms as there are Marxists. It was a happy situ¬ ation some ten years ago when the question was still: “Marxist or antiMarxist?” Nowadays the more elemental question is: “What is Marxism?” It is because of this difficulty that I shall attempt to present an interpretation of that version of dialectical materialism that is generally accepted today. In order not to interrupt the overall flow of the argument, I will deal with this particular version of Marxist theory without dealing with all the possible and often well-founded objections to it. I am, in addition, concerned with presenting dialectical materialism as clearly and as accurately as possible and not my own political outlook. An interpretation of Marxist theory is, by itself, not an interpretation of the empirical social, economic and political realities upon which political decisions are based. In dealing with any particular phase of the social process, a major difficulty in Marxian (and all other) analyses consists of retaining a vision of the relationship between the particular and the whole. The particular phenomenon must be understood as linked to a preexisting whole; and the whole must be found in the structure and meaning of the particular. The most common and characteristic forms of present everyday life can thus be understood to be historically and socially determined by the special characteristic of capitalistic society called Verdinglichung. This is a term that is difficult to translate, define and to explicate in a short, abstract definition. I will start by relating an experience I had when I was very young. At school, my teacher had a certain dignity: he was the “schoolmaster.” He appeared to be completely moral; knew everything; and seemed to be Written in London in 1930. 139

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all powerful: he was entirely the ideal man. In this particular light, even such ordinary things as his suits and shoes assumed a strange, symbolic character. They were after all associated with the master. On one occasion, I was privileged to deliver the exercise books of my class to the school¬ master’s apartment. When the door opened in response to my knock, a man stood before me. He was and yet was not my schoolmaster. He wore slippers, smoked a pipe but was not as carefully dressed as usual, and he treated me differently from the way he did in the classroom. He had dropped his professional manner. After this incident, I could no longer look at him with awe. He was just an ordinary human being whom I had just seen as an individual for the first time. Now Verdinglichung means that social relationships characteristically take on an impersonal form as illustrated by my image of “the school¬ master.” In our social relations we present ourselves to each other wearing so-called character masks. We meet each other in such particular social relationships as: teacher-student, employer-worker and lawyer-client, etc. These character masks all imply the formal level of abstracted social relations designated by this term Verdinglichung. In these we fulfill our professional roles with only a particular, public, side of our personality; and our social relations in these roles become, to that degree, inhuman. In contrast, we meet each other as total individuals only in fhe more private spheres of life, in friendship, in marriage and in other family relationships. The abstract, depersonalized and inhuman character of our social relationships reaches its purest form in the role of worker. Before one gets a job, one is tested to ascertain whether one’s special, mostly physical and psychological, abilities and characteristics fit special predefined positions in rationalized and calculated systems of production. In these systems there is little room for unique individual abilities or personal qualities. The latter can result only in a deviation from existing standardized procedures. They are “irrational” in the sense that they can only disturb the rationally calculated course of production. Sombart states this dramatically:

In place of human relations we now have “systems.” They consist equally of men and things, which management puts into place as if they are parts of a machine controlled by switches and conveyors. The worker entering employment has, so to say, to leave his soul behind in the cloak room.

Similar structures operate in the legal system. The individual lawyer finds before him a system of laws and regulations which he applies with some amount of discretion to individual cases. Yet the entire network of legal principles and precedents never embraces the totality of an individual life.1

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As Tolstoy points out in “The Living Corpse,’’ the problems of daily life, which are generally singular and of a highly “irrational” character, must necessarily be presented by the lawyer as a “case,” that is, prepared in rational form. The fresh, concrete raw materials of actual life are put into legal machinery that has inner laws of its own, and the concrete character of the life of the individual disappears under the processing of this machinery. No well-educated Marxist would accuse an ethically oriented individual lawyer of such injustices or accidents of law as are found in the Sacco-Vanzetti case in the United States or the Jakubovski case in Germany. They, instead, demonstrate the inhuman character of the finely articulated machinery of the law. Max Weber describes this legal formula as a procedure in which “the files and costs are thrown in at the top in order that it may spill forth the verdict at the bottom.”2 For the individual lawyer Verdinglichung exists in his weakness in facing the entire organized social apparatus of the law, which governs a course of an action which he as an individual cannot alter. But ultimately the lawyer begins to experience the entire world of law as his second nature, his natural attitude, to which he submits because it becomes part of himself. His position then becomes similar to that of the worker: he is an extension of the machine. Verdinglichung underlies all capitalistic bureaucracies and profoundly affects all individuals within and subject to them. Some of their abilities, as in the example of the worker, are separated from their personality and “objectified” in the form of commodities to be sold on the labor market. We find this idea expressed in the 1923 Report of the Committee on State Servants: “There is only one principle in which all factors of responsibility, cost of living, marriage, children, social position, etc. are included: the employer [here the state] should pay what is necessary to recruit and retain an efficient staff.” Even still more important is the fact that Verdinglichung enters deeper layers of personality than one might, at first, imagine. Even if the bureaucrat takes off his professional coat at home and then feels that he is now a whole man, he cannot remove his bureaucratic mind. Once he dons his bureaucratic mask of social character, he cannot take it off. Once it becomes part of his second nature, it pervades his total personality and governs his entire behavior and gives a particular stamp to even his innermost private life. It may even affect the way he makes love, responds to old and new friends and rears his children. The particular predefined systematic relations to others, to things, and to the regulations of the system within the bureaucrat is placed, instills in him a corresponding cast of mind. Henry Craik once expressed this in the House of Commons as follows: “The Civil Service has been guided ... by a high spirit of honour ... by zeal in discharge of

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its duties and by the pride of tradition which ought to, and, we believe, does animate it.” The special bureaucratic consciousness of the importance of correctness, complete discipline and the idea that his honour and feeling of responsibility require that discipline, all demonstrate that the division of labor becomes embodied in the ethical sphere while Taylorism only affects the psychological sphere of the worker. The rest of the public is divided not only from the “bureaucrat” but also among themselves. Everyone enters a particular “system” and expresses only a side of his or her personality corresponding to their respective attachment to a system. Yet, viewed as a whole, they are “citizens.” The idea of democracy looks somewhat different from conventional presenta¬ tions when viewed from this perspective. Through the division of power, an interdependent system of cooperation among separate “systems” is established. In this cooperative framework, each separate system achieves minimal power. At the larger level, all systems, in their mutual interdependence, control each other. The overall structure rests ideally upon an underlying principle of equality. In principle everybody is equal before the law. The governor is bound by established rules: so are the paper boy and the lord; the lady and her maid; and the worker is formally equal to the industrialist. Anatole France described this concept of formal equality as: “when the law in its rhajesty prohibits sleeping under a bridge, it addresses itself equally to Mr. Rothschild and the homeless burglar.” Formal, rational objectivity and the pledge of guarantees against arbitrary treatment are a major feature demanded of rational, objective adminis¬ tration, in order that the individual can predict and anticipate its decisions. The same principle of objectivity and abstract equality fulfills the moral impulses of the masses when it is applied to particular issues; but the masses want material rights oriented to concrete situations and are not concerned with the abstract objectivity of general rules. Rational calculability and predictability are less important to the masses than are concrete results in the present or immediate future. Formal equality is more appealing to the bourgeoisie, whose principle is “equal conditions of competition.” There are some exceptions to this generalization, mainly in Germany where the trade unions and Social Democrats have succeeded in constructing new forms of law. They are aware that elsewhere in capitalist society, the bourgeois, industrial monopolists and landowners have advanced their interests, all too often, by breaking the law. It is because of this fear of capitalistic illegality that the German Social Democratic party and the trade union bureaucracy is so firmly attached to formal rules of law.3 But workers on the whole, and especially the unorganized masses, want law and admin-

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istration to compensate for their reduced life chances as compared with those of the possessing classes. Law and administration, however, can only fulfill this compensatory function when they take on an informal, concrete, ethical character. Justice then becomes, as Weber called it, Kadi justice.4 Such law does not then apply existing general rules to the particular case but gives the unique, irrational case a particular ethical solution. This “hiatus irrationalis” between the dynamic processes of everyday life and the more static legal system leads eventually to great or small crises in the legal system which are solved only by acting outside or against the very presuppositions of the system. These crises expose the existing form of Verdinglichung and the fictional character of the theories upon which it is based. The rational processes of justice and administration are invariably affected by strong influences on public opinion. These include the actions of political leaders or journalists sensitive to irrational, spontaneous feelings of the masses. Thus the principles of equality and of the separation of powers do not invariably govern empirical reality; but their internal conflict often reveals the ideological character of legal fictions. In addition, the rationality of each particular organized sphere of life does not extend to the often irrational and anarchical interplay of the entire system. These are expressed in departmental jealousies, and friction and conflicts between the old and the new administrative agencies that come into existence—for instance—in warfare.5 The effect of these discontinuities, disruptions, conflicts and irration¬ alities of rational systems upon those who have made the system part of their second nature are profound. The individual as wearer of a social character mask finds himself facing a particular system of rules. His action cannot be autonomous or creative. Even the industrialist finds that his actions consist largely of complying with the “laws” of the market. Should he violate these “laws,” he is likely to go bankrupt. The objectivity of the entire system thus imposes itself on the individual actor. As a result, the rules of that system and even its internal frictions become part of his second nature, resulting in the fetishlike and depersonalized social relations of capitalism. The process of Verdinglichung originated in the economic sphere where the crystallized and depersonalized labor—the frozen, dead labor of the past in the form of capital—commands living laborers; and the laws of profitability determine the fate of the worker. As a result the past rules over the present; and the living human being loses his freedom and power of self-determination. But during the course of its history, capitalism has imposed the structure of Verdinglichung on all spheres of human activity,

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and all institutions have had to adapt themselves to its forms and structure of production. Moreover, the structural principles of capitalism, Verdinglichung included, have increasingly pervaded all other spheres of thought. Here we deal with these processes, as they apply to the theory of law. Thus the struggle for natural law promulgated by the revolutionary bour¬ geoisie was initially based upon systematic principles of formal equality and the universality of law, along with a belief that its rational character would determine its content. This is to say that rational form and substan¬ tive equality and justice inevitably would go hand in hand. As long as the bourgeoisie was revolutionary and fighting against feudal privileges and forms of law, bourgeois law rejected the principle that the mere existence of a legal relationship was the basis for its validity. Thus Voltaire said: “Burn your laws and make new ones. Where shall we take them from? From reason!”6 After the victory of the bourgeois class and the establishment of its own system of law, a more critical stage of historical legal theory and criticism was achieved, at least in Germany. In this stage the content of law is adjudged to be merely empirical, that is, law is completely incomprehensible by formal, logical categories of right-it-itself. According to Hugo Preuss: “What the law says, that is the content of the institutions of law, is not of juridical, but only of a political and economic nature.” Preuss was one of the creators of the Weimar constitution. When Jellinek calls the content of law metajuridical and when legal philosophers want to leave the study of the content of law to the fields of history, sociology and political science, it means only that they have abandoned all methodological attempts to discover a reasonable foundation in law for substantive rationality.7 These positivists regard law only as a system of calculable rules, by which the juridical consequences of certain legal actions (rebus sic stantibus) can be reckoned as exactly as possible. Under these methodological presup¬ positions, the emergence of new law and its disappearance cannot be under¬ stood. Kelsen states: “It is the great mystery of the law and state that it reveals itself in legislation, and thus may be justified. Yet its essentials can only be expressed in inadequate symbols.” Kelsen further states: “It is significant for the essential character of law that even an illegally arisen rule can be a legal rule, that, in other words, the condition of legal origin cannot be taken as the meaning of law.” But in other social sciences processes similar to the empirical foundations of the origin of law can be found in the changing relations between social forces. When these originating forces become indistinct or disappear, then the same problems of the transcendence of the material substrata arise as they do in law. In this respect it does not make any difference whether or not the law is codified. Certainly, the paradigm of bourgeois law is perhaps the Code

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Napoleon, itself a derivation from Roman law. What matters is the fact that in the early stages of capitalism the great manufacturing monopolists of the mercantilistic period were attempting to hold on to privileges granted by the princes. In doing so, they very often violated the legal principles of the common law, especially that of corporations. Their illegalities often caused the bourgeois middle class to rise up against this early form of political and economic monopoly capitalism in the Stuart era in England. The latter were interested in extending the patriarchical power of the princes. Yet, on all sides, there was a demand and a trend for the unification and systemization of law. This was due, not the least, to the technical needs of administration in addition to the personal interests of the bureau¬ crats. A unified law whose jurisdiction extended over a whole country and which only they knew, gave them wider scope for career mobility. They would no longer be bound to localities, whose laws the lawyers knew ex¬ clusively. The interests of lawyers in the emergence of a national law thus went hand in hand with the occupational interests of the bureaucrats. When, however, in England the corporate and personal interests of bar¬ risters in the common law served as an obstacle to the introduction of Roman law, the very lack of abstract, uniform legal codes served bourgeois interests as well. Formal legal procedure was firmly established in cases brought before the national court of justice. Cases of everyday life and torts among the masses were, however, brought before the sheriffs, who administered an informal Kadi-like justice that prevailed in England to a degree completely unknown on the continent. The high fees of the barristers were in fact a denial of rights to the lower classes but served the interests of the propertied. The effect was a dual legal system consisting of formal, procedural justice in legal conflicts between the members of the possessing classes and the arbitrary discretion and the denial of access to justice to the socially powerless. Despite this, one can maintain that codified law is the ideal of law sought after by the bourgeoisie, especially when we recognize the firm demands by the Puritans for legal codification. The Puritans were essentially a bourgeois class. And codification, in fact but not in form, operates today in English law; for despite the appearance of having a case-bound common law, the characteristics of English law are essential principles that are as compulsive as any codified law. This de facto codification applies even to the unwritten constitution. This analysis and critique of early bourgeois law is only preliminary to the Marxist theory of the state, especially as related to Leninism, the latest version of Marxism. According to Marx, Verdinglichung, the process or the objectification of one’s social relations, becomes the object of consciousness to the prole¬ tariat because of its social position:

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The bourgeois class feels happy and confirmed in this self-estrangement. It knows the estrangement as its own power and possesses in it a semblance of human existence. The proletariat feels destroyed in estrangement: it recognizes its own weakness and the reality of an inhuman existence in it.8

Class consciousness means the achievement of a critical state of mind, a consciousness of the prevailing forms of consciousness, that enables one to criticize and repudiate the system as a whole and to create a new theory of class action. This, in Marxian thought, is the historical mission of the proletariat. The dialectical meaning of its freedom is that of leading mankind out of the present stage of objectification to a future society in which men can meet each other as human beings, as total personalities. The necessary condition of this dialectical process is that mankind must pass through a period of social revolution in order to abolish class differences. Part of the process of revolution is the destruction of the fundamental economic position of the capitalist class in order to create the basis for a new social harmony. When this process is completed, social development will no longer require revolution. The state in the hands of the working classes, as represented and guided by its vanguard, the more class conscious Communist party, is the main weapon in the struggle to transcend the capitalistic objectification of social relations. But the state cannot simply be taken over from thfe ruling classes; its construction and machinery must be altered. The underlying principle of the bourgeois democracy was to minimize the concentration of political power by creating a system of separate but interdependent powers that counterbalance and control each other. It is the main principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat to centralize power, to treat the separate social institutions merely as a means of transmitting its central will as expressed by the vanguard. The dictatorship of the proletariat aims not at the coordination but the subordination of powers. The apparatus of the dictatorship has no purpose in itself, as it might under fascism. Its purpose is to abolish class difference and eventually itself in the revolutionary process. Trotsky states the difference between bourgeois and proletarian democracy as follows:

If the parliamentary regime, even in a period of “peaceful,” stable development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a majority, but in dyna¬ mically creating it.9

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This new function of the state is always a historical necessity when the balance of powers in a class-based democratic state prevents it from making necessary decisions. In this condition, the state more and more becomes an ineffective apparatus suspended between the two most powerful classes since neither can exercise its will. This is the trend today in Germany and Austria. The state receives its values from the classes that dominate it. There are no eternal values of state or law. There is no idea of right, not even of natural right in the sense of perfect equality.10 Even the existence of formal, categorical spheres like “ethics” or ideas of right are historically limited. They are determined by the existence of class difference.11 Law has no inherent dignity of its own: it is only a special social mechanism by which the proletarian vanguard carries out its will. It serves to destroy the remaining bourgeois positions and to establish new forms of social relationships leading to a new society. But Communist law still embodies all the major features of the bourgeois period; and its inherited abuses are inevitable in the first phase of Communist society because it has just separated itself from capitalist society after going through the throes of long and intense labor pains. And the law can never reach higher standards than those that its economic formation and the development of the culture of its society determine for it.12 The state and the law are social necessities only in social systems founded on class differences. They will disappear only when their social foundations are abolished. This will occur only in a further stage of development, when the social system has achieved greater productivity and when the fixed division of labor has disappeared: When work is no longer only a means of gaining a living that has become a primary need in life . . . only then can the narrow bourgeois horizons of law be completely surpassed and society can emblazon on its flag; from each according to his abilities to each according to his need.13

In the stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, law is not the frozen replication of the bourgeois past, limping far behind the necessities of present life: it is a weapon of the working class leading into the future. The more completely the resistance of the reactionary capitalistic classes is broken, the less necessary it is to use law as a cutting weapon. The state and the law in the stage of proletarian dictatorship are thus only bitter necessities enforced by the powerful capitalist world upon an achieved proletarian revolution. The whole theory of Verdinglichung is given its shortest condensation in Trotsky’s projection of dictatorship as a means of achieving a communist utopia in Terrorism and Communism:

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To make the individual sacred, we must destroy the social order that crucifies him. But this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.'4

NOTES 1. This idea is expressed by Karl Maria Finkelnburg, Geh. Oberjustizrat, the poet of “Anmestie:” The difference between documents and the man struck me again and again. [Das Tagebuch (Berlin, 1920), p. 216.] 2. Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, 1946), p. 219. 3. Ernst Fraenkel, Zur Soziologie der Klassenjustiz, Jungsozialistische Shriften (Berlin, 1927). 4. From Max Weber, ed. Gerth and Mills, pp. 196-240. ed. (New York, 1946), pp. 196-240. 5. Herman Finer, The British Civil Service (London, 1927), p. 65. 6. Cited by Karl M. Bergebohm, Jurisprudenz und Rechtsphilosophie (Leipzig, 1892). 7. George Jellinek, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (New York, 1901). 8. Marx, Engels, Literarischer Nachlass, ed. V. Mehring (Berlin and Stuttgart, 1923), 2:132. 9. Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (Ann Arbor, 1972), p. 45. Foreword by Max Schactman, no translator indicated. ^ 10. “The idea of a socialist society as the domain of equality is considered to be a French ideal leaning upon the slogan, ‘liberty, equality, fraternity.’ It is an idea that was justified in the stage of development of its time and place, but which now ought to be exploded as more precise forms of presentation are found. They represent the one-sidedness of earlier socialist thought and only confuse the people.” Engels’ letter to Bebel of March 28, 1875. In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Programm Kritiken (Berlin, 1928), p. 49. 11. “There are eternal truths, such as liberty, justice, and the like, which are common to all social systems. But communism repudiates eternal truths. . . . The history of all human society, past and present, has been the history of class antag¬ onisms, and these have taken different forms in different epochs. . . . No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of all ages . . . has moved along lines of thought common to them all, along lines of thought that will necessarily persist until class oppositions have vanished from the face of the earth.” English translation by Emile Burns found in Friedrich Engels, Herr Eugen Durhings, Revolution in Science (New York, 1939), pp. 105-18. Editor’s note: the published English translation is presented here. 12. Karl Marx, “Randglossen zum Programm der deutschen Arbeitetpartei” in Programmkritiken, pp. 26-27. 13. Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (Ann Arbor, 1961), pp. 36-37. 14. Ibid.

11. A MARX FOR THE MANAGERS There is a tendency to interpret modern history, and particularly the twentieth century, in terms of an increasing bureaucratization. In whatever domain of thought the question has arisen there have been able presentations of the facts of the centralization of industrial and administrative organ¬ izations. But it is not only in statistical curves that such phenomena receive notice. They make up the stuff of several philosophies of history. It is no accident that Max Weber is more and more frequently quoted for his thesis that the historical drift may be seen as a bureaucratization of industrial societies, irrespective of their constitutional governments. It is this form of organization which is taken to be the substance of history, the more so as it is identified with a growing rationality of modern society. It is clear that the application of occidental science is an indispensable element in the development of large-scale and planned administrations. For Thorstein Veblen, as well as for Weber, the advent of science is a phenomenon unique and central to Western civilization. Veblen focused more directly upon “the sequence of accumulative technology” and drew inferences directly from the fact of its dominance. Apart from the opaque line of technological rationality, social life is drift and habituation. The irrational institutions, particularly pecuniary ones, are in the main only permissive; all they do is occasionally hinder the spread of a mechanical rationality into all areas of life. It is the men who nurse the big machines, the industrial population, who implement that which makes history. For Weber, impersonal rationality stands as a polar opposite to personal With C. Wright Mills, originally published in Ethics, 52 (January 1942):200-25. Used with the permission of Nobuko Gerth. 149

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charisma, the extraordinary gift of leaders. For Veblen, technology, widely construed, stands opposite irrational institutions. And for both, in whatever other respects they may differ, the rational, the technical pole of history will come through; it will increase to dominate the social life of the West. In this kind of philosophy of history, warfare and revolutions, crises and class struggles, are not the central objects to be explained. They are part of modern man’s destiny, and as subsidiary processes they further implement the big drift toward rationality. The irrational is identified with charismatic leaders (Weber) or with “a democracy of emotions” (Scheler) or “institutionalized masses” (E. Lederer) or with “pecuniary institutions” (Veblen). Authors who follow Pareto and place emphasis upon revolutionary changes and historical discontinuities at the price of structures are likely to see reality under the emblems of oscillating elites. Occasionally “Youth” serves as the shibboleth of tacit hopes to escape the inevitable routinized structures of modern societies, and it is also used as an explanation of sudden crises. One of the latest formulations which popularize such interpretations is provided in James Burnham’s book.1 His thesis is that what is happening in the world will eventuate neither in socialism nor in capitalism; rather that through revolutions and wars we move toward “a managerial society.” The alternatives of capitalism or socialism, of nationalism or international¬ ism, are displaced by a formula which absorbs a number of problems into the explanation of one phrase. Strangely enough, such apparently diverse structures as the New Deal, Russian communism, and nazism are taken to be phases on similar roads to this ultimate ending in “a managerial society.” In common with Spengler, the temper of Burnham’s diction embodies a pervasive cultural pessimism, and from Marx it borrows the Draconian inevitability of iron necessity. With Lawrence Dennis, Burnham shares a technical admiration of the efficient machines now prowling out from Germany and irresistibly attracting half of Russia. The “managerial world current” is Burnham’s demiurge of history, for just as a rather petty species of executive manager in the Peloponnesian states became for Plato the World-builder, so Burnham Platonizes and imputes an irresistible movement toward power to the production expert and administrative executive. This philosophy of history is typically anchored, whether explicitly or not, in two different spheres: (1) in the changing class structure of the corporate capitalism of the twentieth century and (2) in the shifting re¬ lationship between the executive and legislative branches of parliamentary governments and administrative growth of the former. Only by under¬ standing what has been happening in these two spheres can we locate Burnham’s views. The significance of the trends evidenced in these spheres

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must be assessed, and their import for the rise to power of various personnel and structures must be drawn. What do they mean for the distribution of political power and the methods of holding it? How do they affect the chances of power of various strata and types of persons in modern societies?

I There are several facts concerning the shift of class composition and function in twentieth-century capitalism upon which there is agreement. Occupationally, the most striking characteristic is the rise of the “new middle class.” Since the first great war of this century it has gained great social weight. It is composed of white-collar groups and of various pro¬ fessions; it makes up the bulk of clerical and technical staffs. It contains the salaried administrator and the expert civil servant, the trained manager and the private engineer. It is the chief repository of those skills necessary to run administrative and industrial machinery, and its members have assumed many of the functions requisite to a capitalist society. Recognizing the rise to economic and industrial functioning of this class, many writers have set forth lines of social action leading from it. It is precisely around the crucial facts concerning this new middle class that social interpretations have hovered, and in them are anchored disappointed socialist views and not a few prophecies and hopes. In taking cognizance of the new middle class, G. D. H. Cole stated in 1937 that it has acted politically, as well as economically, as the faithful servant of large-scale capitalism.It has the power to organize and carry on industry itself, without the aid of the grande bourgeoisie, if it can insure the cooperation or the sub¬ servience of the proletariat, [and] if the proletariat could be reenforced by the adhesion of even a minority of the technicians, administrators, and professional men and women who form the active section of the new petite bourgeoisie, it could be strong enough.to build socialism against the united hostility of the grande bourgeoisie and the more reactionary petite bourgeois groups. As over against Continental Socialists, English Socialists tend to discount the state with its armed forces. In The Engineers and the Price System Veblen set forth the industrial and economic situation out of which an association and group consciousness of technicians, presumably recruited from this middle class, might arise. For him the realities of the case lie within the range of industrial and technological fact. The modern technological system is indispensable to modern populations, and only the engineers can run it. In the technical planning and execution of work, “The technicians necessarily take the

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initiative and exercise the necessary surveillance and direction.” Given the centralized and intricately connected technological system, “the whole¬ hearted cooperation of the technicians would be . . . indispensable to any effectual movement of overturn.” They are essential for any successful line of revolutionary action. But Veblen does not detail the means by which an association of engineers might come about. He does not examine political and class situations, and the differential chances of power-holding and power-grabbing do not come within his explicit purview. On this crucial point he is ambiguous by irony, and behind this guise he states that, although they are indispensable to any overthrow, the technicians will not engage in such a line of action. In so far as workers are organized, it is in organizations “for bargaining, not production,” which are “of the vested interests.” Yet, in order to be successful, the engineers’ revolution involves “inquiry and publicity” directed at “the underlying population” and the working-out of a “common understanding and a solidarity of sentiment between the technicians and the working force engaged in . . . the greater underlying industries of the system.” There are those among the technocrats who, being less competent than Veblen, were also less cautious. For these the apocalyptic day of seized power follows quickly the night of economic and technical shifts in function. In 1935 Alfred Bingham stated: “If .... the original Marxist concept of a class rising from functional supremacy to political supremacy be followed, it leads today to the conclusion that the technical and managerial middle classes are slated to be next in the sequence of ruling classes. ’ ’ In assessing the chances at power of the new middle class, Cole seeks programmatically to draw their weight into the big rush of the workers. Veblen seeks to draw the workers’ support to the engineers among the new class. Bingham fears their support of fascism. But Burnham is not so cautious as all these. It is his thesis that the managers, who, although he does not say so, are drawn from the middle class, are increasingly the rulers of modern nations and that we are moving into a society over which they will be absolute lords. The heart of Burnham’s thesis and the chief assumption underlying it are contained in the 1935 quotation from Bingham. One error which pervades this interpretation of the chances at power of managerial elements of the new middle class is the assumption that the technical indispensability of certain functions in a social structure are taken ipso facto as a prospective claim for political power. This error is not confined to the view that technical managers and production engineers are going to usher in a society dominated by themselves; it also feeds the widespread notion that in modern Germany the middle class has attained power. If facts are brought to bear upon these points, they will disclose the infeasibility of the basic assumption which underlies them. It is our view that such interpretations unduly short-cut the road from technical

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indispensability to a grab and hold of power. The short cut establishes too automatic an agreement between the social-economic order and political movements. It is only by confining the term “capitalism” to production for free markets, to a laissez faire economy under a parliamentary government, that Burnham is able to view imperialist Germany as noncapitalistic. However, there is a type of capitalism that produces for the state rather than for an open market. As a system, such production has always been most profitable. Nineteenth-century capitalism may have preferred peaceful penetration, the open door, and economic pacifism. Imperialist capitalism of the twentieth century increasingly trades at the point of a gun, but it is no less capitalism. In evaluating the class situation in Germany, we must consider that the group of big industrialists and Junkers have not lost power. If occasional members are plucked out for individual discipline, it does not mean that as a stratum they have been deprived of power but merely that what Mr. Thyssen loses becomes Baron von Schroeder’s commission. Frequently the inference is made that the governmental regulations of the German war economy, the political allocation of investment capital, raw materials, labor, and the subsidization of chances to export act to the detriment of the capitalist class. To some factions they do. In general, those suffer whose products and establishments are not considered vital for the war economy. The shift from a peacetime to a wartime economy affects this class as does any such crisis. Likewise, the political guidance of investment policies deprives many establishments of profits which under a free market would have been available for reinvestment. However, the funds which are losses to some capitalists are gains for other capitalists. In the political capitalism of Germany the state acts as a co-ordinating and transferring agency. The German army is big business, and to the extent that its acquisitions allow for the incorporation of other nations’ businesses, it pays in “plant expan¬ sions.” Why should munition-makers such as Henschel and Krupp, and airplane manufacturers such as Junker and Messerschmitt, feel thwarted by plant expansions because they are financed from funds that are larger than those that would have been available in an open market and which consist of taxes and governmentally compelled loans? The political control of the total economy secures an investment to the big capitalists and their sub¬ contractors who are considered essential to the war economy. Mr. Funk is no less divorced from the capitalist group than was Mr. Schacht: the latter came out of a bank, while the former emerged from the commercial pages of the Berlin Boersen-Zeitung. The war economy makes the estates of the Junkers as necessary and safe as under the Kaiser or the Social Democratic regime when they faced the blockade. There is no evidence that the tra¬ ditional ruling class of big industrialists and Junkers in Germany fare worse economically under Hitler than they did under the Kaiser. The Junkers’

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estates have been buttressed by a class of hereditarily entailed peasants. The National Socialist party domesticates labor and the middle class for the owners better than did the Democratic Socialists. Control of prices works primarily for them and only secondarily for the peasant; as part of the consumers and as a labor reserve, the middle class helps carry the load. The fact that numerous individuals of middle-class extraction have had opportunities and have risen in the social scale does not mean that “the middle class rose to power.” On the contrary, the Nazi war economy has violated all material election promises to the middle class. The middle class was politically important in the ascent of the Nazi party to power, but it is a power which they do not share. “Tax-Bolshevism” was not decimated; it was augmented. Wholesale distributions through co-operatives and department stores did not decline under Nazi control. At least half a million independent middle-class retailers closed down. And many independent enterprisers have become factory hands. In the light of such facts, it would be strange to assume that a class gets into power only to curtail its own opportunities and its own interests. Totalitarian regimentation has superseded Burgfrieden. Those individuals of middle-class extraction who have become officers in the army and Gestapo agents, by virtue of their party membership fill occupations which make them part of the state organization. From this state organization and not from their class extraction they derive such power as they have. In monarchial Germany many bureaucrats were recruited from among the petite bourgeoisie, but this did not mean that the imperial policy benefited the petite bourgeoisie. Nor does the fact that Hitler was a house-painter and Goebbel’s father a blacksmith benefit the house-painters and the blacksmiths. The question is: Where is the power? And the answer is: It is the structure of domination, which is the state with its monopoly of physical force, and fused within it the industrialists and their agrarian colleagues. Neither the proclamation nor the social extraction of the political actor is the deciding factor in the use of power. Deeds answer the question cui bono? Discrete opportunities for individual jobs is one thing; access to the positions controlling the big business of Europe is quite another. The ascent of certain members of the middle class is more than counterbalanced by the compulsory descent of other members of this class, by the decline of their standard of living, and by the war losses of their youth. The role of the German lower middle class in the ascent to power of the Nazi party is well known; the meagerness of their political harvest should by now be equally evident. The rise of a few Nazi parvenus into industrial robber barons, booty capitalists of imperialist dimensions, is paid for dearly by the nonowners and by displaced owners. The spoils of the war and

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levies on Jewry, municipalities, political protectorates, and subjected nations accrue to the propertied class. It is a peculiarity of modern warfare, irrespective of nations and constitutions, that the middle class has nothing material to gain from it. Political capitalism as it now dominates Germany does not benefit middle-class businesses, nor does it lend power to the middle class. Such psychic income of patriotic glory as they receive may compensate for social and economic deterioration. It is, however, ersatz. This middle class contains the managerial professionals with whom Burnham is concerned: he speaks of their grasp of and high chance at further power. The crucial fact in Germany concerning these skilled personnel in their relation to power is that their very indispensability and scarcity value for a war economy insures their loss of income and personal freedom, and provides a decade of overwork. The close supervision over them partakes of army discipline. Not power but subjugation to martial law is their lot. They are as enslaved as any wage-worker. That skill is at a premium does not in itself mean that the skilled have an opportunity for positions entailing power decisions. They are as attached to plants as were serfs to feudal manors—unless their income exceeds 12,000 Reichsmarks (about $4,000) a year. A slight minority of them have salaries above this figure. As experts they give advice, but they receive orders. Occupational skill is not identical with class position. Some engineers are hired men; other engineers do the hiring. A consultant engineer may have his own office, work for his own account, and, economically speak¬ ing, be an independent enterpriser. Or an individual with the same type and amount of trained skill may be a production engineer with a fixed salary and fixed stages in his career within an organization. The possession of a skill may well mean quite heterogeneous interests, class positions, and political loyalties. In a democracy, apart from common technical knowledge, technicians may be found on all political sides of many social fences. The technical knowledge of managers and their relation to pro¬ duction is one thing; their class position, political loyalties, and their stake in the current system is quite another. There is no intrinsic connection between the two. Those who control the experts are not the “political colleagues” of managers but their powerful masters. From a managerial standpoint they may be amateurs, but perhaps it is always the experts in power-grabbing and wielding who, although not specialists in handling implements of production or destruction, master whole nations and purge experts. Modern industry does require specifically trained staffs. But such occu¬ pational roles will be filled irrespective of the type of political system in which this modern industry is situated. The chances at political power for those filling technically indispensable roles is not a function of their

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technical roles but of their class position and political affiliations, what¬ ever they may be. Precisely because of their specialization and knowledge the scientist and technician are among the most easily used and co-ordinated of groups in modern society. This is proved in the German experience. The very rigor of their training typically makes them the easy dupes of men wise in political ways. In the face of Burnham’s depiction of the sinister motives of dis¬ satisfied managers and in defense of the trustworthiness, reliability, and loyalty of America’s technical managers to owners and to our society as it is now duly constituted, it is pertinent to recall the resolution passed by the representative American Engineering Council. Their stand on the technocracy question was well to the middle right, and they thought it “appropriate at this time to record its unqualified admiration of Herbert Hoover . . . [who is] one of the world’s greatest leaders and benefactors of our time.” All factual reports of the organizations of American scientists and industrial technicians disprove completely speculations about the singular class position and political stand of such groups. An American “Soviet” of technically trained persons would be as politically and socially conserv¬ ative as any businessmen’s service club. One prop which is used to support belief in the shift of the managers’ de facto control of industry to dominance in the political order is the fact of absentee ownership. Absentee ownership is one of the problems of modern industrial society which certain thinkers, among them Burnham, solve in favor of the absentee owner’s functioning agent. Where Marx had the coupon-clipping parasites expropiated by the exploited proletariat, Burnham has them expropriated by their junior partners and social colleagues, the managers. The Marxist class struggle has shifted its stage from the barricades to the Social Club. The expropriation of capitalists becomes automatic, intimate, and silent. Despite Mr. Krassin, an odd engineer whom Burnham cites, the Russian Revolution does not quite confirm this view. Burnham notes with satisfaction for his thesis that, while the absentee owners have been absent, their functioning managers have been gaining power. But what have the owners been doing while absent from their business? Veblen did not tell the whole tale in his depiction of the activities of the leisure class. Absentee owners have continuously devoted themselves to politics. Mr. Chamberlain did not lose power because he substituted a premiership for the management of his private steel corporation, and it is said that the contract for the Anderson bomb shelter, instead of a largescale investment in underground shelters, in London was, among other reasons, not entirely irrelevant to the steel industry. If they are successful,

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the lords now taking over the guidance of the British Empire’s destiny will not lessen the prestige and luster of their class. Tenants have not become owners because they have had disposition over houses and farms and estates; they have not, during the last three hundred years, automatically dethroned the absentee owning British aristocracy. Nor will the production engineers and administrative experts displace the economic royalists whose confidence they now enjoy. Burnham’s definition of private property significantly omits one aspect of “disposition over goods”: the disposition to the next generation. It is pertinent that the sons of the managers do not inherit the managed property but rather the relatives of the absentee owners. It is not usual for managers to sell out the plants which they manage. Socialism begins where a legal order does not provide for succession of property holdings in terms of blood relationship nor for private transfers of property. Hence, in this respect, nazism stands quite remote from communism. In Germany, as far as shifts in property holding are concerned, what has occurred makes for the happiness of owners and their heirs. Only in so far as they may become owners will the managers share in such happiness. It is by overlooking the problem of inheritance of property that nazism and communism appear as two phases of the same movement. Those who hate the Nazi but fear Russian communism know why. In treating Russian communism and German nazism as basically similar trends, Burnham confounds the regulatory power of the state with owner¬ ship. The ideal model of thought of economic theory may for certain purposes disregard the regulatory power of the state, but in reality there has never been economic conduct which has not been subject to political and legal regulations. Every tariff and industrial code, even if totalitarian, distributes differential opportunities among economic agents, and those who regulate do not thereby own. There is in Russia no private ownership of the means of production. Nobody owns them. Burnham’s assumption that someone must, even if it be managers, because someone “controls” them, is a lag from capitalist way of thinking. His definition of property as actual disposition means an eternalization of notions of private property. No commander of a battleship owns it or transfers it at will. Nor do the heiresses to industrial properties in the United States, Germany, and England lose ownership of machines and offices which their late fathers’ production engineers and executives efficiently and faithfully run for them. The belief in private and hereditary property, and the maintenance of a society stratified in terms of property, is not a technical or a “managerial” problem. It is quite evidently a political and legal problem. And it is precisely in the sphere of politics that managers do not significantly differ from owners in their beliefs and loyalties. Mr. Krassin and Friedrich Engels became com-

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munists not because they were engineers and manufacturers but despite it. So far we have considered managers as the members of the new middle class who are technically and industrially “concerned directly in production.” Burnham, however, does not restrict the term “manager” to such production and industrial functions. For him, it apparently includes a type of govern¬ ment bureaucrat. This duality of meaning, which pervades his argument, enables him to lend to its cogency in various contexts by making references to powerful groups in each of these contexts. Either by violating the principle of identity or by taking the term “manager” as an emblematic slogan to mean those in power, Burnham exploits the facts concerning the growth of bureaucratic structures for his own theses. Sometimes the “managers” are the “European managerial politician” and frequently they are referred to as “managers, in and out of government, along with their bureaucratic and military colleagues,” and “the bureaucrats (for which we may read ‘managers’).” Yet later it is not “the bureaucracy but the managing group which is becoming the ruling class.” Again, when discussing those who attain power in the United States, Burnham says, “The bureaucrats in charge of popular mass organizations . . . take their places among the managers.” He means the C.I.O. “Who are the managers?” is a real question for those who wish to understand Burnham’s argument. They seem to be, as we have said, those in power in whatever context Burnham discusses. They have one trait in common: all the groups mentioned as managers are more or less associated with personnel holding offices in bureaucracies. Thus, much of the cogency that Burnham’s thesis has is due to the simple fact that the form of organization all over the world is, perhaps increasingly, bureaucratic. But the ends for which these structures will be used, who will be at their tops, how they might be overthrown, and what movements will grow up into such structures—these are not considered; they are swallowed in the consideration of the form of organization, the demiurge of history, the “managerial world current.”

II Since the late 1920s it has been often observed that the executive branch of parliamentary government has been assuming more weight and functions at the expense of the legislative organs. Wars implement this shift. The legislature may be reduced to an interrogative, occasionally criticizing, and, after executive successes, applauding function. All modern states are bureaucratic. But bureaucracies do not operate without definite social settings. There are several views of the power relations of a growing bureaucracy. Hegel and his followers, down to Sombart and Burnham, hold that a bureaucracy becomes an autonomous structure with ultimate and supreme

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power over all classes. Others have not emphasized so much the technical aspect of the machinery of power but its direction and ends. The question cui bono? and the question of recruitment of those who dominate in the power decisions of a bureaucracy lead to questions which cannot be answered by confining one’s self to the consideration of the formal pattern of modern states, whether they be czarist, monarchial, democratic, or totalitarian. It opens the question as to the power relations of the bureaucracy of various classes. If classes are ultimately defined according to their relations to the means of production, or in terms of property, a bureaucracy is certainly not a class. Typically, the official of a bureaucracy is not allowed to become an economic enterpriser. In so far Hegel is correct; they remain removed from specific economic interests. But if, as in the political capitalism of modern Germany, a ruling group uses political power for building up private economic power, for acquiring industrial properties (Goering, for example), it is probable that for once Marx may be correct in calling the state the executive committee of the ruling class. In parliamentary systems the group of owners may find its representation in the ruling party. In Germany the amassing of fortunes by Nazi chieftains does not curb but rather con¬ solidates the power of the owning group. A new composition for an owning group does not destroy it. The robber barons fuse with the older indus¬ trialists by sharing their wealth, their interests, and their worries. In some contexts he who hesitates and does not grab is himself an object to be grabbed. Adventurous imperialism under the Nazi aegis has no use for the individual brilliance of a Cecil Rhodes; they organize a disciplined advance comparable only to the older corporate adventures of such companies as the East Indian, but in a world already grabbed they must be even better armed, and they must mobilize an entire nation for their advance. For Burnham, the import of the growth of executive bureaucracies is the ousting of the capitalist owners. But there is no evidence for this. It is true that in America the corporations have been anti-Roosevelt and that the tension between the owners and the New Deal is due to the increasing of the regulatory power of the state. But this state control has by no means aimed at dislocating ownership. It has, in fact, been security against such dislocation. The New Deal has protected the perpetuation of the system of ownership against the dangers which seem to be inherent in it. It is not property which has been “managed,” but the defaults of the property system. And in this respect, naturally, the corporate owners have not resented governmental expansion. They have resented that protection has been extended to small owners, farmers and bank depositors, and to nonowning groups, as trade-unions and the unemployed. The corporate owners have sought to restrict the scope of such protection or “welfare regulation” by the government. The objection is that Roosevelt has

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“unduly” extended such control to the defaults of the system as it touches propertyless sectors of the population. What is the role and relation to power decisions of the expert in govern¬ ment? Experts do not make decisions but influence them, and, fortunately for the wielders of power, by virtue of their specialization they are likely to draw different conclusions from the same observations. The turnover of experts within structures of power, military, industrial and governmental, does not conduce to their steady influence upon ultimate decisions. Witness the army purges and the shuffling of “the self-confident, young men” of the New Deal. It is not irrelevant to contrast the insecurity of tenure of the expert with the legally guaranteed inheritance of private owners. In totalitarian regimes the personal insecurity of experts increases propor¬ tionately to the influence of their advice. In democracies experts may retire and grumble; in totalitarianism they are liquidated. But is it true that the state bureaucracies that have grown up are tending to become the repository of power decisions? If not, for what class or social sector are they the instruments? Harold Laski has pointed out that the assumptions of the British civil servant are “the same as those of the men who own the instruments of production.” The general strike of 1926 showed that British bureaucrats will stand socially and politically with the ruling class. Neither their alleged neutrality nor their independence from the class in power has even been tested by their having to administer policies counter to the loyalties of their class. It is true that the larger a bureaucracy becomes, the more restricted its head becomes in giving orders. The means built up restrict the ends for which they can be used. But the top knocks off the “managers” before they get to be the depository of decisional power. The purges in Germany serve the owners, certainly not the “managers.” In Russia the centralization of bureaucratic agencies involved the purging of any sector of it which was gaining too much weight and threatening the absolutism of Stalin and his ruling circle. The history of brain-trusters does not bespeak the power of the “managers” in the New Deal.

Ill The task of understanding what is happening in the world today involves a comprehension of such basic issues as the retention or abolition of private property, the structure of classes, possible political and social movements, and of war. For it is from such matters and not in the allpervasive drift to some general form of organization that one may obtain a veiw which implements an intelligent and prepared expectation. To swallow such crucial items and possibilities into a form of organization is to be

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engulfed within the demiurge of history. The questions of events that require answering which may well be weighty determinants of the course of history are not merely incidental to some unilinear tendency toward great organizations. They may well constitute the pivots of history; they may be points around which managed structures swing in new and unforeseen directions. Nothing has been more surprising during recent decades than the dis¬ ruption of large-scale bureaucratic regimes and the quick dissolution of armies. And nothing is more astounding than the speed with which new and rival social machineries may be built up. The czarist police and the Communist G.P.U. may be equally harsh and brutal in their techniques of persecution; but this formal sameness should not obscure the fact that they are directed against different strata. Nothing is known of wholesale purges of production executives and army officers under czarism which would be comparable to the Communist purges of the middle 1930s. It is such facts as these which make fruitless a lumping of all executive agencies under one rubric “the managers.” We must not only consider the formal structures of history; we must also consider the various uses which are made of them. For the class pivots of such use are also a part of history—and an important part. Marx believed that state bureaucracies would remain fairly stable throughout bourgeois revolutionary shifts in power at the top, and Max Weber generalized this view for all revolutions. But this does not seem to be true of twentiethcentury bureaucracies. Their very size and complexity make it possible for small alert groups with political loyalties to other machines to become “cells” in them and crucially to snarl and entangle their functioning. Little cells may be formed in bureaucracies which externally carry on their proper work but take commands from political groups on the outside. Such activities do not contribute to continuous bureaucratization. It is not convincing that a book subtitled “What Is Happening in the World” should be without an explanation of the drive to war. Wars seem to Burnham “natural to society;” they only further the drift toward a form of organization. In seeing capitalism’s displacement by a managerial society, Burnham obviates an explanation of war. He vindicates nazism because it succeeded in eliminating unemployment. He has, however, to expand the concept of employment far beyond economic functions. The endowment of unemployed masses not with relief but with barracks and weapons may constitute a “solution,” may lead out of unemployment crises, but it is no new precept to solve economic crises by plunging into imperialist warfare. The Nazi drive to war is not nihilism, but imperialism, an old phenomenon in a streamlined form. Factors which are not a part of the hypothetical managerial society but are intrinsic to the structure and power grouping of the real world are needed to explain war. Of particular im-

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portance today is the political bolstering and implementation of capitalist crises. “Germany,” says Hitler, “must export or die.” In shrinking worldmarkets, German capitalism can conquer outlets for commodities and capital and raw materials only by violence. It is no longer possible by peaceful trade. Lebensraum for Central European capitalism means raw materials and chances to export. Socialism in one country may be possible: National Socialism is not. Burnham suffers from too much Marx: for economic determinism, control over the implements of production is the only route to power. But as E. A. Ross stated during the first World War such a view needs to be rounded out with a doctrine of martial determination. Among wars there are revolutionary wars which may be capitalized and guided by self-elected elites but not always. No manager pushes a button to be immediately and efficiently equipped with a spontaneous mass-grasp at power. To overlook the stress of war on loyalty and morale and to count for naught the depri¬ vations of masses may be helpful contributions to the cogency of a unilinear and formal construction of history, but it does not make for a readiness to expect the unexpected. To be grounded in history is to expect of the future that which does not follow mechanically but flows from large decisions not yet made. The belief in the stability of German totalitarianism and of the self-split and doom of the Soviet Union is a prognosis of Burn¬ ham’s which does not become less a wishful thought by hi? dressing it in admiration of the technically efficient. The loyalties of potential revolution¬ ary strata are not wholly determined by who has the best parachutes: workers are not necessarily loyal because their employers have shiny machines; soldiers are not necessarily loyal because their weapons are the latest. On the other hand, Dr. Goebbels has correctly remarked that revolutionary organizations and their animi do not disappear while underground. They become dangerous in so far as they succeed by cell techniques in winning the loyalties of men within the bureaucratic structures. In France the army was defeated but the generals remained. The very extension of these bureaucratic structures brings with it the extension of chaos should they fall during their supreme test which is defeat in war. It is during such crises that not the specialist managers but revolutionary leaders may take over. The Russian and the German revolutions of 1917 and 1918 started in their navies: not with, but against, officers. We are not so convinced of the stability and finality of nazism in Europe. American rearmament may solve the problem of unemployment, and warfare is no Nazi patent. The military breakdown and the eventual breakdown of the Nazi war machine may well release forces which may be primarily apt in engineering revolutions and later in managing staffs of engineers. Their goal will not be to curb masses

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but to mobilize them. A prognosis of what is happening in the world today which reduces masses to the mere object of the mythologizing of engineers may well be surprised at the potentialities of the possible opponents of the present managers. If the present ruling owners fall, so may their managers. Burnham’s theory of historical change does not take adequately into account the de facto functioning of class structures. For him the constitutents of society are masses and elites. History is now a struggle between managers and weak, because they are functionally “superfluous,” capitalists; later it will be between different managers who will curb the masses with myths. In order to become dominant, all the managers must do is control the functional economy, really run the productive apparatus, silently knock over the re¬ maining capitalists and curb the masses. That is all they have to do! Modern revolutions are not watched by masses as they occur within the palace of elites. Revolutions are less dependent upon managerial personnel and their myths than upon those who bring to focus and legitimate the revolutionary activity of struggling classes. The Russian revolutionaries may have been slight in number, but the peasants who wanted the land were many, and it is they who make revolutionary leaders successful. The French Revolution was not dissimilar. In Central Europe in 1918 the urban proletariat was the class that pushed the socialist leaders into power. In modern history always behind the elites and parties there are revolutionary masses. Without such masses, parties may shout revolution, but (no matter how expert they may be) they cannot make it. So far such revolutionary masses, landless peasants, striking workers, and defeated armies have ousted owners and their managers. The productive process is not always and necessarily continuous and ongoing but may well exhibit major breakdowns and discontinuities; from the standpoint of the technologist, it seems to be the dilettantes and amateurs who, coming into power, build up a new staff of expert managers. Such radical shifts in the distribution of power and in the composition of personnel are not illumi¬ nated by being covered with the all-over phrase, “the managerial revolution.” NOTE 1. The Managerial Revolution. What is Happening in the World {New York, 1941).

12. ON COMMUNISM In the ongoing war of words and nerves, communism stands in compe¬ tition with other great “isms” of our times, conservatism, liberalism, and earlier, fascism and nazism. During the Korean War the United States lost over 7,000 soldiers as prisoners of war to Chinese communism. These prisoners spent their times in POW camps under American-educated Chinese Camp commandants who had the pleasure of seeing about 80 percent of the captured men denounce each other to camp commandants. The prisoners were prepared for such denunciations within four weeks of having been captured, disarmed and reconditioned. Thus the term “brainwashing” entered our vocabulary. What is so remarkable about this accomplishment of communism and the corresponding psychological defeat of the United States was that it occurred less than a decade after the United States together with its Russian and other Allies had won the war against nazism and divided the German people into two nations. An Americanized West Germany now faced a Slavonic East Germany held captive behind an iron curtain. The division of Germany was part of the process of the rearmament of the West presum¬ ably for its defense against the Communist threat from the East. Martha Dodd, the daughter of President Roosevelt’s ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, vanished with her husband behind the iron curtain in 1957. She was retrained and reeducated in a camp for this purpose in Silesia, once Germany, now part of Poland. She may well stand as a symbol for all who were to face similar reconditioning in the decades to come. After we had divided the world in 1945 with our then Stalinist friends, we gradually and increasingly began to dislike our former Russian allies Dictated and transcribed in 1961.

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and their world. What had been, for a thousand years, the heartland of Germany was thus swapped for West Berlin in the interest of defense. The region of the Salic emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, containing some of the most remarkable cathedrals in Merseburg, became part of the East. The new Communist East Germany included Wittenberg, Naumburg and Magdeburg, the latter where Shakespeare had his Hamlet acquire the “pale cast of his intellect.” It was at Wittenberg that Luther translated the Bible and where he nailed his ninety-five theses on the chapel door and that Bach composed his Brandenburg Concerti. The new East included Wartburg, where Bach transcribed the Concerti, and Leipzig, where he conducted his masses. It also included Weimar, where Schiller and Goethe lived and worked and where the former died during the Napoleonic occupation of Europe. Together they left a legacy which can be summarized under the motto: “Noble be man, helpful and good.” The Western world, by the division of Europe, has been reduced to the western boundaries of Charlemagne’s empire as of 800 a.d. The boundary between East and West Germany follows the Werra River near Kassel. Kassel was the site of an ancient Roman army camp. Ninety percent of the city was destroyed in the bombing of World War II; and after the division, it became a frontier town. The East German border at this point is only one hundred fifty miles from the French border. While rivers mark the boundaries for the West, the Russians and their East German satellites do things more properly. They have levelled a noman’s-land along the border and raised barbed wire fences and watch towers. Bullets, aimed at any individual who would cross or infringe upon these boundaries, burst from the automatic rifles of the new German Soviet man, who patrols the boundary with his German shepherd. A compulsory militia made up of peace-loving Germans, including a sixty-year-old working woman and her fourteen-year-old grandson, marches by in formation, with rifles slung over their shoulders in defense of new socialist attainments. These include highly prized summer vacations in the camps and hotels of prewar Baltic resort areas, the Thuringian forests and in the Saxonian “Switzerland” near Dresden. The last, the Florence of the River Elbe in Bach’s era, is still largely in rubble. General Eisenhower in the order of the day when his troops crossed the Remagen Bridge stated: “We come as conquerors, not as liberators.” Accordingly some two million residents of once suburban West Berlin who were incorporated in 1870 into a unified Germany have been further segre¬ gated from the rest of Germany since August 23, 1961, when East Germany constructed the Berlin wall. They have been safely confined behind ghetto walls with a replica of the American Liberty Bell chiming overhead. When this happened, General Walker, until then in command in West Germany, resigned his generalship and left the army. Eighty percent of West Germans,

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according to German polls, wished to be friends of the United States and longed to be protected from the threat of a new Asiatic despotism. This new despotism has been constructed on the raw foundation of a Western-derived technology and know-how which has been implemented by a misunderstood and dogmatized Marxism. European Marxism has been infused with the Byzantine legacy of autocracy and converted into Stalinism. Like the fact that Woodrow Wilson’s illusion of permanent world peace was followed by disillusionment in the 1920s and thereafter, the illusions of World War II have been replaced by new disillusionments. The same patterns have occurred in Russia. Russia experienced the illusion of a triumphant czarist Byzantinism early in World War I. That illusion turned to disillusionment and then into the new illusion of Leninism. Renewed illusions of a Byzantine Stalinism were followed by the disillusion of Khruschev’s de-Stalinization program with all its revelations. But one cannot underestimate the permanent effects of Stalin’s victory. It includes the extension of the boundaries of a Slavonic Eastern world to within sixty miles of the Rhine. This means that the West cannot defend Western Europe by means of conventional warfare alone. The East, including China, has a combined population of over a billion who are organized into a few totalitarian states that are armed to the teeth and prepared to fight total war against all comers under a Wilsonian slogan of total disarmament. This approach is similar to that of Czdr Alexander I, the chairman of the Congress of Vienna which dominated all of Europe, from Spain to Moscow and Sweden to Egypt, after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. Alexander’s Holy Alliance guided the restoration of Europe with the help of Prince Metternich of Austria. In 1941, Henry Luce wrote an essay on America’s twentieth century that provided an equally illusory view of creating “one world.” Karl Marx has become enshrined in the Russian pantheon of icons as a founder, by now second to Lenin, of the Communist version of a new Asiatic despotism. The Revolution of 1848 shaped much of Marx’s thought. That revolution aimed at liberalism and the achievement of political and national freedoms. It was in 1848 that Marx’s Communist Manifesto first appeared, though written in 1847, on the eve of the Revolution of 1848. Marx was, first of all, a Western European intellectual baffled by the advent of the industrialization of society under the leadership of a rising middle class of industrial entrepreneurs. He studied a double-pronged revolutionary transition in the West. It included the revolutionary warfare of France under Napoleon and the British industrial revolutions of 1764 through 1832, the spinning jenny and the Reform Bill. Marx was a descendent of an assimilated Jewish family and was born in Trier, west of the River Rhine. He studied philosophy in Berlin and took his Ph.D. at Jena, near Weimar, where Goethe and Schiller had lived,

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Fichte was born and Jakob Friedrich Friess, the philosopher, had taught. Karl Marx wrote his doctoral thesis on Democritus, the Greek father of dialectical thought whose obscure fragmentary chants have puzzled admiring students of pre-Socratic philosophy and non-Aristotelian logic ever since. The dominant philosopher in Germany in Marx’s time was Hegel, the last great metaphysician of the Western world and the first modern thinker to base his philosophy upon the logic of non-Aristotelian thought. Hegel had been called to Humbolt University in Berlin in 1818. The university was founded in 1810 based upon the ideas of Wilhelm Von Humbolt, a liberal reformer who wanted to reconstruct the Prussian state under a “New Deal” policy led by non-Prussian bureaucratic liberals. The liberals had assumed emergency powers over the state and the army during the Napo¬ leonic Wars after the Prussian king had been defeated and fled to Konigsberg. Hegel, for the first time since Descartes, based his philosophy on the importance of human existence in the passage of time. Historical time, for Hegel, is the time of great decisions, of revolution, warfare and of the rise and fall of empires—from the era of the ancient Orient to his present. Under oriental despotism, according to Hegel, only one was free; under the polytheistic ancient Greek polis and the deified Roman caesars, with their slave-run plantation worlds, only a few were free. Superseding the pluralistic diversity and inequality of Greco-Roman polytheism, Christianity had prophesized and promised a new Jerusalem under the cross and universal freedom and equality before God to all men. These promises, to Hegel, had begun to be realized in the Western world with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Under the slogan of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” these wars were conducted from Mohammedan Egypt to the gates of Byzantine, czarist Moscow, the European seat of Asiatic despotism since Tamerlane’s time. Marx, a forty-eighter of thirty years of age, after writing his Communist Manifesto, was expelled from the Rhineland in 1848 by Ferdinand von Westphalen, his brother-in-law, the Prussian secretary of the interior. Marx went to Paris and was again expelled after Louis Napoleon made his Caesarist coup d’etat in 1851, and established the rule of the saber with warfare in the Crimea in 1854, his Mexican adventure in 1864, and the conquest of Egypt resulting in Ferdinand de Lessep’s Suez Canal that later was to be lost to the Great Britain of Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria. Marx lived for a short time in Brussels, was expelled from Belgium, and found asylum in Victorian England. There for twenty years he withdrew into the British Museum and wrote his studies in criticism of current, liberal economic theory. He published the first volume of his main work, Das Kapital, in 1867 and in 1871 wrote a pamphlet on the massacre of 30,000

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militiamen and their wives and children after the defeat of the Paris Commune. The militia had dared to defend their besieged city against kings, lords and gentlemen: against the kings of Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony, and against General MacMahon. The French general was captured by the Prussians two years earlier in the Franco-Prussian War and then released to lead the Prussian armies against the workers of Paris. MacMahon served the gentleman, French President Louis Thiers, and both did the dirty work for the invading army. The besieging troops waited watchfully for three months while Paris starved; and the Third French Republic was born in the blood of its starving and massacred militiamen, burghers and workers. Marx’s analysis of these events, appearing in 1872 as The Civil War in France, made him both famous and notorious all over Europe as a “Marxist.” Marxism became a modern “ism” at this time. In the same year, Marx and his friend Engels attended, for the first time, the Congress of the International Society of Workingmen at The Hague. This society of French Proudhonists and Blanquistis, Spanish and Italian anarchists, and British trade unionist refugees of 1848 and Commoners, was organized in London under the leadership of British trade unionists fighting for the franchise against Gladstone’s liberals. They won this right in 1867 when the Tories, under Disraeli, extended them the vote, after having acquired India for the British crown (from the East India Company) and after having defeated the Sepoy Rebellion of mutinous Indian troops in 1857 and 1858. This was less than one year after the Second Opium War conducted in the name of free trade by the British government under pressure from the East India Company against a backward China that wished to resist the import of opium into the country. Marx studied the competitive expansion of European power, learned to hate Victorian cant that glorified the meanest greed with imperial pomp and Protestant righteousness: “They speak Christ and mean cotton.” He made the debunking of ideologies and all forms of “false consciousness” into a weapon for political propaganda. The congresses of the First International between 1864 and 1872 became a stage for the competition of anticapitalist ideas and movements. The Hague Congress of 1872 became the most important of these meetings because in it, Marx, by then a leader of the Communists, was triumphant over Michael Bakunin, the anarchist leader. Marx was victorious at that meeting when German Marxists, appearing in force for the first time before an international congress, helped him carry the day. Having succeeded in moving the general council of the association to New York, Marx designated Friederich Sorge to be his successor as secretary of the First International. Sorge’s grandnephew, Richard Sorge, was to be, from 1936

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to 1941, the Russian master spy in Tokyo, reporting upon the secrets of the Japanese war machine to Stalin, who ignored his reports. Stalin was the last of the “Three Who Made a Revolution,” Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. He was first deified, then posthumously slandered and disinterred during Khrushchev’s campaign of de-Stalinization of 1961. Such actions are well within the traditions of oriental despotism. Neither the famine under Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan (1928 to 1933) with its 2.5 million dead peasants, his extension of his empire to the borders of Charlemagne’s nor the liquidation of the vast majority of the men who, together with Lenin, made the revolution (including the murder of Trotsky in Mexico) saved Stalin’s Byzantine icon for the pantheon of Communist heroes and Soviet patriots under the thrust of Khrushchev’s iconoclasms. General Secretary Khruschev knew Stalin’s number. He had been, after all, a participant-observer in these events, unlike U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt, Averill Harriman and General Walter Bedell Smith, all envoys of the United States to Soviet Russia, who could not be expected to know of these events. Marx, in developing his “Marxist communism,” had fused together the legacy of German humanism and philosophy with British empirical naturalism and the image and promise of universal liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution. He debunked nineteenth-century liberal hypocrisy with its veneration of emperors, kings and lords and a pecuniary, industrial society. Nineteenth-century Europe was to him a continent made up of nation states, each out for conquest in an unbrotherly competition for markets and raw materials and in deadly rivalry with each other for colonies and for national grandeur. It was a society where capitalists and their managers had the right to hire and fire their workers under the pressure of a business cycle that produced periodic unemployment and surplus production and one that condemned workers to “starvation in the midst of plenty.” Marx saw this capitalistic society of nation states engaged in irrational power struggles for the division of redivision of the world and its markets. He prophesied its doom and collapse into barbarism unless an internationally organized and revolutionary-minded proletariat were to mount and win a continuous struggle of increasing vehemence and scope in order to redirect the path of social change from capitalism to socialism. A planned society of free and equal men would follow this leap into freedom. The administration of things would then replace man’s rule over man. This hope for the good society was joined with hope in the proletariat, the last exploited class in world history. They were devoid of property rights over machines, factories, farmlands and railroads, i.e., productive but without control over their own production. Only after the revolution would they control their own output. Under capitalism their workday was

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subject to the impersonal and compelling laws of labor and commodity markets. To Marx, the movement of these markets in the last analysis was irrational. He studied these laws and concluded that the entire capitalist system was doomed: it represented an “anarchy of production,” not only suffering from the ups and downs of the business cycle but drifting inevitably towards a breakdown of the entire system. Before World War I, Marxist intellectuals were engaged in a great debate over the validity of these central theses of Marx’s Marxism. They were divided into two major camps. One camp, led by Eduard Bernstein, was made up of trade unionist reformers who wanted to work toward a social democracy or toward democratic socialism. These became known as revisionists. The other camp did not surrender its faith in revolution but criticized Marx, using Marx’s own dialectical “logic of contradictions” against him. They argued, roughly, the following: Marx was wrong in some of the assumptions of his analysis. He had assumed the existence and the continued operation of a “pure” capitalism consisting principally of entrepreneurs and wage workers. Actually, they argued, no such pure system had ever existed. There had always been a frontier of undeveloped and underdeveloped countries alongside the expanding capitalist nations. These societies without industries lacked compulsory universal education, compulsory taxation and a compulsory universal draft that would provide pational armies to defend themselves against the aggressive, nationalist expansion of the capitalist nations. In whatever forms laissez-faire capitalism had ever existed, these forms had ceased to exist in the present. Cartels, trusts and corporations with diverse legal structures had developed into monopolies. Their operations extended far beyond existing national boundaries by means of capital exports into undeveloped countries, the “backward” nations. These were being transformed into single cash-crop economies which offered the indus¬ trial nations cheap labor, profitable mining opportunities and further opportunities for capital investment, especially in the form of railroads and, later, oilfields and pipelines. To understand these later operations of capitalism, the revolutionary Marxists argued that one would have to study and analyze this new stage of capitalist society in its relationship to a nonindustrialized world that offered an expanding capitalism new opportunities for profit. Rosa Lux¬ emburg and Rudolf Hilferding arrived at new conceptions of capitalistic development. Hilferding developed his conception in his book Finance Capital. He generalized the specific economic conditions of Germany after 1890, after observing the flow of bank-controlled savings into industrial capital that was being invested into newly emerging corporate enterprises.

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He dubbed this fusion of banking and industrial capital “finance capital” and considered it a phenomenon characteristic of nation states that were relatively new, parvenus in capitalistic development, in comparison with the British empire or the ever swiftly expanding American economy. Yet Hilferding, to repeat, derived his conception from the single case of Germany. The Russian Social Democratic Marxists followed these ideas. Lenin in his study of Imperialism combined Hilferding’s theory of monopolistic finance capitalism and Rosa Luxemburg’s conception that the older industrial nations faced the economic necessity of exporting capital to underdeveloped nations and extracting high rates of profits from these investments in order to stave off their own internal collapse. According to Lenin, the capitalists and the governments of the older industrial nations corrupt their labor by “buying them off,” by granting them high standards of living in order to domesticate presumably revolutionary labor movements. This transformation of “bourgeoisified” labor aristocracies and social patriots works as a transmission belt of bourgeois ideas into the very ranks of labor. Thus Lenin, in underdeveloped, semifeudal and semibarbaric Russia, thought that modern wars and the shifting coalitions and alliances among modern nation states were caused by the existence of uneven rates of growth and unequal industrial development among the advanced capitalist nations of the world. These unequal rates of social change further resulted in ever new divisions and redivisions of the under¬ developed areas of the world. The more the world became industrialized and the more the remaining preindustrial world became reduced in size, the sharper became the conflict among the respective capitalist nations to control that world. Lenin felt that czarist Russia was the weakest link in the chain of world imperialism, and hence it offered the Communists the opportunity to break that chain by means of a strategy of revolutionary defeatism, a stab-in-the-back policy. He had seen Russian workers, peasants and defeated soldiers rebel against czarism after Russia, then the mightiest military land power in the world, had been beaten by a small but rising and expanding Japan in 1905. Almost 90,000 underequipped Russian soldiers were lost in the Battle of Mukden by a modern, machine-gunequipped Japanese army. Lenin observed how the Japanese navy, only thirty years old, had blasted the Russian Baltic fleet to the bottom in the battle of Tsushima Straits after the czar’s ships had sailed from the Baltic Sea around Europe and Africa. Forty thousand Russian soldiers returned to European Russia in defeat and intensified the disaffection produced by the Revolution of 1905. In this, czarism experienced the first tremor of the forthcoming overthrow, but czarism was victorious. It established a sham

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constitutionalism and introduced land reforms which aggravated the evils of czarist society by creating a bottom stratum of landless poor villagers in the countryside. As a youth Lenin had spent summers on a grandfather’s estate and understood a great deal about the Russian peasant. He changed Marx’s conception of a revolution, which was based solely on the proletariat, by teaching his followers how to ride the tiger in the coming decade when the next debacle came to czarist Russia. His revision of Marx included the idea that the revolution would not have to wait for the industrialization of Russia and the proletarianization of its peasants. He taught the need for and created a new type of conspiratorial, revolutionary party made up of professional revolutionaries who worked full-time under military discipline in an enterprise manned by a devoted vanguard of workers. This discipline included the requirement that party workers marry only with the approval of the party; the submission to job assignments by the party; and the following of a party line in one’s propaganda and agitation under the directives of the Political Bureau of the party. The Political Bureau consisted of party theorists and propagandists who worked out the theory and directives for its agitators. The latter worked among soldiers, workers and peasants and in bourgeois salons, the universities, the Duma, and among railroad workers and officials. This vanguard of professional revolutionaries would mobilize and channel all social discontent to the service of a Communist-led proletarian hegemony during the great transfor¬ mation that was yet to come. In devoting great attention to and in in¬ creasing social discontent of all sorts and at critical levels, Lenin, from his post of exile in Switzerland during World War I, advocated the ultimate overthrow of czarism. The czarist regime fell in February 1917 and was replaced by a liberal reform regime that existed side by side with the demo¬ cratic councils (soviets) of factories, rural districts, military units and political parties that had emerged in Petrograd after the Revolution of 1905. Trotsky in 1917 was elected chairman of the revolutionary council of Petrograd. Lenin arrived in April from Switzerland, was greeted enthusiastically at Petrograd’s Finland station, and immediately went to work to prepare for the next stage of the revolution. Although Kerensky’s provisional government tried to keep Russia in the war with the help of American, British and French loans, aid and encouragement, all efforts to do so failed. The soldiers and peasants were sick of war. They deserted, rifles in hand, from their military units; returned to their villages where they forbade their landlords to ship any produce out; and demanded that the land be turned over to themselves. The railroad system, for similar reasons, broke down. During the summer of 1917 the entire Russian population became first restive and then rebellious. Lenin led his party under the slogan of

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“Peace, Land and All Power to the Soviets” to a second revolution, the Bolshevik seizure of power, in October 1917. Trotsky ended the war with Germany at Brest-Litovsk and then had to defend the revolution against white Russian, German, British, Czech, Japanese and Polish armies. Marshal Tukhachevsky, under Trotsky, led the Russian armies against General Weigand, the defender of Verdun in World War I, who was then in command of the allied forces at Warsaw. Tukhachev¬ sky later represented the Soviet Union at the coronation ceremonies of Edward VIII in 1938, only to be arrested not long thereafter. He was tried by Andre Vishinsky and then executed in the continuing purges that con¬ stituted Stalin’s regime. Tukhachevsky was a foremost builder of the Red Army. Another was General Bluecher, a munitions factory worker elevated from the ranks by Trotsky, ultimately to become the Soviet Union’s first peoples commissar for defense.1 Bluecher’s major innovation was to combine into a new infantry organization riflemen, artillery units and motorized cavalry, creating the ultimate basis for the modern army. After the Rapallo treaty of 1922 between Russia and Germany, Germany circumvented the enforced troop reductions required by the Treaty of Versailles by sending its officers, at Russia’s invitation, to help train the Red Army. In so doing the German officers studied how to use tanks and how to use aircraft as fighting artillery, i.e. dive bombers (both forbidden in Germany), and how to perfect Bluecher’s ingenious reorganization of combined military units. The Russian army learned, among other things, how to march using the goosestep, as it still does today when on parade. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin became his successor as general secretary of the Communist party. Increasingly, by means of alliances with more prominent but rival Communist leaders, the avoidance of public stands on controversial issues, the formation of servile, faceless bureau¬ cratic dependents, and ultimately by purges, he took over complete control of the Soviet Union. The title of Marshal was adopted by Stalin only during World War II when German armies appeared before Moscow. It allowed Stalin, like Lenin earlier, to avoid responsibility for defeats in military, foreign and home affairs, and it provided him with scapegoats to appease the wrath of the people when mistakes occurred. Even earlier in Stalin’s regime, the original soviets (democratic workers’ councils) had gradually been eliminated as bureaucratization was initiated and accelerated at an unheard-of pace. Village peasants were transformed into land-workers in those factories in the field, kolkhoz and solkhoz, that surrounded machine tractor stations. These were all run by technically trained managers responsible to party supervisors, higher bureaucrats in the Department of Agriculture and to the security forces of the Department of Interior.

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In industry, things today are essentially no different. There is a plurality of superordinate bureaucratic and political organizations regulating every plant, whose directives the plant manager must take into account. Charac¬ teristic of all essential organizations of agriculture, industry, transportation and defense, in fact all social organizations, is this plurality of overlapping and often competing bureaucracies whose jurisdictions intersect at each point of managerial decision. A manager has to develop a sixth sense to anticipate which directive or rule he can overlook or forget, which areas are open to his discretion, bargaining and compromise, and which ones to comply with, lest he lose his neck. The young Russian learns to be “wise” to bureaucracy and “security” starting as a young pioneer, a komsomol, as a student or a worker. He must continue to do so as a party member in the 7.5 million member party machine; as a soldier in the 175 divisions in European Russia; as a diplomat watched by unknown KGB agents; or as a professional army officer watched by political commissars. He learns how to maneuver through the labyrinth of overlapping and intersecting superordinate bureaucracies and surveillances and how to deal with the competing claims and jurisdictions of subordinate decision makers with their respective party lines. The party represents the overall organization of a single-party state that is composed of many nationalities, and its politburo lays down a state-sanctioned party line for everyone. The artist has ^o qualify as a socialist-realist whether he is a writer, artist or musician. He has to avoid being labeled a cosmopolitan, an avant-gardist or a Western-bourgeois decadent. He cannot afford being dubbed an existentialist philosopher: that too bespeaks of Western decadence. As a musician he has to avoid Schoenberg’s twelve-tone rows and serial composition, also Western decadence. He must, as a painter, avoid nonrepresentational painting and fight for “socialist realism,” however that is defined. Shostakovich as a young man was condemned by Stalin personally for his opera Our Lady Macbeth of Minsk: Stalin’s word became Shostakovich’s law. Stalin’s demand for a revival of folk tunes and folklore in the 1930s bespoke not only of his personal taste but his desire to exalt Soviet patriotism by presenting folk tunes, peasant costumes, Cossack horsemen and folk dances on the opera stage while he was displacing and killing by starvation millions of Cossacks and other national minority peasants. Needless to say, liberty in the single party state has been replaced by strict discipline along military lines under the rigid control of an elite ruling class. Free speech is allowed with respect to the efficient implemen¬ tation of publicly promulgated plans and party lines. Inefficiency is freely criticized and older or lazy workers are dubbed saboteurs and slackers. Young workers and athletes who become star performers and who exceed production quotas, i.e., Stakhanovites, become heroes of labor, publicly

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decorated to be imitated and emulated. Mothers who bear large families also are honored and given medals for meeting or exceeding production norms. Children and soldiers are highly valued, as they always have been in Russia, as indicated by their celebration in folklore, Cossack soldier songs and balalaika and accordion music. The incentives for hard work and unusual endeavor include cash bonuses and premiums provided by socialist competition for individuals and between factories, farm organizations and tractor stations. Besides these pecuniary incentives, the ladders of promotion are adorned with honorific titles and medals in a star system that embraces all the pursuits of workday life. There are heroes of labor who have laid more bricks than any mason since the days of Babylonia. There are vanguards of production for every occupation and specialty from chess play to Olympic games; from mining to tailoring and to the composition of national anthems and army songs. Artists are decorated for paintings of heroic steel and assembly line workers and for making decorative monuments as well as for designing Byzantine facades for the tenement houses of copper miners at Lake Baikal and for those of chemical workers at Chemmitz. They do this from Stalin Allee in East Berlin to Leningrad on the Baltic, from Odessa to Kiev, and in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. The newly organized ruling class has been swiftly homogenized under the pressure of purges, propaganda and promotions. It has developed a standardized vocabulary of dogmatic Marxism-Leninism. This vocabulary is obligatory for all public speaking and all expression of thought. Any deviation is chastised as one of a multitude of sins from deviationism to sectarianism to adventurism. One must avoid being an “opportunist,” a “revisionist” or even worse, a “putschist adventurer” who suffers from the contagious disease of radicalism. One cannot be a “parliamentarian cretin,” a “bourgeois degenerate” or a “cosmopolitan internationalist.” The new Soviet man has to be aware of the possibility of such responses to his utterances and actions from which he can extricate himself only by public self-criticism and confession. If the sin is too great for forgiveness, the great accuser and public prosecutor are ready to mete out political justice in star-chamber proceedings behind closed doors. The spectacular show trials of Stalin’s day, with their public confessions of high treason, long-term conspiracies and sabotage by the men who made the revolution, are no longer in fashion. Instead, silent justice prevails. The one equality that has been realized in the Soviet Union is equality of death, in production and war, all under managerial or military orders. Totalitarian rule in Russia is Asiatic despotism on the basis of the bureau¬ cratic industrial and professional organization of a technocratic urban society engaged in chronic warfare and war preparation. This situation has persisted since 1914 under the czar, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and their

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successors. It consists of propaganda, psychic war, economic warfare, ghetto walls for West Berliners, infiltration, Aesopian language and double-talk of peace, democracy and proletarian dictatorship, guerrilla warfare and warfare by proxy. It includes a united front policy on all levels: with Hitler against the West and with the West against Hitler; with Tito against the West and with the West against Titoism; and [with China against the West and with the West against China—editors’ addition]. In short, the following words of Marx hold for today as well as for yesterday: The policy of Russia is changeless. Its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy—world domination—is a fixed star. Needless to say, there have been generations of men of great faith whose god has failed. These processes of illusion and disillustionment with Soviet communism started from the days of John Reed, whose widow married Ambassador Bullitt, and Martha Dodd, the daughter of the United States ambassador to Hitler. They include, among others, Karl Wittfogel, Ernst Bloch and Peter Freys, formerly of the London Daily Worker, who could not swallow the 1956 invasion of Hungary. Those who wish to hold Karl Marx responsible for Commupist totalitarian autocracy in the Eastern world should ask themselves whether the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount could be blamed for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bombings that were celebrated to the tune of “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” If faith demands that intellectuals sacrifice their reason, then the only response is that of Abraham Lincoln when he heard of an alleged massacre of his Negro troops just before he spoke at a public health fair in Philadelphia. His words were: “The truth shall make you free.”

NOTE 1. Marshal Bluecher, after having won an undeclared war by Japan against Russia in Siberia during 1938, vanished without trace during Stalin’s great “Yezov” purges that finally eliminated all the men around Lenin in 1921.

The Sociology of Knowledge and the Intellectuals

*

13. THE INTELLECTUAL IN MODERN SOCIETY The term intelligentsia came into use during the nineteenth century in czarist Russia. It referred to a literary and political stratum of unrepentant, apostate noblemen who included the sons of clergymen. They were important, in fact indispensable, in the Westernization, industrialization and modernization of Eastern European and especially Russian society. They imported from the West the political ideas of liberalism and democ¬ racy, socialism, communism and anarchism, and the ideals of secularism and science, as well as Western literature and culture. In the process of the growth and development of this stratum and of the growth of its self-consciousness, the terms intelligentsia, intellectual and intellectual stratum have become accepted in all Western languages. But their definition poses historical and sociological problems: who actually belongs to the stratum? Does it have a uniform membership? What does an intellectual do? What is its ideal or actual function in society? Derogatory terms, such as “pencil pusher” and “ink smearer,” indicate the fear of the power or the potential power of the letter and the word. This fear, we must remember, arose in the social and political context of the nineteenth century, when illiteracy was all but eliminated and when newly literate masses could hence be led by the written word. The rise of these new literate and semi-literate masses went hand in hand with urbanization, industrialization, the mass army and widespread, systematic taxation in newly emerging states. The emergence of these new masses was aided, of course, by compulsory universal education and by the rise of mass cir¬ culation newspapers, journals, magazines and book publishing. This essay is based upon a radio lecture originally broadcast under the title “Zur Soziologie der Intelligenz” by RIAS in West Berlin on May 17, 1956. It was translated by Nobuko Gerth, edited and emendated by the editors to achieve its present essay form.

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The intelligentsia and intellectuals, an elite of those knowledgeable in letter and word, achieved a different standing in industrial society from that held by the educated strata in earlier agrarian societies. The agrarian societies had consisted overwhelmingly of peasant masses who had no connection to the literati, itself another term for the intellectuals. In addition, the rise of intellectuals in Eastern Europe, as in much of the world, occurred during the same eras when middle-class capitalism and the newly emerging industrial working classes were transforming the entire character of agrarian society. If we then wish to understand the terms intellectual and intelligentsia with reference to these changes and from the standpoint of world historical changes in the direction and quality of culture, we must also understand the changes in the character and composition of the “intellectuals” as they themselves were changed by the transition from agrarian to capitalist industrial society. In the ancient agrarian world, what we now call intelligentsia included hierarchically organized priesthoods such as those of ancient Egypt who had a monopoly of secret knowledge of and access to eternal life in the afterworld. It would also include the members of such hierarchically organized bureaucracies as the Confucian mandarins, the literati of classical China, who along with their teachers and philosophers made a cultivated, literate life possible. But the concept of religious intellectuals would also include such diverse and unorganized individuals and groups as wandering prophets, salvation seekers, fortune-tellers and itinerant monks. These latter groups were often opposed to the organized, established hierarchies. They were sometimes the founders and disseminators of new religions that later became the basis for hierarchies; and, at the other times, they lived within the framework of established hierarchies and dominance but offered alternative paths to salvation. The itinerant intellectuals included in various societies minnesingers and troubadours, bards, minstrels, poets and folk singers, who were detached from fixed positions in feudal society by internal warfare and warring states. They were the creators and conservators of the epic poem, of legends and fairy tales and were the disseminators of “news” gathered in their travels. The wandering artists suggest the aesthetic dimension that underlies the concept of intelligentsia-intellectual. The seers and prophets suggest a “forecasting” function; their news dissemination suggests journalism; and the mythic function of bards and poets suggests the con¬ struction of ideologies based on the heroic past. Intellectuals in hierarchically organized bureaucracies provide us with images of established, conservative groups committed to their positions in

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established societies and to the fees, benefices and the offices that their positions entailed. In ancient Rome the intellectuals included jurists and teachers of rhetoric. The former helped to lay the basis for Rome’s rationally codified system of law and administration, while the rhetoricians, like the academicians of ancient Greece, created the foundations for the modern humanities. Yet what was decisive for the development of the West and for its intel¬ lectual foundation was the establishment by the medieval church of univer¬ sities. These were created to educate its clergy, themselves an expression of the intellectual function. These clerical universities preserved, in everchanging form, the ethical and intellectual legacies of ancient Judea, its knowledge of revelation and the Holy Scriptures, also the product of intellectuals. They also preserved the intellectual heritage of ancient Athens, its philosophic speculation based on abstract concepts, upon logical, rational demonstration and upon the wisdom of human judgment and experience free from the bureaucratic control of state and church. Finally the medieval university gave new expression to the intellectual productions of ancient Rome, its emphasis on rational law and administration as well as on poetics and rhetoric. University-educated intellectuals looked down upon various kinds of nonacademic intellectuals as outsiders, and all intellectual groups fought among themselves; but sometimes they cooperated with each other in struggles against nonintellectuals. Together, during the course of centuries, they produced individual ideas and collective movements that sometimes supported, sometimes opposed, but often both supported and opposed the church-defined spiritual way of life of the Occident. The countercurrents they produced have occurred at varying degrees of intensity throughout a Western history that has been characterized continuously by great changes in its cultural and intellectual life. The cooperation and tension between intellectuals has thus resulted in great discontinuities, renaissances and periods of stagnation, the latter often being followed by radical interruptions and creativity. Changes in the external world, of course, have affected the cumulative growth of culture even to the extent of causing both universityand nonuniveristy-trained intellectuals in the late Middle Ages to rediscover and resort to the legacies of their own past, especially that of ancient Mediterranean antiquity. The nonacademic intellectuals of the Renaissance Italian city-state republics and dictatorships and of those attached to religious and secular sovereigns were artists and humanists who searched for fame without academic rank or theologically confirmed titles. They simply called themselves “geniuses.” They were a vanguard seeking mental emancipation and a claim for the sovereignty of the free intellectual and artistic spirit. That

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claim received its confirmation when Isaac Newton was buried in Westminister Abbey with royal honors. Yet, when this new elite of secular art and knowledge, which existed in a feudal society that was dominated by warriors and landowners, confronted established, hierarchically ordered priests in the salons, courts and landed estates of the feudal elite, they were often powerless, but they were taken into the households and then became dependent upon royal, aristocratic and merchant capitalist patrons. This form of household patronage for musicians, artists and writers survived in Munich and Vienna up until the end of the nineteenth century. The decentralized municipal and state theatre, opera and symphonic orchestra are a legacy that these rent-consuming noblemen and owners of landed estates left to the bourgeoisie, to cities and to taxpayers in general. That legacy included the support of culture by the citizen taxpayer, the voluntary contributor and the consumer. The rise of industrial and consumption-oriented capitalism along with urbanization and a continuously expanding job market resulted in a con¬ stantly increasing number of intellectuals. These modern intellectuals originated in the bourgeoisie, itself an expanding category, and were uni¬ versity educated. They began to compete for newly created positions in state and national governments, which themselves were in competition with each other and thus created the need for a systematic financial, tax-based administration, for a bureaucratically organized professional army, and hence the bureaucratic state. These institutions of the modern ad¬ ministrative state were in part designed, planned and promulgated by early eighteenth-and nineteenth-century middle-class intellectuals. Humanist intellectuals initially became diplomats, international corresponding and other high level secretaries, consultants, informants, and negotiators. The expansion of public administration in the consolidation of a taxbased military state and of a well policed and pacified mercantile state resulted in an increased demand for specialized, professionally certified experts in public service at all levels. The universities began to educate, train, certify and produce experts at the request and often at the demand of the state ministers heading civil service bureaucracies. Lorenz von Stein of Prussia, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, called the univer¬ sities Beamtenschulen, civil servants schools. Moreover, university reforms, which began in the nineteenth century and have continued until the present, have modernized the teaching, research and internal administration of the university so that its structure increasingly resembles that of a bureaucracy. More and more the structure of the university resembles that of the scientific academies of the seventeenth century. Science and technology have thus become tied together with the capitalistic economy, as science had earlier been tied to rational bureaucracy.

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In the present, in whatever field the intellectual is employed, he finds himself working in a hierarchically structured organization with graded supervisors and subordinates and an ordered level of grievance procedures, hearing officers and administrative law. In both the scientific institute and the university, competency is examined by the use of objective pro¬ cedures; official and professional secrets are maintained; and rules for employment, examination, promotion and for the securing of earned rights and privileges are formalized and made predictable and calculable. In the wider sense of providing a bureaucratic environment as well as training aspirants for the bureaucracy, Lorenz von Stein’s dictum is now doubly applicable. The universities in the era of expanding capitalism, of course, did more than produce graduates oriented to employment as officials in increasingly more finely articulated and stratified public bureaucracies. Some new graduates were professionals who, armed with a university education as a certificate of occupational competence, broke what Grete de Francesco called the power of the charlatans and displaced them. The charlatans were self-educated, self-qualified intellectual and “service”-oriented entrepreneurs. The new university-trained graduates became free pro¬ fessionals. In this process, men of letters were especially acute in judging market opportunities for their work and were also important in paving the way to power and political influence for a new stratum of bourgeois intel¬ lectuals. They worked as journalist-pamphleteers and authors of books and as jurists and lawyers in nongovernmental spheres. Such men of letters were not necessarily attached to official salaried positions: They often carried their “office” in their hat or briefcase. Their literary skills, of course, became available due to the rising literacy of a public ready to pay for and read the materials produced and disseminated as a result of con¬ tinuous advances in technology such as Gutenberg’s moveable type, Koenig’s rotary press, Mergenthaler’s linotype, the typewriter and the everaccelerating electronic and photoelectronic conquest of space and time. The demand for these new types of equipment and the personnel to supply them with content, ideas, information, copy, images and statistics were themselves the product of hierarchically organized bureaucratic or¬ ganizations that create and retain power over their intellectual, technical and administrative personnel by their coordination and integration of ideas, people and technologies. These expanding media bureaucracies created new centers of power and influenced the expansion, concentration and more rapid circulation of market-oriented streams of ideas and symbols to the public. But intellectuals have not always nor exclusively served in positions useful to the interests of highly centralized governmental, military and

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business bureaucracies. At other times they have served the more decen¬ tralized but still directly organized power of the community and have facilitated the collective organization of its like-minded people in their joint strivings. They have also organized groups in the community around a single interest or goal. These interest groups have projected cooperatively agreed-upon images of a public order and leadership and upon the issues and state of public life as a whole. In France in the eighteenth and nine¬ teenth centuries, interest and community groups took the additional, unique form of political clubs and salons, the latter often organized by the wives of the haute bourgeoisie, bankers, business magnates and specu¬ lators. In Germany, intellectuals organized secret societies devoted ex¬ clusively to or in combination with politics, friendship and the pursuit of spiritual and cultural values. In England, coffee houses, literary societies and men’s clubs abounded. Collectively these relatively informal associations created public opinion or a climate of opinion, that is, community-wide attitudes and expressions of opinion with regard to “public” issues, i.e., issues that the “public” feels itself entitled to hold and to express. Intellectuals saw these groups as well as the power of the opinions they created as sounding boards for their ideas and as the means of legitimating their opposition to the holders of established power. Japrnalists and advocates struggled in the name of the public for the right to gain infor¬ mation withheld by centralized bureaucracies. They fought against cabinet, state and bureaucratic secrets, secret, “in camera,” justice, secret parlia¬ mentary hearings and secret negotiations and treaties. When revolutionary advocates overturned feudal or autocratic regimes, they brought to the fore revolutionary concepts of natural right that seemed to place ideological limits on secret and arbitrary government. When, on the other hand, “enlightened” poet-princes or philosopher kings, like Frederick the Great, prevailed, they bequeathed to the bourgeoisie a legacy of spiritual but not political freedom. The bourgeoisie could become “civilized” and spiritual; but without political revolutions and the traditions and conventions that political victory entailed, the spiritual impulse to create a free, democratic political and economic order remained weak. In “spiritualized” autocracies the dominant form of political accom¬ modation is the deep internalization of religious values; and personal catharsis replaces political action: the edifying moral sermon replaces the evocation of ethically rigorous actions. Schiller’s reinterpretation of Rousseau’s thought expresses this spiritual transvaluation of action: Man is created free and is free even if in chains he was born to be.

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Under this dispensation, Holdlerin’s anxious question sadly fades away: or does the deed come from the thought like lightning from the clouds? Will the book soon come to life?

When classic forms of political revolution put the bourgeoisie in power in the Western nations, the reorganization legitimated public life: The citizen could legally express his concern for and define public issues in free, public debate. Yet to allow the free expression of public opinion to result in the enactment of law requires specific, permanent constitutional and electoral procedures that can only be the result of farsighted planning. It requires that an enforceable, stable mechanism be set up that permits competition and power struggles between individuals, groups, parties and strata in which all contenders will accept that political mechanism as the basis for their struggles. The acceptance of basic political schema thus is made the basis of claims to exercise political power within the framework of the schema. All parties to the constitutional system are required to accept the system as the basis for their political action. They thus grant legitimacy to it by struggling within it. In this process the “majority” has the final word in resolving contested issues, making it necessary for the various competing interest groups to resolve their differences and to work out compromises in order to assemble a majority. They have to reconcile their special, conflicting interests by negotiation to achieve a satisfactory compromise. The legitimating formula, the overall justification, is “the good of society”; but this formula is, at the same time, the formula for the continuous resolution of competing group differences by negotiation and compromise. Those who wish to abstain from this process of haggling and hustling because of their purity of conscience, their absolute conviction, exclude themselves from the entire process of decision-making and are hence un¬ likely to achieve their legislative goals. They can only console themselves by believing themselves to be above the pettiness and self-interest of party politics, if that is any consolation to them. The principle underlying this continuously unfolding, fluid process of the assemblage, maintenance and recombination of power blocs by coordi¬ nation through negotiation and compromise is opposed to that of the hier¬ archical, bureaucratic exercise of power. The latter principle rests upon command and obedience, instruction and disciplined compliance. The intellectuals have, in summary, contributed during their long history to the development of the bureaucratic state and to the creation of the culture industry, the arts, mass communications, mass media and mass culture and to the criticism of the latter. They have contributed to the development of the free professions and, of course, the liberal arts; but,

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most importantly, they have helped to create the reality of public opinion and the theory, practice, and the institutions of democratic government and society. The study of the origins and role of the intellectual inevitably thus leads to the analysis of the relationship of their purely intellectual activities to power-holding institutions within society and to their relationship to power, whether power is exercised alone or in alliance with or dependence upon other groups in society. It is not fruitful, in this analysis, to classify them schematically into relatively simple, abstract and ahistorical “types of intellectuals.” Theodore Geiger in his Aufgaben und Stellung der Intelligenz in der Gesellschaft [Functions and Position of the Intelligentsia in Society]1 divided intellectuals into the “technical scientific” intelligentsia and the “political” intelligentsia. His technical scientific intelligentsia, such as the nuclear physicists, have nothing to do with politics and public life because of the specific nature of their profession. The political intelligentsia, at the alleged other extreme of political involvement, are the ones usually brushed off as “literati,” “ink smearers” and “book politicians” by upper-level bureaucrats, military officers, businessmen and professional politicians. Characteristic of this kind of disparagement is Bismarck’s phrase, Verkrachten Existenz, rootless being. Joseph Goebbels’ epithet, “asphalt literati,” decadent, marginal coffee-house intellectual, testifies to the self-hatred of a former journalistic intellectual coopted into the Nazi Party apparatus. But even when the so-called technical scientific intelligentsia are enjoined or seek to avoid political participation on the grounds that they are merely technical experts, we find that they rarely do or can do so. We only have to remember that the German Natural Science Research Convention was, before March 1848, a gathering place for German liberalism. By the Wilhelminian era, Berlin professors were, in DuBois Raymond’s words, “the bodyguards of the Hohenzollerns.” In any case, it is easy to see that abstinence from political participation and the avoidance of political responsibility is a special kind of politics. Geiger, in his quest for schematic classifications, suggests that “criticism of power is the latest task for the intelligentsia,” and at that, it is even then only “a special task of a small, specialized group within the intelligentsia, namely the social scientists.” This statement appears to make the classification of intellectuals the primary basis for allocation of professional jurisdictions. Yet, if this is its purpose, it is a strange one. The artistic intellectual, presumably on the basis of this classification, would have no business dealing with power relationships. Edmund Burke said that “human nature is art”; and if we see the human being as a political animal, in Aristotle’s sense, we would

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then find it strange to put “out-of-bounds” such work of musical in¬ tellectuals as an opera that presents the struggle of the heroic individual for freedom against tyrannical power or the mourning of its victims. Was Mozart’s criticism of the jus primae noctis in The Marriage of Figaro merely an attempt to “spiritualize” existence, or was it a political critique of feudal despotism? Perhaps it was both, but surely it went beyond music as a pure, nonpolitical art form. Could one have reopened the Frankfurt Opera after World War II—especially when based upon the voluntary contributions, large and small, of thousands of citizens—among the ruins of a bombed-out city with anything better than a production of Beethoven’s Fidelio? The chorus of freed prisoners in its last act let the human voice travel to the heart at a time when the icy silence of the wish to forget had already set in among the German populace. The chorus invoked the memory of freed (and dead) inmates of the concentration camps that had existed almost within earshot of Frankfurt. Only a living opera could reach them: mass-produced commercial culture was unwilling or unable to do so. Picasso, certainly an artistic intellectual but no certified social scientist, captured in Guernica the scream and protest of dismembered Spain so unforgettably that no flood of words, photographs or monographs could equal this one painting. Goya, a century earlier, had likewise provided an equally powerful moral and political commentary on The Horrors of War. Arnold Schoenberg’s Ode To Napoleon is a concentrated attack on tyranny, not only the tyranny of Napoleon but also that of Hitler. Surely though the methods and means of communication of artistic intellectuals are not discursive, one cannot maintain that these intellectuals are unable to grasp and convey images of reality by the use of their art. In contrast to these historical efforts at artistic social criticism, Geiger attributes to the natural scientist, the technical intelligentsia, the “ration¬ alization of existence.” Yet one could respond in an age of atomic and hydrogen bombs: “What, if anything, does the rationalization of destruction have to do with existence?” If this response seems too excessive or rhetorical, so too is Geiger’s contention. Geiger argues that even the scientific-technical intelligentsia must restrict their social-scientific criticism of political action because they supposedly “cannot place themselves against the state or the economic-political goals for such actions.” Geiger explains the ground for his assertion: “these goals are substantially decisions of value and, as such, are removed from all rational argument and counter-argument.” Since, however, the other types of intellectuals are not qualified, in Geiger’s terms, to make technical criticisms, key areas of military-technical decisions affecting the life and death of entire civilizations are defined as being beyond the scope of both kinds of intellectuals and beyond the scope of critical reason. They are beyond both rational and “irrational” discussions and thus appear to be left entirely in the hands of top military-political

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leaders, apparently not subject to any external, democratic controls. Geiger’s argument is entirely fallacious. It would involve removing all “irrational,” ultimate values from rational political discussion, leaving them to the state. Yet every major political decision and most minor ones involve decisions over and between values; and all of these are subject to reasoned criticism, if only to ascertain their priority and the moral, political and social consequences of purely technical decisions. Thus a political decision to prepare for war by adopting an autarchic economic policy, as undertaken in the 1930s, is just as susceptible to rational discussion as any other “irrational,” value-based policy. All voluntary decisions are subject to rational clarification and insight and subject to evaluation by critical reason. The duty of the intellectual, whether artistic, rational-speculative or specialized scientific-technical, is to attempt to develop insight, to learn what one can from the past and present in order to extend the legacy and the faith in reason of the occidental Enlightenment. The role of the intellectual, defined in the Enlightenment as an agent of reason, understanding and critical insight, has been profoundly altered by the processes of urbanization, industrialization and the development of large-scale capitalism. Two major institutional developments are responsible for these changes. The first is that the large-scale business and bureaucratic market apparatus of the new culture industries have resulted in the use of new techniques of publicity, star systems and advertising to create a new kind of public culture. These techniques make it increasingly difficult to create and maintain a community of independent publics, as was done in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, it is increasingly difficult to create a public opinion that is sufficiently stable to be the basis for informed negotiations, compromise and rational argumentation. Instead, the mass media provide, in political discourse as well as in the arts and entertainment, distracting diversions and an endless variety of one-day celebrities and media heroes who are offered helter-skelter to otherwise unconnected audiences of radio listeners, TV addicts and cinema viewers. They provide repeated recordings and performances of their output until both the records and audiences are worn out. Under mass reproduction, new and novel diversions and entertainment become necessary in larger and more powerful doses so that the fatigue and boredom caused by the ebbing of earlier cultural and media catharses can be surmounted. The need for catharsis appears to be intensified by the attempt to gratify it. But by endless repetition, the media reduce thought to cliches; moreover they go beyond this. They create by their slogans new cliches and adopt cliched formulae or, rather cliched substitutes for thought. Political advertising raises the equivalent hopes for its audiences of “striking it rich,” that is, personal

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salvation at small prices or through luck, all without effort or thought. All contemporary critics of culture have expressed this evaluation of the culture industries. They have expressed this evaluation so often that even the critique has become a cliche. On the other hand, the very development of the new culture industries and the mass media have, as previously noted, opened up a host of careers for new types of “professional” intellectuals, editors, writers, researchers, technicians and political as well as business managers and administrators. The universities have, of course, characteristically and almost immediately jumped in to fill the gaps in professional training created by the economic opportunities and technological advances in the culture industries, in the media of culture diffusion and in political persuasion. Thus, while old-style, humanist intellectuals decry these advances, they themselves have been supplanted and partly transformed by and in the new hierarchies that determine much of the intellectual’s function. They have also been supplanted by university-trained specialists in the media and the media arts. The second major development in the external functioning of society that affects the classical character of the intelligentsia in its relation to its publics has been the rise of large-scale organizations in the private economy, the bureaucratization of business, and the corresponding formation of largescale, hierarchically organized trade associations, interest groups, class organizations and political parties. These processes of bureaucratic centrali¬ zation have led to oligopolistic and monopolistic competition in opinion formation that parallels the organization and control of markets in business. A handful of giant organizations dominates opinion formation. The remainder of the public is condemned to silence and to an intellectual poverty that is likely to prevail so long as new organizations do not emerge as the product of self-conscious efforts to provide an adult education that encourages and facilitates informed participation in political decision¬ making. These new organizations could also support the serious work of independent, political and artistic intellectuals, who are otherwise pushed to the periphery of public life. The “normal” process of cooptation of intellectuals usually results in transforming them into spear carriers, professional soldiers in the armies of these hierarchically organized interest groups, in much the same way as they are employed by the culture industries. In the present, even more so than in the past, the intellectuals thus do not constitute a uniform group or stratum. They serve any and all powers and help to legitimate all policies and the quest for power by all groups. Intellectuals have thus been emancipated, as in the earlier, precapitalist milieux, from the exclusive control respectively of the church, the aristocracy and the state. They now have the possibility of choosing the groups and strata they wish to lead or serve. In the past,

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Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Ferdinand Lassalle chose to make the working class their reference group; Friederich von Gentz and Adam Muller chose to support feudal reaction and restoration; and Alexander von Humbolt supported the liberal bourgeoisie. In democratic societies, intellectuals, through their affiliations and alliances, collectively project a picture of the reality of the claims for power, of the distribution of organized power and of the competition for power among the various class, status and interest groups in their society. But they do more. They aid in the formation of these groups. They provide a large part of the symbolic unity and the organization of the separate groups; and, of course, they justify claims to power and policy decisions to external decision-making bodies and to the public itself. If the projections of reality by intellectuals in either their own interests or in the interests of others become rigid, dogmatic formulae, the groups they serve or lead many splinter or lose potential political partners, and the alliances the latter have formed may break apart. This has been the fate of all dogmatic European ideological political parties. Yet to do the opposite— as is the contemporary case—that is, to eliminate all theoretical reflection and all ideological and interest concerns that are relevant to concrete political programs in favor of appeals to personality or to sentiment, is to make the political education of the electoral campaign and political debate into an advertising campaign. When this happens, the diversions and cliche-ridden thoughtlessness of the mass media then become the language and rhetoric of politics. In the long run, such devaluations of politics result in mass apathy, in an apolitical diversion from issues and interests that displaces the political education toward the self-confident, informed citizenry that democracy requires. Citizens are required to know their own interests so that they can understand and approve or reject the negotiations and compromises necessary to make effective decisions and to create the majorities in whose name democracy operates. Democratic freedom is celebrated often and loud, even in the mass media that undermine it. Yet that freedom ought not be the mere object of de¬ votion; it becomes a reality only when it is exercised. Whoever wishes to be free must use his freedom. For intellectuals, the exercise of freedom means to criticize error, to unmask ideologies, to reveal the truth, and not to accept fatalistically the naked reality of power that denies the possibility of the exercise of reason. We cannot accept the present as an iron cage in which the possi¬ bility for reasoned action is so rigidly prescribed that the future becomes only the object of despair, an image that invites apathy in the present and the acceptance of an even worse future.

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Our images of the future do not necessarily have to be the horrible images of George Orwell’s 1984. Intellectuals, to keep open the possibility of freedom and reason, must project an image of an ideal social order that embodies both qualities; and they must struggle to attain that ideal.

NOTE 1. Aufgaben und Stellung de Intelligenz in der Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1949).

14. THE RELEVANCE OF HISTORY TO THE SOCIOLOGICAL ETHOS Sociological thought emerged in response to the crisis of a newly dynamic European society, fresh from industrial and political revolution. The aim of this new thought process was to forge intellectual tools which would make the complex web of social relations more transparent. Sociology was born and grew in a rapidly changing world, a world that seemed, to be drifting, and in which man was again and again surprised and frightened by ex¬ periencing the unforeseen and unintended consequences of his actions. From the Enlightenment, the wars for revolution and independence on the European and American continents, the Napoleonic conquests and defeats, the czarist and Metternichean reaction, and the explosion of British industrial and commercial energies, emerged sociology—the intellectual quest pursued by a new type of scholar. In 1816, Friedrich Buchholz, in Germany, saw this quest as “the advent of a science of which former centuries could not dream; namely, the science of society in its necessary and fortuitous relations.” Buchholz did not have a name for these new scholars, but he described them as special minds whose “entire endeavor aims at bringing science nearer the state of society, as it actually is, and adjusting sceince to it.”' Later, Auguste Comte, the disciple of Saint Simon, named the new intellectual approach “sociology,” and sloganized its ethos as “Savoirpourprevoir, prevoirpour pouvoir.” This new science of society, as its originators thought of it was designed to overcome blind drift, fate, or the unforeseen and unintended consequences of man’s action. The end of knowledge was to be predic¬ tion, the end of prediction, control. Written with Saul Landau. It first appeared in Studies on the Left 1, No. 1 (Fall 1959): 7-14. Copyright © 1959 by Studies on the Left. Reprinted by permission of Saul Landau and Nobuko Gerth.

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The great founders of sociology were not traditional academicians in any sense. Men like Buchholz, Comte, and Spencer were academic outsiders: Ferdinand Toennies and later, Max Weber were at least relative outsiders.2 Those that were in the academy did not behave like the average college professor, for they would not, and could not, be confined to one academic discipline. Buchholz, a pastor’s son from Brandenburg, was a free-lance writer and critic. Karl Marx, the “non-Jewish Jew,”3 was an economist, philosopher, sociologist, historian, and social revolutionary. And not only was he obviously outside traditional academic life, but, as an exile who did not assimilate, he was a cultural outsider as well. Certainly for Toennies and Simmel, Spencer, Weber, and Durkheim (a Jew in Paris in the days of Dreyfus and Zola), the narrow confines of the traditional professor were intolerable. This fact is related to the nature of the contribution which these men made; for to probe deeper into the analysis of society, to see society in its transition toward a world market, supported by world-wide industriali¬ zation, required a sense of time and reality, and a breadth of vision, that could only be possessed by men outside, or at least partially outside aca¬ demic walls. Most of the older academicians were involved in a process of division of labor which increasingly tended to confine their scholarship to expertness (the expert has rightly been defined as a man who knows more and more about less and less); and the court historian of old, the biographer of kings and captains, was giving way, in an age of highpitched nationalism, to the national historian concerned with the heroes and martyrs of his nation. But at the same time, and in opposition to this tendency to contraction, the great minds were developing a sense of world history. Men like Adam Smith, Hegel and Marx, Burckhardt, Ranke, and Mommsen all tried to see the world as a whole. To the sociologists, seeing the world in totality involved the concrete comprehension of historical causality, not to be explained by reference to “the spirit of the times.” For to them, “spirit of the times” seemed a handy phrase that begged the real issues, a slogan substituted for real knowledge. Interestingly, Goethe, who coined the term “world literature,” spoke through Faust on the same subject: The spirit of the times, At bottom merely the spirit of the gentry In whom each time reflects itself, And at that it often makes one weep And at the first glance run away, A lumber room and a rubbish heap, At best an heroic puppet play With excellent pragmatical Buts and Yets Such as are suitable to marionettes.4

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From the inception of sociology as a way of thinking, its practitioners conceived of decision making as a property of all men and women. History was made by all men, albeit some contributed minutely and some grandly. But each individual in his society meant something, and, since he was a maker of history, all parts of his life had to be studied and analyzed. His vocational life and his political life were inseparable; and so, for the so¬ ciologist, history and biography merged in the analysis of society. The case study was born as a steppingstone to the construction or docu¬ mentation of types.5 It was the use of these types that helped the sociolo¬ gist to conceptualize society as a whole. Each individual was important, but for the purposes of analysis he had to be seen with reference to a type construct, whether it was “intellectual” or “yeoman farmer,” Marx’s “bourgeois” or “lumpen proletariat,” or Max Weber’s heroic Puritan. The heroic individual and unique individual of historical biography was now replaced on the analytical pedestal by the type. The individual could be measured as an approximation of, or deviation from what was typical. The type enabled the sociologist to broaden the intellectual horizon by making comparative studies of societies and groups of men. Thus, the study of “caesarism” replaced the study of Caesar, so that Alexander the Great and Napoleon could now be studied comparatively as “caesarists.” The type approach did not deny the importance of great historical per¬ sonages, but rather, it made for analysis of the great man in a different way. Concretely and comparatively, men like Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller might be used to study economic supermen, or “robber barons”6 as they were called by the muckrakers. These Promethean bourgeois, in turn, could be compared with the English merchant capi¬ talist from Sir Walter Raleigh to Smythe and his cohorts on the Muscovy, East India, and Virginia Companies. Thus, whatever the limitations of the great social analysts, it is appar¬ ent that they attempted to see things in their interconnections, and on a world scale. They all consciously worked within a dynamic social struc¬ ture, and each saw his own age as one of crisis and transition. For Marx it was an age of transition from capitalism to socialism; for Spencer it was an age of conflict between peaceful industrial society running according to natural law, and despotic military society which threatened chaos. For Max Weber, the revival of imperialism spelled disaster for Germany, which he feared would be divided, along with the rest of Europe, between the “rule of the Russian official’s ukase and Anglo-Saxon conventionality with a dash of Latin raison thrown in.”7 II The coming of the twentieth century saw America’s emergence as a world power. The nineteenth-century sociologist’s schematization of the

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past, whether in terms of evolutionism, or progress toward national effi¬ ciency and/or “virtuous perfection,” seemed to have been outgrown. By 1919, the Kaiser and his armies were no more. The world should now have been safe for democracy, and the War had supposedly ended all wars. The obstacles to the Wilsonian mission—the guilty Germans and the stubborn Bolsheviks—were placed in the diplomatic dog house where they belonged for not cooperating. The prophet of the Western world, President Wilson, sailed to Paris with a proposal for a League that would usher in a new age of mankind. The United States sat on top of the world. Its age in world history had been reached. Just as United States leaders began to realize their dream of a world economic empire headed by American corporate power, the American sociologist dispensed with world concepts. He dismissed, as metaphysics, all thought and theory that dealt with world or total structures. The world simply was taken for granted. To be sure, there was still work to be done, but it was no more than a scattering of problems that remained to be solved, involving industrial efficiency and the national adjustment of certain immigrant-alien milieus to the American system. The integra¬ tion of the world was left to the businessmen and politicians. The soci¬ ologist wanted to routinize the functioning of the good society at home, focusing on industrial problems, the family, and the behavior of groups in their natural setting. To do this, statistical and survey techniques, and small precision group work had to be perfected. Robert Park, in Chicago in the 1920s, con¬ tributed more than any other man to the origination of milieu sociology. Park was fascinated by the cultural hybrid, the bilingual immigrant, the marginal man.8 As a journalist, he offered rich descriptive techniques, in the tradition of Balzac’s realism, to help conceptualize the changing milieus in the post-World War I United States. Sociologists became in¬ trigued by this kind of study. Following the old maxim that “nothing human is alien to me,” but without the “let’s go slumming attitude” of the debutante, sociologists descended upon the slums and studied the sex codes of slum dwellers. They also associated with cafe society to study the behavior patterns of the night-life set. Humanity was studied in the raw, and in its environment—Chinese peasants in their villages, bandits of the Robin Hood type in forests, gunmen in the old West, and A1 Ca¬ pone and Anastasia types in American gangland. Salesladies at Macy’s, schoolteachers, Chicago and New York street gangs, POW’s—all were studied in their respective roles in their respective settings. This analysis of society into segments for separate study, necessarily led to specialization. Comte and Spencer, the nineteenth-century main¬ stays of United States sociology, gave place to the empirical scholars, who proceeded to tackle problems, small and smaller, of milieu, families, and

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small groups in general, until a sociologist was no longer just a sociolo¬ gist, but a specialist in family sociology, public opinion, criminology, statistics, small groups, methodology and methods, race relations, and so on, ad infinitum. The “experts” and “specialists” emerged and conquered. Fame went to the innovating specialist, the more so if his new specialty fed material into IBM statistical machines. The kind of material fed into the machines came to matter less and less. The synthesizing minds, both past and present, that possessed what C. Wright Mills calls the “sociologi¬ cal imagination,” began to be berated as impractical and unscientific. Karl Mannheim and Pitirim Sorokin were dismissed by many of the new “expert specialists” as out of date. The questions that Marx, Comte, Spencer, Ross, and Weber had wrestled with, and the great theoretical legacy they had bequeathed were cast into limbo. Their works were largely unread: in some academic circles they were unknown; in others they were sanctified as classics, and so did not have to be read. And one result of this intense division of labor was that sociologists failed to pre¬ dict anything. Meanwhile, the war that had ended all wars generated steam for a second war to end war, while bolshevism, fascism, and nazism made a mockery of the Wilsonian dream. Certainly, society had to be broken down and studied in its units. Cer¬ tainly, too, milieu sociology refined and broadened the tools of the trade, developing advanced techniques of inquiry and scientific methods of analysis. The closeup-microcosmic lens was utilized with admirable pic¬ torial results, and observations were made with millimetric exactitude. But all this was achieved at the expense of total structure; that is, by disjoining history and sociology. And such exactitude, even when applied to a society as a whole, cannot be a substitute for the examination of social movements in terms of their roots and far reaching consequences. The impact of the Bolshevik revolution on the structure of the Western world, to say nothing of the Asian world, cannot be revealed through milieu studies, no matter how thorough. The history of czarist Russia, in the context of world history, must be analyzed in order that the soci¬ ologist may see the roots of the upheaval and its future direction. A study of Russian workers or peasants, while valuable, could not reveal much more than some aspects of worker and peasant attitudes. Even if several milieu studies were put together, they would only form an incomplete compilation of some of the clues. Without a view of the total structure, from a historical bridge, only narrow currents can be analyzed, and much of their content will necessarily remain unknown. Similarly, to take a less revolutionary example, the far-reaching results of the long Slavonic mi¬ gration to Prussian Junker labor barracks, or of immigrants arriving in boatloads from Poland, and heading to the mines, mills, and factories of the New World in Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Milwaukee, cannot be

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grasped through the close-up camera, or attitude studies of changes in Old World patriarchalism. While such studies by Thomas and Znaniecki9 and other milieu sociologists greatly enriched the tool kit of the profes¬ sion, the more basic issues were neglected: the analysis of structures, which cause milieu changes, was forsaken for more “empirical” investigation. Thus, compartmentalization and the confinement of precision work to milieu and industrial sociology have threatened to smother the original sociologists’ ethos. Interest in sterile verbal systems and faddist profes¬ sional jargon have often replaced the concern with the substance of so¬ ciety. The fact that “all the facts are not in” has been used as an excuse for the failure to examine important problems, and the failure to exam¬ ine important problems has, of course, resulted in the failure to predict. It was not until 1940, after the hot war was underway, that the American Journal of Sociology decided to publish an article on the Nazi Party.10 In all, from 1933 to 1947, only two articles on National Socialism appeared in the Journal.11 A fifty-year index of the Journal shows exactly three list¬ ings under Marx or Marxism, and under Lenin (or Leninism) there are no citations.12 By and large, the sociologists of today have shut the world crisis out of their vision, focusing their intellectual energy on the crisis of the family, while the Chinese revolution, involving 600,000,000 people —perhaps the greatest mass movement of mankind—is totally neglected.

Ill Hot and cold wars have tortured the earth since the beginning of this century. No one has escaped the horrors of the age of imperialism and its wars, or the effects of the rapid bureaucratization of industrial societies and their empires, and of the movement toward centralized control in almost all areas of the world. The effects of all this on the social sciences are hard to measure. Bureaucracy of all sorts has built high walls of “nec¬ essary secrecy” (official secrecy classified from confidential to top secret), and has befogged the human mind with the “necessary” vapors of pub¬ licity and rival propagandas. Mass media, themselves products of the age of total warfare and bureaucratization, have transformed the journalist of old into an adjunct of a state and/or business bureaucracy (who sees him any more as a crusader and fighter for truth, except in grade B movies?). Likewise, the academician, although one step removed from the market place and the political areana, does not escape, and does not want to escape, his obligation to state and corporate power. “Science in uniform” is the order of the day, and the sociologist, along with his col¬ leagues, has become an auxiliary of the bureaucracies, in an age in which bureaucracies have become almost universal. But there are hopeful signs. Among the newer sociologists, C. Wright

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Mills demonstrates in his work a fresh concern with the important ques¬ tions of modern society. His White Collar and The Power Elite repre¬ sent important and challenging attempts to analyze the nature and direc¬ tion of American society. His work has something relevant to say to an intelligent reading public that is concerned about the future of American society and of the world. This concern of Mills and others with the drift of social structures and the concatenation of institutional orders and social strata accounts, in part, for the recently greater receptivity on the part of sociologists to the work of Max Weber, who epitomizes the former sociological concern with the totality of man’s social life and future. Weber, who practiced what Comte preached as a motto for sociology, wrote comparatively little on the methodology of prediction, but he predicted much, fusing history with sociology. The death of czarism in Russia and the subsequent rise of bolshevism did not surprise Weber, who had devoted twelve hundred pages to the study of Russia since Admiral Togo sank the Czar’s Baltic navy in the Tsushima straits and General Nogi’s troops killed 90,000 Russian soldiers and took 40,000 prisoners of war in 1906, in the battle of Mukden. And in his study of Confucian China, its village and agrarian problems, he expressed his awareness of what lay ahead by apprehending the attraction that agrarian bolshevism might have for the Chinese peas¬ antry.13 On the basis of his study of Chinese society, Weber was able to predict the future of China. The same professor, who accompanied the German peace delegation to Versailles, had no Wilsonian illusions. He warned his students about the “polar night of icy darkness” that lay ahead for Germany after World War I.14 The notion that the development of mankind can be formulated in terms of a single law of evolution has been almost unanimously rejected. Social scientists have learned to appreciate the relativity of cultural con¬ texts and the diversity of developments in simultaneously existing cul¬ tures. Yet, though we no longer refer to “backward nations,” we never¬ theless recognize the existence of “underdeveloped areas” (that is, pre¬ industrial areas such as India and a large part of Africa) side by side with the United States and the Soviet Union. But when the most educated of the Indian electorate, the people of the state of Kerala (47 per cent are literate, as against 16 per cent for the whole of India), returned a Com¬ munist majority in 1957, in a democratic election, not only Prime Min¬ ister Nehru was shocked. The revolutionary transitions of large parts of the world since World War I make it urgent for sociologists to study the historical backgrounds of value systems and social structures other than those of the United

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States, and it is in this direction—with the aid of Fulbright grants— that we hope to see a reorientation of American sociology in the postwar generation, in an age in which the maintenance of peace is a more urgent necessity than ever before. Historiography offers a great storehouse of facts and ideas to the sociologist in quest of insight into total social structures, their phases of growth, decline, and destruction. Only in this way, with one eye on history and one on the future, can the sociologist broaden his scope to meet the obligations of the contemporary world. And the contemporary world certainly imposes obligations. Today, the planning bureaucracy of bolshevism speaks for almost one billion people (a fact which was hardly expressed in U.N. votes): so that it is perhaps time for the sociologist to begin to ponder the success of industrialization processes under the new system of planning. It is in addressing ourselves to this situation that Weber’s work may be of invaluable help, for it is permeated with a keen sense of the historicity of social structures and ideas. And just as Weber devoted a great part of his life’s work to the study of the rise and spread of capitalism, we must now turn our atten¬ tion to the spread of bolshevism to Thuringia and China. Only by read¬ dressing ourselves to the big questions, and by analyzing character forma¬ tion and social structures in historical perspective, may we perhaps, at long last, overcome the blind drift and arrive at the level of development where Comte’s savoir pour prevoir,prevoir pour pouvoir becomes a fact rather than a pious hope for sociologists. NOTES 1. Hans Gerth, “Friedrich Buchholz: Auch Ein Anfang der Soziologie,” Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft CX (1954), pp. 665-692. 2. Ferdinand Toennies became a professor more than thirty years after his great work, Community and Society, had been published. He received a chair in 1918, but was ousted in 1933 with the advent of National Socialism in Germany. Weber, although technically on the faculty of Heidelburg, did not teach for nineteen years. Prince Max of Badenia appreciated Weber’s essays in the Frankfurter Zeitung, and exerted his influence to keep Weber on the faculty. 3. See Isaac Deutscher, “The Wandering Jew as Thinker and Revolutionary,” Universities and Left Review I (Summer 1958), pp. 9-13. 4. Stephen Spender, ed., Great Writings of Goethe (A Mentor Book, 1958), p. 76. 5. For the best single exposition on the use of the type see Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, Edward A. Shils, ed. (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949). pp. 50-112; for a good example of a type study monograph see Frederic M. Thrasher, The Gang; a Study of 1313 Gangs in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chi¬ cago Press, 1936). 6. Mathew Josephson, The Robber Barons (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Inc., 1934.

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7. Max Weber, Gesammelte Politische Schriften, Johannes Winckelman, ed. (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1958), p. 164. 8. Robert E. Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man,” American Journal of Sociology XXXIII (1928), pp. 881-893; Everett V. Stonequist, The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture Conflict (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937). 9. William Isaac Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918). 10. Hans H. Gerth, “The Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition,” American Journal of Sociology, XLV (1940), pp. 517-541. This article was later incorporated into the Civil Affairs Handbook published by the War Department in 1943. 11. American Journal of Sociology: Index to Volumes I-LII, 1895-1947, p. 70, p. 83; see Nazism, National Socialism, and Germany. 12. Ibid., p. 78, p. 77. 13. Max Weber, The Religion of China; Confucianism and Taoism, Hans H. Gerth, trans. (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1956), p. 76. 14. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber, Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 128.

15. REFLECTIONS ON THE AMERICAN INTELLIGENTSIA The big event of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology held in Washington, D.C., in 1962, was the speech of Pitirim Sorokin, a refugee from Lenin’s Russia and founder of the Sociology Department at Harvard University. An international audience of eight hundred people listened to the words of a Nestor of American sociologists. Far more than any other sociologist in the United States, Sorokin was an international figure in his intellectual eminence, in his worldwide perspective and in his personal experience. To this community of sociologists he stood, in addition, as a symbol of the fate of the political intellectual in the twentieth century. When in 1923 Sorokin lashed out against the “democratic centralism” of the Russian Leninist Revolution, the price he paid was exile. He found, like Trotsky after him, that he could not escape from his international status; his life experience would never become parochial. Among his friends were the composer Igor Stravinsky, who was already in school when Sorokin was still in diapers, and Professor Selig Perlman, the late distinguished labor economist who came to the University of Wisconsin from Bialystok in Russian Poland when the Black Hundred and the pogroms swept czarist Russia in the aftermath of the defeat by Japan in 1905. Sorokin had outlived two prewar and two postwar generations of intellectuals. Similar to Walter Lippman, the dean of American political journalism, Sorokin could speak with the wisdom of a man who could still recall pre-World War I days. In his early twenties, Sorokin lived through the downfall of the Chinese Dowager Empress and the rise of Sun Yat-sen and later in his late twenties This paper, originally prepared in Japan during Gerth’s visit to that country in 1962, appeared in Japanese translation in the student newspaper of Hitotsubashi University (30 October 1962). 199

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through the fall of the Romanovs and the rise of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In his early thirties, he witnessed the downfall of the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, the rise of Pilsudski and the Hungarian strongman Admiral Horthy. In his mid-forties he saw the rise of Hitler and the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He lived in an intellectual world populated by such Bohemian intellectuals as Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, John Reed, Mabel Dodge, Emma Goldman and the so-called Greenwich Village ex¬ patriate American writers such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway who preferred Paris to New York and Chicago. After World War I, Sorokin saw new images on film created by Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood and Sergei Eisenstein in Soviet Russia: they developed the new language of the silent film into a world idiom based upon pictorial characters which trans¬ cended educational and national differences and made them available to transcontinent publics and audiences. Sorokin lived through a time that spanned Lenin’s revolutionary radio message “to all the world,’’ Roosevelt’s “fireside” chats during the depths of the American depression and the Kennedy-Nixon debate before television cameras in 1960. Through all of this, Sorokin, who published major works on the history of sociology, on social mobility, on social and cultural dynamics, on war and on altruism, held the first chair in sociology at Harvard. He continued to teach and write and became in addition to being a political intellectual , A an academic sociologist of world reknown. He was thus much more than an academic man. He thrust himself into the world arena at an early age and lived as a man who hoped to change his world through his ideas. Because his life spanned several major cycles of illusions and disillusionment that intellectuals of his age had gone through, Sorokin became an important symbol of the travail of intellectuals for other, younger, later intellectuals throughout the world. Who, then, are “intellectuals?” The word became popular in nineteenthcentury Russia, when “unrepentant noblemen” like Bakunin, Kropotkin (known throughout the world for his book Mutual Aid) and Count Tolstoy, not to mention unrepentant candidates for the priesthood like Stalin, tried to run away from it all, i.e., the mundane, workaday life of petty affairs. The term intelligentsia was invented to describe them. Only later in France during the Dreyfus affair was the term “intellectual” coined, and then, at first, with a derisive connotation. But in Russia, not all of the early intel¬ lectuals tried to escape. Others plunged into the world of revolutionary politics, went underground, were jailed and fought the established world on the strength of their ideas. In the end, it was Lenin, after returning to Russia at Petrograd’s Finland Station, who with the men around him won out in a revolution conducted in the name of an industrial proletariat. Lenin helped to bring industrialization and urbanization to a still under¬ developed Russia under the banner of Bolshevism. But Lenin, much earlier,

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had helped to define by his example what it meant to be a revolutionary political intellectual. Was Plato an intellectual? He gave advice to an ancient tyrant in Sicily, and scholars may dispute to this day whether the tyrant fell because or in spite of Plato’s advice. In any case, Plato fled back to Athens and wrote a sequel to his The Republic which embodied his famous utopia. The sequel The Laws reflects Plato’s experience with practical politics. We may also think of men who serve the seven muses and the deities; men who are masters of the word, whether for discursive reasoning of science or synecdochical evocation of poetry. There are also master-builders of temples, cathedrals and cities; others who write on the art of warfare including Julius Caesar, Clausewitz, and De Jomini, the latter two writing after the age of Napoleon’s chronic wars. We may also include men who construct thought models of economic systems and processes, these range from Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter, from David Ricardo to Lord Keynes. Finally, we may mention Sigmund Freud and other psychiatrists who have opened our eyes to human nature when it threatens to sink below the level of the human condition into an ununderstandably brute and mute nature. The ancient Romans, we must remember, called culture “nature worked over by man.” Such artistic, scientific, and interpretive thinkers are intellectuals who help us to define reality and man’s place in it. They tell us what to hope for and what to fear. They help to create our culture and to shape our sensibilities. They have helped to make man and his culture civilized. As a starting point in our discussion of American intellectuals, let me begin with Max Weber’s definition of the intellectual. He proposed to call intellectuals “men who by virtue of their peculiarity have special access to certain achievements considered to be ‘culture values’ and who therefore usurp the leadership of a ‘culture community.’ We cannot here summarize Weber’s sociology of intellectuals and intellectuality but can only point out that to Weber intellectual phenomena are always rooted in specific, historical social strata and that these strata relate to other strata in the historical societies in which they are located. The term in¬ tellectual is not an ahistorical abstraction that can be treated independently of history. Thus, America’s intellectual strata have the special characteris¬ tics of their own time and place. The situation of the intelligentsia in the United States is unique in that the development of the American commercial urban world of industrial society did not have to make its way into an established ancient civilization of ecclesiastic and princely feudal power. Yet, on the other hand, America lacked an intellectual stratum with roots in an ancient culture whose tradition and legitimacy could be used by such a stratum to maintain its social pre¬ eminence and intellectual autonomy.

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In old civilizations, such as in Europe and Asia, the cultural losses and costs entailed in the emergence and development of industry and commerce were bewailed by intellectual critics who (on the basis of their traditions and tastes) identified with the past. Such critics sided with other, older threatened strata and with traditional power, thoughtways and values. They tended to be conservative, anticapitalist, and antiurban in the midst of changes brought about by capitalism and urbanism. They remained at the sidelines, bitter, as they saw their world transformed. Whether we take Edmund Burke in England, de Maistre in France, or Hegel after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and Ranke in Germany, we see ultimately the same conservative reactions. All of them played off the older values of folklore, craftsmanship, village community life against the rational machine and the cash nexus. The machine and machinelike organization had become the model of efficiency in political administration, in party structures and in military organizations. So strong was this conservative reaction to the new that even a conservative socialism could spring up in some of these older countries as a response to the newer individualism, rationality, and materialism. None of this was the case in America. From the beginning, intellectuals in and out of the academy were dependent upon the urban business com¬ munity and on commercially minded farmers. The pastor or the young academician without tenure of office had to please those upon whom they depended for their salary. Alexis de Tocqueville, coming from France in the 1830s, was concerned about the predominance of conformist thought among Americans. He was unable to locate in that society any independent strata other than lawyers whom he saw only as a potential conservative political force. In the Puritan tradition, the secularized intellectuality of the minister was not separated from or independent of the secular authority of the successful members of the community. In the United States the businessman was honored as a “capitalist and as a philanthropist,” and intellectuals learned to be grateful to the big businessmen for college buildings, for libraries, for endowed chairs and later for foundation grants. To intellectuals and to the universities, modern technology was not suspect but was hailed and incorporated at an early date into the universities’ agricultural and mechanical colleges. As we shall note, it has only been since the total industrialization of warfare and its progression from blockbuster to city-smashing atomic bombs that some ambivalence about technical efficiency and instrumental values has de¬ veloped in American universities. Thomas Paine was an exception, a man of conscience and a free intel¬ lectual. For many Americans, but probably more so for people throughout the world, he is remembered as a man who fought, as a matter of principle, for intellectual freedom. Yet, Tom Paine died in misery in New York. At

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the beginning of this century, Theodore Roosevelt not uncharacteristically dubbed him a “filthy little atheist.” Some Americans are ambivalent about Paine because his intellectuality was antireligious, but this does not mean that Roosevelt was necessarily anti-intellectual. While he condemned Paine, he also took the occasion to write a letter of encouragement and congratulations to that great sociologist and academic muckraker, E. A. Ross after having read Ross’ classic book Social Control. For his part, Ross, who had established at the University of Wisconsin a Department of Sociology in 1905, was always proud of this letter and for years proudly showed it to newcomers who joined the department. This example of a relationship between a formidable American politician and an unconventional academic sociologist embodies much of the contradiction in the role of American intellectuals. Political leaders can and do recognize intellectuals who in turn are flattered by such recognition; but politicians may also attack and reject them; and under many conditions, the basis for resistance and self-defense to such attacks by intellectuals is not secure. In America, this relationship between intellectuals and politics, the church and business, developed in its own separate way and did not parallel that of the older cultures especially in respect to the institutions of industrial civilization. Pitirim Sorokin with his Russian origins and his European-derived personal intellectual experience is thus not an ideal-typical example of the American academic intellectual. American academic intellectuals, as Veblen pointed out in his book The Higher Learning in America, work within the framework of an institution that is dominated by business and business values. Over the last half century, much of American higher education has, like industry, developed the analogs of mass production. It has developed into a mass education industry with textbooks, fixed daily and weekly assignments, routinely scheduled lectures, classroom drill and six weeks, midterm and final examinations. Much of the external administrative apparatus of higher education is meant to assure parents that the students have attended class and have at least read what the teachers assigned and have fulfilled their work quotas. It is feared that the absence of such institutional controls might lead son Johnny away from books and learning; it must be remem¬ bered that Johnny is miles away from home and meets the coeds in great freedom. For every Johnny, there is, of course, a Mary, so that all parents can be assured that the class “work” and the course “load” help to regulate the lives of college students. Practical-minded American parents heeding Benjamin Franklin’s exhortation that “time is money,” hate to pay for Johnny and Mary’s lost years of a playful, experimental college life, winding up in a huge stein of beer and sex and “leading nowhere.” America recognizes no soulful Oblomovs as a social type. The American universities, at least the state universities, have developed

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into minor cultural bureaucracies which impart instruction to more than five million boys and girls. To be sure, the American university is a selective agency and awards annually no more than 16,000 Ph.D.s, which are too few given the world’s condition as it now is. But we can be sure that the university system will continue to expand along with and faster than its expanding population. Since World War II and with the assumption of wider responsibilities by America in Europe, where East and West meet at the boundary line of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire and in Asia, where Americans stand guard in Okinawa, military men of America have come to know many a land and many a culture and people. These military men are themselves a new breed of educated soldier and sometimes cultivated gentlemen from the best of families. In addition, America’s postwar military mission has required the help of university professors and intellectuals. But the much older American provincialism has to be overcome if men of the mind and the educators of men and women of the world of tomorrow are to keep abreast of these new post-World War II responsibilities. Americans are stationed from Turkey to Heidelberg and Berlin and from France to Norway in a world “where there is no peace,” only a chronic state of war, both cold and hot. Under the conditions of America’s new world mission, farsighted Washington legislators and corporate business leaders haye sought to find means to assist a postwar generation of scholars and students to broaden their intellectual horizons, to learn to speak and read foreign languages, to study abroad and to see their own country for a time from the outside. As a result, American youths as well as educated men and women have learned to share with Asians, Europeans and Africans the problems of those countries. In an age of jet planes and swift communication, autarchic nationalism and nativist sentiments are not good enough. Yet, many American intel¬ lectuals and teachers between the two world wars, unlike previous generations of American scholars, had not studied abroad, nor had they learned to read and speak foreign languages. In order to remedy this deficiency, private philanthropies such as the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford foundations and legislation like the Fulbright Act made scholarships, fellowships and grants available to qualified students regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or class. As a result, thousands of scholars and students have spent time abroad, have learned to speak and read foreign languages and literatures and have gained priceless international experience. In addition, foundations in cooperation with the federal government have helped universities to expand their work, to establish special research institutes such as centers for the study of Oriental civilizations and languages at universities such as Harvard, Michigan, and Wisconsin to name but a few. Thus, Sinology, Indology, and Japanology are no longer dominated by European scholar-

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ship. They have developed and expanded so swiftly in America that Americantrained scholars have had many opportunities for employment. At the same time American universities have opened themselves to guests from Europe, from the Far East, from Africa and the Middle East for study and research. A great stream of cultural interpenetration and mutual intellectual borrowing is flowing in America. The flare-up of anti-intellectualist sentiment and resentment which inspired McCarthyism and the witch-hunting and book burnings in the American cultural and information centers of Western Germany have subsided. Shortly after taking office, President Kennedy invited the poet Robert Frost to read poetry and Pablo Casals, the venerable Spanish cellist, to play before his guests in the White House. One must remember that as recently as 1913 the works of Arnold Schoenberg were hissed and scoffed at in Chicago and in Boston. When his opera Moses und Aron was performed not so long ago in West Berlin, Schoenberg’s triumph in distant Berlin was reported in even the provincial American press. America has undergone a great cultural reawakening that parallels and is, in part, a product of the growth of the American university system. As it has with its industrial technology, the university has shown that it can mobilize its energies to provide higher culture and education and that it possesses great capacity for efficient administrative organization. The universities and colleges have also learned to supplement older forms of patronage by businessmen and philanthropists with large government grants. Individual artists, writers and intellectuals who classically had been supported by princes and noblemen and who, in America, were dependent on “selling” their work or living off an inheritance may now supplement their incomes by working in the new marketplace of mass audience. Celebrated authors, intellectuals, painters, and dancers find new support for their own cultural work, being financed by advertisers, the mass media, television, radio and the press along with book publishing, which is being increasingly absorbed by the mass media corporations. America has had its cultural, political, religious, and academic intel¬ lectuals, but for the most part they have not stood apart from the society nor have they made themselves independent of the political and the business communities. In contrast to Europe, attacks on capitalism by intellectuals on the left have not led to the broad anticapitalist sentiments and movements associated with Marxism, anarchism or Bolshevism. When small groups of intellectuals have become identified with such causes, they have been ferreted out by the legislative and judicial system and been pushed, minimally, beyond the line of social and economic respectability. Partly for this reason the contact of intellectuals with the American labor movement has been limited; and, when it has occurred, the trade union movement has resented the intellectuals introduction into it of “alien”

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political philsophies or, for that matter, all ideological concerns. Complex ideological themes or abstract images of societal utopias only threaten the solidarity of the union movement in its struggle to achieve a more affluent way of life within the parameters of American capitalism. Selig Perlman’s book, The Theory of the Labor Movement, written in 1928, has as its central thesis that American unionism was concerned with “bread-and-butter issues.” What the American worker wants, he said, is “more.” The integration of the skilled and unskilled labor force, of native American and immigrant nationality groups and of diverse racial groups into one broad labor movement was only made possible by the elimination of all ideas and philosophies that might be divisive. Given the social, occupational, religious and immigrant diversity of the labor force, anticapitalist ideologies could only serve to alienate otherwise available potential members as well as favorable public opinion in the society at large. As a result, ideological intellectuals on the whole have not fared well in the American labor movement. Intellectuals who have embraced the cause of labor have made themselves useful as specialists and experts in limited and circumscribed positions and functions. They may serve as labor lawyers, educational directors or as statisticians and economists, but they do not become leaders in the labor movement in the European, Asian or older Russian style. The labor movement in America has always been surrounded by a small number of radical sects. Occasionally these radicals may be workers, and at times they may attempt to exercise influence on union policy. However, the leaders of the labor movement have almost always been practical men, union bosses, strongmen up from the ranks, labor czars. They have been unideological organizers of the next expedient struggle—the struggle for more. Even when they, like Walter and Victor Reuther, have been shaped by a socialist tradition, under the conditions of formal leadership they have been forced to pick the path of breadbasket unionism. The historical situation of America, its Puritan origins, its multiethnic and racial status system, its diverse religions, and especially the historical dominance of businessmen and giant corporations has not been hospitable to the critical-minded intellectual. Where the latter have existed, they have played their role as lone wolf. One instantly recognizable literary repre¬ sentative of this genre is Sinclair Lewis, the first American Nobel Prize winner in literature after World War I. He was honored for his novel Main Street and was the first to introduce into the American version of the English language a new stereotype, Babbittry. Since the 1920s Babbittry has stood as the image of the colorless, conventional, shallow, middle-class man. H. L. Mencken, the acerbic Baltimore dandy, journalist, and critic of American society, beer glass in one hand and big cigar in the other, called this same middle-class man, America’s “booboisie.” This level of cultural

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207

criticism belongs to a society undergoing ceaseless cultural change, and it is part of the fashion process. Ideas are consumed and then rejected the moment they become fashionable outside of their originating advanced cultural circles. It is part of the same illusionist parade of ever-changing styles of house facades and automobile models with nickel snouts and their array of gadgets. It is for good reasons that the American speaks of urban renewal. As long as functional architecture, stripped of all historical connotations, exists as unique art objects in the midst of the older facade architecture, it is likely to remain and be appreciated for what it is. However, when such functional architecture becomes routine and relatively common, we are afraid that the buildings designed in its style may develop like automobiles. Plenty of ornamental features will be added having no other value than that of creating novelty and, hence, purchase value. Americans search forever for new things and new illusions by which to live. And America’s cultural criticism, partly because it makes this its subject matter, reflects this same tendency. Moreover, the lack of older, secure cultural traditions makes the criticism of novelty itself an endless search for novelty. The criteria for the evaluation of change are them¬ selves ceaselessly changing. Seemingly unlimited power encourages illusionist pomp, and the new prestige, prosperity and prominence given to academic intellectuals in the postwar period by government and foundations in their own worldwide mission have contributed to a new illusion of power and pomp among intellectuals. Intellectuals now have greater freedom to criticize and to praise. The freedom to do so at will and without regimentation by power or money is what American democracy stands for. It is realized, however, only when it fights for the freedom of man and against the totalitarian claims for infallibility by supreme leaders, parties, bureaucracies and ruling classes. American intellectuals, now, perhaps for the first time, have the opportunity, and the freedom to prove they are intellectuals in the older, original meaning of the term.

NOTE 1. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946), p. 176.

16. THE RECEPTION OF MAX WEBER’S WORK IN AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY Max Weber’s work has come to exert a substantial “spell” over America. Insofar as certain qualities in Weber’s work are responsible for this spell, we would suggest they are its features of “vastness,” “open-mindedness,” “open-endedness,” the “panoramic simultaneity of the near at hand and the remote in time and space,” and his “conceptual^imaginativeness combined with great precision.” One could go on listing the features of Weber’s thought and habits of mind that are especially appealing to Americans. Needless to say, since World War I, particularly since the advent of Nazism, the traditional connection between German and American uni¬ versities virtually came to an end. Heidelberg, Leipzig, Goettingen, and Berlin had lost their attraction. The few years between the end of the inflationary upheavals in 1924 and the onset of the Great Depression and rising tide of Nazism after 1929 were a short respite in the increasingly swift drift to disaster. When in 1933 almost 50 percent of the teaching staffs of the then twenty-five universities in Germany were ousted and had to emigrate,1 quite a few Germans became Americans, and some men of different generations carried in their thoughtways the imprint of Max Weber’s legacy. Those who defected politically but remained in Germany withdrew into the snail shells of an “internal emigration.” They suffered agonies in silence and learned to counter Nazi “double-talk” with their own “double-talk” in their writings in such old liberal prestige newspapers as the Frankfurter Zeitung or the Berliner Tageblatt. A few managed to Originally published in Japanese (translated by Nobuko Gerth) in Shiso, 467 (May 1963): 174-182, Iwanami Shoten Publishers, Tokyo. Reprinted by permission of Nobuko Gerth and Iwanami Shoten Publishers.

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survive the entire debacle and slowly recovered after the Holocaust in what became a “no-man’s-land” between the “shooting war” and the “cold war,” featuring at all levels the competition of polarized power blocks. Outstanding among the Americans who had studied in Germany after World War I were Howard Becker (1899-1961) and Talcott Parsons (19021979). The former went to Cologne, studied under Leopold von Wiese who systematized the essayist sociology of Georg Simmel and enriched it in an eclectic fashion. Von Wiese visited the United States and taught at the University of Wisconsin during the 1920s. Howard Becker set out to Germany primarily as a student of Robert Park, having completed a thesis on ancient Athenian and Spartan society. Later, he translated and augmented von Wiese’s monumental textbook, incorporating into it some of Max Weber’s ideas.2 Among Becker’s teachers was the late Paul Honigsheim (1885-1962), who belonged in his early years to Max Weber’s circle in Heidelberg. With the advent of Nazism, Honigsheim came to the United States, and among his numerous essays are many erudite papers on Max Weber.3 In 1949 I published in Social Research with Hedwig Ide Gerth the “Bibli¬ ography of Max Weber,” which listed alphabetically 296 authors of 491 books and articles that directly referred to Weber and discussed one or another aspect of his work.4 By now the compilation of such bibliographic work connected with Weber and his work would require an international committee, because much of his work has been translated into English, Japanese, Spanish, and, if I am not mistaken, Italian. To do just this, Munich University established a Max Weber Archive under the direction of Dr. Johannes Winckelmann, the outstanding editor of a new and truly admirable edition of Weber’s works.5 Our 1949 bibliography was by no means complete. Thus, I missed Frank H. Knight’s essay on “Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Problem of Modern Capitalism,”6 which dealt with W. Sombart, Weber, and Tawney. Even Talcott Parsons’ essay, “Max Weber and the Contemporary Political Crisis,”7 had escaped my attention. Perfection is hardly given to man, and I may be forgiven when I mention, in passing, that the seven-page bibliography in Werner Handtke’s excellent work Die Wirtschaft Chinas8 neither mentions Max Weber’s work, nor the main five volumes of Otto Franke’s work on China.9 Franke’s fifth volume of notes incorporates the Sinological work of Western scholars and bespeaks of years of his consular experience in Hong Kong and thorough workmanship. Handtke’s book with its bibliography gives an informative and comprehensive picture of what went on during the great transformation of China behind “the bamboo curtain.” During the 1920s, Karl Mannheim (1899-1947) found refuge in Heidelberg

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from the rising tide of European dictatorships, anti-Semitic persecution, and the Horthy regime in Hungary. For years he conducted a Max Weber seminar to which, among others, Hans Speier, Alexander von Schelting, Svend Riemer, Hannah Arendt and Reinhold Cassirer belonged. When Mannheim was called to the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt-am-Main to succeed Franz Oppenheimer, a few of his Heidelberg students followed him, and within a short time his seminar grew to about eighty participants. It was by then organized into several subseminars. The participants included Norbert Elias, Kurt Wolff, Hannah Arendt, Gisele Freund, Viola Klein, Gerhard Meyer, Gladys Meyer, Leonard Doob, along with the students of Paul Tillich, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Riezler, Adolph Lowe, and those of the Horkheimer-Adorno led Institute for Social Research. Mannheim left for London in 1933, and through his teachings, publications, and the establishment of the International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction, Routledge and Kegan Paul, “put Sociology on the map” as the London Times put it at his death. In America Weber was, of course, known to such cosmopolitan minds as Pitirim Sorokin who in 1931 established the Sociology Department at Harvard University. Frank Knight had published the first Weber transla¬ tion into English during the mid-1920s.10 Talcott Parsons, who took his Ph.D. at Heidelberg in 1927, began his academic career during the Great Depression with an English translation of Weber’s Protestant Ethic. Throughout his many and incisive publications, including interpretive studies of Weber’s work and his carefully annotated Weber translations, Parsons contributed greatly to the broadening current of Weberian thought and work in America. Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950), one of the truly great men of his generation, taught at Harvard after he arrived in the United States in 1932. His posthumously published History of Economic Analysis" represents, of course, what men of his generation still could undertake, a Lebenswerk. The title, History of Economic Analysis, sounds forbidding to the average sociologist who often feels more attracted to psychology—Gestalt, Freudian, or otherwise. Sociologists miss much by their neglect of economics. Men like Schumpeter, Adolph Lowe, Emil Lederer and Arthur Salz were and are, of course, as much sociologists as they are economists. Perhaps the enthusiasm for knowing more and more about less and less and leaving the rest to “journalists” and to propaganda experts had not reached Europeans of their generation. Perhaps the “division of intellectual labor” into neat small fields of researchable subproblems had not yet been de¬ veloped to the level where the “macroproblems” of societies in a world adrift vanish in the horizon of the “philosophical,” “unresearchable,” or “journalistic” and hence become beyond the reach of unsubsidized sociological work to be done by anguished academic men.

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Thus, Weber—in a fashion similar to Marx—is sliced up into specialties since he cannot readily be boxed in, labeled and set aside. Nor can sociol¬ ogists let go of Weber’s (or Marx’s) thought since the major part of his work is available and helpful to both micro- and macrosociological model builders and researchers of all sorts. Physicists decades ago spoke of microand macrophysics. Social scientists subsequently followed suit and now distinguish between “small group” research and the study of “complex organizations.” In sociology there thus exists an increasing division of intellectual labor, and much of sociology oscillates between intense speciali¬ zation and the “integration” of the discipline. It is through this tension that Parsons developed his suprahistorical concept of the social system with its classificatory concepts and definitions of great precision. The result has a peculiarly static effect. The late C. Wright Mills, on the other hand, successfully retained both the sense for the milieu and the concern for the large structure. David Riesman, in addition, obviously derived some of his basic typological categories of “inner-directed” and “other-directed” men from Weber’s Ancient Judaism, which analyzes the emergence of “innerdirected” men. Structural-functional elements in Weber’s thought, which may not readily fit into his methodological self-clarification, have been used and elaborated preeminently by Robert Merton; and “functionalism” blended with anthropological concepts has thus become a vogue and a “school.” Its narrow focus, the construction of subsystems in terms of multiple func¬ tions and dysfunctions would seem to offer a middle ground between logical formalism and empirical fact grubbing. The speculative element of reason, shooting beyond the limits of empirical facts, is then exorcised, and sociological thought becomes devoid of any imaginative awareness of the possible. Among Weber scholars there are those who created formal intellec¬ tual schemata that bespeak of “thinking about thinking.” These schemata are constructions of suprahistorical constructed systems which reduce our knowledge of the past to illustrations of ontological principle and a priori axioms. The “success” of a schemata leads to a thousand follow-up “studies.” It becomes a vogue, followed by the next vogue and the next, as in modern art. Weber, so it seems to us, excelled in incorporating the most diverse intellectual schemata and “thought models” when these were suitable to free the sociological mind of “phantoms and chimeras.” He distrusted and deprecated even the then popular concept of “national character.” It smacked to him of “organicism” and teleological entelechies. He opposed the romantic tradition of early conservatism that went back to Montesquieu’s Esprit des Nations and to Herder, Hegel and von Ranke and to much of the Geistesgeschichte that ended up with Spengler and Meinecke. He was also

212

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opposed to the organicism and teleology that was present in the early liberalism of Heine, Boerne, and Jean Paul. As a causal pluralist, Weber took an ambivalent position towards naturalistic thought. He was opposed to all monodeterminist reductionism and was eager to fuse in his work the two intellectual streams which fed into sociology. These were naturalistic, empirical thought given to causal explanation and thought concerned with understandable meaning of events. He emancipated his thoughts from presumably suprahistorical notions of academic philosophers who divide thought into “schools” whether these derive from natural law thinking (revolutionary or conservative, secular or religious); whether from “ideal¬ istic” or “materialistic” systems; or whether from schools that are “sensationist” and British, “positivist” and French or “geistige” and German. He somehow refused to be boxed in and dogmatized. In contrast to the pre¬ vailing patterns of the time, he founded no “school.” He used neo-Kantian philosophical tools that bespeak of the endeavor to defend and to legitimize his sociological enterprise against all purely philosophical pressures, including the grand retreat from reason. Yet rather than being committed to the philosophy of a neo-Kantian school, he used neo-Kantian thought merely as a tool for inquiry. He certainly was the “free spirit” that the Nietzscheans of his day wished to see. Naturally, Weber’s work incorporates tensions, even contradictions. Is his central methodological concept of the “ideal type” a strictly nominalist mental construct? One can adduce many statements to document this opinion, which seems to be the prevailing view. It is based on his rightfully famous essay “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy,” which he published when he became co-editor of the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. In it, Weber expressly asserted; “In its conceptual purity, this mental construct [Gedankenbild] cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a utopia.”'2 In later years, when he assembled his essays on the sociology of religion together for book publication he asserted the contrary in a “Zwischenbetrachturg” [summary of his thesis up to that point] in which he suggested the relationship between his Protestantism essays and his study of Confucianism and Taoism. There, he spoke of “theoretically constructed types” of value conflicts and continued, “. . .the individual spheres of value are prepared with a rational consistency which is rarely found in reality. But they can appear thus in reality and in historically important ways, and they have.”13 Should John Stuart Mills’ “Logic” reassert itself in Weber’s ratiocination? Should the “emissary prophet” as presented in the Bible, be deduced from reality? And why after all should Jesus be considered by Weber an “approximation” to the “pure type” of the “emissary prophet” and “charismatic holy man”? It may not be irrelevant to see how Weber in early writings considered Jesus’ work from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” as indicative

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213

of his presumed despair and failure as a charismatic man.14 During his last years, however, Weber emphatically took the opposite stand and called the view he himself earlier shared a “strangely frequent interpretation.’’15 As Weber once said, “Neither religion nor men are open books.”16 One of Weber’s disciples, Otto Neurath, published in Weber’s Archiv in 1921 an essay “Sozialistische Moglichkeiten Heute.” In it Neurath catalogued anticapitalist dimensions of socialist thought ranging from anarchism to Bolshevism. Included were diverse conceptions of economic planning with or without free markets and with or without controls of different degrees. Then he confounded these listed categories with Toennies’ polar types of community and society. He arrived at a list of over 200 different “types.” This procedure of confounding logical possibilities and thus constructing typologies was developed and advanced by Viennese positivism, especially by Paul Lazarsfeld. Lazarsfeld set forth the theory behind this technique in a brief but incisive review article of the Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenschaft at the occasion of the publication of Hempel’s and Oppenheimer’s book, Der Typusbegriff im Lichte der modernen Logik. Lazarsfeld’s typological procedure represented a crucial step away from Weber’s humanist-historical approach which brought natur¬ alistic thinking into a fusion with the underlying assumption and methods of the humanities. By combining this approach with the apparatus of market research on consumer preferences, Lazarsfeld expanded his work to the study of dispersed aggregates of radio listeners, TV viewers, movie audiences and their preferences. This opened up since the mid-thirties, a rich field of research opportunities. To do this Lazarsfeld established first the Office of Radio Research in Princeton, New Jersey and then the Bureau of Applied Social Research in New York, which later became attached to Columbia University. On his fiftieth birthday, he received the congratulations of 160 alumni of “the bureau.” His method of combining quantification with sociological ingenuity has led to the great feats of organized research. Over 100 research bureaus modeled after Lazarsfeld’s Bureau have since been developed; and in these bureaus, with the use of IBM machines, all sorts of workaday problems of market research and of the administration of corporate business and public authorities have supplemented the ongoing sociological work of the bureaus. Empirical types emerged as a cluster of measureable traits and attributes that are selected for “the purpose at hand”; age, sex, occupation, income, marital status, kind and amount of formal education, place of birth, residence, etc. Preference statements are then collected from a carefully designed sample of whatever universe is under investigation. For example, we may wish to examine the degree of resistance that medical doctors who want to try new drugs would have to a traveling salesman (often a medical doctor), furthering an industry-sponsored sales and advertising campaign.

214

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The “marginal man,” i.e., an immigrant doctor, evinces great hesitancy and caution about accepting the pitch of a salesman. He deems the possible risk of losing a patient unbearable, whilst the doctor of an old American family with a local, hereditary medical practice shows far less hesitancy in taking chances. The conclusion of the study is that Robert Park’s theory of “the marginal man” as an “innovator” merits serious reservation and qualification. The situation becomes difficult, however, in macrosociological inquiries. Applied social research is dependent on the “usefulness” of the research to clients who require and pay for marketable knowledge. All tension within the world, all macrosociological concerns and the traditions of sociology necessarily vanish in the restless workaday routines which define research objectives in terms small enough to make them researchable yet large enough to be of practical significance. Such thought implements but fails to transcend these workaday routines. The empirical elaboration of the workaday routine itself becomes an added intellectual routine, part of the routinized world as it is. It is accepted, taken for granted and sanctioned as the “natural” empirical way. The “facts” speak for themselves and every thought beyond the facts at hand is exorcised. Such preconceptions are devoid of concern for the polity, and they stifle the impulse which has led anew to those basic “visions” which Schumpeter has clarified in the face of the opposition of other thinkers in the social sciences. At Columbia University, besides Robert Maclver who had, before World War II, worked together with Alexander von Schelting (the editor of the Archive fur Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik in the 1930s) and developed his ideas on the major types of social causation, there was C. Wright Mills who found his way from the University of Wisconsin via Maryland to Columbia. At the New School for Social Research in New York were such Weberians as Hans Speier, Adolph Lowe, the late Emil Lederer, Albert Salomon, and Carl Meyer. At Harvard there was Carl Joachim Friedrich, who came from the Heidelberg of the twenties, and in the United States criticized Max Weber’s work on bureaucracy in a some¬ what scurrilous way.17 Important also are Talcott Parsons and generations of his disciples, among whom we may mention Robert King Merton, Marion Levy, Robert Bellah, Logan Wilson, the late E. Y. Hartshorne, and Wilbert Moore. At the University of Chicago, Edward Shils, a disciple of Louis Wirth, together with Max Rheinstein of that university’s Law School joined forces to bring out a translation of Weber’s Sociology of Law in a profusely and excellently annotated edition.18 The difficulty of such largely un¬ rewarding work, like that of the scholarship which went into Bible editions, is, of course, great. The leading questions in such works are: what would Weber have published had he had the time to complete, edit, and annotate

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215

Economy and Society, his major posthumously published work, and what would Weber have read like had he lived as long as his brother Alfred (1868-1958)? Reinhard Bendix of the University of California at Berkeley, brought out in 1960 a competent book summarizing the available translations of Weber’s work in a lucid and teachable fashion.19 Although he knows very well that Weber wrote about 1,200 pages on tottering czarist Russia and on the agrarian problems of Germany east of the River Elbe,20 all of which Bendix presents beautifully, he bypasses the age-old issues raised by conquest and displacement of the peasantry and by the establishment, after the Russian Revolution, of Kolkhoz and machine tractor stations that range from Siberia to the Thuringian forests of what was then called Central Germany. Weber suffered in anguish and powerless agony pre¬ cisely from this basic threat from the East. In the tradition of 1848 liberals, he feared Russia as the mortal danger to his nation. Bendix’s presentation largely makes this all-pervasive concern disappear from the work of a defense-minded and skeptical, stoic thinker responding to the imperialist divisions of the world and culture. Despite all the studies of Weber’s ideal type and of probability or pos¬ sibility, the political animus which pervades all of Weber’s work, and pulsates through his ascetic diction of “objectivity,” has not roused concern in America. Weber moved across the spectrum of German political parties from right to left, feeling unable to commit himself wholeheartedly to any one. The “political homelessness” and near desperate rage, balanced by stoic equanimity and indifference to his own success and well being, raised Weber to a stature heads and shoulders above his contemporaries. Unfortunately, this political journey is lost in Bendix’s work which has epic flow but no drama. Two of my friends and former Wisconsin students and coauthors, I would like to mention here as men who learned to combine the American heritage with European influences: the prematurely deceased C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) and Don Martindale at Minnesota. Irving Louis Horo¬ witz, who edited Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, does not hesitate to call Mills “the greatest sociologist the United States has ever produced.”21 In the index of this book, Karl Mannheim and Max Weber are the most frequently cited names. With all diffidence, I may also mention that a twenty-year-old essay “A Marx for the Managers”22 is included. I wrote the essay with Mills on the occasion of publication of James Burnham’s book The Managerial Revolution. Needless to say, there are those who hate even as much to mention Weber’s name yet cannot help but carry his influence deep in their mental make-up. Foremost among them is the truly eminent scholar, Otto Kirchheimer, who in 1961 published a profound, deeply stirring and timely

HANS H. GERTH

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work on political justice.23 The book is dedicated “to the past, present, and future victims of Political Justice.” Kirchheimer in truly Weberian fashion sees legal, sociological and historical-political problems in a comparative perspective which highlights the problems of political power and justice, from Socrates’ trial to the recent past. The book deals with this problem with a focus ranging from the United States via European countries to the Soviet Union. It is obviously the fruit of decades of work and experience both in diverse European countries and in the United States. Among all the books of recent years on treason and the sociology of law and politics, it seems to me the foremost scholarly work. In conclusion I should like to cite the word of one of the few surviving (1963) friends of Max Weber, the eminent psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers. He lived in “internal emigration” at the side of his Jewish wife and companion of Heidelberg days. He first came to Heidelberg in 1896 and in 1908 became acquainted with and befriended the twenty years older Max Weber and his wife Marianne. In 1932 Jaspers wrote a short but incisive study of Weber, which was reprinted in 1946. Franz Kafka, Henry James and existentialism had become the vogue; and Jaspers was well known in the United States. He was the first German voice to be heard over Radio Frankfurt after World War II. He spoke on the question of German guilt beginning with the sentence: “That we are still alive makes us guilty. . . .” In 1949 he followed the dlall to teach in Basel, Switzerland. With the wisdon of biblical age, he introduced the third edition of his 1932 Weber book with the words: “Max Weber (18641920) was the greatest German of our time. Such judgment anticipates what can be realized for sure only in the future. I dare say this, although I realize that it may not seem appropriate to do so. Yet for almost half a century, I have lived with this conviction.”24 NOTES 1. Edward Yarnell Hartshorne, The German Universities and National Socialism (London and Cambridge, Mass, 1937). 2. Systematic Sociology of Leopold von Wiese, adapted and amplified by Howard Becker (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1932). Of Howard Becker’s numerous titles, we may mention his contribution to Georges Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore’s volume, Twentieth Century Sociology (New York, 1945), pp. 70-95 and the collection of essays, Through Values to Social Interpretation (Durham 1950). 3. Paul Honigsheim, “Max Weber: His Religious and Ethical Background and Development,” Church History, Vol. XIX, No. 4, Dec. 1950, pp. 3-23; “Weber as Rural Sociologist,” in Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of his Death, Rural Sociologist, Vol. 11, No. 3, Sept. 1946, pp. 207-218; several contributions to Gottfried Eisermann’s Die Lehre von der Gesellschaft (Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart, 1958): “Sociology of Religion,” pp. 119-181, “History of Sociology”

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217

(in coauthorship with Eisermann), pp. 1-64; “Sociology of Art, Music and Lit¬ erature,” pp. 338-374, “Rural and Urban Sociology,” pp. 374-407. 4. Social Research, An International Quarterly of Political and Social Science, March 1949, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 70-89. 5. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 4th edition by Johannes Winckelmann, 1956. 6. Frank H. Knight, “Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Problem of Modern Capitalism,” Journal of Economic and Business History, 1928, Vol. I, pp. 119-136. 7. Review of Politics, 1942, Vol. IV, pp. 61-76 and pp. 155-172. 8. Werner Handtke, Der Wirtschaft Chinas: Dogma und Wirklichkeit, ed., the Institut fiir Asienkunde, Hamburg. Alfred Metzner Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, 1959. 9. O. Franke, Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches, Verlag von Walter de Gruyter and Co., Berlin [Vol. V comprises only notes. Vol. I-III were published in 1936-1937 and IV and V in 1948], 10. Max Weber, General Economic History, translated by Frank H. Knight, Allen and Unwin, London and New York, 1927. 11. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, ed. from manuscript by Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, Oxford University Press, New York, 1954. 12. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, tr. and ed. by E. Shils and Henry A. Finch, Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 1949, p. 90. 13. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, tr. and ed. by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Oxford University Press, New York, 1946, pp. 323f. 14. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. by Johannes Winckelmann, J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tubingen, 1956, Vol. I, p. 664. 15. Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, tr. by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale, Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., 1952, p. 376. 16. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, op. cit., p. 291. 17. In Robert K. Merton, Reader in Bureaucracy, Free Press, Glencoe, 1949, pp.27-33. 18. Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society, ed. and annotated by Max Rheinstein, tr. by Edward Shils and Max Rheinstein, Cambridge, 1954. 19. Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, Doubleday, New York, 1960. 20. Weber treated this problem in his paper read at St. Louis in 1904. See “Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany,” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, op. cit., pp. 363-385. 21. C. Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People, ed. by Irving L. Horowitz, Oxford University Press, New York and Ballantine Books, New York, 1963, p. 20. 22. Ibid., pp. 53-71. 23. Otto Kirchheimer, Political Justice, Princeton, 1961. Seeesp. p. 11. 24. Karl Jaspers, Max Weber: Politiker, Forscher, Philosoph, Piper, Mtinchen, 1958, p. 7.

PART III

HANS GERTH’S CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY

17. HANS GERTH’S CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY JOSEPH BENSMAN

INTRODUCTION Dr. Hans Heinrich Gerth, who was born in Kassel, Hesse, in 1908 and died in Bad Soden near Frankfurt-am-Main on December 29, 1978, spent most of his adult life in the United States. He left Germany in 1938 after he was interrogated by the gestapo. After a short stay as a tutor at Harvard Uni¬ versity and at the universities of Michigan and Illinois (1938 to 1940), he became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin and rose to full professor in 1958. In 1971 he returned to Germany where he was professor of sociology at Frankfurt University until 1975. While at the University of Wisconsin, Gerth took leaves of absence to be a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1947, Brandeis and Columbia universities in 1954, Frankfurt University in 1955 and 1962, the University of California in 1957, Hitotsubashi University in 1962 and 1963, the University of Tokyo in 1963, and the City University of New York in 1970. Although he also translated some of Karl Mannheim’s essays' and the proceedings of the First International,2 Gerth was best known as a translator of Max Weber’s work.3 His introductions to Weber’s works caused him to be considered one of the outstanding Weberian scholars of his and our time. Besides his translations of Weber, Gerth coauthored with C. Wright Mills Character and Social Structure, The Psychology of Social Structures,4 and in 1976 oversaw the publication of his own doctoral dissertation, Burgerliche Intelligenz um 1800.5 His major American articles included “The Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition,”6 “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos,”7 “Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940,”8 and “Friedrich Buchholz as a Sociologist of Ideas.”9 This appraisal of Gerth’s work is not primarily concerned with his 221

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publications; rather, it focuses upon the ideas he made available to his students and disciples in classroom-seminars, personal conversations, and as a dissertation and thesis consultant. Wherever possible we will document his ideas and interpretations from his written works, but it should be recognized that such documentation is minimal. The questions we raise, which constitute the problematic of this essay, are: Is there a basic core of ideas, concepts, approaches and problems, a Weltanschauung, that characterized Gerth’s sociological thought over the more than three decades that he dwelt in the United States; and how did Gerth, if at all, influence American sociological thought during those three decades and thereafter? In posing these questions, we recognize a number of difficulties. First, Gerth was a “living library,” as close to being a Renaissance man as it is possible for a modern scholar to be in a world in which the “explosion of knowledge” and academic specialization has made it impossible for any scholar to achieve the breadth of knowledge of a Goethe or a Max Weber. Yet Gerth made important contributions to the knowledge and careers of his students in such widely scattered fields as European and American history—social, political and intellectual; musicology; art history and comparative literature; political science; economics; psychology and philosophy; journalism; mass communication; and the sociology of the cinema, as well as sociology and social psychology. ^ Given his vast range of knowledge, it seems impossible to distill and summarize in a limited space the sociological ideas that were the under¬ pinnings of this knowledge. Our questions become even more difficult to answer when one realizes that Gerth was a compulsive reader who had almost total recall of all that he read. Moreover, he had the facility of instantly recalling reports of historical events and ideas in their exact, detailed, visual and dramatic setting: “Wie ist es eigentlich gewesen [as it actually occurred].” Gerth totally rejected the “empty abstraction” and unhistorical or ahistorical generalization.10 He presented his ideas in sharp, specific, dramatic detail. His lectures, like his writings, were substantive and empirical; they were only rarely abstract, formal, epistemological, metaphysical or methodo¬ logical exercises. Although he organized his presentations in tight, logical outlines, he presented them to his listeners with the vast erudition and the historical and dramatic illustrations and imagery that were always at his immediate recall. Because the outline and the generalizations were hidden in reportage, only those students, such as C. Wright Mills and Don Martindale, who could directly sense the rigor of Gerth’s logical analyses could fully appreciate the logical and formal elegance of his lectures and discussions. The vast majority were either stunned by his erudition or his dramatic

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presentation of history and ideas. Some thought he was atheoretical and “too concrete.” Another difficulty in dealing with Gerth’s sociology as an integrated Weltanschauung arises from Gerth’s creative brilliance in lectures, dis¬ cussions and personal correspondence. Gerth, in discussing an idea, could generate idea after idea: hypotheses, alternative approaches, suggestions for following-up ideas, illustrations, and bibliography and sources. The sheer speed of his thought and the associative memories—their multiple dimensions and the fact that, like lightning, they seemed to streak in all directions—suggest that reducing Gerth’s ideas to a minimal basic core does a vast injustice to the ideas as well as to the man. Finally, in recognizing the limits of the utility of Mannheim’s concept of Weltanschauung" as applied to Gerth, we must note that Gerth’s ideas were developing and changing continuously. In part, these changes occurred in response to Gerth’s continuous, autonomous study and his inner intel¬ lectual growth. In part, they were due to his response to changes in the macroscopic world; and in part, they resulted from changes in his life and work situation vis-a-vis his immediate environment and the larger world. As a result, Gerth sometimes changed the focus of his work, changed some of his ideas and occasionally appeared to contradict positions he had taken earlier. We shall note these changes from time to time in the pages that follow. Thus, after noting these difficulties in constructing an image of Gerth’s sociology, we shall attempt to do so nonetheless. The justification for such an attempt rests upon its consequences for the reader and for sociology as both a discipline and a perspective. We will undoubtedly and inevitably oversimplify Gerth’s approach. Moreover, since no one observer was present at all occasions when Gerth exercised his sociological imagination, different observers would undoubtedly report different facets of his approach and give them different emphases. This, too, is a limitation on Mannheim’s approach, as it is on all historical reporting. GERTH’S INTERPRETATION OF MAX WEBER There were times when Gerth, in a self-deprecatory mood, would casti¬ gate himself for being reduced solely to the education of midwestern farm boys. In some ways, his comment was true: He brought German sociology, especially Max Weber’s sociology, to the United States and more than any one person educated American sociologists to the “grand tradition” of Wilhelminian and Weimar sociology. He started American sociology’s second greatest industry: the interpretation of Max Weber’s sociology (the interpretation of Karl Marx’s sociology is the first). Although Albert Saloman had written three articles on Weber in Social

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Research in 193612 he had dropped this emphasis after the appearance of Talcott Parsons’ Structure of Social Action,13 which contained four chap¬ ters on Weber. Previously in 1930, Parsons had translated the Protestant Ethic14 into English, and Frank Knight had translated General Economic History.15 But the Weber “industry”16 really began with From Max Weber, which appeared in 1946. One year after Gerth and Mills published From Max Weber, Parsons and Henderson translated the first part of Weber’s Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft under the title The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.17 The three subsequent Gerth translations were accompanied and followed by a flood of others, including: The Methodology of the Social Sciences, On Law in Economy and Society, The City, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, The Sociology of Religion, On Charisma and Institution Building, Roscher and Knies, The Agrarian Sociology of the Ancient World, Critique of Stammler,18 and a host of other volumes of “selections.” Since 1947 the flow of books of commentary, exegesis and explication, critiques and evaluation, and biographies and biographical interpretations has been uninterrupted and undiminished. Today, attacks by Marxists and neo-Marxists and defenses of Weber by nonideological “professionals” are perhaps the central issue of contemporary sociology. More important than the mass of publications is the fact that Weber’s leading concepts and ideas have become the starting point for a vast amount of historical and empirical research, as well as theoretical reflections and summations. Weber’s work is central to historical, political and economic sociology, to the sociology of development and modernization, the sociology of the city and urban life, the sociology of knowledge of the arts, and of religion: it is central to epistemology and methodology, as well as to theory proper. It is perhaps more important to discuss Gerth’s work on Weber in relation to these specific trends than it is to note that Gerth was a major educator for American sociology. Gerth offered a specific interpretation of Weber’s work that was substantially different from that given by all other Weberians. His interpretation not only included a different selection of Weber’s major ideas and works and a different emphasis between substantive and methodological writings but also presented a different evaluation of what is methodologically important in that work.What he defined as Weber’s major theories had not been so considered previously. He offered a different interpretation of the theories themselves and finally a unique normative bias in all of the above. It is important to emphasize the uniqueness of Gerth’s interpretation of Weber because among many sociologists Gerth is considered important for his translation and emphasis on Weber’s sociology of religion. This essay as it applies to Gerth’s work on Weber only proposes that Gerth used

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Weber’s sociology of religion to develop an image of and emphasis in Weber’s work that is both “correct” and different from that provided by all other interpreters of Weber. Moreover, we believe that Gerth’s inter¬ pretation became the basis of his own work. Virtually all American Weberians, even today have found Weber to be a spokesman of the idealistic tradition, even though Weber specifically denied this in his Protestant Ethic.'9 Thus, Parsons in his the Structure of Social Action emphasized the voluntaristic, consensual bases of society, which he inferred from Weber’s Sociology of Religion,20 as well as from Weber’s unfulfilled tendencies toward a conception of the social system that Parsons tried to complete. Parsons also emphasized in The Theory of Social and Economic Organization21 Weber’s formal, neo-Kantian methodology and the importance of “idealistic” factors in Weber’s work. Howard Becker, at the University of Wisconsin, emphasized Verstehen and the ideal type.22 Reinhard Bendix emphasized Weber’s concept of status monopoli¬ zation and the comparative method.23 Edward Shils and his collaborator, Henry A. Finch, in their introduction to The Methodology of Social Science emphasized the importance of theory in research in Weber’s writings on historicism.24 In his own work, Shils tended to accept Parsons’ interpretation of Weber and in addition attributed to Weber ideas of the “primordial” as a basis of charisma and legitimacy.25 Guenther Roth in his introduction to Economy and Society emphasized Weber’s comparative sociology, his focus on agrarian policy and his political morality.26 Unlike these men, Gerth emphasized the similarities between Weber and Marx in all of his work on Weber and argued that Weber tended to gen¬ eralize Marx’s ideas beyond the limited institutional areas, eras and geographical loci to which Marx applied them.27 He suggested that Marx was presenting historically limited ideas as the bases for a universal, ahistorical theory.28 Thus, Marx’s leading idea of the separation of the worker from the means of production was extended by Weber to the separation of the soldier from the means of warfare, the administrator from the means of administration, the stockholder from the management of the corporation, the academician from the library and the scientist from the laboratory.29 In the same way, Gerth pointed out that in “Class, Status and Party,” Weber had taken Marx’s distinction between “class in itself” and “class for itself” and made it the basis for his own distinction between class situation and classes as communities and “societies.”30 In both cases, Weber gave autonomy to the political, military and social spheres.31 The autonomy of the social sphere is embodied in Weber’s concept of status. In addition, in stressing the Marxian component in Weber’s work, Gerth emphasized those sections in “Class, Status, and Party” that are more Marxian than Marx in the attribution of priority to economic factors.

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Every technological and economic transformation threatens stratification by status and pushes the class situation in the foreground. Epochs and countries in which the naked class situation is of predominant significance are regularly the periods of technical and economic transformations. And every slowing down of the shifting of economic stratification leads, in due course, to the growth of status structures and makes for a resuscitation of social honor.32

In some ways, Gerth argued, Marx was superior to Weber. Marx empha¬ sized the irrationality of the modern economy: “The irrationality of capitalism results from a contradiction between rational technological advances of the productive forces and the fetters of private property, private profit and unmanaged market competition.”33 Weber saw modern capitalism as the very embodiment of rationality. The difference in perspective is clear. Marx focused upon the irrationality of the market and Weber on rational bureaucracy in the corporation, both may have been right and also wrong. To Gerth, only Thorstein Veblen saw both dimensions of the problem.34 Gerth accepted the thesis presented by Weber in The Protestant Ethic that the intellectual rationalization and autonomy in Luther’s, Calvin’s and other Protestant theologians’ thought created Christian asceticism from which was born “one of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism: and not only that but all culture on the basis of the idea of a calling.”35 Yet he also noted Weber’s caveats against “a one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and history,”36 and Weber’s theses found in “Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany”37 which stated that Luther’s and Calvin’s and other Protestant ideas could not have been accepted in north western Europe and England if it were not for such material factors as topography, rainfall, population density and other natural conditions. These created a situation in which the patterns of political and economic exploitation were relatively benign and allowed for the emergence of a free peasantry, an artisan class and a bourgeoisie who were predisposed to respond to autonomously developed ideas in terms of their material and ideal interests.38 Gerth’s favorite paragraph in all of Weber’s work was from “The Social Psychology of the World Religions”: Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the “world images” that have been created by “ideas” have, like switch¬ men, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamics of interests.39

In a similar way, Gerth interpreted Weber’s Freiburg Inauguration Address40 as an exploration into the social and political costs of military and economic expansionism. In this interpretation the desire for land by the younger sons of patrician families led them to press for a policy of

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overland military expansion. Military victories provide them with estates with which they could become family and lineage heads. But the costs of overland transportation administration strained the financial and adminis¬ trative resources of the Roman empire. Gerth noted transportation costs were emphasized in all Weber’s work on ancient society.41 They determined the growth and location of cities and the form of political domination in the ancient world and much of the modern world.42 If Gerth seemed to interpret Weber’s economics as close to and partially derived from Marx, he also suggested the anti-Marxian elements in Weber’s work. He drew attention to autonomous elements in the social, political, religious and intellectual orders when such autonomy occurred, although he, like Weber, assumed neither the autonomy nor the determinacy of these elements.43 The relations between these “factors” was, for Weber, a his¬ torical problematic that was resolvable only in specific times and places. In most cases, the interrelation between the various factors, the “institutional orders,” was complex, pluralistic, multicausal. Thus Gerth continuously drew attention to Weber’s rejections of Marx’s “untenable monocausal theory,”44 as he did to all monocausal theories, whether historical material¬ istic or “spiritualistic.” Gerth cited Weber’s study of ancient China as an illustration of the autonomy of the political order in which the bureaucratic literati, the mandarins, having gained control of the state, with a self-created myth of indispensability, used their control to limit severely the rise and power of the merchant class.45 He cited other works in which Weber made this point concerning the autonomy of the political order with respect to Germany and north western Europe, ancient Judea, Egypt and Rome, and even eighteenth-century England. In part to illustrate this point, Gerth selected and translated two of Weber’s most comprehensive and general essays of his entire Sociology of Religion, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions” and “Religious Rejections of the World.”46 To Gerth these essays were illustrations of the multiple directions of causality between not only the religious and the economic order but also all institutional orders. Gerth cited as the most important difference between Weber and Marx Weber’s rejection of the dialectic, the idea that there was a goal to history whether that goal was spiritual or material. Gerth was fond of quoting Weber in “Politics as a Vocation”: “The materialist interpretation is no cab to be taken at will; it does not stop short of the promoters of revolutions.”47 In its full context, the quotation is even more disparaging of Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. The leader [of a revolution] and his success are completely dependent on the functioning of his machine and hence not on his own motives. Therefore he also

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depends upon whether or not the premiums [that consist of the satisfying of hatred and the craving for revenge . . . resentment and the need for pseudo-selfrighteousness] . . . can be permanently granted ... to the Red Guard, the informers and agitators, whom he needs. . . . We shall not be deceived about this by verbiage: the materialist interpretation of history is no cab to be taken at will; it does not stop short of the promoters of revolutions.48

Weber, in this section, goes on to say that revolutionary enthusiasm is reduced after the successful revolution to matter-of-fact routine and depersonalization. Philistines, technicians and spoilsmen prevail along with “psychic proletarianization. ”49 Weber suggested, and Gerth referred to, the possibility that a leader could, on the basis of his reading of the dialectic, consign millions to death by war and revolution and then find that he was wrong.50 Gerth emphasized absolute belief in the dialectic meant absolute belief in actions—actions that not only could be wrong, but also deadly in their consequences. If Gerth was a leftist Weberian, attracted in many ways to a Marxist analysis of capitalism and Weber, he was in no way a totalitarian. It goes without saying that he hated the Nazis. He also documented in class after class and case after case, the Russian Revolution’s habit of devouring its children—both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—and its art and culture. Gerth disagreed with the praxis of righteous totalitarian contemporary neoMarxists as much as he did with the contemporary bureaucratic bourgeoisie. Gerth’s Reconstruction of Weber’s Sociology of Knowledge Gerth was more than a “left Weberian” and more than a Weberian who emphasized the autonomy of the various institutional orders. Gerth found in Weber the bases for a sociology of knowledge51 and a social psychology, especially a social psychology of class. This is especially significant because many Weberians deny that Weber had either a sociology of knowledge or a psychological theory.52 While Gerth accepted Weber’s thesis, propounded in The Protestant Ethic, of the autonomy of ideas, he was fully cognizant of the restrictions that Weber put on ideas in that essay. Moreover, the concept of intel¬ lectual rationalization (Weber’s intellectualization), which can be found in the introduction to The Protestant Ethic and in “Social Psychology of the World Religions,” “Religious Rejections of the World,” and the essays on “Science” and “Politics as a Vocation,”53 was to Gerth one of the two leading ideas in all of Weber’s work; the other was formal rationalization. Intellectual rationalization, as defined by Weber, is the attempt by intellectuals, priests, prophets, literati, theologians and secular intellectuals of all kinds, to make ideas internally self-consistent and consistent with their experience of the world, even in the face of the ultimate irrationality

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of human existence. All ideas, Weber argued, necessarily fail to encapsulate the changing course of human existence;54 and the intellectuals, in their attempt to make meaningful the “senselessness of the world,” contribute to the process of depleting the world of meaning. The attempt leads ul¬ timately to an abstract, opaque rationality that “disenchants”55 the world and gives rise to new forms of irrationality and new attempts at intellectual rationalization. The new attempts at rationalization are based on pre¬ suppositions that either have been previously discarded or are new. The presuppositions are not in themselves “rational”; they are simply accepted as or believed to be “givens,” or articles of faith.56 Intellectuals do not necessarily undertake the process of intellectual rationalization autonomously. In the past they have done so as priests who, once professionalized, served priestly interests or who, as coopted bureaucrats, served the interests of their political masters.57 At times, like the Chinese literati, they have used education and their intellectual and literary talents as mythmakers to construct images of their own indis¬ pensability in order to gain control over the state machinery, the emperor and society.58 At times, too, intellectuals like the agrarian rentier intelligentsia of England and western Germany, have become attached to the culture of the past and have espoused the conservative ideals of a patrician and haut bourgeoise civic morality. Sometimes aristocratic intellectuals in their attachment to the culture of the past and the interests of their nonintel¬ lectual kinsmen have become the spokesmen of “conservative” ideas and interests.59 At times, intellectuals like the Judaic prophets of “ill-fortune,” the prophets of doom, have worked and lived totally outside the organizations and structures that have employed intellectuals and outside the elite or patrician kinship structures. These intellectuals are usually self-educated and self-supported and drawn from urban artisan classes. They are “un¬ coopted,” having no organizational or personal commitments to established organizations or upper status structures or to the ideas articulated in and for those structures.60 They are the equivalents of Marx’s and Mannheim’s alienated or free intellectuals. When intellectuals are coopted, they elaborate, advance and diffuse ideas that are the products of their organizational and social positions and commitments.61 Thus, the messages that intellectuals articulate and diffuse are often the product of historically unique cultural and structural, as well as personal circumstances, but they also reflect the forms of the organizations to which intellectuals attach themselves. They reflect their success in these organizations and the success of the organizations in dominating their respective societies. Cults, sects and ecclesia, although they may have different “ideas” from those of other organizations of the same type,

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develop distinct attitudes to the world that are based upon the degree to which they accept or are accepted by the underlying populations in their society.62 Gerth selected from Weber’s writings, principally from the Sociology of Religion, those elements that would allow him to construct within Weber’s work a sociology of knowledge that allowed for both the autonomy and determinacy of thought. In the case of autonomy, the necessity for rational consistency, or systematic intellectual discipline, and the need to treat and interpret historically important texts accurately could produce significant new ideas that in crucial eras of crisis could wrench the ongoing institutional world off its predetermined tracks.63 Gerth, like Weber, was particularly fascinated by the Old Testament prophets. The “prophets of ill-fortune,” those self-educated artisans and independent, unattached intellectuals, were critical of the urbanized, secularized Judaic kings and their courts. They railed against them not only for their betrayal of their primeval religion in lusting after strange gods but also for their megalomaniac adventuristic and militaristic foreign policies, which they believed were doomed to failure. These prophets, hounded by the courts, fled to the deserts; and, if apprehended, they were incarcerated or beheaded.64 The opposing group of intellectuals—the “prophets of good fortune”— were soothsayers, diviners, advisors, supervisors of sacrifices for kings, and bestowers of legitimacy. On the basis of their “social forecasting,” they promised good fortune for the king’s ventures to both the king and his followers.65 In Weber’s and especially Gerth’s emphasis, the Judaic prophets of good fortune were akin to the Chinese literati, the mandarins who gained power by mythmaking and, in so doing, extended their power over the emperor. The Indian Brahmins were religious intellectuals who achieved a similar success. As Gerth pointed out, Weber himself indentified with the prophets of ill-fortune in his attack on the chauvinism, militarism, and senseless bravado of Kaiser Wilhelm I and such academic court intellectuals as Treitschke and other Pan-Germanic scholars.66 Weber himself, however, in “Science as a Vocation,” denied this prophetic self-identification.67 Yet in these respects, Gerth identified with Weber: He too could not identify with the expansionism and evil of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia or with America’s incursions into Southeast Asia. He abhorred the intel¬ lectuals who attached themselves to the courts of power. They became, he believed, time-servers glorifying the state and eager to sell their verbal and technical knowledge to whomever met their price. That price could be paid in the form of grants, honors and the illusion of power. In exchange for these illusions, the intellectuals would pay any intellectual cost. But, like Weber, Gerth also refused to be a prophet.

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Gerth brought Weber’s sociology of knowledge and especially his sociology of the intellectual up to the present, as had Weber in his own time, but in so doing, Gerth distilled a theoretical core from a vast multi¬ dimensional range of historical knowledge in order to present a more focused view.

WEBER’S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY If intellectuals were the producers and articulators of ideas and knowledge, class and status groups were the ultimate consumers. Formal organizations, courts, churches, political parties and clubs were often their distributors. Gerth focused on the processes of production and distribution of ideas and knowledge to construct a social psychology of class, status, and social structures. In addition, as we shall see, he focused upon the process of intellectual rationalization to construct a psychology based upon Verstehen and upon the articulation and dissemination of ideas. Yet Weber’s social psychology and psychology did not focus on rational meaning to the exclusion of emotion or “habit.” Rather, the emotions and habit were given content, structure and form by intellectual and formal rationalization. The very conditions of existence of a class or status group, that is, their class or status situation, tend to breed psychological orienta¬ tions and “orientations to action.” Peasants in their subservience to nature tend to personalize nature into spirits, gods and personal forces and tend to accept as inevitable conditions the finality of the seasons and the stages of one’s life cycle.68 Urbanites, artisans, the bourgeoisie, bureaucrats and intellectuals are predisposed to rationality, albeit of different kinds and with different content.69 The military classes accept death, tradition and their religions as meaningful, without demanding rational, that is, theo¬ logical, explanations.70 Old upper classes are committed to the past, rising middle classes to the future, and outcasts and pariah groups to the present. Each occupation, class and status group was characterized by Weber— according to Gerth—as having typical social and psychological predispo¬ sitions to thought, feeling and action that evolved from the special character¬ istic of its work, its relationship to the level and kind of wealth, its property ownership and market relations, its relationship to the amount and kind of exploitation in the economy and its religious position and past religious indoctrination.71 Each thus developed a class, occupational or status group psychology or social character.72 This social character was the basis of the predispositions or “elective affinities” that made the class or status groups receptive to the “ideas” developed by either autonomous or attached intellectuals and charismatic leaders.73 The emotional and intellectual characteristics of class and status groups, their tendencies to control

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or express emotions, and their orgiastic and other forms of “irrational” outbursts are the products of historically “objective” external, economic, political and cultural conditions and—mainly in the ancient world— religious structures. Much of Weber’s work in this area was devoted to the explanation and explication of how these objective factors shaped the character structure of specific classes and status groups in specific times and places. Gerth emphasized this aspect of Weber’s work, abstracted it from its concrete detail and to some degree generalized it. These social psychological characteristics of classes and status groups were an essential part of Weber’s sociology of knowledge, for they determined the acceptance or rejection of ideas autonomously produced by intel¬ lectuals. These patterns of class and status group differentiation in the acceptance of ideas resulted largely in the class and status group charac¬ teristics of the audiences and followers of intellectuals and charismatic leaders. The audience selected themselves as followers of leaders usually on the basis of the “fit” of the latent meaning of the manifest message to the audience as determined by their “class” psychology, that is their class or status group predispositions. Once the class or status group com¬ position of the following was stabilized by their adherence to a leader’s movement, the leadership and membership of the movement reinterpreted the autonomous doctrine of the movement to embrace the specific class characteristics of the population segments that selected themselves for membership. Weber wrote: [A religion] receives its stamp primarily from religious sources, and, first of all, from the content of its annuciations and promises. Frequently the very next gen¬ eration reinterprets these annunciations and promises. Such reinterpretations adjust the revelation to the needs of the religious community.74

In basing his sociology of religion on an implicit but necessary sociology of knowledge and class and status group psychology, Weber, in his emphasis upon the autonomy of ideas in the process of intellectual rationalization, was not inconsistent with Marx’s major dicta, “It is not ideas that determine existence, but rather existence that determines ideas.” Weber’s formulation, while less trenchant, appears more richly detailed and more accurate. Another aspect of Weber’s social psychology was his focus upon and explication of the specific methods and processes used by social organiza¬ tions to produce social character and personality types, to “breed character traits.” In translating “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” Gerth stressed the essay as a virtual primer in social psychology. The Protestant sects selected, rewarded, disciplined and controlled their members, using

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voluntary entry and peer supervision to breed and select the character traits necessary not only to sect membership but also to a nascent capitalism. The sects relied on linking theology and theodicy via organization control to their members’ aspirations for prestige, “holding one’s head up in a circle of peers,”75 as well as their aspirations for material success as defined in the Protestant ethic,76 that is, access to capital and entry into markets.77 Weber argued in the “Protestant Sects” that after the Protestant ethic had become secularized, the underlying ideas of Protestantism were trans¬ formed into character traits and instilled into sober businessmen by civic clubs and voluntary associations.78 Weber contrasted these “voluntaristic processes of socialization” with those practiced by universal churches, those into which its members were born. The distinction between self-selection and compulsory membership, that between voluntary submission and forced coercion, was stressed as different means used by religious leaders to produce effective discipline and morale.79 These social psychological mechanisms were also stressed in Weber’s studies of China,80 “National Character and the Junkers,”81 and in his essay “Bureaucracy.”82 In the same essay on the Protestant sects, Weber stressed the “mechanisms” by which the Protestant ethic, having been transformed from “ideas” to character traits, became so much a part of the institutional structure, the social environment, that it became the “iron cage” discussed in the Protestant Ethic.83 Weber’s essay, “The Chinese Literati,”84 treats these social psycho¬ logical themes even more explicitly. The literati, who were originally court astrologers, undertook the process of editing and revising the Analects and other sacred writings. They created for power purposes a myth of their own indispensability.85 With it, they created over the centuries a gentlemanly ideal for themselves and for their whole society.86 As they rose in power, they imposed that ideal on the whole society. They devised codes of manners, systems of deportment and appropriate modes of expressing emotion, as well as “curricula” and a literature through which the standards could be inculcated into would-be members of their status group. They devised a system of education and examinations that tied successful “socialization” to the available political and economic rewards of their society. They defined success and created a system of “censorship” to guarantee the operation of the system as a gateway to success. The content of these “methods of socializaton” reflected Confucian theory and ideals; the methods were educational, “ideological,” political and economic.87 The literati allowed the masses to practice ancestor worship, magic and paganism as long as they were pietistic to their ancestors. Pietism to elders, surperiors, to the emperor, and to themselves was also demanded.88 They invoked traditionalism with respect to the merchant classes and guilds, preventing the rise of capitalism and broadening the emperor’s mantle

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of charisma to include themselves.89 They so successfully broadened the mantle that they became the certifiers of the charisma, and hence legitimacy, of the emperor.90 Because of the unique “atheistic” character of Confucian thought, that is the absence of a supramundane, ethical and personal God, Confucianism did not produce the same kind of deeply internalized guilt formation that characterized the Judaic and Christian religions. Instead, shame in ancient China became the major internalized control mechanism for individual behavior.91 Confucianism made keeping face in public situations the major basis of social control. The Confucian codes for public behavior were finely and comprehensively etched out; this mechanism of control, based on disgrace, the publication of offenses and the withdrawal of social support, was decisive in maintaining the gentlemanly ideals of good behavior that were diffused throughout the whole society. In his essay on the Chinese literati, Weber originated the distinction between “guilt” and “shame” cultures and related it to the historical presence and absence of the conception of a supramundane, ethical, personal God. Thus Weber, Gerth argued, “relativized the superego” and provided the basis for such distinctions as the “other-oriented” and “inneroriented” personality types that prevailed in the late 1950s and 1960s. Those paradigms of the “social construction of personality” that Gerth teased out of the “Protestant Sects” and the “Religion^of China” were also to be found in Weber’s “National Character and the Junkers,”92 “Bureaucracy,”93 “Class, Status and Party”94 and in his discussions of the English notables and honoratories95 and of their status codes as gentlemen. In all of these discussions, Weber focused on the social groups that created, articulated and enforced status conventions, that is the ideals and standards of behavior of the “social order” that conferred honor upon those who submitted to them. The organizations included the club, the academy in ancient Greece, the coretgano, the salon, the fraternity, the dueling society, the sect, and the civic association, as well as the examining and censoring institutions of bureaucracies. These social groups provided ideals for character formation, selected and bred personalities, rewarded and punished aspirants to these ideals and diffused the personality ideals throughout a nation or society. Gerth, it must be remembered, was Mannheim’s assistant in the writing of Man and Society, and Mannheim in this book emphasized these processes in his discussion of the process of self-rationalization.96 Weber had used the same concept but not the same words in describing Benjamin Franklin’s “self-rationalization” in the Protestant Ethic.91 He also had referred to the discipline that “appeals to firm motives of an ethical character and presupposed a sense of duty and conscientiousness” in his discussions of Cromwell’s men of conscience and Loyola’s spiritual exercises as moralized

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discipline.98 Norbert Elias also had been Mannheim’s assistant; and Elias’ Civilizing Process directly reflects these Weberian concepts via Mannheim, although Elias rejected Weber’s neo-Kantian epistemology in favor of an approach that sought to discover deeper structures of meaning and forms of behavior.99 WEBER’S GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY Finally, Gerth constructed, primarily out of Weber’s work, a “general psychology”—one not directly related to specific class and status groups nor to specific historical and cultural circumstances insofar as that is possible. His general psychology included a psychology of the emotions and a psychology of “rationality.” Weber had attacked the romantic, political emotionality of Stefan George’s quest for an intellectual prophecy in the same way that he had attacked the erotic, intellectualized sexuality of the Freudians of his era, labeling their quest for experience as “sterile excitation,” to use Simmel’s terms.100 Such intellectualized romanticism and eroticism was used to overcome a sense of disenchantment, a loss of the sense of genuine emotionality that resulted from attempts at intel¬ lectual rationalization, that is attempts to make the world subject to systematic, consistent rational explanation within a given set of fixed assumptions and predispositions. Weber argued that such intellectualized irrationality was a contradiction in terms and often a fraudulent attempt to escape from one’s moral sense.101 He also addressed himself to Nietzsche’s concept of Ressentiment. In his discussion of this concept, he was in part using Nietzsche as a surrogate for Freud and in part resisting his own attraction to Nietzsche’s ideas. Weber argued that pariah groups as a general rule were not motivated by Ressentiment: They did not seek compensation for deprivation in the present by projecting a future in which they would achieve the joy and material goods that they were deprived of in this world. Rather, they focused on the quest for joy in the immediate present by addressing themselves to chiliastic movements and emotional religions that allowed for immediate emotional release.102 Weber recognized in the human psyche the irreducible core of emotionality and “all too human” core of irrationality that could not be denied by either formal or intellectual rationalization.103 In his discussions of sexuality and the erotic sphere, he recognized not only the “natural sexuality” of the peasant but also the mature sexuality of modern men, which often defied eroticism and resulted in an intellectualized sexuality that was productive of stylized manners and art. Eroticized, intellectualized sexuality denied genuine sexuality, yet turned it into sexual frenzy.104 Although social institutions could channelize, stylize and sometimes

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repress and deny sex and the emotions, the irreducible cores of the emotions always reasserted themselves in the very face of these controls.105 All of Weber’s sociology of religion, including the Protestant Ethic, can be interpreted from the standpoint of the attempts by religions and other institutional organizations to stylize, channel, deflect, repress, sublimate, refine, or civilize the emotional life of their subjects. Depending on time and place, the methods have included religious orgiasticism, sacred prostitution, pietism, asceticism, sexual denial and priestly chastity, eroticism, courtly love, chivalry and romanticism. But, in emphasizing the basic emotional character of the human species, Weber asserted that these always fail and ultimately are replaced by other attempts. This recognition of the emotions, particularly of sex (though it is possible to do a similar analysis of the lust for power, greed or revenge in Weber’s work), operate within the framework of a “cognitive psychology” that Gerth elicited from Weber’s works. This cognitive psychology was a “psychology of meaning” that began only with the process of intellectual rationalization. The terms that identify Weber’s approach are widely scattered throughout his works. They are: “inner balance,” “balance of self-feeling,” “compensation” and “sublimation.” The three initial terms deal with the “need” of men to compensate at the level of meaning for institutionally produced deprivations. Thus men create, elaborate and internalize structures of meanings and consciousness^ rationales that provide them with the means of dealing with their existential realities. The bureaucrat is provided with ideals of service as compensation for his existence in a remorselessly marching impersonal machine. Prestige of office, title and rank “balance his self-esteem” in the face of his power¬ lessness and provide an inner balance for the same helplessness. Thus Weber wrote: A strong status sentiment among officials agrees not only with the official’s readiness to subordinate himself to the chief without any will of his own, but—just as in the case of the officer—status sentiments are the consequences of such sub¬ ordination, for internally they balance the official’s self-feeling.106

Similarly, in “Politics as a Vocation,” Weber asserted that the politician who lives for politics “makes politics his life in an inner sense. Either he enjoys the naked possession of the power he exerts or he nourishes his inner balance of self-feeling by his consciousness that his life has meaning in the service of a cause.”107 In the same essay, he noted that journalism is not for weak characters, “who can maintain their ‘inner balance’ only with a secure status position.”108 Finally in opposition to Nietzsche, Weber argued that the sense of dignity of socially repressed strata tends to result in the belief that they

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were entrusted with a special mission by God: “The value is thus moved beyond themselves into a ‘task’ placed before them by God.”109 In this sense they wish for “inexorable compensations” for their oppressed status that can provide them with immediate satisfaction. The fact that ideas provide inner compensation, a “balance of self¬ feeling” or “inner balance,” does not by itself specify the source of those ideas. Individuals and status group members may provide such ideas themselves: They may “legitimate” themselves by creating or accepting compensatory ideas, but their bureaucratic, military or religious masters may provide the ideas that assure discipline, acceptance of place and willing compliance with orders.110 Thus, in the “Meaning of Discipline,” Weber wrote that under military discipline: The masses are uniformly conditioned and trained for discipline in order that their optimum of physical and psychic power in attack may be rationally calculated. . . .111

He went on to say: [In] the large-scale economic organization . . . the psychophysical apparatus of man is completely adjusted to demands of the outer world, the tools, the machines— in short, to an individual function.112

The final concept in Weber’s psychology of meaning is the concept of sublimation. As with “balance of self-feeling” and “inner balance,” the concept of sublimation, as used by Weber, is not formally defined. It is different from that concept as it was used by Freud. In Freud’s work, sublimation means the discharge of id-originating psychic energy into different, socially approved objects. It involved displacement as well as refinement and is a process of the ego. In contrast, the concept of sublimation, as used by Weber, links intel¬ lectual rationalization to the control of the emotions. It focuses on the use of ideas to define the content, the proper modes of expressions, and the situations proper for the control and release of the emotions as well as the appropriate objects of the emotions. For Weber, sublimation is a process controlled by intellectuals, priests, prophets and institutional leaders.113 It is not a process of displacement but one of refinement, akin to Elias’ civilizing process. It is the attempt to give intellectual meaning of the senselessness of the world and the irrationality of one’s passions. It is embodied in the intellectual content of theology and theodicy, in the religious stylization of emotions and in the ritual, sacrament and behavioral codes that control these passions. As a set of ideas, sublimation is the product of an intellectual and social process,

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not a psychological mechanism. As an intellectual process it is subject to all the vicissitudes of “intellectualization” and the disenchantments that are entailed in the intellectual rationalization of the world. Gerth on Weber’s Metaphysical Position The emphasis on “meaning” as an ingredient in character structure and the emphasis on the meaningful stylization of the emotions are closely interrelated with Weber’s metaphysical position. Weber was highly critical of sociologists, social historians and philosophers, such as Oswald Spengler and Othmar Spann, whose work directly reflected their metaphysical position or a philosophy of history.'14 Weber denied having such a philosophy; and his concepts of value-relevance and value-neutrality are an attempt to separate those concepts derived from empirical work from those based upon the observer’s values. He recognized the difficulties in maintaining such a separation but nevertheless felt that the attempt should be made."5 His formulation of concepts, definitions and ideal types reflected this attempt. Although in defending Weber against critics, Gerth sometimes defended this Verstehen position against charges that Weber was primarily a materialist, he concluded, in comparing Weber’s methodological writings with his substantive work that Weber had a philosophy of history and a metaphysical position that governed all his substantive work."6 Gerth’s “Subjective Intentions and Objective Meaning"7 in Hegel, Marx and Weber” and “Max Weber’s Political Morality,” both in this volume, further emphasized this conclusion. Man, according to Weber, is a reason-seeking animal. Once the process of intellectual rationalization begins, man eternally seeks a “sensible” image of the world, an image that can be reduced to logical, systematic explanations. The origin of this quest in the “irrational” experience of good and bad fortune is the fundamental problem of theodicy: The good suffer and the evil often prosper. In the face of the eternal violation of his expectancies, past theories and magical, religious and even scientific practices, men are forever driven to develop new religions, philosophies and sciences to justify and explain God’s treatment of man, their place in the universe, their relationship to other men, and, finally, their relationship to themselves."7 To Weber, these demands for meaning are both eternal and ungrantable."8 Nature and society are senseless; society continuously evolves partly in response to men’s attempts at intellectual rationalization and partly in response to their rationalization of action—formal rationalization. But all such attempts have led to the failure of their explanations. In the attempt to explain nature as well as to respond to the other demands, science, which replaces philosophy which follows religion, becomes—like intellect-

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ualized religion and philosophy—abstract, specialized, fragmentary and removed from the life of those who make the demands for meaning.119 The attempts to find a “sensible” image of the world yield ever new forms of senselessness and are the sources of an ever recurrent disenchantment with the world. New forms of bad fortune, injustice, disenchantment and senselessness lead to new forms of irrationality. The new irrationalities can lead to new—or the revival of previously discarded—presuppositions, axioms, that become the basis for new attempts at intellectual rationalization. This quest for “meaning” in the face of an ultimately meaningless world underlies Weber’s psychology as it underlies all his work. The quest for inner balance, a balance of self-feeling, compensation and the sublimation of raw emotion, are self- and other-directed attempts to maintain a meaningful relationship with the cosmos, the social order and one’s self within the framework of one’s immediate class and status position, as well as with the explanations of meaning, “ideas” and religions. Thus, in Gerth’s interpretation, Weber’s psychology and social psychology deals with the role of ideas and with the role of the creators, articulators and disseminators of ideas in developing a stance to the world, in ordering action and in ordering, directing and controlling the raw emotional life of the individual. The Gerthian Interpretation of Weber’s Methodology Gerth was one of the few Weberians who did not emphasize Weber’s contributions to epistemology and methodology. This may have been due in part to Gerth’s own predilection for avoiding programmatic promises of the future benefits that might be gained from commitments to a program. It also may have been due to his desire to concentrate on substantive work. In so doing, Gerth reflected Weber’s famous dictum: “Only by solving substantive problems can science be established and their methods developed. On the other hand, purely epistemological and methodological problems have never played the crucial role in such developments.”120 Gerth, however, did present a summary of Weber’s major methodological and epistemological contributions. In it, he stressed Weber’s use of com¬ parative methods, but unlike most other Weberians, he did not emphasize that method as “methodology.” Rather, he focused on the logic of Weber’s comparative religion as Weber’s attempt to solve a particular substantive problem: the failure of capitalism to emerge in societies and at times other than it did in the West. Gerth devalued the ideal type, pointing out that Weber did not mean to introduce a new conceptual tool. He merely intended to make explicit what social scientists had been doing when they used words like “economic man” or “feudalism.”121 Thus, Gerth’s presentation of Weber’s Verstehen sociology is less a dis-

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cussion of “methods” than a discussion of the role of ideas in history as related to the materialistic and idealistic conceptions of history.122 While Weber rejected equally “materialistic” and “idealistic” interpretations of history, Gerth pointed out that even in his use of subjective factors, he did not follow his Verstehen approach when he attempted “structural” explanations.123 For this reason Gerth’s discussion of Weber’s methodology turned again and again to the substantive and philosophic issues that underlined “purely methodological and epistemological problems.” Among these issues were the role of ideas in history; the role of reason in both history and in men; bureaucracy, the nature and character of capitalism; teleology in history, and materialism versus idealism. When Gerth discussed the purely methodo¬ logical issues in Weber’s work, he did not make his disagreements with Weber the basis for a methodological or “theoretical” program. Although Weber had argued that the Verstehen approach was extremely important to the then current forms of what is now known as positivism or behaviorism, Gerth demonstrated that Weber often violated this approach in favor of an “objectivism” similar to Marx’s. As Gerth demonstrated in “Subjective Intentions and Objective Meanings in Hegel, Marx and Weber” and “Max Weber’s Political Morality,” Weber also violated the neo-Kantian approach of Economy and Society in favor of a “philosophy of history,” although in principle he was opposed to such a philosophy. Gerth was often bemused by Weber’s “four types of social action” as described in Economy and Society. He was particularly bemused by the concept of zweckrational. The term was translated as “instrumental rationality” by Roth and Wittich,124 “action oriented to a system of discrete individual ends”125 by Parsons and Henderson, and “means-end or purposeful rationality” by Becker.126 Instrumental^ rational social action, as distinct from value rational (wertrational) action, is determined by the “actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends”:127 Value rational behavior is “determined by the conscious belief in the value for its own sake independently of the prospect of success.”128 For Gerth the significant phrase was “rationally pursued and calcu¬ lated means and ends.” The phrase suggested to others that ends are subject to rational calculation, but Gerth cited dozens of quotations from Weber’s work that indicated the ultimate ends are beyond calculation.129 They are simply givens or properties attributed to God. Only means are subject to calculation in relationship to given or accepted ends. This misunder¬ standing, Gerth argued, led many Weberians either to aspire to rational ends or to accuse Weber of being an exponent of a shallow rationality. For Gerth, this confusion or lack of clarity meant only that the rational element in Verstehen was overstated by Weber.

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In assessing the ideal type, Gerth emphasized Weber’s creative and intuitive genius in his selection of the dimensions out of which he formed the ideal types that was decisive in posing and resolving substantial problems— and not their internal logic, their formal elegance, or even their clarity in distinguishing between “hypothesis,” description and explanation.'30 In the hands of a “pure” methodologist, typological analysis would be sterile. In the hands of a willing or unwilling Platonist, the types would become universals or absolutes,131 as they appear to be in those works of Parsons that came after The Structure of Social Action. Gerth expresses this criticism in “The Reception of Max Weber’s Sociology in the United States.” Most advocates of a typological approach fail to see the pragmatic, in¬ strumental character of typological analysis and fail to realize Weber’s in¬ junctions that types serve only as means to solve problems that are raised independently of and prior to type construction. Types must be discarded once they have succeeded (or failed) in solving the specific problems for which they had been constructed. Typological analysis without specific substantive problems is a sterile exercise at the very least and, at most, leads to a Platonic essentialism. Similarly, comparative history and comparative sociology served Weber only as a means of solving specific theoretical problems, such as the role of religion in the rise of capitalism or the preconditions for the rise of bureaucracy or rational law. The theoretical categories (properties or dimensions) used in the historical comparisons, like those used in type construction, reflect both the necessities of solving specific problems and the historic data available.132 The use of abstract, formal categories does not exempt the historian or historical sociologist from mastering the historical eras under consideration and the unique political, economic, religious and cultural features of each civilization studied. Weber’s mastery of historical eras offered him the possibility of discovering those unique features in a given civilization that were not present in others previously studied. Even more important methodologically, later work allowed him to postulate theoretical categories that had not been considered in his earlier works. Thus Weber’s studies of China and India were far more rich and sophisticated than the Protestant Ethic, as were the articles, “Protestant Sects” and “Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany.” Gerth, in his analysis of Weber’s comparative sociology, concluded that a programmatic methodology for comparative sociology that was not based upon specific substantive problems, but rather on the method itself, would be just as sterile as the methodological use of the ideal type. Methods, Gerth emphasized even more than Weber, serve only to assist in the solution of specific theoretical and substantive problems and are relevant only in the course of specific research work as findings become available. The

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“reification of methods” becomes an infinity of mirrors in which the methodologist sees himself and attributes the images seen to an ultimate reality he rarely faces. Institutional Orders, Spheres of Values, and Life Spheres In one major sense, however, Gerth adopted a specific methodology of Weber. This entailed the use of a number of concepts found frequently in Weber’s substantive works but not specifically defined as objects of attention in his methodological writings. These concepts, to use Gerth’s terms, were institutional order, spheres (of value) and life spheres. Gerth found the concepts in Weber’s Protestant Ethic, “Religious Rejections of The World,” “The Social Psychology of World Religions,” “Science,” “Politics as a Vocation,” “Class, Status and Party” and “Bureaucracy.” In these essays, they were variously translated as “life orders,” “depart¬ ments of life,” “value spheres,” “institutional orders,” or as specific “spheres” and “orders,” that is, the political order, the religious order or sphere, the kinship order, and such like. Gerth noted that these concepts were Weber’s major organizing principles in “Religious Rejections of the World” and the “Social Psychology of World Religions.” They not only embodied the thesis of both essays; they were the concepts that summarized Weber’s major life work. In “Politics as a Vocation” and “Science as a Vocation,” the same concepts were used to summarize the plight of modern man. Weber embedded in these formal concepts his major themes of intellectual and formal ration¬ alization and his theme of the disenchantment of the world. In “Class, Status and Party” and “Bureaucracy,” Weber used these same concepts to state the relationship between economic class, social status and politics. Despite the importance of these concepts to Weber’s work, Weber did not present them as unique methodological contributions, nor was he clear or consistent in his use of his terminology. Gerth attempted to provide this clarity in his own work and in his selection, translation and commentary on Weber.133 The concept of institutional order was used to classify social organi¬ zations and institutions by their major ends. Thus for Weber, “the economic order is for us merely the way in which economic goods and services are distributed and used,”134 and “the way in which social honor is distributed in a community between the typical groups participating in a community we may call the social order.”135 Weber defined the political order, the kinship order, the religious order, and aesthetic and intellectual order in similar ways. Legal and the military orders were also so defined but some¬ times necessarily subsumed under the political order and sometimes treated separately.

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Spheres are aspects of institutional orders. Organizations and institutions in each order, depending upon their particular stage in the process of intellectual or formal rationalization, develop spheres of activity related to their internal organization and to their relations with external organizations and personnel. Thus, every fully developed organization or order will have a political or administrative sphere, an economic sphere, a technological sphere, a social sphere, an intellectual sphere (sphere of values), and an erotic and an aesthetic sphere. In his own work, Gerth combined the sphere of values and the aesthetic sphere and called the combination the “symbol spheres”; the social order became the status sphere; and he added the concept of the educational sphere.136 In these spheres, the leaders of organizations and institutions attempt to articulate the values of their institutions and the political, technological, administrative, educational, economic, social and even aesthetic and sexual goals of their organizational codes, as well as the modes of operation incumbent upon their members and their actual or potential subjects. The spheres refer to the specific intellectual, behavioral—administrative or organizational—and technological codes and values within an organization or order. Thus, a political organi¬ zation can have an economic sphere or ethic, that is, beliefs and behavioral codes relative to economic activity, and an economic order can have a political sphere. The life orders and life spheres refer to these same values and behavioral expectancies as they are presented to and internalized by individuals subject to, or within the potential reach of, the institutional orders. An individual may be subject to various spheres of a wide number of organi¬ zations and institutions in the various institutional orders. The concept of life spheres and life orders refers to the way in which the individual inter¬ nalizes, reconciles, “balances” or confronts these values and behavioral expectancies. In this sense, the concept of institutional orders can be translated into the sociology of organizations (of the respective orders); the sociology of spheres into a cultural sociology; and the sociology of life orders and spheres into social psychology. It must be repeated, however, that the concepts are not clearly, syste¬ matically and uniformly drawn and defined because Weber developed them only as he needed them in his theoretical and substantive work and not as a systematic “methodology.” Yet they appear throughout his late works, and wherever they appear in these works, they are used to develop his major, summary ideas. In expounding these ideas, Gerth made them more “systematic” than did Weber, and perhaps we do also. Yet, we do so in order to see how Gerth interpreted Weber, and how he ultimately in¬ corporated these ideas into his own work. Because for Weber, the major substantive ideas or concepts were in¬ tellectual and formal rationalization, the concepts of institutional order,

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institutional spheres and life spheres and orders were simply the methodo¬ logical underpinnings of these ideas. Both major concepts, however, involve subsidiary processes that start from a “base line” concept of the “primitive” community. In the primitive community the major institutional orders are integrated, interlocked and unseparated.137 Religion, economics, politics, art, kinship, and other spheres interpenetrate each other at the level of organizations, values and social character. The first major “world historical” process is the separation of institutional orders, spheres and life spheres and values.138 At the level of spheres of value this process occurs when, in the face of the differential experience of good and bad fortune, rationalized (intellectual) religions of salvation appear and minister to the individual instead of the community as a whole.139 The separation of the religious sphere from the community begins the process of intellectual rationalization, and leads to the creation of separate organizations and professions that serve the needs of individuals. This also advances the process of formal rationalization.140 The process of institutional separation has two additional sources. One occurs wherever and whenever kinship heads, who are also heads of communal or tribal councils, expropriate kinship and community property for themselves and their lineage.141 Weber agrees with Marx that the political order originates in private property, but he differs from Marx in asserting that it originates in the separation of the political order from the integrated primitive com¬ munity. The other source of separation of institutional orders is the military conquest and domination of one tribe by another which results in the creation of a superior political elite and a separate political order.142 The economic order originates in the exploitation of one class, in Weber’s terms, status group, by another. It occurs initially when the internal develop¬ ment of the means of production permit the economic and political ex¬ ploitation of one class by another, that is after the growth of a surplus. Differential economic success as a result of technological developments, differential access to credit, force and political domination all create economic differentiation and the emergence of status groups and classes, whenever a market comes into being.143 To summarize, the separation of institutional orders thus occurs whenever one organization begins to separate itself organizationally from the com¬ munity as a whole, “forming an order,” and continues whenever others separate themselves either from the community or from previously formed organizations, institutions or orders.144 The processes of separation are neither linear, cumulative nor complete. They do not entail fixed stages of development and the process is never finished. The intellectual and aesthetic orders have been relatively late in achieving separation even in the present. The kinship and territorial community, from which all other institutional orders have emerged, remains as a contemporary reality. They remain

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despite the fact that they have undergone the continuous loss of functions, redefinition and battering. Many of their functions have been absorbed by other orders. Once the other orders have gained dominance, the leaders and intellectuals of these “more advanced” orders redefine and limit the family and territorial locality, often supporting them as an appendage to their order.145 Frequently the process of redefinition results in a struggle between dominant orders over the control of kinship and community. The process of organizational separation is the product of two primary processes: These are the familiar processes of intellectual rationalization and formal rationalization. Intellectual rationalization within the framework of organizational separation is the attempt of intellectuals, priests, literati, jurists, philosophers, “aestheticians,” and others within, attached to or committed to an order or its emerging “sphere of values” to define, articulate, alter or to give new or additional meanings to the values and ideas that are used initially to separate the order and then to give it specific character in relationship to its own past and to other institutional orders. Within these processes both intellectual autonomy and some levels of determinacy occur. The processes of intellectual rationalization, which may begin before the actual separation of orders, not only result in the separation of institutional orders but also result inevitably in the separation of spheres of values and of life spheres. In the processes of formal rationalization, organization leaders in each order—depending on its state of development—attempt to create, articulate, organize, rationalize, routinize and regulate each institutional sphere within the organizations and institutions of an order. For example, they attempt to create a separate economic sphere within the church, so as not to keep it dependent on either irregular support or on the support of alien or opposed orders and institutions. They attempt to rationalize their internal ad¬ ministration, that is to create a technology whether or not it is an economic, religious, political, legal or aesthetic technique. They attempt to create, if they can, educational spheres autonomous from their organizational point of view, for the training and indoctrination of officials and members, and a symbolic sphere to control the process of intellectual rationalization. Thus, formal and intellectual rationalization converge and collide when the institutional and organizational demands for the autonomy of an order meet the separate demands for autonomy made by attached and unattached intellectuals who are concerned primarily with the rational, systematic rationalization of “ideas,” rather than organizational goals and purposes.147 When an institutional order (the organizations in it) achieves some degree of autonomy for its spheres, it is on its way to becoming a separate order. It does so when its spheres are sufficiently developed to permit a separate organizational existence for the order.

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Societal Dominance, Conflict, and the Institutional Orders Both formal rationalization and intellectual rationalization occur in history, at given moments, times and places, within an ongoing institutional and intellectual context. The attempt to create new orders and institutional and intellectual spheres takes place against the background of previous attempts in other orders as well as previous attempts within its own order. Each attempt at rationalization results in separation from other institutions and orders and is resisted by those orders. Thus the development of separate orders and spheres inevitably results in conflict. At the intellectual level, the spheres of value become separated, and the values underlying each order may be treated respectively as exclusive, ultimate, or primary. The result is a struggle of values. At the institutional level, each set of institutions struggles to dominate each other or to escape domination. In Weber’s terms these struggles are often the struggles of the ancient gods, who, after the disenchantment of the world, reappear as impersonal forces.147 The result is competition between different ultimate ends, the various life-spheres, that are governed by different immanent “laws.”148 The various levels of values multiply and become fragmented and dif¬ ferentiated.149 The ultimate ends are contradictory, antagonistic, and in eternal struggle with each other, which sometimes results in organizational compromises, “relativities,” and in the domination of one sphere by another.150 Once the separation occurs, there may be a battle between polity and kinship, church and state, economy and religion, economy and kinship, class and status (the economic and social orders), religion and art (the religious and aesthetic orders), or the state and the artist. The specific conflicts that characterize an era and a society are historically unique, depending on the specific historic, institutional and intellectual development of the various orders and the content of the spheres in a given society at a given moment in time. At any given moment in time, the state of intellectual and formal ration¬ alization of the various orders and spheres is likely to result in particular patterns of dominance in the society as a whole. In each society those orders that are most successful in the rationalization of their respective orders and spheres, tend to dominate the other orders. Thus, capitalism is characterized by the dominance of economic organizations and institutions in specific stages of formal and intellectual rationalization, over all other orders and spheres. Under feudalism, a different form of economic order combined with specific modes of rationalization in the political, military and religious orders. In ancient China, the political order—the mandarin bureaucracy—using Confucianism, the bureaucratic apparatus and education as a means dominated all other orders, including the economic and military orders.

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In this process, one order may for long periods of time—centuries and millennia—dominate the whole society and the other orders, giving that society the appearance of stasis; but always according to Weber’s formu¬ lations and Gerth’s more explicit formulation of Weber, the various orders are in conflict once the processes of rationalization begin. This conflict is an eternal aspect of postprimitive communal societies.151 For this reason a “consensual” view of society is both static and “incorrect.” Consensus is only the temporary appearance of the resolution of a continuous, emergent, eternal, endless conflict. It only reflects the prevailing dominance of one order in the midst of this eternal conflict. On a world historical basis, no one order or institution ever ultimately or on an a priori basis determines the other orders; hence, the power of the examples of China and India, and the exceptionalism of capitalism in Western Europe and the United States. Marxism takes the historically unique cases and makes them the general case. Moreover, no one process of rationalization by itself is decisive. The process of intellectual ration¬ alization, except for cases of pure charisma, may take place within any given sphere of a given order; each order “follows its own immanent laws.”152 Intellectuals may be employed within the church to rationalize that order; or intellectuals in churches dominated by the economic order may be “prophets of good fortune”—attached intellectuals, serving the organizational needs of the dominating order as officials, educators, advisors, or arti¬ culators of ideas, creeds, and legal rationales and procedures. But their concern with the ideas themselves may result in systems of thought that are independent of the motives and needs of their employers.153 This autonomous thought may produce changes, including intellectual, social or political changes, within a sphere or order. It may result in the strengthening or weakening of an order other than the one that employs the intellectual and thus, when linked with other developments, may alter the pattern of dominance. The Protestant ethic was the product of autono¬ mous intellectual rationalization within the religious order, which, when combined with ongoing changes in the political and economic order of feudalism, resulted in the dominance of new forms of institutions in the economic order and changes in all other orders, including the ultimate weakening of the religious order. In the same way, the intellectual rational¬ ization within the political-religious order in ancient China resulted in vast changes in the political and economic order of ancient China that included the subordination of the feudal and merchant status groups in the economic order, as well as the emperors in the political order, to the mandarin bureaucracy. Weber’s scheme, though oversimplified here, allowed for determinacy and indeterminacy, but both were subject to exact, specific and accurate

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historical validation. It allowed for no a priori or teleological resolution of the problems it raised and focused upon. The third major element in this formal scheme concerns the concepts of life spheres and life orders. The life spheres and orders are the ways in which individuals and status or class groups in a society experience and interpret the rationalization of the institutional orders and spheres of values. The rationalization of institutional orders provides the matrix of procedures—codes of actions and norms for action—permitted and proscribed in a society. Intellectual rationalization provides the articulation of values, their content and priority, as well as the definition of proper emotional expression, which individuals internalize, depending on their location to the specific institutions and the media of intellectual rationalization. Taken as a whole, the life spheres and orders represent the ways in which individuals internalize, combine, allocate, “balance,” compensate for or sublimate the various messages, expectancies and prescriptions and proscriptions in their individual lives. It is important to note that as institutional separation and formal and intellectual rationalization proceed, the spheres of values and behavioral expectancies become separate and competitive and can become alternatives. Thus, the competition between institutional orders and the competition between spheres of values can occur within those individuals who are exposed to, and who internalize, conflicting spheres of values and institutional expectancies. Their life spheres and life orders are in conflict at an intrapsychic level and must be resolved at that level.154 For this reason “inner balance” or balance of self-feeling is important. To some extent, these inner con¬ flicts are resolved by the predispositions, or “elective affinities,” between the ideas projected to and internalized by individuals within their overall statuses in society. Given the continuous rationalization of both the institutional orders and their spheres, neither the spheres nor the orders are likely to be presented and received as unified wholes. The conflict, therefore, between spheres and orders in most historical situations is not likely to be the direct polar conflicts of two organized and unified hostile parties. Moreover, as intellectual rationalization proceeds, intellectuals, responding to their own “inner needs” for logically self-consistent and defensible systems of thought, make the ideas they project increasingly abstract, technical and opaque to laymen.155 Thus they become useless to others as means of comprehending the world—that is, of meaningfully answering questions concerning the differential distribution of good and bad fortune, the meaning of the cosmos, the social world and the individual’s relations to himself.156 This disenchantment of the world and its “senselessness” coexists with the conflict in spheres of value and the conflict in the institutional orders

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and at the same time, they exist within the psyche of individuals as they are differentially situated within the institutional orders and differentially exposed to the process of intellectual rationalization. Their differential status position and exposure determine to a large degree their response to the process of intellectual rationalization. When all these processes occur at the same time so that an entire society seems to be on the verge of collapse and when war, famine, disease and other natural or socially produced catastrophes occur, the likely response is adherence to the call of autonomously emerging “pure” charismatic heroes.'57 These heroes demand the total reconstitution of society on the basis of simpler, less rationalized values and gods whose message they proclaim. Charismatic heroes are the bearers of revelations and the spokesmen of new movements that can become the basis of new forms of both intellectual and formal rationalization. The “new processes” of formal rationalization occur during the routinization of charisma. They include the arrangement of succession for the charismatic leader, the provision for a permanent staff, and the regularization of income, training, education and indoctrination as well as the adjustment of all of these things and of the movement’s message to external structures of domination, including economic organi¬ zations, status groups, and other institutional orders.158 The intellectual rationalization of a charismatic movement includes the articulation of its original annunciation, that is, the systematization and rationalization of its original premises, and the adjustment of its religious and intellectual “needs” to those of its followers, its “sponsors” (dominant groups within and without its order) and to the “power” needs of intel¬ lectuals themselves. At the same time, it includes the possibility of “new” thought emerging autonomously from the original charismatic message.159 Thus, at the moment of their inception, charismatic movements are an alternative to intellectual and formal rationalization and occur only under the collapse of “rationalized” society. In the modern world, as Weber pointed out and Gerth insisted, the last truly charismatic leader was Robespierre.160 Since then, charismatic leaders in the West have been the articulators of pseudocharisma (ersatz charisma) who rationally exploit the symbols of irrationality and the irrationality of would-be followers.161 This, to Gerth, explained Hitler and the Nazi movement, as well as the means by which communistic oriental despotism prevailed in Russia (see Gerth’s essay, On Communism, in this volume). Gerth’s Evaluation of the Role of Conflict in Weber’s Work The emphasis Gerth gave to Weber’s work on the conflict of institutional orders and spheres of values (combined with Weber’s own emphasis on power and economic scarcity) resulted in an image of society engaged in

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and the product of perpetual conflict. With this image of society and societal processes, it is no wonder that Gerth rejected all interpretations of Weber and society based purely or primarily on consensus, volun¬ tarism and idealism. At the same time, Gerth rejected as equally distorted the image of society as the result of only vertical—that is, class—conflict. Combining Weber and Marx, he viewed the conflicts as both vertical and horizontal. They were continuous conflicts with no “dialectical” goal.162 At any historical moment, the present was merely a momentary state of both of these types of conflict in their particular historical content and forms of equilibrium. They were the expression of the ongoing processes of the formal and intellectual rationalization of the various institutional orders and spheres of value. Gerth distilled these ideas from Weber. They are ideas that once noted can be found easily in the works cited; yet, with the partial exception of Bendix163 and Roth,164 no other Weberians found them. The misreading of Weber—the conversion of his ideas into consensual, voluntaristic, idealistic systemic theory—was perhaps the greatest single error in American sociology after World War II.165 Gerth fought against this error, but his voice was not heard. American sociologists, their sponsors and intellectual dependents needed a world image that was “positive,” one of a happy consensual community in which all problems could and would be solved with the aid of experts, including sociologists, by intelligence and good will. It was firmly believed, as Gerth pointed out in his essays “The Reception of Max Weber’s Sociology” and “The Relevance of History to the Soci¬ ological Ethos,” in this volume, that sociology, science and consensus would solve the problems of the world.166

GERTH ON MARX, WEBER AND COMMUNISM Gerth worked with, interpreted, and reinterpreted the ideas of Max Weber throughout most of his life; yet he never attempted to postulate a final definitive “resolution” to the methodological and ontological problems and contradictions in Weber’s work. Weber, throughout his life, continuously expanded, reformulated and refocused his work without ever resolving the tensions and contradictions within it. Perhaps the tensions in his work allowed him to delineate again and again new problems for specific studies. Gerth dealt not only with the tensions within Weber’s work but also with Weber’s “confrontation” with Marx. In fact, much of Gerth’s life was spent in the attempt to reconcile Weber and Marx in ways that neither falsified nor did injustice to them. Gerth had done early studies on Lassalle and had written a paper entitled “the Theory of Verdinglichung and Bourgeois Law” (included in this volume), focusing on Lenin and Trotsky’s theory of the state and the state’s

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use of terror under communism. In 1958 Gerth translated the Proceedings of the First Internationale and wrote an introduction to that volume. In addition, many of his unpublished papers, including some presented in this volume, are on Marx, Marxism and communism, especially as they related to Weber and the issues posed by Weber in relation to Marx’s ideas. Because we have included a number of these in this volume, it is appropriate to indicate briefly in this essay these underlying dimensions and themes in Gerth’s work. Gerth rejected any notion of an a priori monocausal theory of history such as Marx’s, preferring Weber’s formulation of the possibility of the autonomy of each institutional order in determining specific courses of institutional and cultural development. He believed that the degree of autonomy and determinancy of an order could only be resolved by the concrete, historical investigation of specific problems. No a priori, general or ahistorical solution was possible. Gerth, with Weber, also rejected the “dialectic,” insofar as that notion implied a predetermined process of causality resulting in an end or final goal of history. With Marx and Weber, he rejected the idea that a spirit, the Geist, ruled over and through men in their concrete, social, economic and political relations. He therefore interpreted Weber as rejecting both the spiritual and materialistic dialectics of history. These rejections of both Hegel and Marx evoke the questions: In what ways was Gerth a Marxist and in what ways did Gerth give a Marxian interpretation to Weber’s work? First of all, Gerth believed that Marx was in the tradition of the Enlighten¬ ment, the democratic revolutionary tradition of Goethe, Schiller and Lessing. Marx’s vision of man, Gerth emphasized, was one of man’s striving to fulfill the full range of his potentialities despite the repression imposed by the autocratic, oppressive regimes of the capitalistic present and earlier social orders, including those under feudalism. Gerth’s essay “Subjective Intentions and Objective Meaning in Hegel, Marx, and Weber,” expresses this recurrent theme in his work. In addition, Gerth took from Marx and Lukacs a notion of totality, which he then “demystified.” For this reason, he saw in some versions of Weber’s ideal type the idea that the social and economic developments that gave rise to both feudalism and capitalism made sense only in relation¬ ship to their total development as it became revealed centuries later. The initial developments could be understood only as elements in an “unantici¬ pated totality.” They were the unanticipated and unforeseen results of individual actions, which became understandable only after their his¬ torical outcomes were achieved. Thus Charles Martel’s organization of a dispensable aristocratic cavalry (the origin of medieval knighthood) came about in response to a specific crisis (the invasion of France by the

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Moors) and resulted in the military and agrarian bases of feudalism. Similarly, the slow, small, incremental changes in the medieval guilds prepared the ground for the rise of capitalism. Neither Martel nor countless guild masters and journeymen had any notion of the cumulative effects of their actions, nor could their actions be based in any way on conscious intentions to achieve these outcomes. Yet, understanding of these historical processes would not be possible without the historian’s prior notion of the subsequently achieved totalities, feudalism and capitalism. Moreover, Gerth argued that Weber was fully aware of these limits to a purely in¬ dividualistic Verstehen approach. Gerth presented this thesis in his essays, “Charisma, Bureaucracy and Revolution” and “Max Weber’s Political Morality” (see chapters 8 and 9). Gerth’s argument is both a rejection of a pure Verstehen approach and an assertion of the presence of basic inconsistencies in Weber’s epistemology. It stresses the importance of “objective” factors in history as well as the existence of “institutional” factors that transcend individual motivation. Weber’s argument is not an assertion of a Hegelian spiritualized Geist nor a Marxian dialectic insofar as both imply a predetermined final goal or end to history. Rather, Gerth stressed the operation of Hegel’s “cunning of history” in Weber’s work. This meant that the concatenation of individual motives, often working at cross-purposes, and the lack of reason, knowledge and foresight by individual actors could result in unintended consequences that become decipherable only by retrospective, historical analysis. The achieved totality provides after-the-fact guides to understanding the blind gropings of men even in their intentions to act rationally. Yet, despite these rejections of Marx, Gerth was attracted to Marx as a humanist and protagonist of the working classes in their struggle against feudal and capitalistic oppression and dehumanization. He was equally opposed to oppression and dehumanization in the name of Marx. Even as a young man, Gerth was opposed to the Bolshevik theory of party and state. This early opposition is expressed in his straight-faced, semisatirical presentation of that point of view in his essay entitled “The Theory of Verdinglichung and Bourgeois Law,” which was written in 1930 (see chapter 10). He ends that essay with Trotsky’s quotation that ends with a nationalist, militaristic phrase of Bismarck. Even in the early 1940s Gerth, at the beginning of each class, lectured on the arrests, disappearances, trials and executions of the old Bolshevik and other Russian revolutionaries under Stalin’s regime. He based his analyses partly on Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation” and Weber’s writings on the Russian Revolution of 1906. Gerth’s essay, “On Communism,” in this volume, recapitulates these themes. His essay entitled “The Intellectual in Modern Society,” also in this volume, is one of many that stresses the importance of free public opinion and pluralistic, free competition for

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power among interest groups, as well as the imperative need for an active, free, uncoopted cadre of intellectuals in order to maintain the endless struggle for freedom, reason and the possibility of human self-realization. Gerth’s rejection of totalitarian communism was more than a rejection of oppression, though that would have been enough, and more than an attempt to save Marx from the Bolsheviks. It was an affirmation of his identification with the humanist tradition of the West, especially with that tradition in Germany. Though driven from Germany by the Nazis and the gestapo, Gerth retained a strong, intense identity with the German working class, with Germany’s artisans, peasants and those segments of its older patrician classes who were democratic and enlightened. Over half of Gerth’s research notes and files were devoted to the problems of Germany, especially its struggle to achieve a genuine democracy and to resist the totalitarianism of both the Left and Right. Of course, Gerth, like Weber, was highly critical of the Junkers, whom he saw as capitalist farmers pretending to be aristocrats. He was also critical of the German bourgeoisie for their emulation of the Junkers, for their failure to mount a successful democratic revolution in 1848 and thereafter and for their quest for material gains at the expense of the demand for democratic liberty. He was equally critical of the German intelligentsia for their “spiritualization” of morality in response to their failure in the struggle for political freedom. He felt that such privatization of “civilization” and “culture” was a form of withdrawal and a substitute for realizing their ideals in action. He believed that the failure to achieve and implement a genuine political democracy in Germany was the product of more than a failure of nerve, resulting from the failure of the revolution of 1848 and the failure of the German middle and upper classes to accept and support the Weimar Republic. To a large degree, the strength of the antidemocratic, autocratic elements within Germany was based on the presence of an expansive Russia in the East. Russia, which was bureaucratic in the sense of Asiatic or Oriental despotism and imperialistically expansionist, forced Germany to respond with a defen¬ sive militarism, which when combined with the egomania of a kaiser or the claims of military indispensability by a Junker-led officer corps, often became aggressive. The bureaucratic, Oriental despotism of Russia czarism under the czars, remained under the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky and continued under Stalin and the post-Stalin regimes after World War II. The West in the period after World War II acquiesced to Russian Oriental despotism in the division of Europe and Germany, as did the church and careerist West German politicians. Gerth was fond of quoting both Marx and Weber in their assessment of Russian Asiatic or Oriental despotism and expansionism, for he found in

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them words that needed no change to apply to the present. Contemporary Russian communism meant to Gerth classical Byzantine Oriental despotism that had been intensified by industrialism, urbanism and a rigid, dogmatic, pseudo-Marxism. The latter, under the influence of Lenin and Stalin entailed a new bureaucratic centralism and an immense concentration of the means of persuasion, propaganda and mass media, and culture in the hands of professional revolutionaries, at first, and, later, Stalin’s bureaucrats. Both were the vanguard repressing the working and other classes in Russia and Eastern Europe. The Russian-led Communist movement also misled indigenous working-class parties in Europe and elsewhere by imposing “illusionist” policies and discipline on these parties. Gerth expressed these ideas in their most concentrated form in his essay entitled “On Communism.” It is in this light that one can assess Gerth’s response to the assault on Max Weber’s work led by Wolfgang Mommsen, Herbert Marcuse and other new leftists present at the meeting of the German Sociological Society in 1964.167 Gerth defended Weber against charges that he was a militarist by citing Weber’s “defensive nationalism,” his opposition to all German military expansion and his direct, public opposition to the provocative megalomanic stridency of Kaiser Wilhelm II. In his sociological essays, public lectures and journalistic essays, Weber not only denounced the Kaiser but also such Pan-German militaristic, professorial prophets as Heinrich von Treitschke and the Junkers. Weber’s own “defensive nation¬ alism” was directed against those Junkers who, in their desire to maintain aristocratic life styles in the face of falling grain prices, were “rationalizing” their estates by replacing German tenant farmers with Polish day laborers. Weber argued that in doing so, they diminished the defensive potential of the German army. In responding to charges that Weber was a “proto-Fascist,” Gerth cited Weber’s defense of Jews in the German universities (Lukacs, Simmel and Michels) and especially his defense of Ernest Toller before a military tribunal in Munich in 1918. Gerth also repeatedly referred to Weber’s attacks on Social Darwinism, his emphasis of the psychic unity of mankind, and his constant assaults on racist and racial theories of culture and national character. In his response to allegations that Weber was an “authoritarian,” Gerth cited again and again Weber’s defense and belief in democracy and freedom, as well as his support of the nascent Weimar Republic and Friedrich Ebert, its first president. Gerth asserted that Weber believed in the necessity of an American-style presidency that would be strong enough to overcome provincial (state) particularism and the authoritarian tendencies of the army, the bureaucracy and the Junkers (see chapter 9, “Max Weber’s Political Morality”). Finally, Gerth argued that Weber believed in a democracy in which both reason and representation would be strong

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enough to overcome bureaucratic manipulation and the irrationalities that excessive intellectual rationalization produced. Gerth argued that, in the quest for a rational democracy, Weber moved across the spectrum of German politics from Right to Left. He was alienated from all groups, especially the extreme Right and Left. If he was critical of the Junkers and the bourgeoisie who were supine to the Junkers, he was also critical of German Communists who were blind to Moscow’s illusionism. He was sympathetic to, yet critical of, the Social Democratic party. Like Michels, he was critical of their lack of imagination and their bureau¬ cratic timidity. In all these respects, it is obvious that Gerth identified deeply with Weber, but Gerth was doubly alienated. For the greater part of his adult life, he was physically alienated from a Germany that, like Weber, he would have been alienated from philosophically had he not been forced to flee from Nazism. When he returned to Germany in 1971, Gerth redis¬ covered, or rather reexperienced, his original alienation from a traditional German bourgeois philistinism that was heightened by Der Alte’s miracle. In the United States Gerth had also experienced a provincialism and alienation similar to that which he objected to in Germany. All of these factors intensified Gerth’s identification with Max Weber whom he con¬ sidered the paradigm of the alienated free spirit wandering across his world in search of freedom and reason in a larger, irrational, disenchanted bureaucratic world. Gerth’s attachment to democracy, reason and the potentialities inherent in the human psyche produced in him a sense of the desperate necessity for intellectuals to assert and achieve their traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Enlightenment ideals, despite their fragmentation and their cooptation by large-scale bureaucracies and interest groups in business, government and the universities. Gerth believed the struggle for intellectual freedom occurs today within sociology itself. These recurrent themes of his are presented in this volume in his essays “The Reception of Max Weber in American Sociology,” “Reflections on the American Academic Intellectual,” “The Intellectual in Modern Society,” and “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos.”

GERTH‘S OTHER WORK This excursion into Gerth’s interpretation of Weber and Marx may appear to be long and irrelevant. Yet, as indicated, Weber, Marx and Emile Durkheim have become, with various degrees of emphasis, the master symbols for sociology in the post-World War II era. In giving a different and in our estimation a correct view of Weber when all but a few Weberians had totally different points of view, Gerth gave a different definition of

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the entire sociological enterprise. This definition characterized his own work as well as his interpretation of Weber’s work. Gerth was primarily a social psychologist who taught both undergraduate and advanced courses in that field for most of the years he taught at the University of Wisconsin. He disdained the experimental, behavioristic studies that then characterized, and that continue to characterize, most social psychology. He had a deep, encyclopedic knowledge of Freud and the neo-Freudians, as well as of Charles H. Cooley, George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vigotsky, Karl Jaspers, Ernest Kretchmer, Wiliam H. Sheldon, and the entire background of the field, which he presented easily and as a matter of course to students. Yet he rejected a social psychology that focused exclusively on interpersonal relations. It was Gerth who labeled the work of Abraham Kardiner and his disciples “piss-pot determin¬ ism.” Kardiner, with his concept of basic personality,168 suggested that the basic culture, character and institutions of a society were based upon projections of needs derived from toilet training and weaning. Similarly, Gerth coined the term “milieu sociology”169 to describe a field that like most psychology ignored history, large-scale organizations and institutions, power and economic structures, and elites and classes. He was convinced that milieu sociology and social psychology ignored the diffusion of values and ideas, propaganda, “education^ and cultural symbols that become or transmit the content of social character. At most, he believed, these current approaches reduced all “macroscopic” phenom¬ ena to psychological traits and complexes or microscopic cultural values. In his own book Character and Social Structure, written with C. Wright Mills and published in 1953, Gerth focused upon “master trends” in the formation of social character. In the modern world these included bureau¬ cracy, the coordination of the political, economic and military orders, the decline of liberalism, and the polarization of the world in the cold war.170 According to Gerth, these historical, macrocosmic “master trends” directly affected the way in which the psychic life of individuals is structured. They affected the role positions and the roles an individual occupies and in¬ ternalizes, as well as his images of himself and of others. As early as 1930 in his “The Theory of Verdinglichung and Bourgeois Law,” Gerth used Marx’s concept of social character mask to indicate the abstract, objective, impersonal roles that were the attributes of a “social system” and not the individual. The individual donned these masks and then internalized the character portrayed by the mask. In analyzing the institutional determinants of personality, that is social character, Gerth made explicit and systematic Weber’s approach to “institutional orders,’171 using that term for the various terms used by Weber and his translators. He used the term “symbol sphere” (Weber’s

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sphere of values) and “educational sphere” as related to ideas, ideologies, religion and culture, and to the processes and concepts of socialization, education, indoctrination, inculcation of ideas, propaganda, advertising and public relations. As a clarification of Weber’s “social order,”172 Gerth used the concept of “status sphere.” In doing so, he transformed Weber’s substantive work (primarily the sociology of religion) into an explicit social psychology of and for the modern world.173 The individual in the modern world is the object of competitive in¬ doctrination, that is, of education and propaganda by elite, bureaucratic, class, commercial, political and other centralized structures and orders. He attempts to gain and retain some unity of character in the face of this competitive struggle for his soul, for his loyalty and for the control of his behavior, intellect and emotional attachments. He is subject to coercion, manipulation and the control of the social environments within which his action is constrained.174 In this perspective, the focus of analysis of even social psychology falls less on the individual than on the institutions that produce individuals. Gerth, of course, did not ignore the individual. He treated with discernment, accuracy and detail the conventional theories of socialization, internalization, roles and emotions, but he placed them in this larger empirical, historical, cultural, social, economic, political and organizational matrix.175 In his own research work, Gerth focused on mass circulation magazines, the Nazi party and the Communist party, and on the rise of liberalism. He directed dissertations on the press, political cartoons and “managed” images of political leaders, as well as on ideological elements in academic philosophy. He taught courses on the movies, the social psychology of totalitarian states, and communism and socialism. In his courses, he focused on the “rational” management of religious and political ritual and the use of education as a means of the transmission of social character. He also dealt with advertising, the public relations industry and selfimprovement and “self-rationalization” a la Dale Carnegie. In all of these courses and in his lectures and conversations, Gerth inevitably stressed historic changes in the media and content of the processes of personality formation. Thus, his concern with the self-rationalization of the personality focused on the Jesuits in Spain and Paraguay, Cromwell’s iron men of honor, Benjamin Franklin, the Chautauqua movement for self-education, Couee, Dale Carnegie and other modern prepackagers of personality. As a research assistant to Mannheim, Gerth had worked on annotating Man and Society in a State of Reconstruction and particularly on those sections dealing with the production and utilization of intellectuals, the concept of self-rationalization, and Mannheim’s statement of the need for a social psychology that could meet the needs of a macroscopic sociology.176 Gerth was especially proud of the work he had done in these sections of

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the book, and his interpretation of Weber and his own work were attempts to fill the need for a social psychology adequate to the needs of a macroscopic sociology. It is impossible to know now whether Gerth’s own work reflects Weber’s and is merely an extension of Weber’s or whether he reinterpreted Weber from a perspective that emerged from his own work and from the work he did with Mannheim. Our impression is that he did the latter. Gerth came to Heidelberg and to Mannheim as a nineteen-year-old youth with a thorough knowledge of Weber and Marx. He also knew Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness. His entire life was an attempt to combine Marx’s materialistic interpretation of history, without its dialectical elements, with the Weberian respect for the complexity of history and for historiographic accuracy and detail. His focus on a historical, macroscopic social psychology fulfilled part of this personal program. Yet, if Gerth attempted to fill the need he and Mannheim articulated in Man and Society, he did so with a personal bias, and his bias with the passage of time appears to be increasingly valid and relevant. The dominance of large-scale organizations within the economic, political, military and merely commercial orders of modern society and the rise of a mass media that is available to all large-scale organizations means the institutionalization of lying, manipulation, misdirection and rationally planned fraud and deceit in modern democratic societies. In totalitarian societies the same means are combined with highly centralized and direct coercion, threats, force and monolithic power.177 The population subjected to such “socialization” sometimes succumbs to the combined processes of seduction and rape, but sometimes it resists. In reasonably pluralistic, formally democratic societies, the cacophony of voices allows the underlying population to use the information gained from one source of propaganda to confront the propaganda of another. In totalitarian societies, the population may rely more heavily on noting the inconsistencies between the line provided at one moment and the line provided at another. In all cases, the populace may compare the propaganda of a given moment with its perception of the realities that derive from their immediate life situation and their “class” and “status” experience. At times, the underlying populace will respond with cynicism, apathy and the construction of personal and intimate views that express rejection or distrust of all larger, prepackaged world views. At other times, the dis¬ crepancy between externally projected “ideas” and immediate life situations will create such irrationalities that so-called alienated segments of the populace will embrace pseudocharismatic charlatans, who provide new symbols, ideologies and illusions to express discontent and become new means of deluding the underlying population: hence, movements of mass irrationality and the commercial exploitation of psychic and material

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distress. Gerth perhaps implements and extends Freud (and Weber) in arguing that the basic forms of irrationality lie deep within the biological character of the human species and become aroused by the failure of civilization to allow for the free expression of emotion at sublimated levels. This failure allows pseudocharismatic and organized opportunists— both within and opposed to centralized established institutions—to organize or pervert civilization, which therefore is always only skin deep. Gerth’s Sociology of Knowledge Gerth’s original area of academic interest was the sociology of knowledge. Originally working under Mannheim, he had begun his doctoral dissertation in that area and had worked as Mannheim’s assistant. He extracted, as we have noted, Weber’s sociology of knowledge from Weber’s sociology of religion. We have also noted that he used the sociology of knowledge to link a sociology of large-scale social organizations (bureaucracies) to social psychology. Intellectuals, either autonomously or as agents and employees of large-scale bureaucracies, elites and institutions, provide both the intellectual content and the definitions and stylization of expression that become the materials from which individuals construct their social character under the pressure of immediate but organizationally directed ex¬ ternal conditions. In the United States, Gerth virtually abandoned the sociology of knowledge as a separate academic specialization within sociology. Instead, for him the sociology of knowledge became the heuristic and interpretive framework for his entire sociological work. In part, this abandonment and recovery may have been due to academic exigencies: difficulties he had in being permitted to give courses in this area. In part, it may reflect an intellectual stand to sociology in general and to the modern social world. For whatever reason, this approach underlies a large part of his published and unpublished work. His use of the sociology of knowledge as a perspective for social psychology is revealed in the manner in which he treated the great sociologists and psychologists. His presentations included not only careful, brilliant expositions of the content and internal logic of their evolving ideas, but also focused on the intellectual and cultural milieu from which these individuals developed their ideas, their specific intellectual histories and the specific issues in their contemporary world that gave focus to their work. Gerth studied their personal histories, their organizational background and work, and their intellectual and academic participation in the issues of their day. Thus, his analyses of social psychology and social theory and theorists always went beyond the manifest expression of the theorists’ thoughts. He conveyed the basic idea that social theory and social psychology were either the “working through” or the reflection of the intellectual and social as well as political and ideological problems not only of a man but also

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of an era. This predilection for biography as a mode of analysis permeated Gerth’s thought, intellectual work and personal style. As an intellectual historican, Gerth did studies on Ferdinand Lassalle, Frederick Buchholz, Edmund Burke, Max Weber, Ferdinand Toennies, Walter Benjamin, C. Wright Mills and many others. He also interlaced his lectures and conversa¬ tions with biographical sketches, vignettes and anecdotes from the lives of such individuals as Frederick the Great, Hans von Bulow, Pablo Picasso, von Moltke and others in order to illustrate the ideas he was advancing. These “personifications” represented Gerth’s disdain for empty abstractions, impersonal forces and “the Geist,” as well as his concern for the concreteness of history. It was not the historical individual of the ideal type but concrete individuals in history that concerned him, even when he presented the ob¬ jective sweep of history. Thus in Gerth’s view, George Herbert Mead, in addition to being a great social philosopher and founder of symbolic interactionism and social behaviorism, attempted to work out and express in his philosophy and social psychology a nineteenth-century liberal basis for world peace and civil society, in a manner similar to Tennyson’s idea of a congress of mankind. Mead, Gerth argued, attempted to use the concepts of social communication and the generalized order to present the idea of an expanding “otherhood,” a universal “generalized other” that would be the basis of a universal civilization. In this way his central idea was not unlike Benjamin Nelson’s and Werner Sombart’s ideal of universal otherhood.178 With these liberal presuppositions, Mead, according to Gerth, minimized in his work the irrational components of personality and focused instead upon social communication, the cognitive and intellectual dimensions of language, social roles, social identification and the internalization of the values of “others” in the process of communication. In so doing, Mead minimized not only the irrational components underlying personality but also the presence of power, coercion, conflict and scarcity in interpersonal social action as well as the larger world. Like some neo-Freudians, Mead also saw the larger world as only the product of interpersonal interaction, reducible to interaction itself. He rarely dealt, therefore, with the larger, institutional world that framed and constrained that interaction. In Gerth’s view, Freud reflected the milieu of an educated, Jewish bourgeoisie undergoing the process of secularization and mobility in Central Europe. Freud’s ideas reflected both the expression and rejection of prophetic Judaism, that is the rejection of their manifest religious form and style but the acceptance of its ethical and moral imperatives combined with Western philosophy’s definition of the need for reason in social and personal relations. Freud also accepted, of course, the idea that modern science embodied reason, but he became aware of the deep irrationality within the human psyche long before he heard of Nietzsche.

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This awareness of irrationality was inescapable to a Jew living in a social world where anti-Semitism surrounded him on all sides, although, like the id, it was often concealed in polite, civilized forms. Philip Rieff, a disciple of Gerth, has taken this analysis of Freud and given it magnificient ex¬ pression.179 The use of the sociology of knowledge as a perspective was pervasive in all Gerth’s work. Only Lewis Coser, in his Masters of Social Thought,180 has fully employed this perspective with any success. Although for Gerth, it was the background and the method, rather than the object, of his work, he did address himself to the sociology of knowledge in a number of the lectures he gave in the late 1960s as a visiting professor or lecturer at various universities before returning to Germany. The topic he chose to lecture on was: Why is the sociology of knowledge impossible today? The lecture, as was Gerth’s habit, was not written down and then read but rather given extemporaneously from deep knowledge and forethought. A genuine sociology, Gerth argued, could emerge only when intellectuals achieved genuine social and intellectual autonomy and when they could form an autonomous community with agreed-upon standards of value and criteria for problem posing, methods and evidence. In short, Gerth was raising the same issues that Karl Mannheim raised in Ideology and Utopia and especially in Man and Society.181 Yet Gerth, while raising Mannheim’s problem of social objectivity, offered a profoundly different solution. The preconditions for intellectual detachment, autonomy, objectivity and an autonomous community of scholars, Gerth believed, did not exist in the United States or anywhere in the modern world. The rise of modern bureaucracies and the welfare state in the West and bureaucratic totalitarian regimes elsewhere had made intellectuals valuable to political, economic, military and other elites in and above the world’s bureaucracies, including the mass media. They were valuable both as symbol manipulators and as specialized, professional technicians and advisors, especially after the bureaucratic expansion and prosperity following World War II. In responding to these opportunities, intellectuals had become engage but in the service of the bureaucratic elite masters. As they became necessary, appreciated and employed, the new and transformed intellectuals rushed to serve those who would provide them with employment, contracts and grants, audiences and invitations, and the illusions of power and prestige. They made themselves over to serve the demands of the market by becoming specialists, technicians and professionals. As intellectuals, they felt that they could define the goals for social policy and devise the means for implementing such policy. In the United States, the tradition and the philosophy of pragmatism lead directly to this con¬ clusion, but, in the much older traditions of the prophets of good fortune,

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the philosopher king and the Chinese mandarins, the intellectuals who responded to this call were coopted. The intellectual “scientists in uniform”182 in the 1950s and 1960s served all the bureaucratic and elite masters in government, business, churches and the mass media—anyone who rewarded them, regardless of interest, ideology or philosophy. They were rewarded by being considered insiders, by having a sense of power and input into important decisions and by meeting important decision makers and social leaders. They abandoned skepticism and the autonomy of their own ideas in celebration of their own, often only hoped-for, success. Not unnaturally, they projected that success when achieved into a celebration of society’s success. They were indeed prophets, in fact exemplars, of good fortune. In the United States they supported the Camelot of John F. Kennedy, the war in Vietnam, and the war on poverty in which, as paid consultants, they were the chief benefactors. Mannheim and Marx had based their conceptions of the autonomy of the intellectual on the idea of the alienation of the intellectual. For Marx this meant the intellectuals were drawn from the old bourgeoisie, who were being crushed by the concentration of capital. Their objectivity came not only from their alienation but also from their intellectual pre¬ occupations, which allowed them to objectify their social position. For Mannheim, the autonomy of the intellectual was guaranteed by an over¬ production of intellectuals based upon the intrinsic attractiveness of intellectual work regardless of the availability of jobs.183 State capitalism and bureaucracy in the West and oppression and liquidations in Eastern Europe resulted in the cooptation of intellectuals and the blockage of the creation of an independent intellectual community and the perspectives that were, for Mannheim, the hoped-for bases of an objective social science. Yet, it was not only the rise of new opportunities for intellectuals that resulted in their subservience; it was also the willful pursuit of power, money and prestige that resulted in an intellectual surrender that was experienced as success. Only when “for reasons of higher policy” the political elites in the United States in 1968 temporarily abandoned a particular generation of intellectuals and when intellectuals were insufficiently rewarded according to their new, higher expectations, did the intellectuals rebel. Even then, this rebellion was more the mindless, often anti-intellectual resentment of being herded away from the trough than it was an expression of autonomy. Thus Gerth was as much enraged by the mindless anti-intellectualism of the radical “intellectuals,” as he was by the opportunism of liberal and con¬ servative coopted intellectuals. In neither case did the intellectuals develop the intellectual honesty that was a precondition for autonomy and for a genuine intellectual community with its own autonomous standards. Gerth presented these themes in his “Relevance of History,” “Reflections on the

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American Intellectual,” “The Reception of Max Weber’s Sociology in America,” and in his “The Intellectual in Modern Society.” In this last essay, he made an almost desperate, perhaps romantic, plea for truth, honesty, autonomy and for the criticism of their opposites by a minimum number of uncoopted intellectuals who could keep alive the Enlightenment ideals of freedom, reason and liberty as well as the hope for the achievement of the full potentiality in human nature.

Social Theory Gerth’s sociology of knowledge supported his treatment of social theory in ways that were similar to his treatment of social psychology. He emphasized the manifest ideas of the great social theorists, but more than that, he saw them as both diagnosticians and indicators of the movement of an ongoing history. They inevitably had to take a stand on the crucial political, economic and social problems of their day, even when they operated within the frameworks of cultural and intellectual traditions and personal bias and inclination. Gerth’s overall concern was not with the emergence of a body of academic knowledge—the fields of sociology or of social theory. His focus—the explicanda of his work—was always the social, economic and political development of the modern world. His major topics, therefore, were the rise and operation of capitalism, liberalism, industry, urbanism, nationalism and racism, as well as the phenomena of bureaucracy, corporate and finance capitalism and communism and the welfare state. He was particularly concerned with foreign policy, that is, in the interrelation between domestic and foreign policy, including colonialism, imperialism and militarism and the classes and status groups that supported and resisted each of these. He was, as indicated, especially interested in the rise of modern forms of mass irrationality, pseudocharisma and mass manipulation by the media, elites and corporate and political movements and interest groups. Social theory for him was not the ideas of great men nor a conceptual scheme upon which to build a discipline, methodology or system of heuristic propositions. It was the direct examination of the critical substantive and empirical issues of the modern world. Yet this statement is far too general. It implies the knowledge of past social theories and theorists as well as the vast accumulation of specific historical, political, social and economic detail that gave direction and body to the exploration of social theory as the diagnosis of an era. Because Gerth was concerned more with the objective referents of social theory than with theory per se, his courses in this area were unlike any other theory courses. Although all the traditional sociological elements were present, these courses resembled courses in social, economic and political history more than they did either social theory or the history

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of ideas. Gerth sought to avoid a social theory that turned in on itself and excluded the empirical world.184 It is impossible to cover all the fields that Gerth reviewed in the process of giving direction to his students. Given the fact that he was a “living library,” his overall approach was to sense the interests of the students and to draw upon the vast stores of his own knowledge and interests to provide content, direction and resources upon which the student could build. Because his students approached him with a wide variety of interests, Gerth simultaneously “worked” in dozens of areas. Only some of them can be mentioned. Gerth was one of the first modern sociologists in the United States to focus on social policy as a specific object of investigation. His interest in classes, elites, bureaucracy, politics, the decline of liberalism and rise of the welfare state caused him to direct students into specific investigations of social welfare policies and administration, educational policy, military and foreign policy, and similar areas. His primary focus in these areas was the formation of policy—both the legislative process and the attempt by interest groups to define and gain support for their versions of social policy. Characteristically, his interest was in these objective, empirical processes; he did not define social policy as the attempt by sociologists to define policy either as ideologists or as paid technicians for interest groups, including government agencies. ^ He was profoundly interested in the arts, music, dance, literature, painting and the plastic arts. Students in these fields, as well as in sociology, sought him out for direction in these areas. He frequently lectured on music in the Music Department of the University of Wisconsin, and on the arts in his own classes. He taught courses and directed research on the sociology of labor, trade unions, radical thought and social movements and parties of both the United States and Europe. Students in sociology, economics, history and political science worked with him in these areas; he was a major resource to social and intellectual historians, both European and American, and helped to shape the direction of historical studies at the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s and 1960s. Gerth had a special interest in the German settlers of the Midwest and Wisconsin, especially those of 1848. This caused him to become interested in agrarian ethnicity and in the urbanization, mobility and social and political movements of immigrant groups in the Midwest. This, along with other interests, led to his work on the First International, on the Socialist party in Milwaukee, the Progressive Movement and the various expressions of populism, including the right-wing “populism” of Joseph McCarthy. Some of Gerth’s students took this thread of his work as their major

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interest. Don Martindale, for example, followed up this interest by directing dozens of his own students in dissertations and community studies of American midwestern ethnic groups. Two final, summary notes must be offered. Throughout Gerth’s work there is evidence of a profound disdain for programmatic methodology, theory and epistemology, although Gerth incorporated some of Weber’s methodological approaches and concepts into his substantive work. One major exception to this “habit of mind” was his insistence that all sociology is historical and that microsociology cannot replace historical and structural sociology. He rejected both a highly generalized, abstract social theory that ignored history as well as a historically uninformed behaviorism and positivism. They missed both the subject matter and point of the field. His views on this aspect of methodology are summarized in his “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos.”185 He also believed that a pure sociology a la Simmel’s formal sociology, Durkheim’s sociologism or Parsons’ systemic sociology was impossible. Sociological research and work intrinsically involved economics, politics, psychology, philosophy, the history of the arts and culture, the study of technology of all kinds and the operation of organizations. Neither a microsociology nor the study of the purely “social” could allow the sociologist to even approach modern society in any of its significant characteristics or its totality. Yet Gerth approached sociology, as we have noted, with a personal bias. He saw in it the very operation of society, the creation and definition of the values and opportunities that constitute culture, civilization and the positive elements in human development. He saw that these same operations created classes and status groups, interest groups and elites whose major aims were the monopolization of these values and opportunities. Most of the organizations of society and the media for the dissemination of ideas were designed to usurp or expropriate the values and opportunities created by society in favor of established, powerful or rising classes and status groups. Most counterideologies and cultures were designed to resist such usurpation and expropriations or to reverse their direction. In the modern democratic world lies, deceit, manipulation and hypocrisy are the major means of intellectual articulation; in the “undemocratic” world, these means are supplemented by more direct coercion and force. All elite groups, including the intellectuals, participate in these processes. Gerth’s bias was in favor of workers and farmers, whose major armor against these forms of fraud and deceit was their skepticism and disbelief, their awareness of their immediate class situation and the memories of past manipulation. Their major form of resistance was noncooperation, apathy and inefficiency— in Veblen’s terms, “sabotage.” Gerth compulsively identified with the

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underdogs of society. Yet he recognized that farmers and workers had their own class interests and given the opportunity would support “charis¬ matic heroes” who, in victory, would further repress them and others.

GERTH’S EFFECT UPON AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY At the University of Wisconsin, thousands of undergraduates and hundreds of graduate students were exposed to Gerth as a lecturer or as a personal consultant. Many undergraduates and some graduates rejected what appeared to be a syncretic historicism. His department, which was committed during most of his tenure to “behavioral science,” discouraged graduate students from working with him. Nevertheless Gerth’s personal “charisma,” the power of his thought, his charm and his understanding of students—his generosity of spirit—brought him hundreds of disciples. They came from sociology, economics, political science, psychology, history and the various fields of the arts. The richness of his thought, imperfectly suggested in this essay, caused many to pick up the ideas that Gerth gave away apparently without fore¬ thought. These were ideas that Gerth could not help but give away. His interest was in the ideas themselves. Because Gerth eschewed programmatic theory and methods, it was the separate, single ideas and insights that remained with students, not a clearly identifiable Gerthian system. Most students took away from Gerth one or more of these ideas and insights which they then developed during the course of their careers. Under¬ standably, Gerth rarely received the credit. A few, because of their own architectonic habits of mind, understood the larger strategy that Gerth concealed in the concreteness of his historical and reportorial imagination. For instance, C. Wright Mills, both student and collaborator, disseminated Gerth’s thought more effectively than did Gerth. This is not to denigrate Mills, because to have ignored Gerth’s ideas, having understood them, would have been a much greater fault. After all, one of Gerth’s favorite mottoes was “ideas are not toothbrushes—they are meant to be borrowed and used.” Mills was undoubtedly the most effective of Gerth’s students. But Don Martindale, Phillip Rieff (not a student but a disciple), Bernard Greenblatt, William Appleman Williams, Herbert Guttman, Warren Sussman, Harold Shepperd, Arthur Vidich, Joseph Bensman, Harvey Goldberg, Susan Sontag and Dore Ashton were similarly affected by Gerth, as were hundreds of others. Through them, Gerth’s ideas seeped into sociology, the social sciences and the humanities, perhaps more effectively than through his own writings, with the exceptions of his work on Weber and Character and Social Structure.

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During the 1950s and 1960s Gerth’s approach was opposed by function¬ alism, structural-functionalism and behaviorism. Perhaps because of the political and social imperatives operating in American society at the time— the necessities of justifying and accepting a consensus society and a welfare state—these perspectives prevailed. But in the late 1960s and 1970s the dominant forms of social theory collapsed under the weight of their selfevident lack of congruity with the external world and the critical exposure of their manifest theoretical inadequacies. Yet, behaviorism, although weakened by a decrease in the federal funds that sustain it, remains the dominant ritual of social science in American universitites. The historical, macroscopic, conflict-oriented and antiestablishment perspectives defined by and focused upon by Gerth now tend to dominate those areas vacated in the decline of functionalism and structuralfunctionalism. The dominance of this perspective does not mean that Gerth is the hero of a new sociology, although C. Wright Mills is one of these heroes. It only means that by the late sixties Gerth’s perspective had prevailed. Neither does it mean that Gerth was the sole driving force in bringing these perspectives into dominance. Social scientists and the American public more and more were beginning to view the underlying social, political and economic realities from a perspective similar to Gerth’s. Gerth helped to forge that perspective, but the manifest, open and direct expressions of that reality made the perspective accessible to both those who defined it and those who used it to perceive the “new” realities. Gerth did not approve nor would he approve of the excesses in action or the weaknesses in scholarship often subsumed under the new perspective. He was always the humanitarian and social democrat, opposed to senseless violence and political irrationality. Although he opposed the lack of scholarship and the shallow scholarship often found in the increasingly respectable heterodoxies, he might have gained some grim satisfaction at the validation of his views. But Gerth did not seek to lead academic or intellectual movements or to establish programmatic approaches to his field of interest. For his students, disciples and friends, it is perhaps enough to know that the power of Gerth’s ideas made them adopt and disseminate his approach to several generations of sociologists, social scientists and nonacademic intellectuals who in turn found Gerth’s views, however disguised, acceptable and valuable. It is the relevance and appropriateness of ideas to experience that is important, not their usefulness in producing self¬ justification and self-validation; it is in this former sense that a vast number of American sociologists and social philosophers are “Gerthians” in perspective, whether they realize it or not.

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NOTES 1. Karl Mannheim, Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning, ed. H. H. Gerth and Ernest K. Bramsted (New York, 1950). 2. H. H. Gerth, The First International: Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872 with Related Documents (Madison, Wise., 1958). 3. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946); Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth (Glencoe, Ill., 1951); Ancient Judaism, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and Don Martindale (Glencoe, Ill., 1952); and The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York, 1958). 4. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure, The Psychology of Social Structures (New York. 1953). 5. H. H. Gerth’s Burgerliche Intelligenz um 1800: Zur Sociologie des deutschen FrUhliberlismus (Gottingen, 1976). 6. H.H. Gerth, “The Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition,” American Journal of Sociology 45 (1940): 517-41. 7. H. H. Gerth and Saul Landau, “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos,” Studies on the Left 1, no. 1 (Fall 1959):7-14. Reprinted in Sociology on Trial, eds. M. Stein and A. Vidich (New York, 1963), pp. 26-34. 8. H. H. Gerth and Patricke Johns-Heine, “Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940,” Public Opinion Quarterly 13, no. 1 (Spring 1949): 104-13. 9. H. H. Gerth, “Friedrich Buchholz as a Sociologist of Ideas,” in Research in the Sociology of Knowledge, Sciences and Art, ed. A. Jones and H. Koklick (1978), Vol. 1, pp. 81-91. 10. See Gerth and Landau, “Relevance to History.” 11. See, for instance, Karl Mannheim, “Interpretation of Weltanschauung,” in From Karl Mannheim, ed. Kurt H. Wolf (New York, 1971), pp. 8-58. 12. Albert Saloman, “Max Weber’s Methodology,” Social Research 1, no. 2 (May 1934): 147-68; “Max Weber’s Sociology,” Social Research 2, no. 1 (February 1935):50-73; and “Max Weber’s Political Ideas,” Social Research 2, no. 3 (August 1935):368-84. Salomon had also written “Max Weber,” Die Gesellschaft 2 (1925): 131-53. 13. Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937). 14. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1930). 15. Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight (London, 1927). 16. Guenter Roth and Wolfgang Schuchter report that “during the first half of the 1970s about one hundred articles a year deal with Weber. . . .” Max Weber’s Vision of History (Berkeley, 1979), p. 1. 17. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (Oxford, 1947). 18. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch (Glencoe, Ill., 1949); On Law on Economy and Society, trans. Edward Shils and Max Rheinstein (Cambridge, Mass., 1954); The City, trans. and ed. Don Martindale and Gertrude Neuwirth (New York,

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1958); The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel, and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale, Ill., 1958); The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff, with an introduction by Talcott Parsons (Boston, 1963); Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago, 1968); Roscher and Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics, trans. Guy Oakes (New York, 1975); The Agrarian Sociology of the Ancient World, trans. R. I. Frank (London, 1976); and Critique of Stammler, trans. Guy Oakes (New York, 1977). 19. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 27 and 183. 20. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 2:719-73. 21. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, pp. 3-7. 22. Howard Becker, “Constructive Typology and the Social Sciences,” American Sociological Review 5, no. 1 (February 1940):40-55; and H. E. Barnes and H. Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, 3d ed. (New York, 1961), pp. 893-96. 23. Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (New York, 1962), p. 472; and “Inequality and Social Structure: A Comparison of Marx and Weber,” American Sociological Review 39 (April 1974): 149-61. 24. Weber, The Methodology of Social Science, pp. iii-x. 25. This theme with reference to Shils’s and Weber’s work is developed in Joseph Bensman and Michael Givant, “Charisma and Modernity: The Use and Abuse of a Concept,” Social Research 42, no. 4 (Winter 1975):570-614, especially pp. 581-90. 26. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York, 1968), pp. xxxvii-cviii. 27. See, for example, Gerth’s comments in his introduction to From Max Weber, pp. 46 and 50. 28. Ibid., p. 50. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., pp. 180-95. 31. Ibid., p. 47. 32. Ibid., pp. 193-94. 33. Ibid., p. 49. 34. Weber was aware of Veblen’s great book, The Theory of Business Enter¬ prises (New York, 1935) but saw in it only the “irrationality” of the “economic supermen,” Veblen’s captains of big business and finance and his own charismatic Maecenas. He did not recognize the irrationality of the market and the systems of banking that Veblen so carefully described. See Weber’s discussion of Veblen in The Protestant Ethic, pp. 258 and 275. 35. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 180. 36. Ibid., p. 183. 37. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 363-85. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., p. 280. 40. Max Weber, “The Social Causes of the Decay of Ancient Civilization,” trans. Christian Machauer, The Journal of General Education 5 (1950):75-88. Also reprinted in Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, and in Max Weber, The Interpretation of Social Reality, ed. J. E. T. Eldridge (New York, 1971).

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41. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 48. 42. See, for instance, Weber, The City, p. 87. Also, Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, R. I. Frank, trans. (London, 1976), pp. 391-92. 43. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 46-47. 44. Ibid., p. 46. 45. Ibid., pp. 416-41. 46. Ibid., pp. 267-301, 323-59. 47. Ibid., p. 125. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., p. 121. 51. Ibid., pp. 51,64. 52. See, for example, Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, p. 472, and W. G. Runciman, A Critique of Max Weber’s Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge, 1972), p. 72. Gerth, on the other hand, as early as in his introduction to From Max Weber, pointed to Weber’s “masterful contribution to what was to become the Sociology of Knowledge” (p. 71). In that introduction, he also anticipated what was to be a major dimension of his later discussions of Weber’s social psychology, the major focus of this essay, in his discussion of Mead and Weber (pp. 72-73). 53. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 26; Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 280-81, 350-53, 138-39. 54. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 281,355, 140. 55. Ibid., pp. 350, 148-50. 56. Ibid., pp. 281-86; and Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 281. 57. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 351-52, 418, 288. 58. Ibid., pp. 418-19. 59. Ibid., pp. 351, 354, 357; and 243-44. 60. Weber, Ancient Judaism, p. 64; and Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p.269. 61. Weber, Ancient Judaism, pp. 103, 110, 230. 62. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 336-37. 63. Ibid., pp. 338, 288; and “The Protestant Sects in America,” pp. 319-21. 64. Weber, Ancient Judaism, pp. 107, 109, 280-81,305. 65. Ibid., pp. 103, 110,230 66. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 48. 67. Ibid., pp. 155-56. 68. Ibid., pp. 308, 364-65; 344, 349, 356; 283. 69. Ibid., pp. 279, 283-84; 241; 331, 339, 342, 350-52, 356. 70. Ibid., 154-55; and 222. 71. Ibid., p. 190. 72. Ibid., pp. 378-79. 73. Ibid., pp. 279, 281,284-85. 74. Ibid., p. 270; also p. 280. Italics added. 75. Ibid., p.320. 76. Ibid., p. 322.

HANS GERTH’S CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

pp. pp. pp. pp. pp. pp.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 82, 181. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 416-44. Ibid., pp. 416-19. Ibid., pp. 426-27. Ibid., pp. 434-36,437. Ibid.,pp. 433-37, 438. Ibid., pp. 440-41.

271

305, 307, 308, 309, 321. 310-11. 314-16. 437-38. 388, 391. 240-44.

90. Weber, Economy and Society, p. 243; and Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 434. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid., pp. 387-89, 390-91, 313. 93. Ibid., pp. 241-43. 94. Ibid., pp. 187-88. 95. Weber, Economy and Society, p. 1063. 96. Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in a State of Reconstruction, Edward Shils, trans. (n.d.), pp. 55-59. 97. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 48-57. 98. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 254. 99. Elias Norbert, The Civilizing Process (New York, 1978). 100. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 115. 101. Ibid., pp. 115 and 143; 347, 357; 280. 102. Ibid., pp. 190; 270-71,276-78; 357, 393. 103. 104. 105. 106.

Ibid., pp. 341-50; 278. Ibid., pp. 343-50. Italics added. Ibid., pp. 278-80. Ibid., p. 209.

107. Ibid., p. 84. Italics added. 108. Ibid., p. 98. 109. Ibid., p. 281. 110. Ibid., p. 278. 111. Ibid., p.254. 112. Ibid., p. 261. 113. Ibid., pp. 278-80; 327, 331, 341, 347, 349. 114. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 70; and Weber, Economy and Society, p. 17. 115. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 324. 116. Ibid., p. 55. The emphasis given in Gerth’s introduction to “the antinomic balance of charismatic movements (leaders and ideas) with rational routinization (enduring institutions and material interests)” that are the basis of what Gerth called “the philosophical element in Weber’s construction of history,” is not the

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only element in Gerth’s analysis of Weber’s metaphysics. Those developed after the introduction was written stressed Weber’s attitude to reason in men and “unreason” in society and history. 117. Ibid., pp. 271, 275, 276, 280, 281; 353-54; and 122-36. 118. Ibid., pp. 354-55, 357; 281-82; 151-52; and 123. 119. Ibid., pp. 141, 148, 152; and 356-76. 120. Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. 116. 121. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 59. 122. Ibid., pp. 55-56. 123. Ibid., p. 57. 124. Weber, Economy and Society, p. 24. 125. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 115. 126. Barnes and Becker, Social Thought from Lore to Science, p. 895. 127. Weber, Economy and Society, p. 24. 128. Ibid. 129. See, for instance, Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 26; and Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 293-94; but this argument is stated most explicitly in ibid., p. 143. 130. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 324. 131. See Weber’s criticism of Othmar Spann in this regard, in Economy and Society, pp. 17-18; and Gerth’s “The Relevance of Sociology,” p. 31. 132. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 60. 133. Ibid., p. 70. 134. Ibid., p. 181. 135. Ibid., pp. 180-81. 136. Gerth and Mills, Character and Social Structure, pp. 251-56, 271-98 and 315-22. 137. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 272; 329; and 80. 138. Ibid., pp. 328; 282; and 123. 139. Ibid., pp. 271-72; and 353. 140. Ibid., pp. 288; and 328. 141. Weber, Economy and Society, p. 909. 142. Ibid., pp. 901-9; and Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 298-99. 143. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 185-86. 144. See, for instance, ibid., pp. 351-52. 145. Ibid., pp. 343-44; and Weber, The City, pp. 85-96, 108-9. 146. See especially Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 246-54, 266-71, 1121-148; Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 332, 334-35, 338; and 297-301. 147. In “Religious Rejections of the World” (Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 323-59), Weber systematically treats these tensions and contradictions as they exist between institutional orders and spheres of values and as they exist within the religious sphere (ibid., pp. 277-301). In “The Social Psychology of the World Religions” he treats the same phenomenon primarily from the perspective of status groups and institutional orders. 148. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 148-49. 149. Ibid., p. 123.

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150. Ibid., pp. 335, 356-57. 151. Ibid., p. 337. 152. Ibid., pp. 330-31, 339-40. 153. Ibid., pp. 330, 331, 334, 339, 341-42, 355. 154. Ibid., pp. 279-87, especially pp. 286 and 288; 352-53, 357; 151-53; Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 89-90, 164-71; Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 420-22; 217-18. 155. The “warfare of the gods,” expressed as “impersonal forces,” the conflicts of values, of spheres of values, and the tensions they produce are seen by Weber and by Gerth as battles for the spirit of men. Thus Weber’s “Religious Rejections of the World,” “The Social Psychology of the World Religions” and “Science as a Vocation” (see Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber) all conclude on this theme, together with the related theme of the disenchantment of the world. 156. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 143, 148-49, 155; and 350-51, 355-57. 157. Ibid., p.245. 158. Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 268, 1209; and Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 72. 159. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 73-74. 160. Weber, Economy and Society, pp. 268, 1209. 161. Ibid., p. 72; and Bensman and Givant, “Charisma and Modernity: The Use and Abuse of a Concept.” 162. Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 70. 163. Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, pp. 469-94. 164. Weber, Economy and Society, pp. xxviii-lx. 165. The recognition that Max Weber presented a “conflict” interpretation of society came relatively late to American sociologists. A very important statement of this discovery was in Jere Cohen, Lawrence E. Hazelrigg, and Whitney Pope, “Deparsonizing Weber: A Critique of Parsons’ Interpretation of Weber’s Sociology,” American Sociological Review 40 (April 1974):229-41. Peter Munch and his associates have also emphasized this theme. See also: Choong Soo Lee and Peter A. Munch, “Fractured Weber: A Critique of Parsons’ Interpretation,” Qualitative Sociology 2, no. 2 (Fall 1979):26-40. 166. Gerth and Landau, “The Relevance of History,” p. 31. 167. Much of the discussion at these meetings is reprinted in Max Weber and Sociology Today, ed. Otto Stammler (New York, 1971). 168. Abraham Kardiner, The Individual and His Society (New York, 1939), and The Psychological Frontiers of Society (New York, 1945). 169. Gerth and Landau, “The Relevance of History,” p. 30. 170. Gerth and Mills, Character and Social Structures, pp. 456-80. 171. Ibid., pp. 192-266,306-39. 172. Ibid., pp. 278-98,315-22. 173. Ibid., pp. 274-98. 174. Ibid., pp. 183-91, 266-73. 175. Ibid., pp. 37-157. 176. Mannheim, Man and Society, pp. 15-26,49-51,81-108.

274

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177. A glimpse of this perspective can be found in Gerth and Landau, “The Relevance of History,” p. 31. 178. Ben Nelson, The Idea of Usury (Chicago, Ill., 1943), pp. 73-109; and Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism (Glencoe, Ill., 1951). 179. Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of a Moralist (New York, 1959). 180. Lewis Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought (New York, 1971). 181. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York and London, 1946), p. 142; and Mannheim, Man and Society, pp. 147-55. 182. Gerth and Landau, “The Relevance of History,” p. 31. 183. Mannheim, Man and Society, pp. 100-6. 184. Gerth and Landau, “The Relevance of History,” p. 31. 185. Ibid., see also Gerth and Mills, Character and Social Structure, especially pp. 456-80.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HANS H. GERTH BOOKS: With C. Wright Mills. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946. Reprinted as a paperback. New York: Galaxy Books, 1958. Introduction translated into Japanese by K. Yamaguchi and N. Inubushi. Kyoto, Japan: Minerva Publishing, 1962. Appeared in its entirety in Spanish as Ensayos de sociologia contemporanea. South America: Ediciones Martinez Roca, 1972. With Ernest K. Bramsted, eds. Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning by Karl Mannheim. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Ed. and Trans. The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism by Max Weber. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1951. (Macmillan since 1964). With Don Martindale, eds. and trans. Ancient Judaism by Max Weber. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952 (Macmillan since 1964). With C. Wright Mills. Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953. Reprinted as a paperback. New York: Harbinger Books, 1964. Italian translation, Carattere e Struttura Sociale, by Paolo Ammasari. Torinese: Union Tipografico-Editrice, n.d. Spanish Translation, Caracter Y Estructura Social, by E. Gelin and J. Balan. Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidos, 1963. Japanese translation, Seikaku to Shakaikozo, by T. Furushiro and S. Sugimori. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1969. German translation. Person und Gesellschaft, by R. Mayer and Siegfried George. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum Verlag, 1970. Portuguese translation, Carater e Estrutura Social, by Zwinglio Dias. Brazil: Editora Civilizacao, 1973. With Don Martindale, eds. and trans. The Religion of India: Buddhism and Hinduism, by Max Weber. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1958 (Macmillan since 1964). 275

BIBLIOGRAPHY

276

Ed. and trans. The First International: Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1958. Burger lie he Intelligenz um 1800, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1976. (Ph.D. dissertation, 1933, Frankfurt am Main. Originally titled “Die Sozialgeschichtliche Lage der btirgerlichen Intelligenz um die Wende des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des deutschen Friihliberalismus.”)

ARTICLES IN ENGLISH: “The Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition.” American Journal of Sociology 45, no. 4 (January 1940):517-41. Spanish translation in Revista de Mexicana Sociologia. Reprinted in Reader in Bureaucracy, edited by Robert K. Merton et al. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1955; Bobbs Merrill College Series, 1970. Reprinted in The Handbook for Occupation Officers, Office of Strategic Services of the Office of War Information. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern¬ ment Printing Office, n.d. With C. Wright Mills. “A Marx for the Managers.” Ethics 52, no. 2 (January 1942): 200-15. Reprinted in Reader in Bureaucracy, edited by Robert K. Merton et al. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1955. Reprinted in Power, Politics and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, edited and with an Introduction by Irving L. Horowitz. New York: Oxford University Press and Ballantine Pooks, 1963. ^ “A Midwestern Sectarian Community.” Social Research 11, no. 3 (September 1944): 354-62. With Lowell E. Maechtle. “ Conscientious Objectors as Mental Hospital Attendants.” Sociology and Social Research 29, no. 1 (September-October 1945): 11-24. “Germany on the Eve of Occupation.” In Problems of the Post-War World, edited by Thomas C. McCormick. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1945. “The Retreat from Ideology as a Prerequisite for American Trade Unions.” La Premiere Internationale, vol. 2. Paper originally read at the centennial meeting of the First International in Paris in 1962. Vol. 2. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1968. With Hedwig Ide Gerth. “Bibliography on Max Weber. Social Research 16, no. 1 (March 1949): 70-89. With Patricke Johns Heine. “Values in Mass Periodical Fiction, 1921-1940.” Public Opinion Quarterly 13 (Spring 1949): 104-13. Reprinted in Mass Communications, edited by Wilbur Schramm. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. Reprinted in Mass Culture, The Popular Arts in America, edited by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957. With C. Wright Mills, trans. “The Metropolis and Mental Life” by Georg Simmel. In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by Kurt H. Wolff. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950. Reprinted in Reader in Urban Sociology, edited by Paul Hatt. Glencoe,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

277

Illinois: The Free Press, 1951, pp. 563-74. Reprinted in Images of Man, edited by C. Wright Mills. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1960. Trans. “The Three Types of Legitimate Rule” by Max Weber. Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions, vol. 4, No. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958. “The Relevance of History to the Sociological Ethos,” Studies on the Left 1, no. 1 (1959):7-14. Reprinted in Sociology on Trial, edited by Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963. Reprinted in Sociology—Introductory Readings in Mass, Class, and Bureauc¬ racy, edited by Joseph Bensman and Bernard Rosenberg. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. With Don Martindale, trans. “The Work of Art in the Epoch of Mechanical Reproduction,” by Walter Benjamin, Studies on the Left 1, no. 2 (1960):28-46. “Franz Oppenheimer,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Cronwell, Collier and Macmillan, 1968, p. 295. “Max Weber Research in America,” trans. by Nobuko Gerth. Shiso [Thoughtways\ (May, 1963): 174-182. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. “Social Change in America.” Konan Economic Papers A, no. 4 (March 1964):71-60. The Economic Society of Konan University, Kobe, Japan. A speech first delivered at Konan University on 27 May 1963. “Max Weber: A Man Under Stress.” Sociological Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1964):305-10. “Friedrich Buchholz as a Sociologist of Ideas.” Research in Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Art 1 (1978):81 -92. “Wilhelm Dilthy.” The University Observer, Journal of politics published at the University of Chicago (1947).

ARTICLES IN GERMAN “Moderne Psychologie.” In Die Welt im Forschritt, F. A. Herbig, Berlin: Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1936. Trans. “Kapitalismus und Agrarverfassung” by Max Weber. Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 108, no. 3 (1952):431-52. Speech read by Max Weber in English at a world congress in St. Louis, 1904. “Friedrich Buchholz—auch ein Anfang der Soziologie.” Zeitshrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 110, no. 4 (1954):665-92. “Zum Problem einer Wissenschaftlichen Theorie der Kultur.” In Hessische Hochschulwochen fur staatswissenschaftliche Fortbildung. Bad Homburg and Berlin: Max Gehlen, 1956.

OBITUARIES: “On Howard Becker.” American Sociological Review 25, no. 5 (October 1960): 743-44. “On C. Wright Mills.” Studies on the Left 2, no. 3, (1962):7-11. Appeared in

BIBLIOGRAPHY

278

a condensed form in The Berkeley Journal of Sociology 7, no. 1 (1962): Originally read at the Columbia University Memorial Service for Mills on 16 April 1962. “On Theodor W. Adorno.” Radical America 3, no. 5 (September 1969): 1-2.

BOOK REVIEWS: The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background, by Hans Kohn. American Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4 (January 1946):341-42. The Sociology of Georg Simmel, by Kurt H. Wolff. American Sociological Review 15, no. 5 (October 1950):685-86. Das Soziale im Leben und im Denken, by Leopold von Wiese. American Sociological Review 22, No. 2 (April 1957):240-41. Frankfurter Beitrage zur Soziologie, Band 2, by Friedrich Pollok. American Sociological Review 22, no. 6 (December 1957):760-61. Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics and Culture, by David Riesman and E. T. Riesman. American Sociological Review 33, no. 4 (August 1968):658. The Illusions of Progress, by George Sorel. American Sociological Review 36, no. 1 (February 1971): 133-34. Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber, by Reinhard Bendix and Guenther Roth. American Journal of Sociology, 78, no. 5 (March 1973): 1279-80.

MISCELLANEOUS: “A Note on Max Weber.” Politics 1, no. 9 (October 1944); 2, no. 2 (February 1945); 3, no. 4 (April 1945). An exchange of notes with Meyer Schapiro. “The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism,” by Max Weber. Princeton University Press. Psychological Book Previews 1, no. 3 (July 1951): 127-32. “Ancient Judaism” by Max Weber. Princeton University Press. Religious Book Previews 1, no. 1 (January 1952): 121-24. Letter to the Editor. American Journal of Sociology 57, no. 6 (May 1952):590-91. Rejoinder to Morton H. Fried’s criticism of Max Weber’s China volume. “American Intelligentsia.” The Hitotsubashi. University student newspaper, 30 October 1962. “The Problem of Power in Modern Society.” Lecture given at the Kyoto University, Japan, printed in a condensed form in Kyoto Newspaper, 12, June 1963. “Yasujiro Ozu and his Work: An Outstanding Movie Director.” This essay, translated by Nobuko Gerth was printed in some 20 newspapers throughout Japan on 17 January 1964.

RADIO LECTURES VIA RIAS UNIVERSITY STATION, BERLIN: Zur Soziologie der Intelligenz. 17 May 1956. Zur Soziologie der Wissensformen, 24 August 1956; 28 March 1958; 28 January 1960.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

279

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES: The following articles were written by Gerth during the mid-1930s for the Berliner Tageblatt unless otherwise specified. (The M refers to midday broadcasts and the A [abend] to evening broadcasts. No letter signifies only one edition took place on the given day). “Verkehrshemmnisse: Menschen und Vehikel-In zwei Jahrhunderten.” 3 June 1934, no. 258 M. “Lord Passfield-Sein 75. Geburtstag.” 14 July 1934, no. 328 M. “Zur Mythologie der Primitiven.” 15 July 1934, no. 330. Reichslager Pieskow. N.d. “Der neue Robert Michels.” Book review. 9 September 1934, no. 426 M. “Erich Wittenberg: Irrwege der marxistischen Bildungslehre. Eine kulturkritische Darstellung ihrer Grundlage. Book review. 7 October 1934, no. 474 M. “Geschichten des Meters.” 14 October 1934, no. 486. “Anatomie des Detektiv-Romans.” “Der Schauplatz.” 12 August 1934, no. 378 M. “Der Detektiv.” N.d. “Der Detektiv: Askese und Meditation.” 14 October 1934, no. 486. “Welt des Handwerks.” 29 October 1934, no. 510 M. “Christine von Schweden-Das Leben einer ungewohnlichen Frau.” 10 November 1934, no.532M. “Der Kloster-Pfortner von Altotting.” 24 November 1934, no. 554 M. “Neue Schlegel-Fragmente,” Book review. 2 December 1934, no. 568 M. “Nationalokonomische Theorie.” 2 December 1934, no. 580 M. “Bjarne Braatoy: Labour and War. The Theory of Labour Action to Prevent War. Book review. 16 December 1934, no. 592. “Thaeriana.” 26 January 1935, no. 44. “Thomas Morus, Hochverrater und Heiliger.” 10 February 1934, no. 70 M. “Der Hoteldiener-Eine verschwiegene Figur.” 17 February 1935, no. 41M. “Der Kosmos in der Hand.” 27 February 1935, no. 099 A. “Max Webers Protestantismus Aufsatz.” Book review. Geistige Arbeit, March 1935, no. 6. “Wissenschaftliche Vortrage: Philosophic des Fuhrertums.” 16 May 1935, no. 230. “Das Landgrafenmuseum zu Kassel.” 18 May 1935, no. 234. “Bismarck spricht Englisch.” 25 May 1935, no. 245 M. “Aus dem Nachlass von Leon Walras.” 26 May 1935, no. 247 M. “PallasAthene.” Book review. 26 May 1935, no. 247. “Avus-Rennen.” 27 May 1935, no. 248. “Die polnische Presse-Dr. Kierken in der Lessing-Hochschule.” 6 June 1935, no. n.a. 264 M. “Stefan George mit und ohne Sockel.” Book review. 9 June 1935, no. 270 M. “Scharrer, ein deutscher Eisenbahngrunder.” 13 July 1935, no. n.a. “Sonnenschirm und Equipagen: Auf den Spuren vergangener Tage.” 13 July 1935, William Dodd.” 15 June 1935, no. 280 A. “The King.” 22 June 1935, no. 291 M. “Kurbel: 1st Lucie ein Madel?” 29 June 1935, no. 304. “Indische Malerei.” 30 June 1935, no. 305.

280

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Theo Herrle: Grundlegung des kulturkundlichen Unterrichts." Book review. 30 June 1935, no. 305. “Pilsudski-Anekdote.” 13 July 1935, no. 327 M. “Scharrer, ein deutscher Eisenbahngrunder.” 13 July 1935. “Sonnenschirm und Equipagen: Auf den Spuren vergangener Tage.” 13 July 1935, no.328 A. “Petterson & Bendel-UFA-Theater am Kurfurstendamm.” 13 July 1935, no. 328 A. “Reklamefilm.” 21 July 1935, no. 341. “Phyllis wieder im Tiergarten.” 21 July 1935, no. 341. “Eine Diirer-Skizze.” 25 July 1935, no. 348 A. “Wiedersehen mit Asta Nielsen: Unmogliche Liebe in der Damera.” 26 July 1935, no.350 A. “Ferdinand Tonnies.” 29 July 1935, no. 354. “Das Geheimnis von Zermatt-Neuauffiihrung im Titania-Palast.” 3 August 1935, no. 364. “Dr Joachim Lachmann: Die mannlichen Orden und Kongregationen der katholischen Kirche, ihre Entwicklung in den Provinzen Preussens von 1815 bis zum A usgang des dritten Jahrzehnts des 20. Jahrhunderts. ’ ’ Book review, 4 August 1935, no. 365. “Die Blonde Carmen-Capitol am Zoo.” Film review. 8 August 1935, no. 372. “Lotte-Reiniger-Ausstellung.” 12 August 1935, no. 378 A. “Phyllis im Planetarium.” 18 August 1935, no. 389 M. “Ulrich Noack: Geschichtswissenschaft und Wahrheit.” 15 September 1935, no. 437 M. “Funfzigmal Meine Tochter-Deine Tochter. Theater review. 19 September 1935, no.444. “Gekiirzte Volksausgabe.” 22 September 1935, no. 449. “Unser Kleines Madel in der Kurbel.” Film review. 25 September 1935, no. 454. “ Urzahl und Gebarde.” Book review. 19 September 1935, no. 461 M. “Rudolf Presber.” Obituary. 1 October 1935, no. 464. “Kitschmotive in Stufen.” 6 October 1935, no. 473 M. “Dr. Hermann Werdermann: Die deutsche evangelische Pfarrfrau. Ihre Geschichte in vier Jahrhunderten.” Book review. 6 October 1935, no. 473 M. “Neue Hitorische Zeitschrift.” Book review. 7 October 1935, no. n.a. “Sven Hedin, der Erforscher Zentralasiens.” 10 October 1935, no. 480 A. “Sir Stanley Reed iiber Indien.” 12 October 1935, no. 480 A. “Widerspruch der Sprache.” 17 October 1935, no. 492 A. “Die armenische Bibeltibersetzung.” 22 October 1935, no. 500 A. “Neuer Weg zu Beethoven?” 25 October 1935, no. 506 A. “Die Unverstandenen.” 27 October 1935, no. n.a. “Das Madchen vom Moorhof?” Theater review. 31 October 1935, no. 516 A. “Dichtung und Nation.” 2 November 1935, no. 520 A. “The Roundabout.” Theater review. 4 November 1935, no. 527 A. “Wilhelm Pinders Antrittsvorlesung.” 6 November 1935, no. 526 A. “Prof. Albert Grunwedel.” Obituary. 7 November 1935, no. 528 A. “Deutsches Handwerk im Mittelalter Zu einem Bilderbuch.” Book 9 November 1935, no. 531 M.

review.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

281

“Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche.” Obituary. 9 November 1935, no. 532 A. “Mensch werde wesentlich!” Theater review. 11 November 1935, no. 534 A. “Der Ehrentag der Universitat.” 13 November 1935, no. 537 M and A. “Das Politische als Problem der Philosophic.” 15 November 1935, no. 542 A. “Sendling zweier Revolutionen.” 16 November 1935, no. 543 M. “Ein Vortrag Elisabeth Langgassers.” 22 November 1935, no. 553 A. “Zur Kunst der Primitiven.” 26 November 1935, no. 559 A. “Der Rassegedanke Heute.” 27 November 1935, no. 561 A. “Zwei Wissenschaftler Sprachen-Der Osten und das Abendland.” 29 November 1935, no.565 A. “Das Werden eines amerikanischen Humoristen.” 30 November 1935, no. 567 A. “Geschichtliches Schrifttum-Die Biographie.” 1 December 1935, no. 568 M. “Mark Twain Gedenkfeier im Haus der Lander.” 3 December 1935, no. 570 M. “Mark Twain Gedenkfeier.” 3 December 1935, no. 571 A. “Professor Charles Richet.” Obituary. 4 December 1935, no. 573. “Der Fiihrer weilt unter Kimstlern-Film aus Alter Zeit.” 5 December 1935, no. 575 A. “August Graf v. Platen.” 8 December 1935, no. 580 M. “Vortrag Professor Marjan v. Zdziechowskis.” 12 December 1935, no. 586. “300 Mai Krach im Hinterhaus.” Theater review. 13 December 1935, no. 589. “Zdziechowski tiberKrasinski.” 12 December 1935, no. 587. “Tirol bleibt Tirol. Ein deutsches Buch.” Book review. 18 December 1935, no. 596. “D/e Weisse Holle vom Piz Palii im Ufa-Pavillon.” Film review. 24 December 1935, no.607. “Kronen undRebellen.” Book review. 24 December 1935, no. 606. “Filmpremiere in Berlin.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 28 December 1935, no. 660-61. “Filmpremiere in Berlin.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 3 January 1936, no. 4-5. “Kirschen in Nachbars Garten.” Film review. Frankfurter Zeitung, 4 January 1936, no. 6. “Filmpremiere in Berlin.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 4 January 1936, no. 6-7. “Das Reclam-Bandchen: Zum 40. Todestag Eines Verlegers.” 5 January 1936, no. 8 A. “Das Reclam-Bandchen: Zum 40. Todestag Eines Verlegers.” Berlin Ausgabe, 5 January 1936, no. 8. “Film Matinee.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 8 January 1936, no. 13. “Stolze Vergangenheit.” 8 January 1936, no. 12 M. “Ein Kapitel Berliner Geistesgeschichte.” 9 January 1936, no. 14. “Filmpremiere in Berlin.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 11 January 1936, no 19-20. “Das deutsche Biirgerhaus.” Book review. 12 January 1936, no. 20. “Die Wahrheit in der Kunst: Ein Vortrag Professor Reizlers.” 16 January 1936, no.27. “Postilion von Longjumeau: verfilmt.” Film review. Frankfurter Zeitung, 17 January 1936, no.30. “Roman als Dichtung.” 18 January 1936, no. 31. “Zum Tode Kiplings.” 18 January 1936, no. 31. Reprinted in Magdeburgische Zeitung, 21 January 1936. “Wahrheit und Schonheit.” Book review. 19 January 1936, no. n.a.

282

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Maternite.” Film review. Frankfurter Zeitung. 20 January 1936. “Die Wiedertaufer in Munster.” 23 January 1936, no. 38. “Bissige Freunde.” 23 January 1936, no. 38. “Oesterreichs Stellung in der deutschen Geschichte.” 23 January 1936, no. 38. “Aus dem Geselligen Leben.” 30 January 1936, no. 50. “Deutsche Kunst in Amerika.” 30 January 1936, no. 50 A. “Garricks Maskenkunst.” 6 February 1936, no. 62. “Die tote Majestdt und die Matrosen-Ein neuer Brauch beim britischen.” 13 February 1936, no.74. “Die Frau im Journalismus.” Book review. 16 February 1936, no. n.a. “Oesterreichs Anteil an der deutschen Geschichte.” 18 February 1936, no. 83. “Das kleine Referat.” 19 February 1936, no. 85. “ Victoria Regina.” Book review. 21 February 1936, no. 88. “Der gute Rat.” 21 February 1936, no. 88. “Eight Millions.” Film review. 21 February 1936, no. 89. “Erziehung, Rausch und Technik.” 23 February 1936, no. 92. “Gastspiel der Englisch Players.” Theater review. 24 February 1936, no. 93. “Gastspiel der Englisch Players.” Theater review. 25 February 1936, no. 95. “Longfellow und Deutschland.” 27 February 1936, no. 98. “Viele Methoden fur einen Zweck.” 1 March 1936, no. 104. “Dr. Oskar Heinroth: Gefiederte Meistersanger.” Book review. 1 March 1936, no.104. “Ursprung der Nationalstaaten.” 12 March 1936, no. 123. “Bunbury.” Theater review. 17 March 1936, no. 131. “Privat-fiir Viele.” 23 March 1936, no. n.a. “Vorlesung Wolfgang Liebeneiners.” 23 March 1936, no. 141. “Auslandsdeutsche Dichter (I).” 25 March 1936, no. 144. “Von der Eitelkeit des Schriftstellers.” 29 March 1936, no. n.a. “Luis Trenkers Kaiser von Kalifornien?” 29 March 1936, no. n.a. “Charaktervolle Fiisse.” 29 March 1936, no. n.a. “Miami kauft!” 2 April 1936, no. 158. “Hoher Besuch und hohe Spesen.” 12 April 1936, no. 175. “Ferdinand Tonnies.” Obituary. 14 April 1936, no. 177. “Die Rolle des Damonischen bei den Russen.” 18 April 1936, no. 185. “Auslandsdeutsche Dichter (II).” 22 April 1936, no. 190. “Sind Traume Schaume?” 26 April 1936, no. 198. “Schewtschenko-Feier der Ukrainer.” 26 April 1036, no. 198. “Mensch und Umwelt.” 29 April 1936, no. 203. “Die Charite im 18. Jahrhundert.” 30 April 1936, no. 204. “Die Kulte von Olympia.” 1 May 1936, no. 206. “Kirche, Theologie, Volk.” 4 May 1936, no. 210. “Vorstoss in das Firmament.” 5 May 1936, no. 211. “Programm einer raffinierten Revue.” 6 May 1936, no. 213. “Zahnarzt und Dentist.” 7 May 1936, no. 216. “Denkmaler in London.” 8 May 1936, no. 217. “Dangerous Comer." Theater review. 9 May 1936, no. 220.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

283

“Heimweh-Lyrik in Amerika.” 14 May 1936, no. 227. “Anne Boleyn, Gattin und Opfer Heinrichs VIII.” 21 May 1936, no. 239. “Symposium der Ehrlichkeit.” 23 May 1936, no. 242. “Gleichnis des Lebens/Zu Julien Greens neuem Roman Minuit.” Review article. 24 May 1936, no. 244. “Die musikalische Inspiration.” 27 May 1936, no. 249. “Adolf Kroners Aufstieg.” 28 May 1936, no. 250. “Die musikalische Inspiration.” 28 May 1936, no. 251. “Der Kopf auf dem Geldschein.” 30 May 1936, no. 254. “Stendhal erzahlt von Schlegel.” 30 May 1936, no. 261. Reprinted in Magdeburgische Zeitung, 11 July 1936, no. 348. “Sir Arnold Wilson: Talks and Walks Abroad.” Book review. 14 June 1936, no. 279. “Fachschulen oder neue Universitas?” 14 June 1936, no. 279. “Kritik an den Denkern undDichtern.” 25 June 1936, no. 297. “Fassadendichtung der Jahrhundertwende-Zum 100.” 25 June 1936, no. 298. “Quedlinburg, Heinrichs I. Stadt.” 5 July 1936, no. 315. “Maschinen, Menschen und eine bessere Welt.” Book review. 5 July 1936, no. 315. “Leben als Experiment.” 19 July 1936, no. 339. “Hatte Pilatus Recht?” 22 July 1936, no. 343. “Johann August Sutter, der Kaiser von Kalifornien.” 23 July 1936, no. 345. “Weltagrarkonferenz in St. Andrews.” 30 August 1936, no. 411. “Bild und Wirkung der Antike: Deutscher Humanismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 30 August 1936, no. 443-44. “Schadelfund auf den Aleuten.” 14 October 1936, no. 487. “Von geschiphtlichem Sinn.” 1 November 1936, no. 519. “Heimische Vogelwelt, in Bild und Ton.” 21 November 1936, no. 552. “Mirko-Jelusisch-Abend.” 28 November 1936, no. 565. “Leopold von Wiese sechzigjahrig.” 2 December 1936, no. 571. “Leopold von Wiese.” Frankfurter Zeitung, 2 December 1936, no. 616-17. “Sind die Japaner eine Rasse?” 8 December 1936, no. 581. “Dynamit und Friedenspreis.” 12 December 1936, no. 588. “Alte Handbiicher-Neues Wissen.” 20 December 1936, no. 602. “Chinesisches Theater im Harnack-Haus.” 13 January 1937, no. 21. “Danemark, von Aarhus aus.” 23 January 1937, no. 38. “Eroberer und Revolutionar.” Book review. 28 February 1937, no. n.a. “Unbekanntes Alt-Irland: Bericht iiber einen Vortrag.” 29 January 1937, no. 48. “Beethoven.” Book review. 17 October 1937, no. 491. Der Buchstabe “G.” 27 February 1938, no. 98.

.

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INDEX Absentee ownership, 56 America: appearance values in, 53-54; emigre community in, 4; Hans Gerth in, 33, 35-36; heroes of mass periodical fiction in, 72; idealization of rural life in, 93-94; 95-96; internal migration in, 109; mass periodical fiction in, 72-103; myths of American life in, 92; and the New Deal, 159-60; and propaganda, 61, 63, 70; universities in, 106; youthful rebellion in, 104-13 American sociology: and concensus, 250; and the dismissal of world con¬ cepts, 193-95; Hans Gerth’s con¬ tribution to, 221-74; and Max Weber, 208-17 Anticapitalism, 112, 213. See also Capitalism Appearance values, 51-60; in America, 53-54; in bourgeois society, 53, 55; in classical antiquity, 59; and costumes, 58-59; and fashion, 52-58; and nudity, 59; and politics, 53-54; and uniforms, 51-52 Arendt, Hannah, and Hans Gerth,

Belief systems: major functions of, 106-7; and youth, 105-7 Bendix, Rienhard, 215 Bensman, Joseph, on Hans Gerth, 221-74 Berliner Tageblatt, 24, 28 Bienenfeld, Die Deutschen und die Juden, 20 Bingham, Alfred, 152 Bourgeois society: and appearance values, 53, 55; and the bureaucratic state, 66 Bukharin, Nikolai, On Historical Materialism, 132 Bureaucracy: and appearance values, 51-52; and the bureaucratic mask, 141; centralization under Stalin, 160; charisma and revolution, 123-29; as a form of organization, 149, 158; and intellectuals, 179, 180-84, 261-63; and mass media, 195; Max Weber’s theory of, 133-34; and ra¬ tionality, 129; and sociology, 195; and Verdinglichung, 141-43. See also Capitalism, Rationality Burnham, James, The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in

33-35 Aron, Raymond, on Max Weber, 132

the World, 150-63

285

INDEX

286 Capitalism: class composition in, 151; and intellectuals, 180-81, 202; and ir¬ rational power struggles, 169-70; James Burnham’s view of, 153; Karl Marx’s analysis of, 115, 118-19; laissez-faire forms of, 170; and Lebensraum, 162; Max Weber’s theory of, 127-28, 133-35; and population, 118-19; rational and irra¬ tional, 226; and universities, 181; and Verdinglichung, 139-48 Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions (Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills), 5, 39, 42-44, 221, 256 Charisma: and leadership, 123-29; Max Weber’s theory of, 138; and Nazism, 34-35 Children, in mass fiction, 87-88 Cole, G.D.H., on the new middle class, 151 Communication, in rural society, 66-69 Communism, 164-76 Costume: and appearance values, 51; and fashion, 58-59 Democracy: bourgeois principle of, 146; and intellectuals, 188-89, 207; Max Weber on, 135-38; and pro¬ paganda, 65-66 Dictatorship of the proletariat, main principle of, 146; Trotsky on, 146-48 Domhoff, William, Who Rules America, 112 Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, 235 Engels, Frederick, Origins of Private Property, the Family and the State, 117 Fascism: and revolution, 70; Max Weber on, 135. See also Nazism Fashion: and appearance values, 51; C. Wright Mills’ analysis of, 57;

cyclical character of, 55; Georg Simmell’s analysis of, 56-57; and na¬ tional costumes, 58-59; as a process, 52 Fischoff, Ephraim, 127 Frankfurter Zeitung, 23 From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, editors), 7 Fromm, Erich, 18 Fiihrer role, 34 German Sociological Association, 137 German Sociological Society, 131 Germany: and bourgeois revolution, 20; class situation under Hitler, 153-55; denazification of, 15; divided after World War Two, 164-66; and liberalism, 21; and Nazi propaganda, 62; under Hitler, 20-21, 29-33, 63-65, 70, 135-37, 157, 159; Weimarian, 3 Gerth, Hans: on American sociology, 38-40; comparison of Max Weber and Karl Marx, 225-28; doctoral exam, 21-22; in exile, 3-13; flight from the Gestapo, 29-33; at Frankfurt in the 1970s, 12; on the Institute for Social Research, 18; in¬ terrogation of in Milwaukee, 35-36; on Karl Marx, 40-41, 225-55; on mass society, 40-45; on Max Weber, 4-5, 223-55; personal characteristics, 10, 222-23; as a student of Karl Mannheim, 16-17; on theory, 45-46; as a translator, 4-5, 36, 223-25; with the U.S. Department of State, 15. Works: Character and Social Struc¬ ture: The Psychology of Social In¬ stitutions (with C. Wright Mills), 5, 39, 42-44, 221, 256; From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (editor, with C. Wright Mills), 7 Gerth, Nobuko, 8, 177 Geiger, Theodore, Functions and Position of the Intelligentsia in So¬ ciety, 184-86

INDEX Goebbels, Joseph, 62 Greffrath, Mathias, interview with Hans Gerth, 14-47 Grossman, Henryk, 18 Habermas, Jurgen, 12 Heberle, Rudolf, 3-4, 22 Hegel, G.W.F., 115-22, 133; Phenomenology of the Mind, 133 Heroes: in mass fiction, 72, 74-77, 83, 86, 89-93, 98-99; worship of, 17, 34-35 Heuss, Theodor, 12 Hilferding, Rudolf, Finance Capital, 170-71 Hitler, Adolf, 54, 61-62. See also Germany, Nazism Horkheimer, Max, 18 Ideology, 143 Institutional orders, 227, 242-50 Intellectuals: academic versus nonacademic, 179-80; and alienation in mass society, 109; and the American labor movement, 205-6; and bureaucracy, 179, 180-84, 261-63; and capitalism, 180-81, 202; coinage of the term, 200; cooptation of, 187-89; as critics, 188-89; and democracy, 188-89, 207; and legitimacy, 183-84; Marxist, 170-71; and mass media, 186-87; Max Weber’s definition of, 201; in modern society, 177-89; and political leaders, 203; as professionals, 187; pure versus political, 187; and ra¬ tionality, 228-31; and revolution, 182-83; and universities, 179-80 Intellectual crisis, 107 Intelligentsia: American, 199-207; in the ancient agrarian world, 178-80, in czarist Russia, 177; defined, 177 Jaspers, Karl, on Max Weber, 131, 216 Jews, 18-21, 25-26 Junkers, 153-54

287 Kirchheimer, Otto, 215-16 Law: bourgeois, 139-48; in Communist society, 147-48; and positivist methodology, 144 Lazarsfeld, Paul, 213 Legitimacy, and intellectuals, 183-84 Lenin, V. I,, Imperialism, 171-72; What Is To Be Done, 126 Leninism, and Marxism, 145 Lepsius, Rainer, 12 Managers: and commuism, 161; James Burnham’s view of, 150-63; mythology of, 163; and the New Deal, 159-60; and the philosophy of history, 150-51; and political power, 152-53, 155-56 Mannheim, Karl: on free-floating intelligentsia, 16; and the Jewish refugee committee in England, 32. Works: Ideology and Utopia, 16; Man and Society in the Age of Reconstruction, 234-35, 257-59 Marcuse, Herbert, on Max Weber, 132 Marriage as a theme in mass fiction, 81-87 Martindale, Don, and Hans Gerth, 8-9, 11 Marx, Karl: on alienation, 120-21; biographical sketch of, 166-69; on bureaucracies, 161; on capitalism, 115, 118-19, 169-70, 226; critique of Hegelian concepts, 119; dialectical reasoning, 116, 119; Hans Gerth’s interpretation of, 225-55; and humanism, 120; on human nature, 115-16; materialism, 115, 119; and Max Weber, 225-28, 244; on popula¬ tion, 118-19, on Roman law, 117-18; theory of progress, 116-17; on society, 40-41. Works: The Civil War in France, 168; Das Kapital, 167 Marxism: and class consciousness, 146; and dialectical materialism, 139; humanism and naturalism 169; and

288 Leninism, 145; revisionist, 170-71; and the theory of the state, 145-48 Mass media: and bureacracy, 195; and children, 110; and intellectuals, 186-87; and power, 71; and themes in mass fiction, 100 Mass periodicial fiction: children in, 87-88; general themes in, 76-81; heroes in 72, 74-75, 86, 89-93, 98-99; idealization of rural America in, 93-94, 95-96; marriage in, 81-87; and mass media, 100; myths of American life in, 92; politics as a theme in, 97; religious themes in, 96-97; success themes in, 88-92, 100; values in, 72-103 Mass society: and alienation of intellec¬ tuals in, 109; Hans Gerth’s view of, 40-45; and propaganda, 71 Mead, George Herbert, 260 Methodology: content analysis of magazines, 72-74; empirical types versus ideal types, 213-14; a general principle of research, 71; the ideal type, 121, 212-13, 241-42; and positivist law, 144; statistical measurement, 66; Verstehen, 4, 238-40 Militarism, and appearance values, 51-52 Mills, C. Wright, on Hans Gerth, 9-11. Works: Character and Social Struc¬ ture: The Psychology of Social In¬ stitutions (with Hans Gerth), 5, 39, 42-44, 221, 256; From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (editor, with Hans Gerth), 7; The New Men of

INDEX Nazism: ascension to power, 20-21; and charisma, 34-35; electoral strength of, 17; and idealization of rural life, 68-69; instability of, 162; and propaganda, 62; and war, 161-62. See also Germany Neurath, Otto, “Sociolistische Moglichkeiten Heute,” 213 New Deal, 159-60 New School for Social Research, 12 Nudity, and appearance values, 59 Occupation: of heroes in mass fiction, 74-75, 83, 86, 93, 98-99; skill versus class, 155 Park, Robert E., 193, 214 Parsons, Talcott: and conceptual atomism; 127; on Max Weber, 131 Perlman, Selig, The Theory of the Labor Movement, 206 Politics: and appearance values, 53; as a theme in mass fiction, 97 Population, in Marxes analysis of capitalism, 118-19 Propaganda: American consciousness of, 61, 63, 70; development of 62-64; and ideology, 168; and the man in the street, 64; and mass media, 71; Max Weber on, 135; Nazi techniques of, 62; and the press, 70-71; and the public opinion, 61-71; and rationality, 66; and Stalinism, 175-76 Property, and the state, 157 Public opinion: free versus centralized, 63; and mass media, 71; and pro¬ paganda, 61-71

Power, 111; The Power Elite, 111, 195-96; Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills (Irving Louis Horowitz, editor), 215; White Collar, 57, 111, 195-96 Mommsen, Wolfgang, Max Weber und die Deutsche Politik, 131-32

Racial consciousness, and Jewish intellectualism, 18 Rationality: and bureaucracy, 129; and capitalism, 226; as impersonal, 149-50; intellectual and formal, 231-32, 243-49; and intellectuals, 228-31; and irrationality, 69, 110, 141; in law and administration,

INDEX 142-43; and progress, 116; and pro¬ paganda, 66; and revolution, 126; and secularization, 69; in univer¬ sities, 106 Rationalization, Max Weber’s theory of, 133-34 Religion, in mass fiction, 96-97; Max Weber’s theory of, 127-28, 134 Revolution: and bourgeois law, 144; and bureacracy, 123-29, 161; and charisma, 123-29; and class struggle, 163; and intellectuals, 182-83; and rationality, 126 Roehm putsch, 27, 29 Ross, E. A., Social Control, 203 Rural society: and communication, 66-69; idealization of in American mass fiction, 93-94, 95-96; idealiza¬ tion of in Europe, 68-69; subversion of, 68-69; two mental spheres in, 67 Russia: and bureacracy, 160-61; in¬ tellectuals in czarist, 177; and the Red Army, 173; and secrecy, 64-65; and Stalinism, 166, 169, 173-76 Schmitt, Carl, on Max Weber, 124 Secrecy, and propaganda, 64-66 Secret societies, 65 Secularization, and rationality, 69 Simmel, Georg, on fashion styles, 56-57 Social theory, Hans Gerth’s view of, 263-66 Sociology: American and German, 38-40; and bureaucracy, 195; and cultural relativity, 196; and decision making, 192; and history, 190-98; milieu studies in, 194-95; and public opinion measurement, 66 Sombart, Werner, on depersonaliza¬ tion, 140 Sontag, Susan, 11 Sorokin, Pitirim, 199-200 Speier, Hans, 33 Stalinism, 166, 169, 173-76 Stammer, Otto, Max Weber and

289 Sociology Today (editor), 131 n2 Student activism, 110-11 Toller, Ernest, Max Weber’s defense of, 136-37 Trotsky, Leon: on the dictatorship of the proletariat, 146-48; and the Red Army, 173. Works: Terrorism and Communism, 147-48; “Art as Insur¬ rection,” 126-27 Uniforms, and appearance values, 51-52 Universities: American, 106, 204, 205; and capitalism, 181; German, 23; and intellectuals, 179-80 Values, appearance, 51-60; in mass periodical fiction, 72-103 Veblen, Thorstein: on absentee owner¬ ship, 156-57; on accumulative technology, 149-50. Works: The Engineers and the Price System, 151-52; The Higher Learning in America, 203 Verdinlichung: as a characteristic of capitalism, 139-48; defined, 140; in the economic sphere, 143-44 Vidich, Arthur J., on Hans Gerth, 3-13 Weber, Max: and American sociology, 208-17; and ancient Judaism, 137-38; on bureaucratization, 133-34; on bureaucracy, 126-29, 161; on capitalism, 127-28, 133-34; Carl Schmitt on, 124; on charisma, 123-29, 138; on concensus and con¬ flict, 247-50; concept of status, 225-26; on the decline of Rome, 118; on democratization, 135-38; on fascism, 135; on feudalism, 132-33; and Freudian psychology, 137, 235, 237; and Friedrich Nietzsche, 235-37; Hans Gerth’s interpretation of, 233-55; and the Hegelian legacy, 121, 133; Herbert Marcuse on, 131; and

290 the ideal type, 121, 212-13, 241-42; and the idealistic tradtition, 225; on institutional orders, 227, 242-50; on intellectuals, 228-31; on Kadi justice, 143; Karl Jaspers on, 131; and Karl Marx, 225-28, 244; on legal pro¬ cedures, 141; and liberalism, 135; and nationalism, 10-11, 124, 136, 254; on the professional revolu¬ tionary, 126; on professionalism, 10; on race, 137; on rationality, 149-50; and the rationality of capitalism, 226; on rationalization, 133-34; on religion, 127-28; on revolution, 161, 228; scholars responses to, 6; on social psychology, 231-35; standards of scholarship, 6; and structuralfunctionalism, 211; Talcott Parsons on, 131; and Verstehen, 4, 238-40. Works: Ancient Judaism, 127; Economy and Society, 127-28; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 127, 134; Sociology of

INDEX Religion, 127; “Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany,” 123-24; “The Chinese Literati,” 233-34; “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy,” 212; “Politics as a Vocation,” 138, 236; “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” 232-33; “Russia’s Sham Constitu¬ tionalism,” 124-25; “The Social Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization,” 118 Weimar Germany, sociology in, 18-19 Women, and appearance values, 55 Women’s magazines, basic themes of, 81-88

Youth: and belief systems, 105-7; in industrial society, 105; rebellion of in the United States, 104-13; and revolution, 150; and the role of the desperado, 109-10; withdrawal of from society, 107-10

About the Editors

JOSEPH BENSMAN is Professor of Sociology at City College and the Graduate Center of the University of New York. ARTHUR J. VIDICH is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the New School for Social Research. NOBUKO GERTH (Mrs. Hans Gerth) is currently a resident of West Ger¬ many. She has studied and taught at the University of Wisconsin.

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Recent Titles in Contributions in Sociology Series Editor: Don Martindale Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution Tetsuden Kashima Identities in the Lesbian World: The Social Construction of Self Barbara Ponse Zero Population Growth—for Whom?: Differential Fertility and Minority Group Survival Milton Himmelfarb and Victor Baras, editors Social Control for the 1980s—A Handbook for Order in a Democratic Society Joseph S. Roucek, editor Ethnics in a Borderland: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ethnicity and Reduction of Ethnic Tensions in a One-Time Genocide Area Feliks Gross Contemporary Issues in Theory and Research: A Metasociological Perspective William E. Snizek, Ellsworth R. Fuhrman, and Michael K. Miller, editors Nationalism and the Crises of Ethnic Minorities in Asia Tai S. Kang, editor History of Sociological Thought Jerzy Szacki Management and Complex Organizations in Comparative Perspective Raj P. Mohan, editor Methods for the Social Sciences: A Handbook for Students and Non-Specialists John J. Hartman and Jack H. Hedblom Cult and Countercult: A Study of a Spiritual Growth Group and a Witchcraft Order Gini Graham Scott Poverty in America: The Welfare Dilemma Ralph Segalman and Asoke Basu

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