Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Over recent years there has been growing interest in the relations between
academic intellectuals and professionals and the Nazi regime—several works on
Heidegger, Nazi doctors and Paul de Man have appeared. This book attempts to
do for sociology what has been done for other Fields: to demythologize the prewar
role of sociologists and provide a serious historical basis for reflection on it. The
myth is simple: that the noble and clear-sighted Frankfurt School was expelled by
Hitler and raised the consciousness of the West. The realities are considerably
more complex. During and after the war, a consensus account of fascism emerged,
but in the interwar years sociologists misanalysed, misunderstood or supported
fascism. The book examines the historical record in Germany, Austria, Italy,
Hungary, the USA and the UK to provide a rich and at times perplexing account
of sociologists and fascism.
Novel in its comparative framework and invigorating in its conclusions, the
book will occupy the centre of debate for many years to come. It will appeal to
sociologists with an interest in history, and historians with an interest in sociology.
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the contributors viii
Index 233
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Karen Kier and Ken Wilkinson typed many revisions of the chapters and
assembled the text for publication. For their patient effort I am grateful.
Stephen P.Turner
I would like to acknowledge the lively interest in the theme of this project from
the members of the Research Committee on the History of Sociology (RCHS) of
the International Sociological Association (ISA). During the TCHS conference in
Munich 1984 I had proposed to organize a session on the theme of ‘Sociologists
and Fascism’ at the following conference of the RCHS. Two such sessions on the
theme of this book were held during the XI World Congress of Sociology in New
Delhi, India, in 1986 where most of the authors of this volume had intended to
give first presentations of their papers. Because of the inability of some colleagues
to come to New Delhi, and on the basis of the very vivid discussions following
the presentations of some of the papers, the idea of the publication of a collection
of papers covering the theme of ‘Sociologists and Fascism’ in the variant national
sociological traditions developed. Without the encouraging support of the
scholarly community of the RCHS this project would never have been completed.
I would also like to acknowledge the encouragement and support of this work
from my students at the Institut für Soziologie of the University of Hamburg who
participated in my seminar on ‘Sociological Analyses of Fascism and National
Socialism’ during the summer semester 1989.
I furthermore thank the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Culture and
Society of the University of South Florida in St Petersburg for the invitation to
spend my sabbatical semester during the months of August 1989 to January 1990
there and to continue my work on this edition.
In order to make this stay possible I gratefully acknowledge the support of the
Universitä t Hamburg, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the German
Marshall Fund of the United States.
Dirk Käsler
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
Stephen P.Turner
the Nazis were presumed to be so hostile to sociology that it could not have
occurred.
There is another aspect to this story. Fascism, as one of the great social
phenomena of the century, was part of the subject matter of sociology. If sociology
claims to be of value in educating the public and improving the capacity of citizens
to act, fascism is a subject which tests this claim. It is widely assumed that this
challenge was met. The evidence usually adduced to support this claim is part of
the same general picture of discontinuity, suppression, and emigration. It is taken
for granted that exiles on the left, such as Mannheim and the Frankfurt School,
were clear-sighted in their response to the developments from which they had
escaped. It is further assumed that they provided or at least contributed heavily to
the intellectual framework within which competent sociological and public
opinion in the non-fascist countries to which they escaped came to analyse and
respond to fascism. The standard evidence for this is the analysis of
authoritarianism by the Frankfurt School during the 1930s, which culminated in
The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1950). The impression that this
represented a coherent and influential point of view during the era of fascism
perhaps rests primarily on an inference that the wide availability of the writings
of the critical theorists and the related works of Wilhelm Reich in the 1960s, and
the retrospective coherence that could be given these works, reflects the situation
of the 1930s.
authoritarian personality type. It apparently fits the myth perfectly. But the case
is not representative, nor is it unproblematic.
The Frankfurt School indeed provided part of the intellectual impetus for The
Authoritarian Personality, a major study sponsored by the American Jewish
Committee. Members of this school, notably Fromm, Neumann and Marcuse,
became influential authors in the postwar period, where they were noted especially
for their reflections on authority and freedom. But the impression produced by
these facts is that the sociologists who were part of the German left understood
and illuminated Nazism prior to the struggle against it, and influenced the struggle
itself. This impression is not accurate. The members of the Frankfurt School
scarcely discussed the topic of Nazism (or indeed Italian fascism) before their
departure from Germany. They had the most limited sort of edifying impact on
their non-fascist hosts prior to the war itself. The reason for this lack of impact,
apart from problems of language and difficulties in establishing themselves that
were shared with other emigrants, was that the framework in which they
understood fascism and their conviction that Germany represented the most
advanced form of the historical process was not shared by sociologists or the public
in the non-fascist countries.
When they arrived in the United States, the members of the Frankfurt School
held to their faith in the historical inevitability of revolution and the idea that
Germany represented the world-historical future. The rise of fascism was
interpreted by the Frankfurt School in terms of a problem that was theoretically
central to Marxism, namely the limited revolutionary capacity and inclination of
the German working class on which the hope of Marxist revolution had been
placed. Like other Marxists, the Frankfurt School simply added epicycles to the
theory of the inevitable revolution of the proletariat to correct for its predictive
failures: fascism became an additional ‘final stage’ in the development of
capitalism. To be sure, the members of the Institute added many dimensions to
this basic idea, and during the war some of them took positions that transcended
it But a serious development of these ideas did not occur in time to affect public
opinion in their host countries. The Authoritarian Personality was an extension
of the idea that Germany was a harbinger of the future: the possibility of fascism
was, the study claimed, latent in the American population. In the wake of the
Holocaust, a ready audience in the American Jewish community was found for
this thesis. Prior to the war and prior to the careful packaging of these ideas for
an American audience, the problematic itself was shared, in its specific terms,
only with other socialists.
But socialist opinion was not an unerring guide to fascism. The practical
political implications of the idea that fascism was simply an advanced form of
capitalism were deeply ambiguous. Many socialists who adhered to this idea were
acquiescent in the face of what they saw as an inevitable part of the historical
process. Another sociologist of the left, Hendrik de Man, went beyond
nonchalance to active encouragement (Pels 1987, 1991). De Man had concluded
that fascism, understood in its historical role, was an instrument for doing away
4 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
with the bourgeois state and creating a centralized power apparatus that could then
be used to create socialism. De Man represents an extreme case, but others on the
left were also ambivalent toward fascism: hostility to ‘bourgeois
parliamentarianism’ and the idea that fascism was a necessary cleansing also
supported acquiescence. As the chapter by Käsler and Steiner shows, the political
strategists of the socialist parties of Germany were placed in a horrendous dilemma
by these affinities to fascism. They could not defend liberal institutions without
abandoning the ideological premises of their parties. But they could not hope to
expand their electoral power without adopting tactics, such as the promotion of
nationalism, that would have made their parties more closely resemble, and thus
legitimate, the fascist movements. The members of the Frankfurt School did not
resolve this dilemma so much as erroneously interpret American life in terms of
it. And the oppositional character of the School’s response to fascism may be seen
to rest on their allegiance to socialism rather than on the oppositional character of
sociology.
Put differently, the case of the Frankfurt School does not test the ‘oppositional’
interpretation of the relation of sociology to fascist regimes. It is, rather, a case
that may be described to fit it. Its ‘importance’ depends on the frame in which it
is presented. The frame, which reads the fashions of the 1960s into the 1930s,
excludes most of what passed for sociology in the interwar era. The centrality of
the Frankfurt School story in the self-understanding of sociology stems from its
affinity to the myth, just as the marginalization of the de Man story reflects its
uncomfortable implications. It might be more precise to say that the myth depends
on presenting the Frankfurt School as representative or central and ignoring the
practical political ambiguities of socialist anti-fascism.
But ‘representative’ and ‘central’ are deeply problematic notions in historical
writing generally and in the history of sociology during the interwar years in
particular. The complexities of the historical problem of the relation of sociology
to fascism underscore the problems. Some of the problems are quite mundane.
Simply to classify persons as sociologists requires, in many cases, largely arbitrary
decisions. De Man held an academic appointment as a social psychologist. The
Frankfurt School stood apart from the institutional life of sociology, and
consequently to consider any members of the Frankfurt School to be ‘sociologists’
in the interwar period itself is controversial, as Klingemann observes in his chapter.
So even the apparently innocuous problem of the conventions one uses to
categorize a person as a sociologist turns out to shape interpretation, and to do so
crucially.
Conventional historiographical strategies serve to provide some protection
against selectivity. Biographical studies meet standards of completeness with
respect to the individual lives they consider; studies of the structure and
development of theoretical ideas meet other standards of completeness. In each
case there is some protection against taking particular utterances or acts out of
biographical or theoretical context. Biography focuses on intentions and actions,
and particularly on the evolution of an individual’s plans and aims in response to
SOCIOLOGY AND FASCISM IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD 5
anti-rationalism and nostalgia for Gemeinschaft that was central to the sociologies
not only of Tōnnies but of Durkheim and many others as well (Ranulf 1939). The
framework of this study does not permit one to address this thesis directly. But
this and similar broad-gauge issues do not disappear entirely. One of the influential
figures in the German-speaking world, Othmar Spann, discussed at length in
Gerald Mozetič’s chapter on Austrian sociology, exemplifies the line of
development from sociological anti-individualism to fascism. The émigrés,
because they were, on the evidence, without influence in any of the national
sociologies discussed, are excluded by this design, and the limited group of
national sociologies considered excludes such problematic figures as de Man, a
Belgian. But here again, the underlying pattern is exemplified in other ways. De
Man was not the only figure on the left ambivalent about fascism. The disputes
between left-wing tacticians in Germany, discussed in Käsler and Steiner’s
chapter, are indicative of the ambiguous significance of fascism and the
intellectual difficulties it presented to the left. Némedi’s study of Hungary,
similarly, identifies preconditions for acquiescence to fascism that were
widespread among European intellectuals: the ambivalence toward fascism felt
by reformers of various political persuasions who saw fascism as a potential
catalyst for the changes they advocated. Némedi also points to other effects of
sociology that influenced responses to fascism, including cynicism toward politics
and reductionistic class analyses that sustained this cynicism.
little would have changed: their views were merely visible symptoms of deeper
currents in opinion that they did little to alter.
The difficulties in assigning responsibility are evident when we consider a
second stage in the relation of sociology to fascism, the actual use of sociological
ideas to legitimate and criticize the emerging fascist movements. The case of
Spann, as discussed in detail by Mozetič, shows how a sociologist could position
himself as an intellectual leader of a fascist or proto-fascist political force. But
Spann’s experience also shows the ambiguity between ‘leading’ and anticipating
the movements of the one he pretends to control. When Spann sought to guide the
movement he contributed to, he was ignored.
The relatively long period of fascist rule in Italy, and the relative openness of
its intellectual life, made this country into a kind of laboratory for the study of
intellectual influence. Critics who have argued that sociology has routinely
betrayed its mission through its pro-establishment biases have generally assumed
that the discipline’s capacity for ideological service to established orders, notably
to capitalism, has been great, that the need and demand for legitimation has been
similarly great, and thus that the capitulation of sociology to these demands has
been consequential for the societies in which this has occurred. The cases of
Mosca and Michels indicate the complexities of legitimation. As Losito and Segre
show, Michels, by becoming a propagandist for Mussolini, lost his ‘influence’.
The ideas of Mosca, which no less an authority than David Beetham has
pronounced to have a ‘natural connectionto support for fascism’, were not used
to legitimate the regime because of Mosca’s personal opposition to Mussolini
(Beetham 1977:163). Like Spann, the German sociologists who sought to provide
ideological justifications for Nazism discovered that once in power the Nazis had
a strong interest in preserving the purity of their own doctrine and little or none
in ‘legitimation’. Nor did either major fascist regime exhibit much fear of
sociology: they regarded the subject as largely superfluous where it did not
coincide with their own programmatic ideas, and not as a threat to be suppressed.
A third stage was the period in which sociologists attempted to serve the regimes
technically rather than ideologically. One might regard this service as
opportunism, and, consistent with the belief in sociology’s progressive,
oppositional essence, regard it as betrayal. But the easy absorption of sociologists
and social researchers into the apparatus of the Nazi system of academic patronage,
documented by Klingemann, suggests otherwise. Sociologists participated in the
Nazi order in large numbers and for the same kinds of reasons as sociologists
participate in schemes of subsidized scholarship today. If anything, the Nazis were
modernizers of sociology: they brought the machinery of subsidized scholarship
and publication in empirical sociology and substantive research significantly
closer to present models of research subsidy and relations with the state.5 As
Klingemann shows, there was even a great deal of continuity in personnel in the
sociology of the Federal Republic.
Wartime sociology itself is beyond the limits of the studies presented here, but
the parallels between sociology in this third stage in Germany and the case of
8 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
American wartime sociology should be noticed. One might suppose that the
conditions which led sociologists into involvement with the Nazi regime described
by Klingemann were unique to Germany and the Nazi system. But in both
Germany and the United States, sociologists as experts and technicians attempted
to contribute to national purposes, and were so employed. The areas of work were
largely the same: studies of morale, aid in the administration of occupied territory,
and the training of officers. Many sociologists served in interdisciplinary survey
and research units for the War Department.6 Talcott Parsons himself tried to get
funds and legitimation for sociology by working in the area of national morale
and received funding for the training of officers in the Far East (Buxton and Turner
1992).
for their opinions to have political effects. The scholarship was intended to edify:
these thinkers wanted their ideas to influence action and promoted their ideas
accordingly. And even those sociological purists whose idea of sociology was
farthest removed from these edifying intentions were financed because it was
believed by ministers of state or the public that the pursuit of sociology ultimately
served some practical purpose.
The ideal of an engaged sociology also fared poorly. As Weber says, to enter
into politics is to contract with diabolical powers. If the engagement of sociological
thinkers in ‘progressive’ political causes is to be judged on its consequences, the
consequences will rarely be unproblematic. One can err in choosing which ‘party
of progress’ to ally oneself with. And one may err in choosing principles. The
‘principles’ that some of the Marxists discussed by K sler and Steiner ‘preserved’
by their refusal to compromise ideological purity and the goal of revolution do
not look particularly progressive from today’s perspective. Instead, these
principled Marxists appear partly culpable for the weakness of the political
resistance to Nazism, which was at the time of the seizure of power a minority
movement made powerful by the divisions between its opponents. The Critical
Theorists, who held to the same theory of historical development, seem scarcely
less culpable. Intellectuals in Europe found within the sociological tradition many
reasons to be acquiescent or to support fascism, and few to reject it or inform a
political resistance to it.
One fundamental constraint on the conduct of sociologists is underscored by
the German case. Sociology and social research is a subsidized activity,
state-subsidized for the most part, and is thus morally bound to its patrons and
historically conditioned by the relations and forms of patronage that support it. In
practice, sociologists can escape the pact diabolique only by retirement or by exile
and a change of patrons. Several of the Italian sociologists discussed by Losito
and Segre chose this course. But exit is not a choice without moral implications
either.
the cause of centralization. In the United States, the effect of these analyses was
to ‘normalize’ these regimes. Treating them as similar political responses to the
world economic crisis, as sociologically analogous, undermined attempts to
differentiate them morally, such as Charles Ellwood’s warnings of the dangers of
Italian fascism.
The intellectually consequential analyses of fascism were not the product of
disinterested sociological reflection, but of sociology motivated by political
concerns. In Britain, where ‘sociological’ commentary on fascism was in the
hands of writers who were not part of a disciplinary tradition, there was a quite
different response, because there was a local political motive for making
distinctions. Fascism was problematic, especially for socialist writers, in a way
that it was not for academic theorists, whose views typically could be elaborated
or stretched to accommodate fascism as a special case of a previously understood
pattern. For British socialists, the equivalences raised uncomfortable questions
about their own political ideals, questions famously exploited by Orwell. Their
analyses of fascism and Nazism were in part attempts to find differentia between
the socialist programme of the expansion of state power and the fascist program.
As Lassman shows, they found the differentiating concept they sought in
‘totalitarianism’, a term originating in the propaganda of fascism itself. The
historical image of fascism cultivated by such figures as Mussolini and Carl
Schmitt was that fascism represented the replacement of the liberal system of
compromise between partial interests with a ‘total’ regime, with the
comprehensive incorporation of partial interests under the authority of the state.
Labour socialism, oriented to the mundane interests of an economic and moral
constituency within a parliamentary structure, was a different species of socialism,
and British socialists sought to articulate this difference. The circumstances of
reception, including the Cold War, favoured the interpretation. At the same time
the revelation of the dimensions of the Holocaust worked against the ‘normalizing’
analyses of Nazism which had competed with the concept of totalitarianism: the
abnormality of the Holocaust demanded an abnormal cause.
What was missing in academic sociologists’ discussions, even in the cases of
those who understood the dangers of fascism, was an account which connected
the destructive potential of fascism to sociological facts.8 The much disputed
theory that Nazism was the product of the ‘new middle classes’ is an apparent
exception to this. But it is an exception that proves the rule. The connection
between the cause and the relevant consequences was made only by conjoining it
with the Reichian idea of the degree of sexual repression unique to this class, and
the special consequences for mass psychology and aggression of repressed
sexuality. The idea of ‘class basis’ was itself merely the extension of a familiar
explanatory pattern, the determination of politics by class-interest, which
accounted for the novelty of the phenomenon by identifying a novel class to cause
it. But it and the question of the class basis of fascism was in its actual effect a
political sedative which misled the opponents of fascism about its potential
strength and potential future course. Contempt for the class led to an
SOCIOLOGY AND FASCISM IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD 11
underestimation of the movement which was based on it. The reduction of politics
to class interests and class-specific psychology proved largely irrelevant to fascism
in power.
The puzzle of fascism remains, half a century after the conclusion of the war
against the fascist regimes. This study does not pretend to shed much direct light
on this puzzle. But it does illuminate a little discussed and poorly understood
precondition for fascism: the intellectual confusion that this ‘bolt from the blue’
engendered. Sociologists were not immune to this confusion, just as they were not
immune to temptations of participation in the fascist regimes. Myths die hard. The
myth of sociology’s opposition to fascism and of the wisdom of sociology in the
face of fascism deserves to die. But with it some other myths ought also to be
undermined. The myth of sociology as a ‘legitimator’ whose services are much
in demand ought simply to be forgotten. The idea that sociologists can be freed
of responsibility for the consequences of their sociology ought also to be given
up. There is nothing that assures that the effects of sociology will be progressive
or constructive other than the definitional equation of ‘true’ sociology with the
good. No sociology of the interwar era grasped fascism fully or produced an
unambiguously ‘correct’ political recipe for dealing with it. The continuing dispute
over the character of fascism and the interwar ‘fascist’ regimes suggests that these
are inappropriately high standards for social science. But the failure to meet them
indicates that the pretensions to political wisdom of social science are
inappropriate as well.
NOTES
1 As Theodor Adorno once put it, Hitler was the sworn enemy of sociology (Lepenies
1988:336).
2 Lepenies speaks of the ‘strange consensus between émigré and Nazi collaborator’
on this version of events (Lepenies 1988:336).
3 E.g. Hans Freyer. Cf. Jerry Muller 1987:367.
4 Muller’s excellent study of Freyer shows how complex the intellectual and personal
response of individuals might become. What is difficult to see from such studies is
the larger prosographical pattern of which the life in question forms a part within a
given political order. It is also of course impossible to identify the specific conditions
that made these national patterns distinctive.
5 Something similar may be seen in the case of psychology. See U.Geuter 1984.
6 Indeed, sociologists were readily found who were willing to cross the Constitutional
line between morale surveys and political polling in support of Roosevelt (Converse
1987:152–53).
7 Analyses which subsume fascism under some other broad pattern have enjoyed a
kind of second life owing to the moral horror of the Holocaust. Today it is possible,
not to say fashionable, to attack some movement of thought or tendency, such as
modernity, technology, rationality, capitalism, irreligion, and the like, by associating
it with Nazism.
12 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
8 The ‘new middle class’ thesis did not do so; the analysts, contempt for the class and
its ‘psychology’ led to contempt for the party that presumably represented its
interests and was the expression of its psychology. The exception to this rule of
failing to connect the explanation of fascism to its destructive potential was Thorstein
Veblen’s analysis in his eerily prophetic Imperial Germany and the Industrial
Revolution of 1915, and his successor work of 1917, An Inquiry into the Nature of
Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation. Joseph Dorfman’s claim for the former,
that ‘So well had Veblen caught the spirit of the Third Reich twenty years before
its birth that its accredited spokesmen sound as if they are merely obeying Veblen’s
logic not in broad outline but in specific detail’, no doubt grossly overstates the case.
Veblen had no inkling of Hitler or the specifics of the Nazi movement. But Veblen’s
analysis of what has come to be called the Deutsche Sonderweg showed in detail the
destructive potential of unbalanced German development in a system of democratic
states. Some of the virtues of this approach are retained in the work of Kirkpatrick
discussed by Bannister in his chapter on American sociology.
REFERENCES
Adorno, T.W. et al. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row.
Beetham, David (1977) ‘From Socialism to Fascism: The Relation Between Theory and
Practice in the Work of Robert Michels. Part II. The Fascist Ideologue.’ Political
Studies 25:161–81.
Beyerchen, Alan D. (1977) Scientists Under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community
in the Third Reich. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Burleigh, Michael (1988) Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of ‘Ostforschung’ in the
Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buxton, William and Stephen P.Turner (1992) ‘Edification and Expertise’, in Morris
Janowitz and Terry Halladay (eds) Sociology and Its Publics. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Converse, Jean M. (1987) Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence
1890–1960. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Durkheim, Emile (1933) The Division of Labor in Society. Translated by George
Simpson. New York: Macmillan.
Geuter, U. (1984) Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie im
Nationalisozialismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Lepenies, Wolf (1988) Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Muller, Jerry Z. (1987) The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the
Deradicalization of German Conservatism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press.
Pels, Dick (1987) ‘Hendrik de Man and the Ideology of Planism’, International Review
of Social History 3:206–229.
——(1991) ‘Treason of the Intellectuals: Paul de Man and Hendrik de Man’, Theory,
Culture & Society 8:21–56.
Proctor, Robert (1988) Racial Hygiene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ranulf, Svend (1939) ‘Scholarly Forerunners of Fascism’, Ethics (50): 16–34.
SOCIOLOGY AND FASCISM IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD 13
Weingart, Peter, Jürgen Kroll, and Kurt Bayertz (1988) Rasse, Blut und Gene:
Geschichte der Eugenik und Rassenhygiene in Deutschland. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
14
2
OUTSIDERS AND TRUE BELIEVERS
Austrian sociologists respond to fascism
Gerald Mozetič
The view that national socialism brutally brought sociology to a standstill and
reduced it to silence, long promoted by René Kōnig and widely accepted, can no
longer be taken seriously. The evidence is that National Socialism promoted
certain forms of sociology, among them the efforts of those sociologists who said
that 1933 marked a new beginning for sociology. These ideologically ambitious
sociologists were generally disappointed in the opportunities the new order
afforded them. But the demand for certain kinds of empirical sociology increased
considerably, and in consequence during the Third Reich there was more sociology
than before (Rammstedt 1986). The historical ambiguities of the term ‘sociology’
make this a difficult conclusion to establish.
The image of the history of sociology in general depends on what is considered
to be ‘sociology’. In the special case of the relationship between sociology and
fascism this turns out to be crucial. The approach of this chapter will be to treat
as a ‘sociologist’ whoever thought of himself or herself as a sociologist, or wrote
what was then regarded as sociology. This means that some of what we might
today decline to call sociology will be included.
In the case of Austrian sociology, the ambiguities of the term ‘sociology’ are
matched by the variety of ‘fascisms’ to which it responded. Immediately after
Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany, Dollfuss’s government in Austria began to
abolish democratic institutions and human rights. The suppression of the
working-class movement, the prohibition of the Social Democratic Party, the free
trade unions, and eventually all political parties led to a system called
Austro-fascism or the authoritarian corporate state (Larsen et al 1980). Dollfuss
was killed in an unsuccessful Putsch carried out by the Nazis in 1934. Austria
allied itself to Italian fascism in this period, and Italian political interests kept
Austria and Hitler apart. This means that, for our purposes, we must take into
consideration these three distinct varieties of fascism.
The common situation of the defeated countries after the First World War is
part of the political and socio-economic prehistory of fascism. Revolutions of the
left and revolutions of the right were regarded as everyday events, and it was
widely and fervently believed that democracy promotes socialism. An
anti-democratic, authoritarian policy was seen to be the only solution to the
problem of social and political order. These convictions had developed over
16 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
decades, so one can say that the history of fascism reaches back to the nineteenth
century. These ideas came into currency during the processes of industrialization
and democratization in Austria. To some extent they represent a general
phenomenon which occurs in all developing countries. But some of the intellectual
manifestations of this kind of reaction were peculiar to Austria. Finally, the Austria
that came into being in 1918 was indeed a ‘rest’, something that had remained
after the dismembering of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Whether this ‘Austria’
could survive was a matter of dispute. The idea of Anschluss (annexation) thus
was co-equal with the establishment of the First Republic in Austria.1
confronted with anyway—were rather poor, and successful steps forward were
few and feeble. When Hugo Spitzer in Graz established a Seminar für
Philosophische Soziologie in 1921, he reported at the end of 1924 that the library
of the seminar consisted of forty-five books. One can see from this how restricted
the possibilities were (Matthes 1973:222). The fact that ‘Gesellschaftslehre’ was
introduced into political science as an examination subject in 1926 and that it could
be chosen as a dissertation subject was celebrated as a major success at the Fifth
Convention of the German Sociological Society (which took place in Vienna)
(Käsler 1983). Sociology was still a marginal subject.
It is not easy to give a brief characterization of the sociological conceptions
which could be found in Austria at the beginning of the First Republic. Neither
Gumplowicz’s or Ratzenhofer’s naturalistic sociology had adherents. The spirit
of positivism appeared again within the Vienna Circle. But Otto Neurath’s later
attempt to develop a sociology based on behaviourism was without influence.3
The important ‘Austrian School’ in economics was responsible for some
interesting sociological analyses and could have contributed to the establishment
of a specific approach in sociology. But it lost ground at the university and
continued only in private circles.4 Wilhelm Jerusalem’s sociology of knowledge
remained only an episode, as did Max Adler’s rigorous but fruitless attempt to
present Marxism in the form of a positivistic sociology (Mozetič 1978, 1987). The
sociological approaches one thinks of today as the Austrian contribution to the
progress of sociology in the interwar years were formulated outside the university
or at best at the margin of academic life. This is true of Paul Lazarsfeld, Marie
Jahoda, Hans Zeisel and also of Alfred Schutz, Felix Kaufmann, and Edgar Zilsel.5
Those sociologists who began careers in this period and contributed to the
intellectual development of postwar sociology were correct in saying that they
developed their innovations in opposition to the mentality dominating at the
university at that time. All of them had to emigrate between 1934 and 1938.
The major exception to this pattern of marginality and failure was the
consequence of a decision made at the University of Vienna in 1919. Othmar
Spann was chosen to fill the late Eugen von Philippovich’s professorial chair in
political economy. In the previous years Spann had taught political economy at
the School of Technology in Brunn. He had announced that he did not want to
restrict himself to his nominal subject, but wished to teach sociology as well. The
professors of the Faculty of Law and Political Science agreed. Only the dean of
the faculty, Carl Grünberg— who in 1924 became the first director of the newly
founded Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt—expressed doubts. They were
rejected by the ministry. In the summer term of 1920 Spann gave a lecture in which
he roundly criticized the political basis of the young Austrian republic and
presented the programme of an authoritarian state. These expositions were first
published in 1921; by 1938 they had gone into a fourth edition (Spann 1921).
Spann welcomed efforts to eliminate democracy in Austria and replace it with a
‘corporative’ state. This declaration against parliamentary democracy was not the
private opinion of a scholar at his desk; it was a prominent expression of a
18 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
of forming the concept of a Ganzheit (whole) that does not come into being through
the mutual effects of its parts and that cannot be defined by them. When this is
done it may be shown that society is such a whole. The basic concept of
universalism is Gezweiung, i.e. that the human mind cannot be conceived of as
isolated Geist existing on its own and developing itself according to its own
principles, but always refers to spiritual community with others. This idealistic
and romantic idea, best formulated poetically by Novalis, shows the inadequacy
of individualism, which only knows complete, isolated people who have mutual
effects on each other. Geist can only be developed if it is connected with other
people’s Geist. Society is not something that comes into being because of
interaction, but exists through Gezweiung.11 Typical forms of Gezweiung are
friendship, love, family, and the relationship between student and teacher. Spann
considers the fact that society does not consist of the sum of all isolated individuals
—these individuals only exist because they are parts or members of society—a
presupposition of all authentic sociological science. By saying, as Aristotle already
had, that the whole is prior to the part, Spann affirmed not a temporal but a logical
priority. Society as a spiritual community is not a metaphysical entity that
independently lives a life of its own, any more than it would be possible for a
human body to exist independently of the organs. Society depends on its parts and
is expressed in its subtotalities.
Spann regards this finding as strictly logical and scientific. But the esoteric
philosophy and theory of categories have a political bias. Geist is something that
is hierarchically stratified. No Gezweiung can be based on equality. People cannot
participate in the common spiritual life to the same degree. All social
differentiations and hierarchies are or should be based on this stratification of
mind. That is the reason why all attempts to establish equality are doomed in
principle to failure. The universalistic characterization of the mind thus already
contains the principle of inequality which Spann made the norm in social and
political life. The solution to the problem of social order for the universalist is to
build up a stratified society according to the scale of spiritual values.
Starting from these presuppositions, Spann drafts a model of a perfect state, the
establishment of which would put an end to the age of individualism. Affection
in the community will take the place of atomism, utilitarianism will be replaced
by ethics of obligation, a sovereignty based on compulsion by the ‘whole’ will
supersede the sovereignty of the people, the delusion of equality will give way to
the organic relationship between leader and followers, and the time of capitalism
and democracy will be over. All the abuses and faults of capitalism and democracy
will be eliminated through the reconstruction of society on an estate basis.
Spann distinguishes between spiritual and acting ranks: all ranks are of the same
functional importance to the whole of society but they are not equivalent. Every
low rank is spiritually led by the rank above it. Inferior people can only participate
in the superior through adoration and devotion. The stratification of society is
based on a ranking of values. These values must be protected because the destiny
of society depends on the purity of values. The values can only be guaranteed
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 21
through power and the best form of government is the one in which the best come
into power. Who ‘the best’ are can only be decided from the top, not determined
by democracy, because the people lack spirituality and understanding.
However much Spann emphasizes the fact that the ranks live lives of their own
(‘vita propria’), a state is absolutely necessary. The state represents a top rank
(‘Hōchststand’) to the extent that, apart from its proper tasks, it acts as the referee
over all ranks. This means that in addition to the spiritual hierarchy there is, on a
different level, a hierarchy of action.
It is not necessary here to go into the details of the rank society envisioned by
Spann. Suffice it to say that Spann was one of those who regarded a ‘conservative
revolution’ as the solution to the problems of social and political order and
welcomed attempts to fight democracy and socialism. Before the relations of
Spann and his followers to the fascist movements are described, it will be useful
to understand Spann’s position in the sociology of the time.
Spann did not think much of his scientific colleagues and, when visited by the
American sociologist Earle Edward Eubank in 1934, spoke nearly exclusively of
himself and his works (K sler 1991:100–106). He criticized contemporary
sociology on the grounds that it concentrated on individualism and naturalism.
Spann considered Weber’s idea that sociology can arrive at a causal explanation
by interpretive understanding of social action an incomprehensible contradiction.
Weber’s concept of the ideal type was rejected because it is naturalistic and even
amateurish. Spann was particularly angry about Weber’s sociology of religion.
Had Weber been really serious about his method of understanding, he should have
entered into the spiritual content of religion, and taken into consideration the
specifically spiritual state of mind. But nothing of the kind can be found in Weber’s
works. On the contrary, his analysis is always concerned with the worldly
consequences of religious acting. He never tries to understand the metaphysical
secret of religion. Weber is an a-metaphysical man through and through: if such
a person turns to religion, then a caustic rage for devastating the Holy will appear.
Spann accused Weber of atheism, scepticism, materialism, individualism and
Marxism.12
The final consequence of his holistic universalism was metaphysical: God is
the highest form of mind and whole. From this Spann deduced that religion should
have a privileged position in the state and it must never be declared a private
matter. Since empiricist, individualistic and rationalistic sociology is not able to
distinguish and to acknowledge the Holy as Holy, it leads to moral relativism,
which has destructive effects on society. The fight for the reconstruction of society
thus does not permit relativism and pluralism in science, much less in culture.
From this point of view it is only consistent that Spann was enthusiastic about the
fact that certain books were thrown into bonfires by the Nazis in May 1933.13 He
celebrated these events as a triumph of the German mind. He never doubted that
the nation with the highest spiritual values was in the right and this nation was the
German one. Equally unequivocal is Spann’s verdict that the Jews never generated
a single creative talent of high degree and that their main characteristic is obduracy.
22 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
They repeatedly had the opportunity, Spann pointed out, to make themselves part
of a higher culture (i.e. become Christians). But they refused to do so. Thus they
refused to abandon the inferior sect for the superior faith and civilization (Spann
1934:281–284).
Nearly all the ideological convictions which paved the way for National
Socialism can be found in Spann’s works. In one respect, however, his ideology
was different from that of the Nazis. Since Spann started from the primacy of the
mind he could not agree to racism, which proceeded from the supposition of
biological determination. He thought this to be too naturalistic and even though
he did not deny completely the importance of racial characteristics, he considered
them to be at most only of secondary importance in relation to the sphere of the
mind.
Spann did not completely lose his scholarly reputation when he made his
political programme public. In 1926, when the Fifth Convention of the German
Sociological Society took place in Vienna, he was invited to give a lecture.
Naturally, his statements, in the section on methodology, all related to
universalism. They were discussed and, in part, vehemently criticized by Leopold
von Wiese, Max Adler, Franz Oppenheimer, Felix Kaufmann and Robert
Wilbrandt. The general topic of the convention was democracy. But the
participants succeeded in discussing this topic without referring explicitly to
Spann, the deadly enemy of democracy.14
that the organic idea of state, born out of the German Geist, will be realized in the
country of its origin.
On 9 June 1933 Spann gave a lecture in Rome for the ‘Confederazione
Nazionale Fascista del Commercio’. Here we again find the argument that
individualism and Marxism can only be completely destroyed if they are fought
with a theory of the ‘true state’. Spann offered his model of the corporate state as
this spiritual weapon (Spann 1933a). But just as the Carta del Lavoro of 1927,
which Heinrich had studied thoroughly, did not in the least correspond to Spann’s
ideas of the order of corporations neither did the reform of the corporate system
in 1934 lead to the separation of economy and state which Spann considered
essential. Thus in spite of their favourable reception in fascist Italy, Spann’s ideas
did not really exercise any influence and the hopes of Spann’s followers were not
fulfilled.
Spann’s followers became particularly active in Austria in the late 1920s. After
the burning of the Justizpalast in 1927, the political atmosphere was highly
charged. The anti-democratic forces in the Heimwehr, the united front consisting
of middle-class, rural and aristocratic representatives, became stronger.15 In 1928,
Ignaz Seipel, the leader of the Christian Socialist Party, confirmed its ‘longing for
true democracy’. The term implied the abolition of party rule, widely regarded as
the root of political evil. Still accepting ‘democracy’, Seipel supported those
whose aim it was to destroy democracy, the Heimwehr. He knew some of Spann’s
followers personally and might have encouraged them to support the Heimwehr
ideologically. Walter Heinrich and Hans Riehl assumed leading positions in the
Heimwehr in 1929, and organized the political training of the Heimwehr (Siegfried
1974:84). Several leaflets were written through which the members of the
Heimwehr became acquainted with Spann’s theory. In a programmatic lecture on
the spiritual basis of the Heimwehr movement Heinrich explained that Austria
was approaching a situation of decision in which the only choice was between
Bolshevism and the corporate state (Heinrich n.d.).
The aspirations of the Spannians to become the ideological leaders of the
Heimwehr were not fulfilled. When during the discussion about the reform of the
Austrian constitution in 1929 it became evident that the Heimwehr was not strong
enough to realize its ideas, the different interests of the individual factions within
the Heimwehr led to internal contests for power. In the autumn of 1930 the
aristocratic wing of the Heimwehr, represented by Starhemberg, was victorious;
those on whom Spann’s followers had set their hopes were defeated. This put an
end to Heinrich’s and Riehl’s position of influence in the Heimwehr.
A fresh impetus was given to the Spannians when in 1931 the Papal Encyclical
Quadragesimo anno, in which the establishment of corporate bodies was
demanded, was published. The ensuing discussion among Catholics, not only in
Austria, was important in disseminating Spann’s conceptions. The aims that were
realized by Dollfuss’s regime after the abolition of democracy in 1933–34 were
ideologically supported by Quadragesimo anno, and reflected its central ideas.
The reforms did not, however, win Spann’s approval. The new constitution
24 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
proclaimed on 1 May 1934 generated the corporate state, but, in Spann’s opinion,
only on paper. He protested that the constitution had made a caricature of the idea
of the ranks, and was still much too characterized by the democratic spirit of 1789
to pass as ‘corporative’! Above all, the state still retained too much power, power
that Spann thought should go to ranks (Spann 1933a). Thus, however much
Spann’s followers were satisfied with the abolition of party democracy and the
elimination of the Marxist-oriented working-class movement, they could not
identify themselves with the new system of Austro-fascism.
The Spannians found the Nazi movement congenial because, as they understood
matters, the Nazi programme contained many of their own political aims. In
Gottfried Feder’s commentary of 1927 on the programme of the NSDAP, Spann’s
universalistic conception of society was called ideal. Spann in turn supported the
Nationalsoziatistische Gesellschaft für deutsche Kultur, founded by Alfred
Rosenberg in 1927, which was designed to propagandize for National Socialism
among people with a university education. In 1929, in the Auditorium maximum
of the University of Munich, Spann gave a lecture on the cultural crisis of the
present, in which he complained about the enormous influence of the Jews,
especially in the field of philosophy. After the performance Hitler, who was
present, congratulated the lecturer (Siegfried 1974:253).
At the end of 1931, when the press agency Grossdeutscher Pressedienst
reported that Spann was in agreement with the newly founded German
Katholisch-Soziale Nationalpartei, Spann instructed his lawyer in Munich to
demand a retraction. The founder of this party had been one of his students, but
Spann himself had nothing to do with the party. After some weeks his lawyer
wrote Spann a letter informing him that it turned out that the Grossdeutscher
Pressedienst and the National Socialist Press Agency were one and the same. Thus
he was unable to continue to plead Spann’s cause and he suggested ‘an amicable
settlement’.16
This farcical episode was settled, in at least this sense: Spann became a member
of the NSDAP in 1933. A short time previously he published an essay presenting
the plan of a corporativist reconstruction of Germany. Spann’s views were
supported by the representatives of heavy industry, primarily because his model
did not provide for autonomous working-class organizations. He considered that
the workers should form a corporation with the employers, something that would
in practice have guaranteed the predominance of the industry. This kind of
arrangement was meant to compete with, and prevent the incorporation of the
workers into, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, which after the abolition of the unions
was to control the workers. With the consent of Hitler, heavy industry, under Fritz
Thyssen, financed an Institut für Ständewesen. In June 1933 the institute was
opened in Dusseldorf, and Spann’s followers found a new outlet in the training of
leading managers and leaders of the working people. The director of the institute
was Spann’s student Josef Klein. The scientific director was, for a time, Walter
Heinrich.
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 25
When the NSDAP was banned in Austria in July 1934, after the National
Socialists’ riot (which failed but caused Chancellor Dollfuss’s death), Spann and
his followers found themselves in a difficult situation. As they did not distance
themselves from National Socialism, they were watched by the police. Early in
1934 Spann’s son Rafael published a daily paper which was clearly oriented
towards National Socialism and to which Spann’s wife also contributed. It was
banned in April 1934. Spann’s second son was arrested. When the Austrian
corporate state took measures against officials who declared themselves National
Socialists, and even dismissed several professors, Spann himself was placed in
danger. But he took the official oath of loyalty to the new state and was not
suspended. It was certainly to his advantage that he had good connections with
Catholic circles and that he had always favoured a Christian state.
The Spannians were soon not welcome even in National Socialist Germany.
The conflict with the Deutsche Arbeitsfront became worse. Moreover, those who
considered themselves the real guardians and defenders of the
Nazi-Weltanschauung rejected Spann’s claim to ideological leadership. Alfred
Rosenberg (Hitler’s agent for Weltanschauung) was especially hostile to the
Spannians and emphasized one remarkable difference between National Socialism
and universalism: Spann rejected biological racism and thus rejected a central
tenet of National Socialism. The result of this conflict was unequivocal: Spann’s
followers had to withdraw from the Institut für Ständewesen, which lost its
importance altogether, and Spann was stigmatized as a dangerous enemy of
National Socialism.
As he himself lamented in 1936, the political movement which he had always
supported turned against him—something he could not understand. Subsequently
the attacks against him in the National Socialist press became more violent. After
Austria’s annexation, Spann and some of his disciples were arrested by the
Gestapo. Spann himself was set free after some months, but Heinrich spent a year
and a half in a concentration camp. The Gau-Gericht of the district administration
in Styria rejected Spann’s application for membership in the NSDAP in 1939,
saying that Spann could not be considered a National Socialist because of his
glorification of theocracy and his rejection of the Rassenlehre. So his last attempt
to gain a footing in the NSDAP failed.17
After 1945 Spann and his followers presented themselves as victims of National
Socialism, enabling Spann’s school to survive National Socialism and to regain
some influence after 1945. This presentation was true in certain respects, but of
course the victimization was of a special kind.
probably the most prominent.18 For them the solution to the problem of the correct
Christian order and of the social problem was sought beyond the institutions
created by these social and economic developments. The close relationship
between Catholicism and the dynasty of the Habsburgs was embodied in the
Concordat of 1855, which granted the Church extraordinary privileges. This
relationship was not seriously endangered by the concessions made to the spirit
of liberalism in the Austrian constitution of 1867, or in subsequent legislation.
When the monarchy fell, however, the Catholic Church was confronted with a
completely new situation, in which its position was endangered both by political
liberalization and the threat of proletarian socialism. In self-defense, the Church
developed a highly aggressive counter-program, a fully political Catholicism. The
resolutely anti-democratic and anti-capitalist ideas of M ller and Vogelsang,
which had been pushed into the background in Austrian Catholicism after
Vogelsang’s death in 1890, were reborn. These ideas had originally served to bring
about a more receptive attitude to social policy within the existing state. So-called
solidarism, which seemed to be confirmed by the encyclical Rerum novarum of
1891, implied that a solution to the social problem was possible without a radical
reconstruction of society. Spann shared the anti-capitalist and antidemocratic
attitude of Vogelsang’s successors, but he was always at variance with the
representatives of solidarism, such as Heinrich Pesch, Gustav Gundlach and
Oswald von Nell-Breuning.19 Moreover, the Catholics disagreed on another
essential question of whether or not Austria should strive for annexation by
Germany. This became an important issue in the 1930s, when conflicts arose
between National Socialism and the Austrian corporate state.
Most of the Catholic theorists and journalists furthered fascism in the sense that
they rejected the republic established in 1918. When Ignaz Seipel stood up for the
republic at its beginning, it was not an expression of a support for democracy in
principle, but was motivated by the reflection that the new democratic forms
should not be left to the socialists. Only a few days before the proclamation of the
republic, the Christian socialists announced that they considered monarchy the
best of all forms of government. Vigorous attacks against the young republic by
the Catholics were an everyday occurrence. Even though Vogelsang’s supporters
did not have direct political influence at the time, his representatives criticized
democracy in a way that presaged the National Socialist criticisms. The leading
theorist of Vogelsang’s school, Anton Orel, declared democracy to be a disease
that had to be overcome. In democracy a plutocratic oligarchy reigns; under the
mask of a republican constitution a ‘republic of Jews’, unbearable for a Catholic,
established itself. Capitalism and Communism were both understood to be
incompatible with Christianity (Diamant 1960).
Catholic circles and groups in general declared themselves against democracy
and the republic and for an authoritarian, Christian order. The Catholics in the
First Austrian Republic did not accept the ‘liberal’ separation of society and state.
Their criterion for the evaluation of political programmes was the role of the
Church. Catholics agreed with anti-democratic solutions as long as the influence
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 27
of the Church was asserted. Consequently, the Church kept in the background
when it would have been important to defend democracy against fascism.
It is striking how often the term ‘sociology’ appears in Catholic discussion about
the correct social order. From 1925 on, a Katholische Wochenschrift für Religion,
Kultur, Soziologie und Volkswirtschaft was published. In it, Ernst Karl Winter
examined the sociological essence of Plato’s work, a ‘scholarly group of Catholic
sociologists’ elaborated a Catholic and social manifesto, and there was also a group
of ‘sociologists’ in Klagenfurt. This ‘sociology’ was nothing other than Catholic
social teaching. Ferdinand Frodl’s Gesettschaftslehre illustrates what such
‘sociologies’ consisted of Frodl concludes from the biblical report of Eve’s
creation out of Adam’s rib that with this event society was not only founded but
its nature determined (Frodl 1936). Without making fun of the religious, Leopold
von Wiese (1937:661), in a review article, complained about the blending of social
theory and theology which characterized many publications which were labelled
as ‘sociological’ by Catholic authors of that era. Yet the most important Catholic
sociologist to address fascism, Ernst Karl Winter (1895–1959), did not fit this
mould. Winter, atypically, supported a strictly methodological separation of
theology and sociology. Consequently he was regarded as an outsider by the
Catholics. Winter’s position was closely connected with neo-Kantianism, and
particularly Hans Kelsen’s dualism between law and sociology and between norm
and fact. Against a crude empiricism, he asserted the primacy of concepts in
sociology, though without denying the importance of experience as a corrective.
Winter wanted to protect the autonomy of sociology in the face of theology, in
contrast to ‘Catholic sociologists’. Although in the 1920s he was still a supporter
of the monarchy, he became one of the most rigorous critics of political
Catholicism, and, after the abolition of democracy in 1933–34, he became a
solitary Catholic fighter for democracy and for rapprochement with socialism.
Shocked at the Austrian and German developments of 1933–34, Winter
occupied himself more and more with fascism. He reproached his Catholic friends
—including Dollfuss, with whom he had become friends during the First World
War, when they were both in the same regiment—for their aim of establishing a
corporate state. For Winter, this was a metaphysical aim with heuristic function,
similar to the eschatology of the classless society (Heinz 1984:76). But in practice,
Winter argued, the ‘corporate state’ was merely a masked neo-capitalism, which
was far from bridging the class-contrasts between bourgeoisie and proletariat and
peasants. In order to stand up successfully to the mortal threat of National
Socialism, he believed, a coalition between conservativism and Austro-Marxism
needed to be established. His imploring appeals to establish a strong Austrian front
against National Socialism were, however, without effect. But by taking this
position Winter made himself a useful tool of the corporate state: as one of the
vice-mayors of Vienna he was used to winning over the working class to the
authoritarian regime. Winter fought futile fights everywhere. But when he dared
to demand the unification of Catholics and Bolshevists in the struggle against
National Socialism, he went too far, and had to give up his political role (Heinz
28 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
his last book. Oddly, the idea is in a certain sense very similar to Spann’s basic
thesis of Gezweiung. Adler’s answer to the question of how society is possible is
free from empirical considerations: what is real and true is inaccessible to the
isolated individual; in thinking I am with others. A transcendental socialization
of the mind thus is the basis of all societies. When Max Adler announced that ‘We
are going to construct modern sociology with Kant and Marx’ during the
convention of the German Sociological Society in 1924, he meant that the
epistemological foundation of sociology can only be established in the spirit of a
transcendental philosophy, while Marxism embodies the most developed form of
empirical sociology. His interpretation of the materialistic conception of history
minimized the difference between economic basis and ideological superstructure
by ranking both with the Geist. Society is thus a spiritual fact. If Marxism examines
social regularities, it must account for them by applying the concept of psychic or
social causality (Mozetič 1978:286ff).
Adler did not succeed in demonstrating the fruitfulness of his approach in the
concrete analysis of social processes. His few incidental remarks about fascism
are not very original. The extent to which his thinking was considered esoteric is
shown in the fact that Adler was arrested as a prominent socialist in February
1934, but was soon allowed to continue his teaching at the University of Vienna,
with the restriction that he was not permitted to lecture on socialism or politics.
In 1936 the corporate state allowed the publication of a final book in which Adler
summarized his work (1936). It was published by a small publishing house in
Vienna, poorly distributed and produced no effects.
Austro-Marxist commentaries on the phenomenon of fascism began to appear
immediately after the Italian fascists’ march on Rome in 1922. For example, Julius
Braunthal, one of Otto Bauer’s closest collaborators, tried to analyse the
sociological causes and the political and ideological functions of fascism. He
explained that fascist forces come into being where the propertied classes, the
economic power of which is unquestioned, encounter the political opposition of
a strengthening working-class movement. Supported by parts of the bourgeoisie,
the rentiers organize themselves in military troops to be put into action against
socialism and democracy. Their anti-socialist and nationalist ideology especially
appealed to the petite bourgeoisie. He surmised that if fascism came into power,
it would destroy the organized working-class movement, make itself independent
of the bourgeoisie, and build up a new state. But the capitalist mode of production
would not be touched (Braunthal 1922).
The Austrian social democrats were convinced that they would soon gain a
parliamentary majority and would be able to realize their programme in a
democratic way. They considered the rise of Italian fascism a warning: it indicated
that if the working-class movement could not be defeated with democratic means,
at least one part of the bourgeoisie and other anti-socialist classes were willing to
use violence and to abolish democracy. But this was a perception which developed
slowly.
30 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
increasing their exploitation. Within its own ranks, fascism eliminated all the
forces which pressed for fulfilment of the anti-capitalist aims which had been part
of the ideological and propagandistic reservoir of fascism during its rise to power.
At the end of his life, Bauer emphasized more heavily the economic aspects of
fascism, and interpreted fascism as a new phase in the development of capitalism.
The successes of fascism, the quick elimination of unemployment in the Third
Reich and the increase in productivity were said to be due to the superiority of a
command economy over the anarchy of liberal capitalism. But the successful
economic measures used by fascism, once in place, cannot be used to defuse new
economic crises. So in the face of new economic crises, fascism must either accept
them, with incalculable consequences, or choose the imperialistic strategy of war,
and build up, at great expense, a military machine.
Bauer, like other Austro-Marxists, realized the Austrian model of the corporate
state could only be called ‘semi-fascism’ and it never acquired the mass support
of National Socialism in Germany.
fascist thinking on the state in 1935. In the preface he stressed that he was
presenting a purely scientific essay which had nothing to do with propaganda or
criticism. Menzel outlines the Weltanschauung of fascism and its roots in the
history of ideas going back to antiquity.21 Despite his announced objectivity,
Menzel suggests that he considers fascism a great innovation of the mind and
politics. He concludes his study by stating contentedly that the fascist idea of the
state continued much of what he had himself proposed as the ‘energetic theory of
the state’ in 1912 (Menzel 1935).
Those sociologists who emigrated from Austria, such as Paul Lazarsfeld, Alfred
Schutz and Felix Kaufmann, did not seem to concern themselves with fascism
after they emigrated. Karl Polanyi’s contributions, written in the mid-1930s in
Britain, concentrated on the theme that fascism was the enemy of both socialism
and Christianity (Polanyi 1935). Friedrich August von Hayek and Karl Popper
wrote books in which they criticized the totalitarian trends of their time. However,
they were directed primarily against Stalinism and socialist theory. The idea that
fascism had come into being as a product of the capitalist society was regarded as
completely absurd by the liberals. Ludwig von Mises’ view of fascism of 1927,
unfortunately a prognostic disaster, is worth mentioning in this connection.
Fascism, he claimed, had nothing to do with capitalism, but was rather a direct
reaction to Bolshevism (an interpretation with which the Austro-Marxists
concurred). However, von Mises thought, brutality and barbarism were not as
developed in fascism as in Bolshevism. Mises explains this by the fact that fascism
came into being in countries in which the memory of some 1,000 years of cultural
development cannot be stamped out at one blow, whereas on both sides of the
Ural Mountains there are barbarians who have never come into contact with
civilization. Mises therefore was optimistic that the fascists, who had been carried
away by their indignation at Bolshevism and had thus committed actions out of
emotional disturbance, would soon return to moderate politics.22 Mises shared this
opinion with Karl Renner, who also considered the advanced culture of the
Germans an insuperable obstacle to fascism, and with many other contemporaries.
They could not imagine the barbarities that became historical reality in the country
of poets and philosophers. Mises was even of the opinion that fascism had a certain
useful function.23
The survey of the Austrian sociologists’ relation to fascism given here does not
warrant much optimism about the ability of sociology to resist dominant political
and spiritual trends. The spectrum includes naiveté and self-deluded vanity,
familiarity and opportunism, eager participation and attempts at ideological
leadership. Those who were able to avoid this did so as a consequence of their
political commitments and the challenges posed to them by fascism rather than
through their rigorously ‘scientific’ sociological perspective.
34 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
NOTES
I am indebted to my sister Lydia for her help. The ‘Alfred Schachner
Ged chtnisfonds’ provided financial support for the translation of this paper.
1 For a short description of Austrian history in the twentieth century see Sweeney and
Weidenholzer (1988). Of course there is a large literature on this topic.
2 The beginnings of sociology in Austria are discussed by Torrance (1976). This article
must be used with care because of numerous minor errors. For a more comprehensive
description see Langer (1988), and the instructive article by Müller (1989) on the
Sociological Society in Graz.
3 Neurath (1931a and b). There is a large literature on the aims and history of the
Vienna Circle. For a short summary with respect to the political dimension see
Wartofsky (1982).
4 The most prominent was that of Ludwig Mises. Members of Mises’ private seminar
were inter alia Friedrich Hayek, Oskar Morgenstern, Fritz Machlup, Gottfried
Haberler, Felix Kaufmann, Alfred Schutz, and Erich Voegelin.
5 The works of Schutz (1932) and Kaufmann (1936) did not influence the development
of the social sciences in the 1930s, and the same is true with respect to the articles
of Zilsel (1992), and for that matter the study on the Arbeitslosen von Marienthal
(Jahoda et al. 1933) cf. the autobiographical notes by Lazarsfeld (1968).
6 Walter Heinrich may have been the most important contributor to the further
development and continuation of Spann’s school. In 1933 he was appointed
Extraordinarius for political economy at the Hochschule (university) for World
Trade. In 1938 he had to quit his professorship and was kept in a concentration camp
by the Nazis for eighteen months. He was able to resume academic work at the
Hochschule für Welthandel after 1945, where he served as full professor from 1949
to his retirement, gathering around him a circle of Spann’s followers. Heinrich was
one of the leaders in the foundation of a Gesellschaft für Ganzheitsforschungin 1956
and the editor of the Zeitschrift für Ganzheitsforschung. Between 1963 and 1979 a
complete edition of Spann’s works, comprising twenty-one volumes, was published.
The attention and care with which it was treated by editors and publishers is
indicative of the long-term influence of Spann’s school in Austria. That in a certain
sense Spann is still alive in Austria is evident in a recently published book (Pichler
1988).
7 Suranyi-Unger (1927–28), who later emigrated to the United States where he became
Professor of Economics at Syracuse University. In 1950 Suranyi-Unger contributed
an article for the Spann-Festschrift (Suranyi-Unger 1950).
8 In a foreword to this article the editor states (Akabane 1927–28:586f): ‘So ist diese
kleine Arbeit ein r hmliches Zeugnis daf r, dass der Siegeszug der deutschen
Wissenschaft auch durch die furchtbaren Schicksalsschl ge, die das deutsche Volk
im letzten Jahrzehnt über sich ergehen lassen musste, nicht gehemmt werden konnte.
Besonders zeigt sie uns, dass die philosophische Behandlung der wirtschaftlichen
Probleme, wie sie Othmar Spann lehrt, ferner dass sein gesellschaftstheoretischer
Universalismus selbst schon im Lande der aufgehenden Sonne festen Fuss zu fassen
beginnt.’ Among the contributors to the journal Nationalwirtschaft were Eugen
Kogon (1927–28) and Alfred Vierkandt (1928–29a and b).
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 35
9 In this context it should be mentioned that Alfred Peters, a German who had taught
journalism at the Hochschule für Welthandel in Vienna since 1931, was habilitated
in sociology with special regard to the sociology of print media in 1939–40. He was
appointed as a Dozent at the faculty of jurisprudence and political science.
10 For a more detailed description of Spann’s basic ideas see Landheer (1931 and 1948)
which contain additional references to articles dealing with Spann’s thinking. I am
aware of only one work of Spann’s in English, his History of Economic Thought,
translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, which appeared in 1929.
11 See Spann, 1930, p.130: ‘Dem Universalismus ist gerade und einzig der geistige
Zusammenhang der Einzelnen der Quellpunkt alles geistigen Lebens. Das wahre
Wesen der Gesellschaft liegt ihm in der geistigen Kr fteschōpfung, die im
Miteinander, in der geistigen Gegenseitigkeit der Menschen gegeben ist. Das
Geistige jedes Menschen, der Kern und das Wesenhafte seiner Individualit t, besteht
nur in und durch Gezweiung.’
12 Cf. Spann, 1923, p.200, where you can find the following judgement with respect
to Weber’s sociology of religion: ‘Es ist eine seltene Verst ndnisarmut, die sich hier
an ein ihr unerschwingliches Grundgebiet des sozialen Lebens, die Religiosit t,
heranwagt, es ist eine tzende Sucht, zu zersetzen und zu zerstören, die sich hier
kundtut. Und was bietet sie selber?—überall nur ein atheistisches Aufkl rertum
plattester Art Max Weber hat recht, es ist ein “Sein ohne Sollen”, ein Wertfreies
und Wertloses, das er uns hier zum besten gibt. Vor 20 Jahren noch hatte Max Webers
Atheismus, Skeptizismus, Materialismus, Individualismus, Marxismus und was
dieser Art mehr ist, sein “gross’ Publikum” gefunden. Heute ist seine Zeit vorbei,
heute ist seine Lehre tote Wissenschaft Max Weber war ein d monisch-ruheloser
Mann, der auf andere persōnlich zu wirken vermochte, dem es aber nicht beschieden
war, ein Lebenswerk zu hinterlassen, das dauern konnte.’
13 Spann, 1933b, p.181: ‘Es ist ein Ruhmesblatt der nationalsozialistischen
Umwälzung, ein Triumph des deutschen Wesens, dass man die B cher des
Unholdentums ōffentlich in das Feuer warf (10 May 1933).
14 How this abstinence, strange from today’s perspective, came about is not mentioned
in the printed report on the debates during the convention (Verhandlungen l927).
15 This was a ‘united front’ only in the sense of unity in the battle against the left. There
were different interests and ideas in this party. The Heimwehren had come into being
immediately after the end of the First World War when the borders of the new state
of Austria were not determined and the government in Vienna seemed too weak to
be able to stand up to claims for territory and trespass. In the 1920s the political
character of these associations changed. The Heimwehren did not have a clear,
concrete political programme apart from their struggle against the working class
movement, which was organized in the Social Democratic Party. The establishment
of an authoritarian state was a means by which the Social Democratic Party would
be prevented from acquiring power through parliamentary means. The counterpart
of the socialist working class was the Republikanische Schutzbund. Thus the political
forces of the First Republic knew that behind them in the case of escalating conflicts
were paramilitary associations. See also Pauley 1980.
16 This is based on documents in the Archiv zur Geschichte der Soziologie in
Osterreich, Graz.
17 Spann-documents, Archiv zur Geschichte der Soziologie in Osterreich, Graz.
36 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
18 For Spann and his disciples Adam M ller’s work was regarded as the starting-point
for modern social thinking. In a posthumously published edition of the papers of
Karl von Vogelsang, the editor (Klopp 1894:6) considers these articles an important
contribution to Christian sociology.
19 Ludwig von Mises also considered solidarism a threatening socialist doctrine.
20 Hans Kelsen (1924) and Otto Bauer (1924) are reprinted in G.Mozetič (ed.)
Austro-Marxistische Positionen, Vienna et al., Bōhlau, 1983, pp.205–215 and 216–
231.
21 Perhaps prudently, considering the year of publication.
22 Mises, 1927, p. 43: ‘Die Taten der Fascisten waren Reflex- und Affekthandlungen,
hervorgerufen durch die Empörung über die Taten der Bolschewiken und
Kommunisten. Sowie der erste Zorn verraucht war, lenkte ihre Politik in
gem ssigtere Bahnen ein und wird voraussichtlich immer mehr Mässigung an den
Tag legen.’
23 Mises, 1927, p. 45: ‘Es kann nicht geleugnet werden, dass der Faszismus und alle
hnlichen Diktaturbestrebungen voll von den besten Absichten sind und dass ihr
Eingreifen f r den Augenblick die europ ische Gesittung gerettet hat. Das Verdienst,
das sich der Faszismus damit erworben hat, wird in der Geschichte ewig fortleben.
Doch die Politik, die im Augenblick Rettung gebracht hat, ist nicht von der Art, dass
das dauernde Festhalten an ihr Erfolg versprechen konnte. Der Faszismus war ein
Notbehelf des Augenblicks; ihn als mehr anzusehen, ware ein verhängnisvoller
Irrtum.’
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——(1933) Kapitalismus, Bolschewismus, Faschismus, Jena: Gustav Fischer.
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SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 37
Botz, G. (1974) ‘Genesis und Inhalt der Faschismustheorien Otto Bauers’, International
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Bauer (1881–1938) Theorie und Praxis, Vienna: Europaverlag, pp. 161–192.
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Nationalwirtschaft 2:681–709.
Braunthal, J. (1922) ‘Der Putsch der Fascisten’, Der Kampf 15:320–323.
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ständischen Aufbaus, Graz and Leipzig: Leuschner & Lubensky.
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and the Social Order 1918–1934, Princeton University Press.
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——(1928) ‘Die Ordnung in Italien’, Der Kampf 21:593–604.
——(1932) ‘Wurzeln und Geisteshaltung des internationalen Faschismus’, Der Kampf
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——(1990) Rund um ‘Marienthal’. Von den Anfängen der Soziologie in Osterreich bis
zu ihrer Vertreibung, Vienna: Verlag f r Gesellschafts Kritik.
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Fuchs, A. (1978) Geistige Strömungen in Österreich 1867–1918, Vienna: Lōcker.
G nther, A, (1940) Der Rassegedanke in der weltanschaulichen Auseinandersetzung
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Haag, J. (1980) ‘Marginal Men and the Dream of the Reich: Eight Austrian
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248.
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Nationalwirtschaft 2:273–291, 437–453, 591–615, 746–769.
——(1934) Die soziale Frage. Ihre Entstehung in der individualistischen und ihre
Lōsung in der ständischen Ordnung, Jena: Gustav Fischer.
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38 AUSTRIAN SOCIOLOGISTS RESPOND TO FASCISM
Jahoda, M., Lazarsfeld, P., and Zeisel, H. (1933) Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal. Ein
soziographischer Versuch über die Wirkungen langdauernder Arbeitslosigkeit,
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SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 39
This chapter will focus on two subjects: the history of Italian sociology during
fascism and the sociological analyses of fascism given by Italian social scientists
in the 1920s and 1930s. The two subjects are related: some of these social scientists
also produced works that were potentially relevant to the theoretical growth of the
discipline, even though most of this potential could not be fully exploited in Italy
under fascism. Few of these authors— perhaps only Roberto Michels and Corrado
Gini—called themselves sociologists. A great deal of what was regarded as
‘sociology’ in Italy up to the 1940s would probably have been labelled differently
afterwards—e.g. as social philosophy, political theory, demography. Sociology
as an autonomous discipline was just being institutionalized in Italy during the
1920s and 1930s.
deep-rooted image of the past of Italian sociology was part of the cultural climate
of an entire intellectual generation.6
In recent years, now that the cultural climate of the immediate postwar period
has faded, a re-examination of this interpretation—which was also taken up across
the Atlantic—has begun. There is increasing consensus that the stunted
development of sociology in Italy should not be attributed exclusively to the
influence of idealist and spiritualist philosophy but rather to the unequal and
intermittent development of positivist social culture from the middle years of the
nineteenth century onwards. Seen from this perspective, the limitations of Italian
positivist thought become apparent. The controversy that followed the first
Conference of Sociology at Genoa in 1899 and the principles set out by the Rivista
italiana di sociologia demonstrate that, although the many Italian sociologists of
the time realized that they had to give a clearly defined basis to their discipline,
they attempted to do so without the help of a solid theoretical framework. The
work of Auguste Comte was largely unknown in Italy, and there was considerable
reliance on the theories of Charles Darwin and of Herbert Spencer—not always
to the benefit of scientific progress (Barbano and Sola 1985).
Careful examination of the source material shows that Italian sociology
continued to develop—albeit unevenly—despite the opposition of Croce. On 17
February 1906 a circular letter signed by fifty-eight university lecturers was sent
to the Minister of Education petitioning for the establishment of university chairs
of sociology. The attempt was unsuccessful, and Croce, who had received the
letter, took the opportunity to give a clear statement of his views—something
which he never failed to do when he was in disagreement—in his journal:
Sociology considered in its historical sense, that is, as the effective modern
sociological movement, is nothing more than positivism; positivism which
treats especially of the facts and actions of man, and deals with morality and
law rather than with zoology and chemistry. As positivism, it is therefore
an implicit negation of freedom for determinism, of teleology for
mechanism; a more or less coherent, more or less disguised affirmation of
materialism. Such is sociology, in its historical genesis (Comte) and in its
living spirit; and this is why anyone of idealist conscience rejects, and must
necessarily reject, the presuppositions, the methods, the conclusions, and
even, I would say, the style of modern sociology.
(Croce 1906)
Despite Croce’s aggressive polemic and the failure to persuade the Minister of
Education to include sociology in the Italian university curriculum (a failure due
in part to the belief of some academics that, although valid, scientific subjects
without a history behind them should not be taught, and in part to the opposition
of those who feared that the teaching of sociology would spread advanced political
ideas in the universities), numerous Italian scholars persisted in their studies of
the subject and in their international activities (Garofalo 1906). These years saw
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 47
numerous efforts to give synthesis to the new discipline, most notably the
Dizionario di sociologia by Fausto Squillace, published in Palermo in 1905
(Squillace 1911).7 The institutionalization of sociology proceeded in close relation
to international developments.
The Institut International de Sociologie organized a conference in London on
the theme ‘Social Struggles’ for its members and associates, held 3–6 July 1906.
The conference was attended by Raffaele Garofalo, one of the leading exponents
of the positivist penal school, Giorgio Arcoleo and Alfredo Niceforo, professor
of statistics, noted for his research into poverty and social stratification. The
seventh conference of the Institut International, of which Raffaele Garofalo was
chairman, was held in Berne 20–24 July 1909 on the theme ‘Solidarity’. In 1910,
after a campaign by the Italian members of the International Institute, the Società
italiana di sociologia was founded. The creators of the society were twenty of the
most eminent sociologists at work in Italy. Raffaele Garofalo was appointed
chairman, and Giorgio Arcoleo, Errico De Marinis, Enrico Ferri and Giuseppe
Sergi vice-chairmen.
Public confirmation of the academic respectability of sociology in Italy was
given by the VIII Congress of the Institut International de Sociologie, held in
Rome 7–12 October 1912. The conference was inaugurated in Campidoglio, the
historic Roman city hall, with an audience that included Italian and foreign public
figures. The guests to the conference were welcomed by Guido Cavaglieri,
professor of administrative law at Rome University and co-director with Giuseppe
Sergi, professor of anthropology, of the Rivista italiana di sociologia.
In the years that followed, Italian sociology came to a standstill, but not because
of the ‘predominance of Italian idealism’. The ninth conference of the Institut
International de Sociologie, which was to have been held in Vienna in 1915 on
the theme of ‘Authority and the Social Hierarchy’, was cancelled. The community
of Italian scholars was swept up by the war.8 The death of Guido Cavaglieri in
1918 marked the beginning of the end for the Rivista italiana di sociologia. The
new editorial board, composed of Sante De Sanctis, Augusto Graziani, G.M.
Fiamingo, Alfredo Niceforo and Giuseppe Sergi, managed to keep the journal
going until 1921—its twenty-fifth year of publication—but then it finally folded.
But there were other, more promising developments.
During the early 1920s, Piero Gobetti and his associates on the journal
Rivoluzione liberals (1923–25) turned their attention to certain aspects of
sociology. In a few years of intense activity—which ended tragically with
Gobetti’s exile and death in 1926—this journal printed a debate on Italian
liberalism of the highest quality, including, in 1923, an article entitled ‘La
democrazia tedesca nel pensiero di Max Weber’ by Giovanni Ansaldo. Filippo
Burzio, an intellectual with scientific training and an associate of Gobetti despite
their divergent political positions, conducted detailed analysis of the work of
Vilfredo Pareto from the end of the 1920s onwards. However, Burzio’s
sociological writings were only published after the Second World War, in 1947
and 1948, and Gobetti’s journal did not survive the onset of fascism.
48 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
political thought, from authors who were not necessarily sympathetic to the party
and its ideology (Albertoni 1977:23). Similarly, they carried out interesting
investigations and, together with the Catholic University, were instrumental in the
postwar formation of modern management in postwar Italy (Lentini 1974:31–33).
What by today’s standards might be called ‘sociology’ was, when theoretically
oriented, to be found in elaborations of some of Pareto’s sociological categories,
in addition to some attempts to analyse social classes from a historical or
sociological viewpoint. As we shall see, when it was truly empirical, it consisted
largely in investigations of the adaptation of the working class to factory work.
The influence of Pareto on the economic sociology of the interwar period was
perhaps most evident in some of the works of Alfonso de Pietri-Tonelli and
Giuseppe Palomba, both professional economists with a strong interest in
sociologically relevant assumptions on economic behaviour. Both sought to
combine neoclassical economic theory with corporatist ‘theory’. De Pietri-Tonelli,
a professor of political economy in Venice, had himself been a pupil of Pareto and
had frequently corresponded with him in the years between 1909 and 1923 (de
Pietri-Tonelli 1961:109–154). His ‘General economic, political-economic and
corporatist theorem’ (1942) was an attempt to update his master’s economic and
sociological teaching and make it compatible with the new economic doctrine.
Giuseppe Palomba’s ‘Economic equilibrium and cyclical movements according
to the data of experimental sociology’ (1935) set out to establish, in Paretian
language, ‘the conditions of general economic equilibrium in a collectivity in
which people act under the influence of residues and derivations and are
accordingly movedby a mixture of argumentations and instincts’. The fact that
some social and political forces tend to alter this equilibrium was used to justify
government intervention, within the legal and economic framework of a
corporatist system, to restore it (1935:139–140).
Even if we disregard the special subfield of economic sociology, theoretically
oriented sociological enquiry (to the very limited extent to which it was pursued
in the 1920s and 1930s) was conducted with the explicit purpose, generally
speaking, of supporting and legitimating the existing political and social order.
Thus, Nello Quilici, a brilliant and cultivated student of social and economic
history and a Pareto expert, published in 1932 an interesting study of The origin,
development and inadequacy of the Italian bourgeoisie’, in which he advocated
the thesis— under the clear influence of Sombart—that the capitalist development
of Italy had not been the achievement of the bourgeoisie, whose ‘spirit’ was in his
opinion quite inadequate to this task, but rather of the Jewish minority, inspired
by a calculating, rationalistic mentality. As Quilici saw it, the final crisis and
degeneration of the Italian bourgeoisie in the 1920s was fortunately more than
offset by the new corporatist economy, where the conditions for a harmonious and
coordinated economic development were also conducive to economic freedom
(1932). In 1937, another economic historian, Antonio Fossati, published a number
of short articles which he subsequently (1938) collected into a single work
published in a journal (Commercio) directed by Filippo Carli. These articles
52 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
focused on the so-called ‘middle classes’, their definition, economic and social
functions, their historical development in Italy, their economic predicament in the
early twentieth century, and finally their deliverance from it by means of the fascist
corporatist political economy. In contrast to other contributions that came out in
Commercio during 1937 (such as those by G.Cesare Rossi (February 1937:3–6),
Luigi Rossi (May 1937:19–21), Attilio Racheli (July 1937:25–27; November
1937:49–52), Agostino degli Espinosa (July 1937: 28–30), and Vincenzo Ameri
(August-September 1937:22–23)), Fossati’s is comparatively scholarly and free
from propagandistic overtones, and also exhibits a good knowledge of economic
history (a field in which the author had special competence) and of economic
theory, as well as a passing knowledge of the international literature on social
classes, as evidenced by his quotation of A.Meusel’s entry ‘Middle Class’ in the
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Fossati however did not have a general theory
of social classes, nor did he refer to other such theories, and therefore the cultural,
economic and professional dimensions of the middle classes which he chose to
emphasize are somewhat arbitrary. Moreover, like the authors mentioned earlier,
he failed to distinguish clearly between sociological analysis and political
legitimation, especially in the final section of his work (see, for a critical appraisal,
Lentini 1974:56–58).
While Fossati was better known as an economic historian than as a sociologist,
Arrigo Serpieri (1877–1960) quickly established a reputation as an agricultural
expert and as a rural sociologist, which he upheld even after the demise of fascism.
Serpieri’s authority in this field was sanctioned by his appointment as the
influential director of the National Institute of Agrarian Economy in 1928. Serpieri
proposed a distinction between different rural strata according to whether they
were large landowners, small independent farmers, tenants and sharecroppers, or
wage-earning farm-workers with stable or unstable employment. But he also
emphasized the existence of a common cultural bond connecting all the strata that
(in his opinion) regarded agriculture as a way of life. Resorting to Pareto’s
categories, Serpieri maintained that those who pursue this activity are permeated
by the ‘persistence of aggregates’, that is, by conservative sentiments, but that
their way of life is threatened by the so-called ‘speculators’ (Serpieri (1925)
1974:63–80).
The combined influence of Pareto and Gini on the Italian sociology of the 1920s
and 1930s, especially on the sociology of social stratification and social change,
is shown in an interesting summary and evaluation of their contributions contained
in a short article written in 1935 by Giorgina Levi della Vida. This article focused
on Pareto’s and Gini’s explanations of social change, pointed to some similarities
(both theories consider the interchange of the individuals belonging to the ranks
of the ruling class as beneficial to society), but also emphasized their main
substantive and methodological differences.9 The prominence enjoyed within the
Italian social sciences of the late 1920s and the 1930s by Gini, even more than
Pareto, was achieved at the expense of other social scientists, who could not be
easily interpreted as ideological forerunners or supporters of fascism.
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 53
the Catholic University, an important member of the Catholic Union for the Social
Sciences, and a contributor to the Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali,
provided the link between Gemelli and Gini. Boldrini was the author of an article
relating social strata to physique, an approach congenial to Gini’s peculiar version
of sociology, that came out in the Rivista Internazionale (1932).
A few social scientists active in the Catholic Union contributed to the Rivista
Internazionale under Gemelli’s supervision. They had diverse educational
backgrounds and scholarly interests, but all enlisted in an attempt to provide
legitimation for the existing political order from the point of view of conservative
Catholicism, whose social philosophy was allied with fascist corporatist and
authoritarian ideology in a common endeavour to fight alternative ideologies such
as Liberalism (see Gemelli 1933a, 1937). Among these social scientists, the young
economist Giovanni de Maria and economic historian Amintore Fanfani published
valuable essays on the character of modern entrepreneurship and the origins of
capitalism in Italy (De Maria 1929; Fanfani 1933), thereby showing that serious,
non-parochial scholarship was possible even with the given cultural and political
constraints. De Maria’s study focused on the contributions by foreign students of
entrepreneurship such as the American E.R.A. Seligman and the Austrian J.
Schumpeter; Fanfani’s on a critical discussion of Sombart’s and Weber’s works
on the rise of modern capitalism. De Maria (who became Professor of Political
Economy at the Università Bocconi) sought to legitimize the functions of
entrepreneurial activities in the institutional framework of the capitalist order;
Fanfani (who became a leading Christian-Democratic politician in the postwar
period) established a connection between counter-reformation and capitalism
(Fanfani, 1934). Sociology, in any case, as an autonomous, scientific discipline,
was rejected by Fanfani (see Fanfani (1939) 1974:309–314; see also Ornaghi
1984:40, 114), and in general by those exponents of Catholic sociology who, like
Luigi Bellini and Agostino Gemelli, strove to find in their opposition to liberal
individualism common ground between the Catholic and the fascist interpretations
of the corporatist doctrine (see Bellini 1929, 1934; Gemelli 1937). From the point
of view of the development of sociology in Italy, this was clearly not conducive
to a broadening of the scope of its theoretical and substantive interests.
The case of Luigi Bellini, a lawyer who was a close collaborator of Gemelli, is
indicative. Bellini’s first sociological work, published in 1929, was a relatively
value-free introduction to this subject with an emphasis on the classification of
social phenomena and a discussion of the concepts of social function and
equilibrium, and of social and historical causation (1929). Bellini’s subsequent
work (1934), however, intertwined social-science analysis with normative
prescriptions and metaphysical interpretations of social phenomena, in conformity
with a corporatist view of society which was compatible both with a ‘Catholic
Sociology’ and the fascist corporatist doctrine (see for example 1934:2, 116–117).
Sociology could no longer therefore be distinguished from a Catholic and
authoritarian social philosophy, in agreement with Fanfani’s own orientation (see
Fanfani (1939) 1974:309–313).
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 57
Gemelli was not, however, only a social philosopher, but also the indefatigable
organizer of much of whatever empirical research was conducted in Italy during
the 1920s and 1930s (see Gemelli 1933b, 1937). Thus, the Catholic University,
with its Research Center for Applied Psychology, the Rivista di Psicologia and
the already mentioned Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, all of which were
directed by Gemelli himself, became important reference points for the Italian
social sciences. Their theoretical limitations were not offset by Gemelli’s
non-theoretical empirical investigations in applied psychology, and especially, in
the psychology of industrial work. As a consequence of Gemelli’s active presence
in other research centres, theoretical irrelevance characterized the whole field of
the applied social sciences in Italy.
The numerous investigations performed by Gemelli and his colleagues served
more practical purposes. On the one hand, they were instrumental in the formation
of modern management in postwar Italy, on the other hand, they were subservient
to the cultural policy pursued by the fascist regime. The special and dubious
achievement of the Catholic University of Milan was thus to promote a version
of the social sciences suitable to the Catholic hierarchy, to the political authorities
and the entrepreneurial class (see Lentini 1974:29–45). As for the State
Universities, the Faculty of Political Sciences in Perugia was perhaps the most
distinguished among those instituted by fascism for the education of the
managerial class of the regime (Albertoni 1977:13–14; Lentini 1974:36–37).
FASCIST CORPORATIVISM
The official doctrine of corporatist representation was formulated in the writings
of economists, legal scholars and philosophers (for a general discussion, see
Ornaghi 1984). Ugo Spirito, among philosophers perhaps the foremost proponent
of this doctrine, maintained that only by means of corporatist representation and
authoritative coordination of sectional economic interests could individual and
social interests be reconciled (Spirito 1939:119–127). The attention of the jurists
was focused instead on the subsequent enactments that created, between 1926 and
1934, the legal framework of Italian corporativism; but they, too, contended that
‘with the corporationthe State pursues the goal, which corresponds to a need of
the greatest importance for modern society, to settle economic and social conflicts
by harmonizing and consolidating the economic and social interests in conflict’
(Panunzio 1939:399). The actual distance between the officially proclaimed
doctrine and its applications in legal practice was, of course, very great (see Tinti
1988:249–250). Finally, among economists, a distinction may perhaps be drawn
between those who saw some way of combining corporativism with liberal
economic theory, and those who strove for ‘a complete renewal of the fundamental
principles of economic science’ (Arena 1943:31). The latter group eventually
became predominant, as signified by the acceptance of corporatist theory by such
disciples of Pareto as Amoroso and Lanzillo (cf. Amoroso 1932, 1934; Lanzillo
1936), and its direct advocacy by Giuseppe Bottai (1895–1959), the Minister of
58 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
In fact, Michels’ close association with the fascist regime, for which he
performed the role of official ideologist, made it imperative for him to confer a
new meaning to, or insert into extraneous context, some analytical categories
formulated by other social scientists. Legitimation of the given political system,
rather than the explanation of its resources of strength and authority, seems to have
been Michels’ main concern. The relations between those who avail themselves
of such resources and those who cannot do so—a theme that inspired some
important theoretical contributions from Gramsci, Mosca, Pareto and the younger
Michels himself-were tackled by Michels in the 1920s and 1930s as a scholar of
the regime, rather than as a social scientist striving for verifiable explanations.
Accordingly, he drew freely on diverse intellectual sources, combining Gentile’s
idealism with Einaudi’s liberalism and Max Weber’s political sociology (Michels
1936a; Bazzanella 1986:214–215), and wrote on whatever subject was
recommended and made fashionable: demographic policy, the creation of a
corporatist economy, the ethical qualities promoted by fascist education, the
advantages accruing from the fascist state’s intervention in the nation’s economic
and cultural life, and so forth (Michels 1924:71; 1927:40; 1929:551; 1931a:131–
134; 1932a:993; 1934a; 1936b:5).
Michels’ writings met the need of Mussolini’s regime for cultural legitimation,
and provided its managerial and political classes with some education in the social
sciences. Michels made use of sociological categories derived to a large extent
from Weber, Mosca and Pareto and from his own political sociology and sociology
of organization, such as authority, charisma, political organization and ruling elite.
These categories provided the appropriate theoretical instruments for the
legitimation of fascism and of its leader’s rule, as much as, or even more than, for
the purpose of a value-free analysis of fascism.
were produced. Thus, the anonymous ‘letter from Rome’ (1936) contains a number
of remarks on the political attitudes of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and
the intellectuals (see ‘Borghesia’ (1936) 1976:95–105), but even a sympathetic
student of the Communist Parisian Group calls into question the empirical bases
of these remarks (see Lentini 1974:56). By the same token, even brilliant and
articulate analyses of the class structure and class relations in Italian cities—such
as Sereni’s study of the Neapolitan working class—had to rely exclusively on
official statistical data (to the extent that they were available in Paris). These data
were however absolutely inadequate as a basis for general conclusions, for
example, on the impact of political repression on working class militancy (cf.
Sereni (1938) 1974:121–132). Moreover, the members of the Parisian circle
pursued a social and political goal—the achievement of proletarian revolution in
Italy under the guidance and leadership of the Communist Party—and were
therefore not interested in sociological research as such (see, for example, Grieco
(1928) 1974:231–244). Sociology was typically understood by them in terms of
Bukharin’s conception of the discipline, and for this very reason rejected (see
Gramsci (1935) 1974:337–343; Curiel (1935) 1974:345–354).
As mentioned, Renato Treves (1907)—who is a prominent philosopher and
sociologist of law—represents a rare and perhaps unique instance of an Italian
sociologist who conducted, in the early 1940s, firsthand empirical research (using
a variety of research methods) on strictly sociological questions, such as the social
life in an urban slum area of an Argentinian city. The research was meant to be
an example of empirical investigation, the history of which Treves had written on
(Treves 1942). It is worth noting, however, that Treves’ interest in empirical
research was the accidental consequence of his appointment as professor of
sociology at the Argentinian University of Tucuman. Treves’ educational and
professional background in Italy was in no way conducive to this interest (see
Lentini 1974:46–47), and sociological investigations such as those that he
conducted in Argentina would have in any case been considered quite
objectionable by the authorities. Treves left Italy in 1938, after the enactment of
anti-Semitic laws. Living in exile was apparently a precondition for his empirical
research, since the interest and the opportunity for unconstrained research was
hardly available in Italy.
Since the construction of sociological theory, insofar as it bore on fascism—
namely, its institutions, elites and supporting social strata—was severely limited
in its cognitive sources and freedom of expression, all the politically non-aligned,
in-depth analyses of fascism were produced before the consolidation of
Mussolini’s dictatorial power, in the mid 1920s. We shall accordingly focus on a
restricted number of well-known Italian social scientists and politically active
intellectuals who wrote extensively and significantly on the fascist movement and
party in the early 1920s. In an attempt to give a comprehensive review of political
and ideological orientations, we shall start with Gramsci’s Marxist standpoint,
then consider Gobetti’s and his associates’ left-liberalism and Mosca’s
conservative liberalism, and finally focus on Pareto’s somewhat ambiguous
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 65
mixture of liberal and authoritarian viewpoints. All these authors developed their
analyses of fascism as part of more general theoretical and ideological
frameworks, which will also be discussed, together with the question of their
reception by fascist and non-fascist intellectuals. Michels’ contribution to an
analysis of fascism will be reassessed in the light of its ambivalence toward
(bordering on downright rejection of) all sociological enquiries, including his own,
that were not deemed politically and ideologically reliable.
system he represented and directed, had mediated among the conflicting interests
of the various segments of the bourgeoisie, while exerting political corruption over
the ‘most advanced’ segments of the working class. The way was thus paved for
the dictatorship of the capitalist and agrarian ruling classes over the industrial and
rural proletariat (Gramsci 1973a:43, 276–277).
The weakness of the bourgeois coalition, whose cohesion was severely strained
by factional interests, was compounded in the postwar period by the increased
militancy and improved organization of the working class. A new, authoritarian
government was therefore necessary to bolster the bourgeoisie’s economic
predominance and to reorganize its political dictatorship. Fascism would not have
been successful, however, had it not been for the failure of the working class to
give adequate guidance, leadership and political organization to the other
oppressed classes (Gramsci 1973a:278–279). The victory of the reactionary front
was nevertheless short-lived, since the unchecked violence promoted by the fascist
government no longer served the interests of the bourgeoisie, and actually
undermined the legitimacy of its rule (Gramsci 1973b:264–265).
Gramsci, in keeping with his Marxist perspective, discounted the possibility of
having the interests of both the conservative and the revolutionary power blocs
represented in one political system, whether democratic or not. Mosca and Pareto
concurred with Gramsci in that they, too, considered Mussolini’s regime to be a
consequence of the crisis of democratic parliamentary institutions. They, too,
thought that this crisis was produced by the inability of some or all of the privileged
strata to promote by the agency of these institutions the welfare of the nation, or
even their own private interests. To this extent, Gramsci, Mosca and Pareto
conducted a sociological analysis of fascist and democratic political systems,
whose strength and stability was made contingent on the support of certain social
strata. However, Mosca and Pareto, unlike Gramsci, maintained that the political
hegemony of the working class is incompatible with the public interest, and
interpreted the fall of the Italian parliamentary democracy as a consequence not
of a political rearrangement of bourgeois forces, but of the ineptitude and
selfishness of the entrepreneurial class (Pareto), or the powerlessness of the
educated middle class (Mosca). Before turning to the contributions of these two
authors, it is worth considering Piero Gobetti’s sociological and political analysis
of fascism. Although Gobetti was an uncompromising liberal, and not a Marxist,
his analysis was in many respects closer to Gramsci’s than to Mosca’s and Pareto’s.
After that, Gobetti’s Rivoluzione Liberale was confiscated by the police; Gobetti
himself was beaten up by a mob and arrested several times. He left Italy in February
of 1926, and died of bronchitis a few days after his arrival in Paris. In his writings
on Mussolini and fascism, mostly produced between 1922 and 1924, Gobetti
expanded his liberal conception of social and political life. In this conception, the
new world of industrialism promotes material and spiritual emancipation, but only
provided that the social classes of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—that is, the
two classes directly involved in industrial production—find adequate
representation in a ruling political class devoted to the cause of industrial progress
(Gobetti (1922) 1960: 263–266).
Political democracy, based on universal suffrage and proportional
representation, must be considered a prerequisite to this result ‘Universal
suffrage,’ as he put it, ‘is the only instrument, however imperfect, for the long-run
political and moral education of the masses’ (Gobetti (1922) 1960:428).
Mussolini, and those manufacturers who supported him, undermined such
educational work, which was especially necessary in a country like Italy that was
‘backward and devoid of any attachment to the fundamental freedoms’ (Gobetti
(1922) 1960:428; see also: (1923) 1960: 529). A vigorous opposition to fascism
was accordingly, ‘a question of the historical, political, economic maturity of our
economy, of our ruling classes, of the working and the industrial status groups’
(Gobetti (1924) 1960:765, 803). The proletariat and the elites of tomorrow’s free
democracies ‘will not collaborate with fascism, since they endeavored to create
for the future a new situationof political dignity and economic seriousness’,
quite in opposition to the conservative and traditionalist economic orientation of
Mussolini’s regime (Gobetti (1924) 1960: 694–695, 797).
The regime represented ‘the economic dictatorship of the plutocratic status
groups’, who could still control the Italian political system and citizenship, as they
had done before through Mussolini’s ‘demagogic, bureaucratic and paternal
dictatorship’ (Gobetti (1924) 1960:637). In this sense, fascism was ‘the legitimate
heir’ to the pseudo-democratic Italian political class, which had always been
conciliatory in its spirit, pursuing government positions, afraid of free popular
initiatives, parasitical, oligarchical and paternalistic (Gobetti (1924) 1960:644).
In the political arena, the democratic bloc, comprising Catholic, socialist and
communist political forces and representing the proletarian and the enlightened
middle classes, faced a reactionary bloc based on the petite bourgeoisie and the
protectionist agrarians and manufacturers and politically represented by
Mussolini (Gobetti (1922) 1960:240, 383–388, 400; (1924) 1960:792, 797).
Gobetti’s work, and in particular the editorial he wrote for the first issue of the
journal Rivoluzione Liberate, dealt with issues then widely debated in political
and sociological circles centring on the establishment of a political class able to
govern the country’s new social needs. Although the eclectic intellectual origins
of Gobetti’s thought are still a matter of controversy, he certainly belonged to the
liberal and, in certain respects, socialist traditions. There is general
acknowledgement of the influence on his thought exercised by Gaetano Mosca,
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 69
who was his tutor in the Law Faculty of the University of Turin (where Gobetti
enrolled as a student in 1917 and where Mosca had taught since 1898).
Gobetti explored both the virtues and the vices of Mosca’s work.14 In his view,
Mosca’s bleak exposition and his mathematician’s patterns of thought (features
of his sociology) should be set against his work as a historian, his study of the
southern Italian petite bourgeoisie—which provided him with the material for his
first and best-known book, Teoria del governi e governo parlamentare—and his
use of European tools of political analysis. Mosca overcame his anachronistic
nostalgia for the ancien régime with his ‘brilliant discovery of the concept of the
political elite’. Thus, although Gobetti adopted Mosca’s teachings, he gave them
an interpretation which emphasized their democratic and liberal aspects and
audaciously reconciled the two concepts of elite and political struggle.
Some interpreters of Gobetti’s thought have classified him among the elitists
(Ripepe 1974), of whom Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto and Roberto Michels
played a leading role in the founding of sociology in Italy as well as enjoying
international fame (Burnham 1943). Yet an examination of Gobetti’s search for
an innovative political doctrine (which he never managed to elaborate fully)
reveals aspects that conflict with this classification and accentuate instead the
democratic and ‘libertarian’ character of his liberalism. Moreover, the sceptical
aloofness of Gaetano Mosca has little in common with the passionate commitment
of Gobetti, who used the morality of liberalism as a political instrument; a heroic
morality founded on asceticism, as the spiritual education of the bourgeois class
so that it could shoulder its historic responsibilities. Gobetti’s thought was
moulded by his study and discussion of Kant, and his frequent use of such terms
as ‘asceticism’ and the ‘Calvinist spirit’ reveals his knowledge of and interest in
the ideas expressed by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of
Capitalism.15 Gobetti maintained close intellectual contacts with other prominent
authors such as Filippo Burzio and Guido Dorso, both of whom published in
Gobetti’s periodical La Rivoluzione Liberale, and Giovanni Ansaldo, a moderate
liberal who contributed to the diffusion of Weber’s sociological and historical
writings in Italy in the early 1920s.16, 17 Burzio and Dorso were followers of
Mosca’s and Pareto’s doctrines (Burzio was closer to Pareto, Dorso to Mosca).
By surviving the fall of fascism, they were instrumental in postwar Italy in
upholding the liberal-elitist approach to political and social analysis that Gobetti,
Mosca and Pareto had so well represented at the onset of fascism.
the nation, on the one hand, and the demagogic satisfaction of widespread
sentiments, on the other. Previous governments had made unabashed use of
demagoguery and had failed to create the economic conditions for the development
of industrial production. Fascism’s ascension to power was thus greeted by Pareto
as the salvation of Italy (Pareto 1980:1150–1153, 1157, 1190; see also Beetham
1977: 164–166).
According to Pareto, the lasting success of Mussolini’s party and of his new
government was contingent on a number of social and political conditions, in
addition to the ever-present necessity of overcoming the great economic and
financial difficulties of the postwar years and avoiding demagogic excesses
(Pareto 1962:315–316). These social and political conditions were, first, an
ideology, or set of values, which would appeal to the sentiments of the fascist
rank-and-file, and to those of the population at large (Pareto 1962:284–285, 292,
311; 1980:1156–1157, 1170–1171) and, second, abstention from the private use
of violence after gaining control of the government and the legal means of
coercion. Resorting to the private use of violence may benefit the collectivity if
the authorities fail to maintain law and order, but in normal times it is in the public
interest for coercion to be the exclusive prerogative of state authorities within the
limits established by the law (Pareto 1962:320; 1980:1152, 1179). The third
condition was the upholding of civil liberties, and particularly of freedom of
expression, since their curtailment would in the long run weaken the government
and be detrimental to the nation at large (Pareto 1962:320; 1980:1151–1152).
In this reconstruction of Mosca’s and Pareto’s attitudes toward, and analysis
of, fascism no mention has been made of their well-known concepts of,
respectively, ‘political class’ and ‘elite’. This is not accidental, for the two authors
made little use of these concepts in this specific connection, even though their
analyses of fascism were conducted in keeping with some of their pre-established
categories. Mosca’s ‘political class’—narrowly defined as composed of those who
held authoritative power—may best exert its role when controlled by
parliamentary institutions, whereas Pareto’s political ‘elite’ may be most
advantageous when able to control, or even to do away with, an ineffective and
corrupt parliament. Of course, Pareto, too, conceived the possibility that an
effective ‘elite’ would cooperate with an effective parliament, but this was not—
in his opinion—the case of Italy in the postwar years (see Fiorot 1983, 92–100).
Neither the concept of a ‘political class’ nor ‘elite’, in relation to parliamentary
order, fits the novel situation presented by fascism.
their analytical categories rather than their theoretical propositions. In the case of
Gramsci, the matter is simple. Gramsci’s writings on fascism, as well as on any
other subject, failed to attract attention from the time of his imprisonment (1926)
until the fall of fascism. Gramsci was prevented after his imprisonment from
carrying on any intellectual communication with the outside world and this
repression continued even after his death in 1937.18 The contents of the notes jotted
down in prison remained unknown until the late 1940s. His writings only began
to attract serious attention in the 1950s and in the following decades (Santarelli
1973:9–11; Spriano 1977:97). The fascist policy of political and ideological
repression was therefore successful, at least as far as the reception of Gramsci’s
ideas was concerned. This policy of repression was addressed to all outspoken
and overt adversaries of the regime.
The social sciences in general were held in suspicion whenever their
representatives displayed independence of thought, no matter how limited (Lentini
1974:48). A case in point is Michels himself. Michels was full professor of the
new fascist ‘science’ of corporative economy, and was active in this capacity as
an ideologist of the regime. But both qua sociologist and qua apologist he met
with widespread resistance and diffidence. Fascist intellectuals had in general little
use for Michels’ strictly sociological writings (Bazzanella 1986:215; Portinaro
1977:136). They praised him as a political scientist (Orano 1937; cf. also De
Marchi 1986: 22). But Michels’ ‘science of the political class’ (Michels
1936a:159), largely devoted to the study of political elites, was little more than
‘legitimation of the regime’ expressed in the ‘terms of a scientific theory’
(Beetham 1977:173; see in general: 167–173). Sociology, even Michels’, was
generally held in suspicion whenever power and authority became areas of inquiry
(Lentini 1974:38–39). At best, as a sympathetic colleague of Michels’ remarked,
Michels managed to ‘turn the same sociology that Pareto had made so disagreeable
into something pleasant’ (Curcio 1937; cf. De Marchi 1986:23).
Pareto’s selective and occasionally critical reception by fascist intellectuals may
account for this disparaging judgement. Pareto’s works enjoyed immense
popularity in the 1920s and 1930s (Beetham 1977:166), and there were attempts
to make use of some concepts derived from Paretian sociology, such as the
circulation of the elites, the heterogeneity of social groups and their inevitable
competition for the pursuit of economic, social and political power (cf. Morselli
1928; Levi della Vida (1935) 1974: 189–200). But the general tendency was to
incorporate these sociological concepts as far as possible into the framework of
corporatist doctrine, and to discard them when this was thought to be impossible
(Ornaghi 1984: 68–69, 117, notes 44 and 47, 166–167). The intellectual efforts
of the Italian social scientists who were supportive, and concurred in the
production, of fascist culture were not oriented, generally speaking, to the
discussion and application of Mosca’s and Pareto’s categories, but rather to the
establishment of the new ‘science’ of the corporatist state discussed above.
To be sure, Pareto’s attitude toward the rise of the fascist movement and party
was selectively interpreted as giving endorsement and legitimacy to Mussolini’s
74 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
CONCLUSION
In this paper we have endeavoured to shed light on the mutual relations of Italian
sociology and the fascist regime in the period between 1920 and 1945. In this
connection, both the history of the discipline during fascism and the sociological
analyses of fascism have been considered. As for the history of Italian sociology,
a comprehensive overview that includes the preceding and following periods
points to two developmental stages. The first stage, from the 1870s to the early
1920s, was characterized by a lively interest in, but failed institutionalization of,
this new social science. The second stage, which corresponds to the rise and
consolidation of fascism, and which has accordingly received special attention
here, is marked on the one hand by some institutionalization of the discipline,
following the 1923 reform of the educational system, and on the other hand by
widespread (though not complete) suspicion and even rejection, as well as by
severe constraints in the categories and subjects relevant to theoretical and
empirical research. These constraints were also felt by intellectuals and scholars
who opposed fascism, though those living in exile could at least take advantage
of the freedoms of expression and enquiry.
Despite some institutionalization as an academic discipline, the growth of
sociology was thus hampered not only by the repression of these political
freedoms, but also by the official support of the corporatist doctrine, which was
taught in the faculties of political sciences, law, and economics. There were further
obstacles, to the effect that there was a severe lack of consensus among the students
of this discipline on its proper field of enquiry and relations to the other social
sciences, and strong opposition, as a matter of principle, from such reputed idealist
philosophers as Croce and Gentile, and from their numerous followers. All these
obstacles did not prevent the establishment of important research centres and
76 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
production of culture, and the lack of appeal of certain social science concepts to
specific ideological audiences. Thus it was not the concept of ‘political class’ as
such, but rather the liberal image of Gaetano Mosca that accounts for the fact that
fascist ideologues refrained from using it, and of its popularity among the liberal
adversaries of Mussolini. Likewise, Michels’ involvement with fascism
contributed to his temporary influence on other fascist intellectuals, but also to
the result that most opponents of fascism ignored his writings.
NOTES
1 The most important contributions of recent years have been the book by Filippo
Barbano and Giorgio Sola, Sociologia e scienze social: in Italia, 1860–1890, Milan,
1985, and, by G.Sola, ‘La sociologia italiana dall’unificazione nazionale ai nostri
giorni’, Storia sociale e culturale d’Italia, vol. V, La cultura filosofica e scientifica,
tome I, Bramante editrice, Busto Arsizio, 1988. Nevertheless, very few scholars have
written on the early history of sociology in Italy, and it is only in recent years that
study has begun of its origins and development, with research into source materials.
2 The idea of teaching sociology first came to Giuseppe Carle during the discussions
of the Congresso delta Società per il progresso degli studi economici, held in Milan
in 1874. He submitted his proposal for a university course in social science or
philosophy to the then Minister of Education, Ruggero Bonghi. Thus, one can argue,
Carle initiated a school of sociological thought which had the merit of blending
interest in sociology with an intellectual tradition that was deeply rooted in Italian
culture. He taught Gioele Solari, a distinguished scholar of political science and
cultivator of this new discipline who, at the University of Turin, tutored Piero Gobetti
(who wrote his degree thesis under his supervision), and then Norberto Bobbio,
Renato Treves and Bruno Leoni— the outstanding minds in a generation of legal
philosophers who devoted themselves to sociology and were responsible for the
renewed growth of the subject after the Second World War—and Filippo Barbano,
a prolific writer on the history of Italian sociology.
3 The aims of the conference were to encourage the teaching of the social sciences, to
bring together scholars engaged in research in these areas with a view to founding
a Società italiana di scienze sociali, and to discuss topics divided into three subject
areas: historical-philosophical, legal-economic and bio-ethnological. Although the
conference attracted numerous speakers from several countries, it was riven with
controversy, principally because of the presence of ‘too many occasional
sociologists’, which was detrimental to the quality of the scientific discussion.
4 In July 1897 the journal set out its philosophy as follows: ‘Although sociology
has had and still does have its distinguished scholars, it has not yet clearly defined
its principles; and work often appears under the name of sociology which—because
of its shallowness of analysis, because of its unwarranted tendency to synthesize, or
because of its abuse of artificial comparisons between social and biological
phenomena—amounts to no more than sterile generality, rather than consisting of
careful examination of facts or the prudent deduction of laws. A journal of sociology,
therefore, if it is to succeed must set itself an objective that matches the current needs
of the science, keeping within its natural boundaries and disseminating knowledge
78 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
that is exact. It should not occupy itself with all facts or topics of a social nature
which, by being too particular, do not fall within the scope of sociology; nor should
it seek to trespass on the fields of other sciences.’
5 Regarding research into collective psychology, mention should be made of Scipio
Sighele (1868–1913), an acknowledged pioneer in sociological study, psychologist
of the scientific school, and criminologist. Sighele was the author of various essays,
including ‘La coppia delinquente’ (1893) and ‘La folla delinquente’, (1891)
two monographs that were translated into numerous languages.
6 Renato Treves, one of the leading architects of Italian sociology’s revival, was the
scholar who proposed this historical division to the World Congress of Sociology
held at Stresa in September 1959. Treves distinguished four historical periods: the
first dominated by positivist thought and lasting from approximately the unification
of Italy to 1903—the year in which Benedetto Croce’s La critica first appeared; the
second lasting from 1903, a period which saw the progressive rise to ascendancy of
idealist thought, until 1922, the year in which fascism seized power, the third
comprising the fascist dictatorship from 1922 to 1945; the fourth dating from the
end of the war, when Italy rebuilt its free democratic institutions. Treves did,
however, draw a distinction between Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, who
was even more vehemently opposed to sociology.
7 Other noteworthy publications by Squillace, who taught at the free university of
Brussels, are his Le dottrine sociologiche (1903), translated into German in 1911,
and I problemi fondamentali delta sociologia (1907). Mention should also be made
of the manual by Francesco Cosentini, Sociologia: genesi ed evoluzzone dei fenomeni
sociali, with an introduction by Enrico Morselli and a chapter by Massimo
Kovalewski, Turin, 1912.
8 As evidence of the influence of the First World War on Italian intellectual life, the
members of the Circolo di filosofia di Roma debated subjects such as ‘Moralità e
nazionalità’, ‘La guerra nel pensiero dei filosofi’, ‘Nazionalismo e
internazionalismo’, ‘Guerra e diritto’. Benedetto Croce took up a position which
provoked ferocious criticism. Although he recognized that the Italians had the duty
to defend their ‘historic institutions’, he separated the political sphere from the
cultural sphere, thus setting himself against those who over-hastily described the
war as not a political, but a cultural conflict.
9 For Gini, the process of social interchange is due to the comparatively lower birth
rates of the ruling class, and he accordingly employs demographical and statistical
data. For Pareto, the process is brought about by the specific cultural attributes of
this class, and he therefore makes use of historical data. The author suggested, by
way of conclusion, a possible integration of the two theories (cf. Levi della Vida
(1935) 1974:189–200. See, for another example, Boldrini 1933).
10 What makes his contributions even more interesting is his discussion of a moot but
crucial point, the determination of the prices of goods and services in an economic
order in which ‘the Corporations, entrusted with the representation of sectorial
productive interests, were to promulgate ‘economic laws’ in order to regulate
production’ (Panunzio 1939:352). Carli’s solution was the stipulation of ‘standard
contracts’, in which the representatives of the various categories constituting a single
Corporation establish agreed-upon wholesale prices as a result of a bargaining
process (see Carli 1939:11–16, 157–171).
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 79
REFERENCES
Albertoni, E. (1977) Introduzione alla storia delle dottrine politiche, Milan: Cisalpino
— La Goliardica.
80 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
Linz, J.J. (1966) ‘Michels e il suo contributo alla sociologia politica’, in R.Michels, La
sociologia del partito politico nella moderna democrazia, Bologna: II Mulino.
Livi, L. (1937) I fattori biologici dell’ordinamento sociale: introduzione alla
demografia, Padua: Cedam.
Lorenzoni, G. (1936–1937) Corso di sociologia, Università di Firenze: Florence.
——(1937–1938) Corso di sociologia, Università di Firenze: Florence.
Loria, A. (1894) Problemi sociali contemporanei, Milano.
——(1897) Problèmes sociaux contemporains, Paris: Girard et Briere.
——(1900) La sociologia, il suo compito, le sue scuole, i suoi recenti progressi, Verona:
Fratelli Drucker.
Magnino, B. (1939) Storia della sociologia, Naples: Rondinella.
Martiis, S.C. de (1897) ‘Corso di Sociologia all’ Università di Torino’, Rivista Italiana
di Sociologia, vol. 1, 1:131–132.
Marotta, M. (1958) ‘Il pensiero sociologico di Corrado Gini e la sociologia in Italia: a
proposito di una recente ristampa del suo corso di sociologia’, Sociologia, vol. 3.
Miceli, V. (1890) Lo studio del diritto costituzionale e la moderna sociologia, Perugia:
Tip. Santucci.
——(1906) ‘L’insegnamento della sociologia’, Rivista Italiana di Sociologia 10, 2: 190–
205.
Michels, R. (1911) La Sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna, Torino:
Utet.
——(1920) ‘Max Weber’, Nuova Antologia, 1170:355–361.
——(1924) ‘Der Aufstieg des Fascismus in Italien’, Archiv für Sozialunssenschaft und
Sozialpolitik 52:61–93.
——(1927) Corso di sociologia politica, Milan: Istituto Editoriale Scientifico.
——(1929) ‘Il concetto di Stato nella storia delle dottrine economiche’, Rivista di
politica economica 19, 6:543–551.
——(1931a) ‘Il concetto di partito nella storia italiana moderna’, in O.Fantini (ed.) Il
partito fascista nella dottrina e nella realtà, Rome: Editrice Italiana Attualità.
——(1931b) ‘Authority’, Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2:319–321, New York:
Macmillan.
——(1932a) ‘La “classe politica” nel dopoguerra europeo’, Educazione fascista, vol.
10, pp. 993–999.
——(1932b) ‘Appunti sul concetto di autorità’, La stirpe 10, 8.
——(1934a) Economia volgare, economia pura, economia politica, Perugia: Donnini.
——(1934b) Politica ed economia, Turin: Utet.
——(1935) La politica demografica, G.Dobbert (ed.) L’economia fascista, Florence:
Sansoni.
——(1936a) Nuovi studi sulla classe politica, Saggio sugli spostamenti sociali ed
intellettuali nel dopoguerra, Milan: Dante Alighieri.
——(1936b) Cenni storici sui sistemi sindacali corporativi, Rome: Cremonese Editore.
——(1966) La sociologia del partito politico nella moderna democrazia, Bologna: Il
Mulino.
Mioni, U. (1932) Manuale di sociologia, Turin: Marietti.
Morra, G. (1979) ‘Introduzione’, in G.Morra (ed.) Luigi Sturzo, Il pensiero sociologico,
Rome: Città Nuova.
Morselli, E. (1928) Pareto e la politica di Mussolini, Catania: Studio Editoriale Moderno.
——(1930) Politica e sociologia economica (scritti vari), Padua: Minerva.
84 ITALIAN SOCIOLOGY AND THE FASCIST REGIME
——(1890) Il problèma della filosofia del diritto nella filosofia, nella sdenza e nella
vita ai tempi nostri, Verona: Ed. Tedeschi.
Virgili F. (1898) La sociologia e le transformazioni del diritto, Turin: Bocca.
Weber, M. (1910?) Letter to Michels, Archivio Max Weber, N. 126, Turin: Fondazione
Luigi Einandi.
——(1956) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, T bingen: Mohr.
——(1971) Gesammelte politische Schriften, T bingen: Mohr.
4
ACADEMIC DISCUSSION OR POLITICAL
GUIDANCE?
Social-scientific analyses of fascism and National
Socialism in Germany before 19331
When the fascist march on Rome in 1922 led to the emergence of an Italian fascist
state, a potential alternative to democracy was established as a political model.
Political and scholarly discussion in Germany was motivated by the question of
the relevance of this development for the young and still unstable Weimar
Republic. German social scientists had a share in this discussion. Their analyses
of fascism were ambivalent in character—academic as well as political documents.
They derived from various theoretical schools, and came to different political
conclusions. The social scientists that analysed fascism in Italy misjudged Nazism.
The German social scientists during the Weimar Republic who analysed the rise
of National Socialism had quite different political roles, and reacted differently.
The development of the fascist trade unions was thwarted by ‘the social
constellation and the social situation of Fascism’ (Marschak 1924b:727). The trade
unions had lost against the ‘ruling practitioners who willingly bowed to the socially
dominant groups, whether it is the plutocracy in the big cities or the local bosses
within industry or agriculture, thereby stabilizing the power of the state or their
own power’ (Marschak 1925:103).
This pointed to the question of fascism’s power bases. According to Marschak
fascism combined ‘three versions of dictatorship’ (1925:113): party-dictatorship,
which was the drive by the middle-class urban intellectuals to become a new
governing stratum; class-dictatorship, which utilized the tendencies of the owners
of industrial and agrarian capital to use political and quasi-military violence for
the solution of social questions; and the personal dictatorship of Mussolini, which
rested on his personal charisma, through which these divergent forms were
integrated. The relation between the forms, however, changed.
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 89
The people and the state [of Italy] did not correspond until now. The people,
still incomplete, had not found its state yet. The Fascist state intends to
become the state of the Italian people as such. Italy would become a
Volksstaat like England and France have been for a long time because to be
a Volksstaat meansthat a specific people has given itself the particular
form of the state that fits its nature.
(Mannhardt 1925a:392)
According to Mannhardt fascism will become for Italy ‘what puritanism was for
England and liberalism was for France’ (Mannhardt 1925a:392). To do so fascism
must ‘succeed not so much as a party—that might be impossible —but as a
Weltanschauung and as a way of thinking’ (Mannhardt 1925a:392–93).
Mannhardt began with the same observations as the ‘political’ authors, but placed
them instead in a völkisch perspective. On the grounds of his own theory of the
Volksstaat Mannhardt had to reject fascism ‘as a recipe for our German situation’
(Mannhardt 1925a:394). But at the same time he regarded it as possible that
fascism had a ‘übervölkisch meaning’ (1925a:393). ‘It may easily be the meaning
of fascism to transmit this new line of thought in the specifically Italian version
to the world, like liberalism was propagated in its French or English version’
(Mannhardt 1925:393). By that Mannhardt envisioned the possibility of using
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 91
fascism as a model: ‘It may be that the German Volksstaat grows from the same
root as the Fascist state but it is very certain that it may only grow on the soil of
our people from its own essence and by its own power’ (1925a:394).
articles on fascism on the common theme of its economic order. Beckerath again
explicated his main theses and compared fascism to other social and political
systems, in particular to the ‘democratic-parliamentary interventionist state’, in
which the ‘antagonisms of an economy full of conflicts have masterfully been
interwoven into the state’. Fascism, in contrast, has ‘made the state independent
of the economy and the party, and left the economic order totally to the bodies of
self-governance’ (Beckerath 1932:362).
As Christian Eckert correctly noted, Beckerath’s method was ‘essentially
historical but mixed with fundamental discussions’ (Eckert 1930/31:359).
Beckerath remained within the political-functional perspective which treated
fascism as a ‘system’, and fascism and Bolshevism as ‘political experiments’
(Beckerath 1927a:245, 249). He was fascinated by the forces reshaping Italy, this
‘most peculiar conquest of a state modern history has experienced’ and by the
‘thrilling experiment of the creation of a state’ that had been going on since 1925
(Beckerath 1927b:141; 1932:350). He explicitly considered the fascist system to
be a potential model for Europe, and considered a return to authoritarianism likely
because of economic and political tensions. He saw as the main task that this
authoritarian state would face was the ‘reshaping of the capitalist order’ (Beckerath
1929b:153). No concrete political suggestions for Germany arose out of
Beckerath’s analyses. Writing in an academic manner, he restricted himself to an
objective analysis of broad historical developments, and to general predictions.
Robert Michels
From today’s perspective, Michels appears as the most prominent participant in
the discussion of fascism. In view of his stature as sociologist and his fascist
activism, one might expect him to have been in the centre of the discussion. From
the number of reviews of his work this assumption appears to be correct: his
volumes, published in 1925 and 1930, were taken very seriously.6 His two volumes
of Socialism and Fascism in Italy (1925a) included his article The Rise of Fascism
in Italy, together with articles on the history of Italian socialism and Bolshevism.
He tried to draw an evolutionary line from these movements to fascism.
Italy Today, published in 1930, was a comprehensive account of Italian history,
economy, and culture. The chapter on ‘Italy under Fascism’ reproduced four
previously published articles (Michels 1926b, 1928a, 1928c, 1929), and added an
account of economic developments since 1922 and an enthusiastic appraisal of
Mussolini. Michels’ last publication before 1933 was a short article for the Berlin
journal Die Zeit (Michels 1930b).
The sheer number and visibility of Michels’ publications on fascism make it
quite clear that Michels was regarded as an expert in this area. He gave many
presentations on the topic and was asked for an article in a dictionary (Michels
1928c). With his 1930 book, the fifth volume in a series on the construction of
modern states, addressed to a politically active readership, Michels tried to reach
a broader audience and succeeded. Michels also regularly wrote articles for Swiss
and German daily newspapers dealing with various aspects of fascism.
Michels’ analyses throughout stressed the ethics of fascism. He identified the
main characteristics of the new Italy as the ‘powerful will’ of fascism and a
‘collective enthusiasm in existence for six years’. All of this contrasted to the
‘period of fatigue’ after the end of the war (1926b:113; 1928a:17; 1930a:209).
The most important quality of the political ethos that had developed from this was
a ‘theoretically underdeveloped but practically highly developed sense of duty’
(1928c:524). ‘Fascism has created a new state. This has been based on tough
discipline from top to bottom with an enormous productivity which tries to reach
all parts of the nation’ (1928c:526). This line of argument obviously came directly
from fascist self-interpretation, with its topoi of the revolutionary deed, moral
rejuvenation, strong government, and leadership. Michels did not discuss
Germany or National Socialism: his interest was only in his adopted country, Italy,
and his new political home, fascism.
reality in Russia and Italy’, the ‘despotic state’ of bolshevist state-capitalism and
the ‘mixture of national, state-socialist, and ständisch elements in Fascism’
(1931b:198–99). Part of his chapter on fascism had been published earlier (1931a),
when he participated in the discussion on fascism, attacking some of Ludwig
Bernhard’s theses mentioned above. Andreae defended fascism for installing
neither a planned economy nor a dictatorship, and stressed instead the multiple
ständestaatlich features of fascism.
In 1932 the second and revised edition of Heinrich’s book Fascism, first
published in 1929, appeared. His very detailed account of the fascist legislation
that had led to the reconstruction of the Italian state and economy and its ‘spiritual
bases’, was retained; an ‘evaluation from a universalistic stand-point’ was added
(1932:VIII). Andreae’s second book, Capitalism, Bolshevism, Fascism, was
published in 1933. It provided a comparative analysis of the basic ideas, economic
system, and state forms typical for these three different systems. Both authors,
who referred favourably to each other, analysed fascism and in particular the
relationship between state and economy primarily from the perspective of Spann’s
advocacy of a ständisch separation of state and economy. By understanding
fascism in the terms of their own theoretical framework, or rather in the terms of
their master’s framework, both authors were led to distinguish the state-socialist
features of fascism from its ständestaatlich ones. Fascism was treated as a first
step in the development predicted for the whole of Europe by their theory towards
a ständisch economy.
In spite of their common theoretical foundation, Heinrich and Andreae were
engaged in quite distinct discussions. Andreae restricted himself to a
ständestaatlich, functionalist analysis. Heinrich, however, gave his interpretation
a völkisch dimension. He did not regard Italian fascism as capable of eventually
evolving toward ständestaatlich ideas. He believed that the ‘word which would
save the whole of Europe and which could throw a magic formula against the
threatening decline cannot be pronounced in a Roman language. We believe it
will have to be pronounced in German’ (Heinrich 1932:182).
Georg Mehlis
Mehlis was on the periphery of the discussion. From 1910, Mehlis served as editor
of the philosophical journal Logos which had turned quite strongly to sociological
problems, but his books were not taken very seriously or widely reviewed
(Grabowsky 1931b; R.P. 1928). In his book on Mussolini’s ideas and the meaning
of Fascism (1928) Mehlis praised Mussolini as the ‘hero’ and born leader of the
Italian people. All social and political developments were interpreted as results of
Mussolini’s ideas. In his next book, on Mussolini’s State, he interpreted Italian
fascism, as the subtitle read, as ‘the realization of corporatist ideas of community’
(1929a). Many of his theses were taken directly from fascist documents and in
general his interpretation reproduced fascist self-interpretation. Like Michels,
Mehlis treated fascism from the perspective of heroic leadership and ethical
96 ANALYSES OF FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY
rejuvenation and, like Michels, Mehlis moved to Italy and regarded himself as a
representative of that country. It may be noted, however, that Michels and Mehlis
evidently did not accept each other in this role: neither, at least, mentioned the
other.
Mehlis published in the same kinds of journal as these other authors. He wrote
as an expert in the official journal of the German employers’ association, Der
Arbeitgeber, where four of his articles were published during the years 1926–1930.
They dealt with the spirit of the fascist laws of labour (1926), with the fascist
economic system as a ‘middle road between bourgeois-liberal and proletarian
economic systems’ (1927:380), with ethical rejuvenation through fascism as the
‘re-gaining of the social group-morale’ (1929c:305), and with the fascist
Ständestaat (1930b). Other papers were published in a social-scientific journal
(1929b) and an economic journal (1930a, 1931). As in his books, in his articles
Mehlis analysed fascism mainly as an ethical phenomenon; even the specific
reorganization patterns of state and economy were analysed in terms of their
ethical functions.
interpenetrates all horizontally organized classes by its organs and links them all
together with the help of the state power-apparatus like with a clamp’ (Beckerath
1927b:142). The form of the government, the party, and the state apparatus were
analysed in detail. Statements about Mussolini’s position were embedded in an
analysis of the fascist party structure, the fascist elite, the various committees that
advised the Duce, including the ‘Big Council’—the central governing board of
fifteen to twenty persons. The relationship between party and state was regarded
as the fusion of both and the adaptation of the structure of the state to that of the
party.
These political-functional analyses each characterized the fascist state as an
interdependent system of many elements, and used similar terms to describe it
(Beckerath 1927b:110; Beckerath 1929b:134; Eschmann 1930a:114–15;
Eschmann 1930b:77–79; Andreae 1933:198). The term ‘dictatorship’, which had
been used unanimously to describe fascist rulership before 1925, gradually ceased
to be used and was replaced by other terms. Fascism as a system continued to be
compared with the two other political alternatives, Bolshevism and democracy,
in a functionalist manner. Most of the authors had negative views of democracy
(Beckerath 1932:349–50; Michels 1930a:220; Heinrich 1932:11).
A certain political attitude towards fascism grew out of these
political-functional analyses. Treating fascism as a system inclined people to
discuss it as a potential model for Germany as can be seen in the cases of Beckerath,
Eschmann, and Andreae. But not all of them drew these conclusions. Bernhard,
in contrast, considered fascist political reorganization to be dysfunctional in the
relation between state and citizens and in the control of power. The democratic
state also showed dysfunctionalities, he thought, as ‘a necessary result of the
unbridgeable conflicts between the parties’ which prevented ‘the indispensable
balance that is needed for a steady government’ (1931:41). But Bernhard pointed
out that ‘badly working parliamentarism is not nearly as horrible as Fascism badly
guided which would throw the whole nation at the mercy of a single person or of
a gang’ (1931:42). Bernhard even denied fascism the character of a system. He
interpreted it as a purely personal dictatorship by Mussolini. The ‘Fascist
corporative state is nothing but an unlimited self-governance’ (1931:31). Adolf
Grabowsky pointed to the same tensions: ‘The Führer overpowers the system’
(Grabowsky 1928a:428).
The term ‘dictatorship’ in this period became the catchword of a minority
opposed to analysis of fascism as a ‘system’. Dictatorship was regarded as
dysfunctional, and not a feasible model for other countries, if it had a future in
Italy at all. After 1925, the Marxist thesis of class-dictatorship, as it was presented
by Hermann Heller and Siegfried Marck, also retained the concept of
‘dictatorship’. In their analyses it was used as a term to denounce fascism. Heller
said of fascism that ‘its political form has unveiled itself as the most primitive
political form of all, as dictatorship’ (Heller 1931b:109). Because this dictatorship
was interpreted as directed against workers, fascism could not solve ‘the cardinal
98 ANALYSES OF FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY
this development. Some of them used Italian fascism as a foil for their evaluation
of National Socialism. Most of these articles, however, were not presented as
scholarly analyses but as political commentaries.
Walter Hagemann, Adolf Grabowsky, and Ferdinand Aloys Hermens each
characterized the Italian model and evaluated the Nazi movement They stated
that Hitler was
only a little man. The little man with a pompous drapery, the little parvenu
who only thinks about the decoration of his Brown House, the little man
who—like his underlings—drives around in his big cars proudly, the little
man who eventually releases his orders which are unconsciously funny.
(Grabowsky 1931a:317)
Hermens stated that while the party-dictatorship of the fascists ‘did succeed in
achieving great aims’, the Nazi leadership lacked ‘the elite quality of Fascism by
far’ (1932:491–92). If National Socialism, as a result of the collapse of
parliamentarism, had to come out of its ‘comfortable opposition-role’, he
predicted, it would be soon done with. ‘At the most it would take months, it
certainly would not be years. The German people would not tolerate such a classe
dirigente for long’ (1932:494).
Other papers were written by Karl August Wittfogel who, in a journal close to
the German Communist Party (Wittfogel 1932a, 1932b), attacked fascism, and
social democracy with it, as the true political opponents because they were the
enemies in the class struggle, and by Willy Hellpach, who within the
conservative-democratic discussion interpreted Nazism as having a tendency
towards an ‘improved democracy’ (Hellpach 1932).
In February of 1933 the last detailed accounts of fascism and National Socialism
by German social scientists immediately after the seizure of power by the Nazis
were published. The Jewish journal Der Morgen devoted a whole edition to the
theme ‘The State’ to which several social scientists contributed. Gottfried
Salomon, in his article on The Total State, analysed the differences between
Russia, Italy, and Germany and the danger of a total state in Germany.
An article by Franz Oppenheimer analysed the evolution of the modern state
and ended with an account of the battle between ‘rationalism’, or socialism, and
capitalism, whose intellectual defenders argued with economics, the fascist and
Soviet doctrine of the ‘absolute state’, and the race theories.
Salomon and Oppenheimer remained on a highly abstract level. Both stated
their opposition not so much to the political organization or movement of fascism
but rather to fascism as the realization of a principle antagonistic to them.
Ernst Michel in his contribution asked how Protestant and Catholic Christians
might be organized together with Jews into a political Volksfront, a united front.
Other concrete analyses of the threat to the political situation by the Nazis were
offered. Margherita Hirschberg-Neumeyer described the essential distinction
between Italian and German fascism as follows: ‘The great danger threatens the
102 ANALYSES OF FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY
Jews not from the Fascist system as such but from the question which has been
raised by some groups in Germany acting like Fascists whether the Jews should
be taken into the state at all’ (Hirschberg-Neumeyer 1933:473). According to her,
the Italian Jews ‘have been fully integrated with equal rights into the Fascist state’,
and Italian fascism has ‘almost not touched the basis of a society founded on a
humanistic-psychological basis’ (1933:474–75). Hirschberg-Neumeyer did not
give up hope for a similar development in Germany.
This edition of the Jewish journal not only marked the end of the participation
of Jewish scholars in the discussion of the social sciences in the Weimar Republic,
where they had played such an important and crucial role (K sler 1986), it also
was the last edition of the journal itself.
Salomon’s and Oppenheimer’s articles can also be seen as contributions to a
much broader academic and political discussion of the concept of the Staat, a
concept with immense importance in the German tradition and one for which the
word ‘state’ is quite inadequate. This discussion had continued throughout the
Weimar Republic. The texts of Salomon and Oppenheimer reflect the great
abstractness of the social scientific discussion. The style of writing meant that this
literature could not deal with concrete political developments, much less influence
them. Even the Jewish intellectuals threatened by concrete dangers spoke of
political developments principally as a spiritual conflict, and even the most
clear-sighted analysis of Nazi anti-Semitism, provided by Hirschberg-Neumeyer,
concluded with a reference to ‘the idea of the organic’.
Even those participants in the social scientific discussion of fascism who
sympathized with it shared the belief that the Nazis were not qualified to be the
agent of the political reorganization of Germany. It is no surprise that none of
these social scientists produced more elaborate accounts of what they saw as
German imitators of Italian fascism. Their dislike of the NSDAP did not alter their
support of an authoritarian or even totalitarian reorganization of the state. The
themes of their analyses of fascism derived directly from the broad anti-democratic
perspective which dominated political discussion in the Weimar Republic.
It is difficult to assess the political effect of those writings portraying fascism
as a positive model. On the one hand it must be said that these texts remained very
abstract and academic. They were published mainly in books whose readership
consisted first of all of scholars, as can be seen from the number of reciprocal
citations, and secondly of an elite readership of politically aware people. It is
difficult to say how much of this scholarly discussion actually reached the political
elite of the Weimar Republic, much less whether it had any impact. But, it
nevertheless may be said that social scientists held a monopoly with regard to the
theme of fascism, at least on the book market. Their only competitors were
translations from Italian.
The social-scientific discussion of fascism was meant to influence the political
elite. This may be inferred from the fact that many of the articles were published
in journals orientated toward economic elites. In these discussions social scientists
appeared as experts before an audience interested in political questions and as
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 103
informants about fascism as a political model. This continued after the ‘victory’
of the Nazi party. In several papers,7 and particularly in a volume dealing with
fascist economy published simultaneously in Italy and Germany in 1934 some of
the authors discussed here, Beckerath, Eschmann, Heinrich, Michels, and
Vōchting, evaluated fascist economic development (Dobbert ed. 1934).
No concrete political suggestions were produced, and this was characteristic of
the social-scientific discussion. Virtually all the authors strove to limit themselves
to a purely scholarly discussion of fascism, and tried to avoid any ‘degeneration’
into political commentary. These attempts were only part of a much broader
concerted effort by social scientists to gain recognition as ‘real scholars’ by
adhering to the ideal of ‘objectivity’. This aim was particularly stressed by those
scholars who defined themselves as ‘social scientists’ in the Weimar Republic, or
were defined as such, and who hoped to gain academic respectability and to find
niches in the highly institutionalized academic system of German universities
(K sler 1983).
Presumably they were employed on a full-time basis by the trade unions. These
articles, which referred to each other, formed a closely interwoven debate about
the historical development of Nazism, its place in the social structure of Germany,
on the relationship between the SPD and the Nazi-followers, the potential further
development of Nazism, and possible counter-strategies.
The theme of the placement of the bourgeois middle classes was dealt with by
Theodor Geiger who identified them as a Zwischenschicht, a ‘stratum in-between’
the antagonistic capital and proletariat classes (Geiger 1930:638). This ‘stratum
in-between’ consisted of the ‘old middle classes’ such as craftsmen, retail traders,
and farmers, and the ‘new middle classes’ like salaried employees, civil servants,
professionals, and skilled labourers. This placement of the middle classes became
the basis for Geiger’s further analyses which he continued in his book of 1932.
His main arguments were questioned only by Eschmann and Tōnnies. Svend
Riemer also spoke of the new middle classes as strata ‘which cannot be placed
clearly class-wise’ (Riemer 1932a:103).
For these authors it was not so much ideology which was of crucial importance
for an understanding of the attraction of the Nazi movement, but rather its character
as a protest movement. As Riemer explained:
The electoral success of the NSDAP in 1930 derived from a ‘panic in the
middle-classes’; the Nazi party had become ‘the party of the humiliated and the
slandered’ (Geiger 1930:649). The ‘psychic motives’ for their continued success
without any doubt and in particular among the masses that have been won
over since 1930 are to be found not so much in the enthusiasm for a new
state and a somehow reformed people but in emotions of anger and
disappointment with the existing state.
(Geiger 1932:118)
Other authors were specifically interested in the question of the social origins of
the voters for the NSDAP. Hans Neisser stated:
The National Socialists attracted between fifteen and twenty percent of the
industrial work force, twenty to twenty-five percent of the agrarian work
force, and the rest from the middle-classes, the salaried employees, the civil
servants, and the pensioners.
(Neisser 1930:659)
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 107
According to Walter Dirks, Nazism had become ‘an Utopian action’ of the middle
classes, the employees, university students, intellectuals, and young unemployed,
and he explained its dynamics with the ‘social tensions which put people of these
strata in unrest, in “movement”’ (Dirks 1931:205). Bruno Gleitze interpreted the
NSDAP following as ‘a mixture of bourgeois in despair, proletarians fed up with
the present, and youth hungry for the future’ (Gleitze 1932:310).
Another crucial element in the class-analytical approaches was the effects of
the propaganda of the NSDAP. Geiger argued that the propaganda during the
elections was directed towards the differences within the middle classes
Geiger offered some examples, pointing out that the slogan of a ‘powerful state’
was very attractive to the civil service and that the slogan of a ‘national spiritual
elite’ was very attractive for teachers and intellectual youth. The denunciation of
‘the Jews’ and ‘the Bosses’ was very helpful in attracting several very distinct
groups at once. According to Riemer the ‘function of the “Third Reich” does not
rest so much on the programmatic level, it does not demand action, but rather
represents the clear expression, the symbol which the nagging attitude of the
dissatisfied create for themselves’ (Riemer 1932a:112).
The analyses of Nazism in the articles in Die Arbeit not only tried to understand
the Nazi movement but also tried to contribute to the creation of an effective
counter-strategy for the SPD. After their articles on the relationship between the
NSDAP and the middle classes, Geiger and Riemer each followed up with an
article on the relationship between the SPD and the middle classes. Other authors
also tried to advise on strategy.
Geiger stated that the ‘new proletariat’ which had never been as impoverished
as the industrial work-force, had remained unchanged in their nationalism. The
SPD had never responded to this attitude, and thus had driven the ‘new proletariat’
into the arms of Nazism. A second mistake of social democratic propaganda was
the continuous use of the term ‘proletariat’ even for salaried employees, who
interpreted this as a sign of a loss in social standing. The same problem arose with
the formula of ‘pauperization’; instead ‘of an explanation of a tendency of
capitalistic evolutionin the ears of the petite bourgeoisie this became a
programme of the socialism they saw themselves as victims of (Geiger 1931:632–
33). Geiger developed some practical political recommendations from this, after
calling for a ‘theoretical re-working of social reality’ and an ‘improvement of the
basic socialist ideas’. He spoke out against ‘a certain routine in demagogic
influence’, and in particular against the ideological petrification of the social
democratic press (1931:633–34).
108 ANALYSES OF FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY
When the leaders of the NSDAP are forced to a practical confession against
or for Socialism than we will see that the old middle-classes want old
capitalism with the protection of the individual entrepreneur while the new
proletariat will want socialism. The unified front of aggressive nationalism
one day must necessarily crack due to these different economic interests.
(Geiger 1931:628; also Geiger 1932:135–36)
These authors were very close to the SPD and analysed Nazism within the confines
of Marxism, in terms of its social origins and its internal ideological integration.
They proposed an SPD policy limited to attracting the support of specific social
groups.
As can be seen from these texts their Marxist perspective did lead to a certain
selective blindness with regard to some aspects of Nazism. Those who stayed too
close to their own theory easily lost sight of possibilities of development and
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 109
action. In the case of the authors in Die Arbeit, it might have become clear to them
that their accounts of Nazism had definitely underestimated its capacity to
integrate its diverse following.
Another participant in this discussion was Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann, who was
not a Marxist. As we have seen, in his analyses of Italian fascism, Eschmann was
the one who called for a political conception for Germany that would be specific
to her own needs but take into account the fascist experiences. In two articles
published in Die Arbeit (Eschmann 1930c, 193la), he had also depicted the
integration of the Italian worker into Italian society as an exemplary model. In
another paper in 1931 he referred to the discussion of salaried employees and tried
to subsume this social group under his concept as he had done with the workers
before.
The ‘socialist speakers’ used concepts that Eschmann regarded as
not very convincing in two ways: neither will it actually grasp the crisis of
the bourgeoisie, nor find a language which might make it plausible for the
middle-classes to understand their supposedly ‘false position’. Or does one
really believe that slogans like ‘panic in the middle-classes’, ‘revolt of the
employees’, ‘revolution by the proletarian of the white collar workers’ can
convince the bourgeois strata which have entered a state of turbulence to
socialism in its present-day party version?
(Eschmann 1931b:364–65)
The political relevance of the middle classes, Eschmann said, had been grossly
underestimated because of the Marxist ‘concept of a historical sequence of
aristocracy, bourgeoisie, proletariat’ (1931b:368). In Germany for the first time
in history the bourgeois strata have come to a state of political activity, and they
are not the ‘forerunner of the proletariat but at least its contemporary’. ‘The
class-struggle’, Eschmann concluded, ‘has moved more to the right’ (1931b:368).
The proletariat together with the middle classes stood against ‘the stratum of the
owners of the monopolies’ and both strove for ‘the replacement of domination by
this group over the means of production by way of taking them away and putting
them under the control of the whole nation’ (1931b:368). In contrast to the
proletariat, which has ‘by means of their party integrated itself into the state and
has won the National by the Social’, the bourgeois strata started from nation and
state, ‘the Social is based on the National’ (1931b:370).
This concept of a nationally oriented socialism—which made it quite easy for
Eschmann ultimately to find his way to Nazism—was bound to provoke the
opposition of the Marxist authors. Geiger in his article three editions later criticized
Eschmann’s concept of a ‘non-capitalistic bourgeoisie’ because he regarded it as
‘essential to distinguish the middle-classes dependent upon wages from the
petite-capitalistic bourgeoisie, the propertied middle-classes’ (Geiger 1931:624).
The latter was not anti-capitalistic but was only looking for a more social
110 ANALYSES OF FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY
capitalism and could not be won for socialism. The front of the class struggle
therefore was not moved ‘more to the right’. Only the ‘new proletariat’ could be
attracted. Geiger pointed directly to the main aims behind Eschmann’s theses: ‘He
thinks that the proletariat and the non-monopolistic bourgeoisie have the same
interests, namely the replacement of socialism as the aim of the struggle by some
“social” form for the middle-bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie. We believe
that we have to hold tight to a fundamental socialism’ (Geiger 1931:626; also
Geiger 1932:106).
Three articles in Die Arbeit explicitly dealt with the programme of the NSDAP.
Adam Hüfner reviewed a book by Hans Reupcke on National-Socialism and the
Economy of 1931. He tried to show the swift change of the Nazi economic
programme from an earlier ‘petit bourgeois utopianism’ to an ‘explicit
private-capitalistic ideology of entrepreneurship’ (H fner 1931:190). Jenny Radt
dealt with Nazi concepts of law, in particular the Nazi conceptions of the state, of
the identity of state and people, and of citizenship connected to the principle of
Blutsgemeinschaft, community of the blood, and the inferior position of women.
In her treatment of the Italian model, Judith Grünfeld, using quotations from the
Nazi women’s movement showed that fascism in general is ‘directed against
women workers and women civil servants and in particular against all higher
professional occupations by women’ (Grünfeld 1932:428). Fascism meant a
While the second of these two articles pointed to threats connected with the rise
of Nazism, the first had tried to discredit it with an analysis of its programme like
the papers dealt with above. This type of discussion stood in clear contrast to those
Marxist interpretations which insisted that the published programmes of the
NSDAP were irrelevant to an understanding of the character of the movement.
In contrast to the other Marxist writers, Sternberg did not believe in an inevitable
historical development. He hinted at the possibility ‘that a capitalistic way out of
this crisis may be organized’. ‘If it comes in Germany,’ he said, ‘it will come in
a Fascist version and it will increase the imperialistic danger of war in world
capitalism, if not lead directly to war’ (1932:399). Germany therefore appeared
to him to be currently at the centre of world history, for it will be there ‘where the
decision will be made whether the counter-revolution, Fascism, or barbarity
makes a decisive step forward, or the chain is broken by revolution’ (1932:400).
NOTES
REFERENCES
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4th edn., Jena.
Andreae, W. (1931a) ‘Ist der Faschismus wirtschaftspolitische Diktatur?’, Volkswirte,
30, 6:169–174.
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——(1933) Kapitalismus, Bolschewismus, Faschismus, Jena.
Anton, Z. (1926) Review of Michels 1925 and Marschak 1924/25, Archiv für die
Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, 12:465–468.
Auernheimer, G. (1985) ‘Genosse Herr Doktor’. Zur Rolle von Akademikern in der
deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1890 bis 1933, Giessen.
Beckerath, E.von (1927a) ‘Moderner Absolutismus’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 25,
Abhandlungen.
——(1927b) Wesen und Werden des fascistischen Staates, Berlin.
——(1928) ‘Idee und Wirklichkeit im Fascismus’, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 52, 1:1–18.
——(1929a) Review of Internationaler Fascismus, Landauer and Honegger (eds) 1928,
Schmollers Jahrbuch, 53, 1:156–159.
——(1929b) ‘Fascismus und Bolschewismus’, in B.Harms (ed.) Volk und Reich der
Deutschen, vol. 3:134–153, Berlin.
——(1931a) ‘Fascismus’, in A.Vierkandt (ed.) Handwörterbuch der Soziologie,
Stuttgart, pp. 131–136.
——(1931b) ‘Fascism’, in E.R.A.Seligman and A.Johnson (eds) Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, vol. V/VI, pp. 133–139.
——(1932) ‘Die Wirtschaftsverfassung des Fascismus’, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 56,
2:347–362.
——(1933) ‘Amerikanischer Fascismus?’, Ruhr und Rhein, 14, 51:862–865.
——(1934) ‘Die jüngste Phase des italienischen Korporativismus und der ständische
Aufbau in Deutschland’, Braune Wirtschaftspost, 3, 15:454–457.
——(1943) ‘Korporative Wirtschaftstheorie’, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 67, 1:257–269.
Bernhard, L. (1924) Das System Mussolini, Berlin.
——(1926) (Review of Michels 1925), Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 23, Chronik, 285**.
——(1931) Der Staatsgedanke des Faschismus, Berlin.
Bonn, M.J. (1928) ‘Schlusswort’, in Landauer/Honnegger (eds) pp. 127–150.
Borinski, F. (1931) ‘Vom Antikapitalismus zum Sozialismus’, Neue Blätter für den
Sozialismus, 2, 3:104–107.
——(1932) ‘Der revolution re Nationalismus’, Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus, 3,
10:531–542.
——(1933) ‘Wir—und der junge Nationalismus’, Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus, 4,
2:61–70.
Borkenau, F. (1933) ‘Zur Soziologie des Faschismus’, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft
und Sozialpolitik, 68, 5:513–547.
Bourgin, G. (1932) Review of Michels 1930, Zeitschrift für die gesamte
Staatswissenschaft , 92:300–302.
Brandt, G. (1983) ‘Warum versagt die Kritische Theorie?’ Review of M.Wilson 1982,
Leviathan 1983, 2:151–156.
Briefs, G. (1932) ‘Das berufsst ndische System zwischen Faschismus und
Bolschewismus’, Das neue Reich, 46:906–907, 47:924–925.
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 117
and C.Schlüter (eds) Hundert Jahre ‘Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft’, Opladen, pp.
517–526.
Keiser, G. (1931) ‘Der Nationalsozialismus. Eine reaktion re Revolution’, Neue Blätter
far den Sozialismus, 2, 6:270–277.
Kogon, E. (1927) ‘Wirtschaft und Diktatur. Das italienische Beispiel’, Hochland, 24,
4:385–406.
Lachmann, L.M. (1930) Fascistischer Staat und korporative Wirtschaft, Ph.D.
Dissertation, Berlin.
Landauer, C.[K.] (1925) ‘Zum Niedergang des Faschismus’, Die Gesellschaft, 2, 2:168–
173.
——(1930) ‘Das nationalsozialistische Wirtschaftsprogramm’, Der deutsche Volkswirt,
4, 52:1764–1768.
——(1931a) ‘Dummheit oder Verbrechen?’, Der deutsche Volkswirt, 5, 18:571–574.
——(1931b) ‘Neue nationalsozialistische Wirtschaftstheorien’, Der deutsche
Volkswirt, 5, 34:1141–1145.
Landauer, C. and Honnegger, H. (eds) (1928) Internationaler Faschismus, Karlsruhe.
Man, H.de (1931a) ‘Nationalsozialismus?’, Europäische Revue, 7:1.
——(1931b) Sozialismus und National-Faschismus. Potsdam.
Mannhardt, J.W. (1925a) Der Faschismus, M nchen.
——(1925b) ‘Zur Kritik des Faschismus’, Zeitwende, 1, 2:1–14.
——(1933) ‘Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus’, Wirtschaftsdienst, 18:42.
Mannzen, W. (1930) ‘Die sozialen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus’, Neue Blätter
für den Sozialismus, 1, 8:370–374.
Marck, S. (1928) ‘Liberalismus, Fascismus, Sozialismus. Ein Kapitel politischer
Ideologie’, Klassenkampf, 2, 12:373–377.
Marschak, J. (1924a) ‘Faschismus und Reformismus’ (Review of A.Labriola, Le due
politiche. Fascismo e riformismo, Napoli 1924), Die Gesellschaft, 1, 1:499–505.
——(1924b) ‘Der korporative und der hierarchische Gedanke im Fascismus I’, Archiv
für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 52:695–728.
——(1925) ‘Der korporative und der hierarchische Gedanke im Fascismus II’, Archiv
für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 53:81–140.
Mayer, J.P. (1932) ‘Neue Schriften ber den deutschen Faschismus’, Neue Blätter für
den Sozialismus, 3.
Mehlis, G. (1926) ‘Der Geist der faschistischen Arbeitsgesetzgebung’, Der Arbeitgeber,
16, 11:222–224.
——(1927) ‘DasfaschistischeWirtschaftssystem’, Der Arbeitgeber, 17, 16:379–382.
——(1928) Die Idee Mussolinis und der Sinn des Faschismus, Leipzig.
——(1929a) Der Staat Mussolinis. Die Verwirklichung des korporativen
Gemeinschaftsgedankens, Leipzig.
——(1929b) ‘Faschistische Organisation’, Archiv für angewandte Soziologie, 2, I:33–
37.
——(1929c) ‘Faschismus und Gruppengemeinschaft’, Der Arbeitgeber, 19, 11:305–
307.
——(1930a) ‘Der korporative Gemeinschaftsgedanke im Faschismus’, Werk und Beruf,
2, 6:172–177, 7:194–198.
——(1930b) ‘Der St ndestaat’, Der Arbeitgeber, 20, 9:250–252.
—— (1931) ‘Liberaler und organischer Staat in der Deutung des Faschismus’, Werk
und Beruf, 3, 11:328–335.
120 ANALYSES OF FASCISM AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY
Borkenau, Franz (b.1900), Full-time employee of the German Communist Party (KPD)
until 1929
Briefs, Goetz (b.1889), Professor of Social Policy and Sociology, Technical University
of Berlin
Dirks, Walter (b.1900), Catholic writer
Eckardt, Hans von (b.1890), Professor of Public Administration, University of
Heidelberg
Eckert, Christian (b.1874), Professor of Economics and Government, University of
Cologne
Eschmann, Ernst Wilhelm (b.1904), University Assistant to Alfred Weber, University
of Heidelberg; Editor of the journal Die Tat
Geiger, Theodor (b.1891), Professor of Sociology, Technical University of
Braunschweig
Gleitze, Bruno (no information available)
Grabowsky, Adolf (b.1880), Dozent, Technical University of Berlin and Institute for
Advanced Study of Government in Berlin
Grünfeld, Judith (b.1888), Ph.D. Dissertation in Public Administration, University of
Tübingen (1913)
Hagemann, Walter (b.?), Ph.D. Dissertation in Philosophy, University of Berlin (1922)
Heberle, Rudolf (b.1896), Privatdozent in Sociology, University of Kiel
Heimann, Eduard (b.1889), Professor of Economics and Social Sciences, University of
Hamburg
Heinrich, Walter (b.1902), Privatdozent in Economics and Sociology
Heller, Hermann (b.1891), Professor of Law, University of Frankfurt
Hellpach, Willy (b.1871), Professor of Psychology, University of Heidelberg
Hermens, Ferdinand Aloys (b.1906), University Assistant, Technical University of
Berlin
Hirschberg-Neumeyer, Margherita (no information available)
Hüfner, Adam (b.?), Ph.D. Dissertation in Public Administration, University of
Heidelberg (1930)
Jessen, Jens (b.1896), Privatdozent of Economics, University of Göttingen
Keiser, G nter (b.?), Ph.D. Dissertation in Philosophy, University of Jena (1931)
Kogon, Eugen (b.1903), Editor of Catholic weeklies
Lachmann, Ludwig (b.?), Ph.D. Dissertation in Public Administration, University of
Berlin
Landauer, Carl (b.1891), Professor of Economics, Business School of Berlin.
Man, Hendrik de (b.1885), Lecturer of Social Psychology, University of Frankfurt
Mannhardt, Johann Wilhelm (b.1883), Professor of Comparative Government and of
the German groups in foreign countries and in the border areas (Grenz- und
Auslandsdeutschtum), University of Marburg
Mannzen, Walter (b.?), Ph.D. Dissertation in Public Administration, University of Kiel
(1934)
March, Siegfried (b.1889), Professor of Philosophy, University of Breslau
Marschak, Jakob (b.1898), Professor of Economics, University of Heidelberg
Mehlis, Georg (b.1878), Professor of Philosophy, University of Chiavari (Italy)
Meusel, Alfred (b.1896), Professor of Economics and Sociology, University of Aachen
Michel, Ernst (b.1889), Director of the Akademie der Arbeit, Frankfurt
Michels, Robert(o) (b.1876), Professor of Sociology, University of Perugia (Italy)
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 123
Carsten Klingemann
sociology has varied with the rhetorical purposes of commentators. In the postwar
years René König expressly excluded them from the community of sociologists,
treating them as tendentious and speculative philosophers of society.2 As late as
1960, König also attacked Karl Mannheim and Siegfried Landshut (emigrants,
like himself), considering them to be among the social-scientific gravediggers of
the Weimar Republic. Twenty years later, he exalted them as the men on whom
Weimar sociology had pinned its hopes and who in their capacity as sociologists
had been removed by the Nazis (Klingemann 1985:369–371). This is grossly
misleading. Sociologists were not driven away because they were part of a
discipline detested by the Nazis.3 The phrase ‘Jewish sociology’, it may be noted,
was applied less by National Socialist officials than by the ambitious anti-Semites
of the discipline itself, such as Richard Thurnwald.
and other Jewish sociologists had been expelled, there were new beginnings: the
Frankfurt sociologist Professor Heinz Marr organized a Working Group for Social
Science which developed a programme geared to providing social scientific advice
and service to firms, administrative agencies and Nazi institutions in the Frankfurt
region. Although the Working Group for Social Science only partially realized its
aims, it supported some academic theses and dissertations (Klingemann 1990b).
The Sociographical Institute of the University of Frankfurt, however, became very
successful (Klingemann 1989, 1991).
The Sociology Department at the University of Cologne, under Leopold von
Wiese, in addition to continuing its traditional version of sociology, also began to
perform empirical social research oriented to ‘practice’. Willy Gierlichs, the
second professor of sociology in Cologne and a Nazi activist, supervised diploma
theses and Ph.D. dissertations that dealt with volkspolitische questions and other
problems that were salient to the Nazi regime. Von Wiese himself supervised
seminar papers and dissertations produced as part of an official research project
financed by the state administrator of Trier on the situation of future generations
in the agrarian sector of the region of Trier (Klingemann 1988b).
The Sociology Department of the University of Hamburg, under its professor
Andreas Walther, had substantial success after 1933. Walther’s research in the
area of urban sociology, based on the methodological approach he learned from
the Chicago School, came to be regarded as socially and politically valuable.
Walther and his collaborators produced a comprehensive and very detailed social
cartography of some quarters of Hamburg that had been defined as areas dangerous
to the community (gemeinschädigende Regionen), analysing, down to the level
of individual streets, rates of social deviance and political dissidence. Walther
used data from the Social Welfare Administration, and added to it with field
research undertaken by twelve of his assistants. His social mapping was to be used
as preparation for measures of a large-scale ‘sanitization’, involving the preventive
eradication (Ausmerzung) of so-called socially dangerous people
(gemeinschädliche Personen), of the Hamburg slums. The plan was never carried
out (Roth 1986). But the maps indirectly contributed to city planning in Hamburg,
the Führerstadt (Pahl-Weber and Schubert 1987). Under the Nazis Walther was
able to demonstrate something that in the democratic order of the Weimar Republic
he was unable to—that empirical research in sociology could be policy-relevant.
Policy relevance requires policies to be relevant to. A regime in which the ‘solution
of the social question’ included the eradication of socially undesirable people
provided Walther’s opportunity and he succeeded in securing a place for his brand
of sociology. His success was made evident when he asked to retire in 1944, and
the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Hamburg tried to switch this chair
to another discipline. Walther opposed this. He mobilized his colleagues and allies,
got a vote from the academic senate in his support, and also received the support
of the rector. The Nazi Partei-Kanzlei, apparently at the instigation of the Berlin
sociologist and Dozentenbundführer, Schering, also intervened at the Ministry for
Science Education and Adult Education to save the chair for sociology. In early
130 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
1945 the Ministry, to block the strategy of the Faculty of Philosophy, proposed
that Walther should be appointed deputy of his chair (Wassner 1985, 1986).
Leipzig sociologists, around Hans Freyer, established the practical utility of
sociology by their empirically oriented research in rural sociology on rural labour
problems. Freyer also made some visible attempts to curry ideological favour. He
tried to introduce the idea of a ‘political semester’ to be required of all students.
The enthusiasm of some party representatives for this idea proved to be short-lived,
for his concept was not really compatible with party indoctrination. Empirical
research was a more successful means of securing support (Muller 1987). Studies
on the rural exodus, developed in cooperation with the special envoy of the Leader
of the Farmers of the Reich (Sonderbeauftragter des Reichsbauernführers für
Landarbeiterfragen), contributed to the regulatory and administrative process.
Among other sponsored research was work on sociological area studies.
Leipzig was an important scientific training centre, which served various
purposes. Ph.D. dissertation theses were very heterogeneous: on the one hand we
find Nazi functionaries who received degrees for ideological pamphlets (Sch fer
1990); on the other hand there were many dissertations in which politically neutral
themes were given serious scholarly treatment, and many more that dealt
empirically with concrete problems.
The Department of Social Science and Government of the University of
Heidelberg, usually identified with the name of Alfred Weber, who had been
dismissed in 1933, also turned to practically oriented empirical research during
the Third Reich. Alfred Weber’s former co-director, Carl Brinkmann, who became
the sole director, had started a few empirical social research projects before 1933,
supported, until 1935, by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Workgroup for Area
Studies and the Central Office for Regional Administration (Reichsstelle für
Raumordnung) continued the funding. The emphasis of this sponsored research,
which continued until the appointment of Brinkmann to the University of Berlin
in 1943, was on the areas of rural sociology, urban sociology, and sociological
area studies. The research was closely related to the reorganization plans of the
Nazi regime for Western Europe as well as for the newly conquered Eastern
territories. The plans, of course, included the expulsion and annihilation of the
population in these territories. At the Heidelberg Department of Social Science
and Government many Nazi functionaries received Ph.Ds, from Arnold
Bergstraesser (who was later forced into emigration when it was found that he
was ‘non-Aryan’) and from Brinkmann (Klingemann 1990a).
In Berlin, the work of the older generation, including Kurt Breysig, Richard
Thurnwald, and Werner Sombart, continued. Franz Alfred Six, who took his
second doctorate under the supervision of Arnold Bergstraesser and who had
become a high-ranking officer of the SS, initiated in 1940 the foundation of the
Faculty for Foreign Studies of the University of Berlin, which served as a centre
of applied sociology within which young sociologists (especially from Heidelberg
and Leipzig) could continue their careers. Sociologists had previously been
employed at the German School of Advanced Political Studies, which in 1933
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 131
was placed under the control of the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and
Propaganda. This was one predecessor to the Faculty for Foreign Studies, which
was under the direct control of the SS. The Faculty for Foreign Studies specialized
in the training of qualified experts on foreign countries. Its Institute for Foreign
Studies (originally part of the Fakultät and later an official state institution with
its own budget) became an agency that specialized in policy advice in the overall
area of foreign affairs for the Third Reich. In addition to serving as experts in
psychological warfare these social scientists were expected to contribute to the
expansion of information, analysis, and expertise in all areas of foreign affairs.
The sociologists who taught in the Faculty for Foreign Studies were, as a rule,
simultaneously section heads (Abteilungsleiter) in the Institute for Foreign
Studies: the arrangement was a highly advanced combination of academic activity
with extra-academic professionalization.
The role of academic sociology in the scientific preparation, planning, and even
the execution of the policies of the Nazi state evolved through the creation of
institutes. There were institutes ‘at’ a university—and not ‘of’ a university—
financed for example by foundations, such as the Sociographical Institute at the
University of Frankfurt, or some private societies, like the Working Group for
Social Science (Frankfurt), or the Organization for Consumer Studies
(Nuremberg), which either received permanent or project-related support from
Nazi agencies. There were other institutions, like the Institute for Studies of
Borders and Foreign Areas (Klingemann 1989) or the Reinhard-Heydrich
Foundation in Prague which did not formally belong to any university, but in
reality were institutions for empirical social research which cooperated closely,
in terms of staff and research aims, with nearby universities. They relied less on
permanent staff and were, like the Heydrich Foundation, directly dependent on
the SS. The Institute for Government Research in the University of Berlin, for
example, could, because of the friendship of its directors with the Reichsführer
SS, Heinrich Himmler, draw freely on the resources of the Office for the
Strengthening of the German Peoples (i.e. outside the borders of Germany). The
Institute for Foreign Studies at the University of Berlin held a particularly powerful
position as an official state institution. The Scientific Research Institute of the
Official German Trade Union in Berlin commissioned research projects for
sociologists, gave them temporary positions so that they could continue to pursue
an academic career, and, in the case of younger scientists without university
opportunities, offered them the possibility of permanent positions. In short,
academic sociology at those universities that engaged in ‘practical’ work were
well integrated into the scientific planning apparatus of the Nazi state.
of the Rosenberg Office was limited. The basis for some of the constraints is made
clear in a letter of December 1939 from Martin Bormann, leader of the
Partei-Kanzlei, to the guardian of the Nazi Weltanschauung, Alfred Rosenberg,
as Special Envoy of the Führer. In this letter, it becomes very clear that the National
Socialist administration did not rely on ideological experts but on expert scientific
advice:
As you know, the ‘Stellvertreter des Führers’ gave his assent to the
incorporation of the German School of Advanced Political Studies into the
Faculty for Foreign Studies some time ago. To a great extent, the German
School of Advanced Political Studies has lost its former tasks. Hence, at the
new institute there will not be additional space for an ideological and
political training to the extent I assume you have in mind. The task of the
Faculty for Foreign Studies is the education of scientists with expert
knowledge on foreign countries. But it is not its task to educate new staff
politically. Hence I am of the opinion that the Faculty for Foreign Studies
is not the right place for the realization of the plans you have in mind and
which can be realized at the ‘Hohe Schule’ of the NSDAP, and therefore I
would like to ask you to abstain from your demand to take over the
protectorate.
(Bormann 1939)
The point is clear: expertise and indoctrination are separate domains. Rosenberg’s
attempts to advance the ideological position beyond the party, into the academic
sector, were not very successful. Some social scientists were criticized by the
Rosenberg Office for their Weltanschauung and were in consequence not
employed in the party-training apparatus, and some applicants to academic
positions in universities were declared unqualified on political-ideological
grounds. The Rosenberg Office enjoyed some success in controlling the area of
Volkskunde in the university system and in the extra-university areas.
Nevertheless, Rosenberg’s attempt to establish a genuinely Nazi science within
the partly cooperative traditional system of science failed. Although many social
scientists were active within the Rosenberg Office, as they later were active in the
Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzten
Ostgebiete), also headed by Rosenberg after 1941, his influence on the social
sciences was small.
The ideological censors of the Rosenberg Office were eager to give verdicts on
the social scientists who were to be hired as lecturers for party functions, and
sometimes discerned a lack of ideological firmness. But they were not prejudiced
against sociology as such. Indeed, the various offices of the Rosenberg Office
relied on cooperative sociologists like Wilhelm Emil M hlmann for expert advice,
and employed, on a full-time basis, Peter von Werder, specialist in the sociology
of ethnological topics, and Kurt Utermann who was subsequently social researcher
at Dortmund. Among the other scholars who served the Rosenberg Office were
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 135
the philosopher and sociologist Gerhard Lehmann, and Helmut Schelsky (Sch fer
1990), who were readers for the Book Department of the Agency for the Support
of German Literature (Reichsstelle zur Förderung des deutschen Schrifttums); this
unit also engaged such social scientists as Arnold Gehlen, Gunther Ipsen, Otto
Kühne, Karl Heinz Pfeffer, Karl C.Thalheim and Max Rumpf. The influence of
the Reichsstelle was, however, limited to selecting material for party libraries and
party training. There were other relationships as well. Carl August Emge,
philosopher and sociologist of law and the scientific leader of the Academy for
German Law, was the permanent representative of the Schopenhauer Society to
the Rosenberg Office. The warm relationship between the professor of philosophy
Alfred Baeumler, leader of the Central Office of Scholarship of the Rosenberg
Office, and the philosopher and sociologist Eduard Baumgarten was used
extensively and successfully by Baumgarten in his various quarrels with National
Socialist colleagues.
The Central Office for Sociology in the Rosenberg Office was led by Wilhelm
Longert, an adherent and propagator of the views of the Vienna sociologist Othmar
Spann. He quickly distanced himself from Spann when Spann fell from grace, and
subsequently provided the security service of the SS with information on Spann
and his supporters (Siegfried 1974). At the Central Office for Sociology Longert
produced numerous evaluations of university teachers of various disciplines and
interfered in the granting of positions to sociologists. But the pomposity of the
designation of his department as Central Office for Sociology of the Office of
Science Planning in the Central Office of Scholarship was inversely proportional
to his power over sociology in the Third Reich. In any case, his additional
responsibilities in other offices in the Rosenberg Office—especially in the field
of economics—kept him from pursuing any effective policy with regard to the
social sciences. Like all the other members of the Rosenberg Office who were
engaged in science policy, Longert was occupied primarily with protecting the
‘real’ doctrine of National Socialism against ‘falsifications’ produced by eager
scholars who were of the opinion that they had been called to make a personal
contribution to the refinement of the Nazi Weltanschauung.
In at least one case the ideological control which Longert exerted led to the
abrupt end of a career. But it was not a politically insubordinate university teacher:
it was Heinrich Harmjanz, in charge of the recruiting policy of the Ministry in the
areas of the social sciences and at the same time head of a department of an
institution called ‘The Ancestral Heritage’, which was the Teaching and Research
Society of the SS. This organization did not only deal with the prehistory of
Germanic cults, as its name suggests, but supported a comprehensive natural
scientific research program, including the infamous Institute for Research for
Military Use (Institut für wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung), known
especially for its medical experiments on humans. This organization also had no
prejudice against sociologists as such. With the explicit support of the
Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler, two sociologists of language, whose work
136 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
was expected to be of great value for the Nazi ‘Strengthening of the People’ policy,
were supported by it.
Harmjanz, who was professor of Research on German Peoples
(Volksforschung) at the University of Frankfurt, fell foul of Alfred Rosenberg
because he ignored Rosenberg’s claim to a monopoly on Research on German
Peoples; and because he had quarrelled with Rosenberg’s collaborators in the
Society for Research on German Peoples. Longert knew of an evaluation that the
ethno-sociologist Wilhelm Emil M hlmann had written on the French sociologists
Emile Durkheim and Henry Lévy-Bruhl for the Central Office for Scholarship of
the Rosenberg Office, and he was acquainted with the work of the late Vienna
sociologist Franz Jerusalem. Longert alleged that Harmjanz, in his inaugural
dissertation, had plagiarized from these three Jewish sociologists. For this
Harmjanz, who had long been protected by Himmler, was tried before the ‘court
of honor’ of the SS and expelled from membership. He then surrendered his
position in the ministry and went into the Army.
But the administrative need for social-scientific data and information set a limit
to ideological control. Consider the case of Max Hildebert Boehm, a well-known
anti-Semite long before 1933, who is often regarded as the typical Nazi sociologist.
Shortly after the Nazi seizure of power he was given a chair of ‘Sociology of the
Volk’ at the University of Jena in October 1933. He had belonged to the group
within the German Sociological Society which had attempted the overthrow of
the established leadership. This estimate of Boehm is confirmed by the
ethno-political activities of his Institute for Studies of Borders and Foreign Areas
in Berlin during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich (Klingemann 1989).
Boehm was regional leader of the Nazi Organization to Protect the Law
(NS-Rechtswahrerbund) as well as a member of the Academy for German Law
and sustaining member of the SS. His application for membership in the Nazi
party of 1937 had been forwarded by the regional head as part of a collective
application for membership of prominent persons. But his acceptance as a party
member was successfully prevented by Alfred Rosenberg—together with his
major ally in the area of scholarship, Professor Alfred Baeumler. Boehm, who
even before 1933 had attacked Rosenberg for his ‘pseudo-religious blood
mystique’, had been denounced by local party members. Apart from its treatment
of Jews, the Volkstheorie of Boehm, based on research on minorities in Europe,
could not be made to accord with Nazi racial policy, for example, its exclusion of
the Slavs. The ‘leader’ of German university teachers (Reichsdozentenbundführer)
and the security main office (Sicherheitshauptamt) of the SS also raised objections
to Boehm. In 1938 Boehm withdrew his membership application. Subsequent,
and quite protracted, attempts by the regional Nazi leader, ‘Gauleiter’ Sauckel, to
enable Boehm and ten more professors to join the party failed.
Nevertheless, Rosenberg commissioned research from Boehm’s Institute for
Studies of Borders and Foreign Areas because, in his capacity as Minister of the
Occupied Eastern Territories (Minister für die besetzten Ostgebiete), he needed
social-scientific expert knowledge. Boehm’s other customers included the
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 137
The Dozentenbund
The Dozentenbund was established in 1935 as an autonomous section within the
party. It had originated as a subordinate section within the Teachers Union
(Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund). The local representatives of the
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (the National Socialist Docent
League), and of the University Instructors League (Dozentenschaft),were if
possible to ‘lead’ the teaching staff of the university in personal union as official
representatives. Particularly after 1945, they were presented as omnipotent arbiters
of academic careers. This enabled university teachers to describe their own
compliant behaviour as the inevitable result of brutal force. German sociologists
who remained in their positions during the Nazi era were also eager to depict
sociology as a discipline that had suffered especially from this control. But the
hostility of the Dozentenbund to sociology is doubtful. The prominent sociologists
Arnold Gehlen, Carl Jantke, and Eduard Willeke (who, like Jantke, was a
collaborator in the Social Research Institute of Dortmund), the military sociologist
Walther M.Schering, the rural sociologist Hellmut Wollenweber, the industrial
sociologists Johannes Gerhardt and Walter Herrmann, Karl Günzel and Willy
Klutentreter, all were active and held high positions in the Dozentenbund and the
Dozentenschaft. The sociologist of sport and family, Gerd Cehak, had been an
officer (Gefolgschaftsführer) at the Institute for Sport. The rural historian G nther
Franz, contributor to the newly established sociological journal Volksspiegel,
founded in 1934, and after 1945 co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte
und Agrarsoziologie, taught at a Docent political training school
(Dozentenakademie). Walter Beck, social psychologist and sociologist, was an
official of the working group on psychology (Fachschaftskreis Psychologie)
which in 1937 had planned the cooperation of the Berlin universities in the
Dozentenbund. Gardy Gerhard Veltzke, who worked in 1933 and 1934 at the
university office of the SA in Berlin, in 1936 and 1937 became leader of the School
of the Office for Scholarship within the Youth Administration (Reichsschule des
Amtes Wissenschaft der Reichsjugendführung). From 1937 to 1939 he had worked
as assistant to Carl Brinkmann at the Department of Social Science and
Government at the University of Heidelberg, and was in 1944 personal secretary
138 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
published monthly, could call itself ‘national socialistic’. The reason for this
commission was the fact that after 1933 a great efflorescence of ‘National
Socialist’ literature had developed. The PPK, with its more than one hundred
full-time employees, like other agencies tried successfully to enlarge its realm of
competence. Dissertations in the social sciences that dealt with explicit themes of
the Nazi movement or the Nazi state had to be approved by the PPK prior to
publication. Not only fresh Ph.Ds in sociology tried to have their publications
listed in this bibliography but even established sociologists fought for the inclusion
of their work. Here and elsewhere the PPK was in bitter bureaucratic competition
with the Rosenberg Office. By means of a treaty with the Chamber of Culture
(Reichskulturkammer), which was controlled by the Ministry of Popular
Enlightenment and Propaganda, the PPK was empowered to ban certain books.
In the course of the war, however, the full-time staff of the PPK diminished
measurably.
Many sociologists can be found among the volunteer ‘readers’ for the PPK.
One sociological insider, Gerhard Kr ger, held a leading position there. Kr ger
was granted his Ph.D. for a thesis on ‘Students and Revolution’ supervised by the
Leipzig sociologist Hans Freyer. He was the chief reader at the Bibliographisches
Institut in Leipzig and was responsible for the new edition of Meyers Lexikon and
for the inclusion of the (surprisingly large number) of competent articles in Meyers
Lexikon dealing with sociologists and sociology. Another reader in the
Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission was Kleo Pleyer, who in 1926/27 had been
assistant to Max Hildebert Boehm and was a lecturer in history and sociology at
the German School of Advanced Political Studies in Berlin from 1930 to 1933.
Among the other readers in the Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission were the
assistant to the Königsberg sociologist Gunther Ipsen, Helmut Haufe, and the
Vienna social scientist Franz Ronneberger, who worked for other National
Socialist organizations as well.
In some contexts censorship was welcome. The various institutions such as the
Rosenberg Office, the Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission, the supreme
command of the Wehrmacht, the Youth Organization (Reichsjugendführer), the
Foreign Office and other ministries and authorities were routinely asked to censor
whenever issues of National Socialist ideology, the party, the government, and in
particular questions concerning foreign or domestic policy or the military had been
dealt with in social-scientific dissertations, or when official data had been used.
Many people who received doctorates were deeply disappointed if the thesis was
judged to be nothing world-shaking or ‘war-important’, so that it was not classified
as ‘confidential’ and therefore they had to donate the deposit copies of their
dissertation.
The SS security service (Sicherheitsdienst der SS), the SD, also had a direct
impact on the policy of the Ministry for Science, Education and Adult Education.
The SS security service, as a party organization, had developed into the relevant
control-institution for the state-run Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei), which
comprised the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), the criminal police, and the
140 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
border police. After the creation of the Central Security Office (RSHA) in 1939,
the various party and state organizations were formally integrated. The SD
originally functioned as an internal state secret service, but after 1937 was also
engaged in external espionage. In the RSHA these tasks were distributed among
the ‘Amt III (SD-Inland)’ and the ‘Amt VI (SD-Ausland)’. Although executive
duties were originally reserved for the Gestapo, the SD ultimately became engaged
in them as well. The SD-Einsatzgruppen participated in the killing of hundreds of
thousands in the occupied territories.
The ‘SD-Inland’ had a task that the suppression of public criticism by the Nazi
regime indirectly produced, the task of assessing public opinion. It produced
thousands of detailed reports, contributed by hundreds of informants throughout
the Reich. These reports (Lebensgebietberichterstattung, Lageberichte, and the
Meldungen aus dem Reich) were in effect an instrument of public opinion research.
They were designed by Reinhard Höhn, mentioned above, a Ph.D. in jurisprudence
and a former assistant to a professor of sociology at the University of Jena. Höhn
later became a high-ranking SS officer and professor at the University of Berlin.
Sociologists were also active in various branches of the SD and the RSHA as
experts on questions relating to Eastern Europe and south-eastern Europe, and
contributed to research on the enemy (Gegnerforschung), to the control of
scholarship by the ‘SD-Inland’ and the ‘SD-Ausland’, and worked in the ‘Amt
VII’ for the Analysis Branch (Weltanschauliche Forschung und Auswertung) of
the RSHA.
As head of a main department of the SD, Höhn had responsibility for cultural
affairs. From 1934 to the beginning of 1937 he intimidated officials of the Ministry
for Science, Education and Adult Education; but his SD career was stopped
through intrigue, on the grounds of past ideological faux pas. During his period
of influence as the new director of the Institute for Government Research at the
University of Berlin (from 1935), and as a personal friend of Heinrich Himmler
(who continued to allow his rise in the SS hierarchy), he promoted sociological
work and projects. In 1944, following the orders of his successor in the SD, Otto
Ohlendorf, who was not only in charge of the ‘SD-Inland’ but at the same time
also Secretary of State of the Reich Ministry of Economics, Höhn organized a
meeting of fifteen social scientists. Max Hildebert Boehm gave the main paper
and Franz Ronneberger an accompanying lecture. Other participants, including
Ronneberger, Hans-Joachim Beyer, Karl Valentin Muller, and Karl Heinz Pfeffer,
became, like Boehm, well-known sociologists in the postwar era.
Friedrich Wagner, cousin of the notorious Karl Heinz Pfeffer, was also active
in SD control of scholarship. Wagner studied at the Heidelberg Department of
Social Science and Government and received his doctorate there in 1934 under
the supervision of Arnold Bergstraesser. In 1938 he was habilitated under Ernst
Krieck, who is generally regarded as the prototypical Nazi philosophy professor.
Afterwards, in addition to various positions in National Socialist organizations,
Wagner was made a lecturer in ‘Political Philosophy and Government’ at the
University of Heidelberg. Between November 1940 and April 1943 he was a
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 141
full-time employee of the SD Munich Main Office as a referee for its office
Wissenschaft und Hochschule, Schule und Erziehung. He then became lecturer
and later held a chair in the Philosophy of the State and Culture (Staats- und
Kulturphilosophie) in the Faculty for Foreign Studies of the University of Berlin.
The founder and dean of this faculty was, as mentioned above, Franz Alfred Six,
another student of Arnold Bergstraesser and a high-ranking officer in the SS. In
addition, Wagner retained an honorary affiliation with the ‘Amt VII’ or Analysis
Branch (Weltanschauliche Forschung und Auswertung) of the Central Security
Office (RSHA), also led by Six.
The liaison officer (Verbindungsführer) of the Central Security Office to the
Partei-Kanzlei was an SS-Obersturmbannführer and senior officer in the Civil
Service (Regierungsrat), Dr Justus Beyer, who was also head of the science
department and deputy of the Head of the Culture Office (Hauptstellenleiter
Kultur) at the Central Security Office. Beyer had been employed as an underling
at the sociology department at the University of Jena, when Höhn was an assistant
there. In the autumn of 1933, Beyer went to work for the SD, following in Höhn’s
footsteps. In his curriculum vitae of 1936 he stressed the fact that he had studied
sociology, which enabled him to discuss scientifically and in a politically effective
way the corporativism of the Vienna sociologist Othmar Spann. Beyer’s report on
‘National Socialism and Universalism’, published in the professional journal
Deutsches Recht in 1936, was placed in his SS personnel file as proof of his
scientific qualifications. Höhn, as Beyer’s superior, in a letter of recommendation
dated October 1936, praised ‘the extraordinary elaboration of the Spann-report’.
It may be assumed that Beyer was the author of the confidential report on the
Spann circle, which helped to stop its political operations in Germany (which had
been promoted by the industrialist Fritz Thyssen) and in particular caused the
Institute for the Study of Ranks (Institut für Ständewesen) in D sseldorf, financed
by Thyssen and other industrialists, to close (Siegfried 1974). Beyer’s Ph.D.
thesis, The Ideology of Ranks in the Era of Systems’ (i.e. the Weimar era) of 1941,
was not only a learned sociological study, it refuted and put an end to sociological
reinterpretations of the National Socialist state in terms of Spann’s model of a
corporate society composed of ‘ranks’.
for relocation measures involving millions of people throughout the Reich and in
the associated and occupied territories, as well as in those areas which, after the
Hitler-Stalin pact, had to be ‘cleared’ of settlers of German descent
(Volksdeutsche). The notorious Generalplan Ost which included planning for the
expulsion and, in many cases, killing of the former inhabitants, and the new
settlement of vast territories in Central and Eastern Europe, had been developed
and partly realized under the RFV. Several social scientists took an active part in
the preparatory analysis and planning. As Reichskommissar, Himmler himself
initiated and financed several research projects and research programmes of
social-scientific institutes.
Area studies and settlement planning is an example of an area of professional
sociological and social research activity outside the universities in which the
recognition of the expert competence of non-university sociologists led to close
cooperation with university sociology, as well as to a strengthening of academic
sociology. A Workgroup for Area Studies (Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für
Raumforschung (RAG)), was founded in 1935 which in the end coordinated the
research of fifty-one such workgroups at different universities. It was the scientific
counterpart of the administrative Central Office for Regional Administration
(‘Reichsstelle für Raumordnung’ (RFR)) founded at the same time, but it served
other planning authorities as well. It became a meeting-place for sociologists.
The RFR was responsible for ‘the comprehensive superior planning of the
German area for the whole of the Reich’ (Meyers Lexikon, vol. 9, 1942, column
106). It had veto power over plans of other parts of the administration. At the start
of the war, special Nazi agencies, like the Office for the Strengthening of the
German Peoples, could push through their own regional concepts and rely on the
RFR for support.
Once planning measures in the old Reich territory had been dealt with, the RAG
increasingly concerned itself with the implementation of the policies of expansion
and settlement in the conquered and occupied territories. Among the scientific
projects of the RAG were the support of dissertations and the financing of positions
in the academic system, together with long-term research projects in the area of
the social sciences. Through this research many sociologists participated in the
Nazi policy of enlarging German Lebensraum, with its tragic consequences for
the occupied states and populations.
Friedrich B low, the Berlin sociologist and economist, was the chief scientific
advisor of this group. After 1939, he became its vice-chairman as well. He fulfilled
these tasks in addition to performing his duties as professor at the University of
Berlin, and his lectureships at the commercial university in Berlin and the School
of Forestry in Eberswalde. Through his position in the working group, together
with his numerous programmatic treatises on the sociological foundations of Area
Studies (Klingemann 1986a), and through presiding over conferences of the
Arbeitskreis Zentrale Orte, B low became an important influence on the
programme of the area studies. The working group dealt with the planning of
settlement in the new territories in the East (based for example on the concept of
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 143
the Central Place (Zentrale Orte) of Walter Christaller), which played a role in
administrative decisions (Rōssler 1990). In one of these meetings the onetime
Cologne sociologist Leo Hilberath took part, as representative of the Central
Office for Regional Administration. For a short time the Leipzig-Nuremberg
sociologist Walter Hildebrandt worked in the central office of the workgroup.
From early 1942, Erika Fischer, whose sociological doctor’s thesis was supervised
by Hans Freyer, coordinated the scientific projects of all fifty-one area studies
university study groups in the whole Reich.
The following social scientists were heads, assistant heads, or managers in these
university study groups: F.B low, A.Gunther, W.Herrmann, H. Linde, K.V.
Muller, G.Mackenroth, H.Sauermann, K.Seller, K.C. Thalheim, W.Vleugels, and
H.Weigmann. Participants in meetings of the workgroup included the sociologists
H.Bach, H.Freyer, H.Haufe, C. Jantke, B.Rauecker, H.Raupach, M.Rumpf, H.
Wollenweber, and G. Wurzbacher. The workgroup financed appointments, single
research projects, and long-term research programmes for sociologists, gave
orders for expert reports (memoranda as well as planning records), and supported
special dissertations at the universities in Bonn, Erlangen, Frankfurt
(Sociographical Institute; Institute for Economic Area Studies), Giessen,
Heidelberg (Department of Social Science and Government), Cologne (Sociology
Department), Nuremberg (Organization for Consumer Studies) and Rostock
(Department of Economic Area Studies), as well as at the Business School of
Leipzig.
Besides the ‘heads’ who were already established, such junior sociologists as
W.Hildebrandt, H.Linde, K.H.Pfeffer, and Max Ernst Graf zu Solms-Roedelheim,
who became university sociologists in the Federal Republic, worked on these
(sometimes very) well-financed projects. The workgroup represented an early
form of institutionalization of multidisciplinary social research devoted to policy
purposes. The Academy for Area Studies and Regional Planning in Hanover was
the direct successor of the workgroup, and continued to bear its name to 1947.
After 1945, such Reich sociologists as W.Brepohl, F.Bülow, G.Cehak, W.
Hildebrandt, G. Ipsen, H.Klocke, H.Linde, H.Morgen, K.V.Muller, K.H.Pfeffer,
E.Pfeil, and F.Wagner worked at this academy, on such topics as the sociology of
refugees, education, population, and industrial and regional planning. The
Sociographic Institute at the University of Frankfurt, K.V.Müller’s Institute for
Studies of Intelligence and Department of Empirical Sociology (Hanover and
Bamberg), the Organization for Consumer Studies (Nuremberg) and the empirical
social research staff of the German Society for Population Studies and the
exclusive German Center for Population Studies at the University of Hamburg
(Wess 1986) are all cases of forms of institutionalized social research initiated
during the Third Reich and continued in the postwar period.
The most important organizational result of professional social research in the
field of area studies in the academic sector of sociology was at the University of
Frankfurt. Ludwig Neundörfer, who intended to give a lecture on his
sociographical method of area research at the cancelled meeting of the German
144 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
Sociological Society of 1932 and 1933, was in charge of the Regional Plan for
North-Baden (Bezirksplaner) and was Vice State Plan Officer in the state of Baden
to 1940. In 1940, the National Farmer’s Association and the Workgroup for Area
Studies requested a sociographical stock-taking to be used as the basis for the
‘rearrangement of the agricultural conditions in the Old Reich’. In order to analyse
the ‘social structure of wide areas of the Reich on the basis of comparable maps
and by that of the substance to be formed by the administration’ 4,500 ‘orientation
communities’ (Richtgemeinden), comprising one million households, had been
registered by 1942–43. Making this original material useful for planning and
research efforts for public administration was a considerable task. A
Sociographical Institute at the University of Frankfurt was created for Neundörfer
early in 1943 to carry it out. Neundörfer had already lectured on regional planning
and resettlement there in 1940. As sponsor of this Sociographical Institute, a
special foundation, the Foundation for Research on the German People (Stiftung
zur Erforschung des deutschen Volksaufbaus), was founded and endowed with
50,000 Reichsmarks from two former ‘Jewish’ foundations. The city and the
University of Frankfurt also participated. Neundörfer’s salary was paid by the
Workgroup for Area Studies which had been integrated into the Reich Research
Council (Reichsforschungsrat). Neundōrfer was given additional support by the
Ministry of Finance through the National Farmers’ Association, and became a
part-time employee of the Administration of the office of its leader
(Reichsbauernführer) in 1941. The Reichsbauernführer, the Research Council
(Reichsforschungsrat) and the Office for the Strengthening of the German Peoples
all agreed that the institute should build up a German Archive of Maps and Surveys
supported by the Ministry of Finance. Neundōrfer’s colleagues were appointed
by the National Farmers’ Association and paid by special resources from the
Ministry of Finance. The annual expenditure for three such agencies in Berlin,
Vienna and Frankfurt, as well as for some researchers at the State Farm
Organization (Landesbauernschaften), amounted to a total of 300,000
Reichsmarks (Klingemann 1989).
Discussions of the formation of an advisory board for the Sociographical
Institute for the purpose of coordinating its activities for the rural reorganization
(ländliche Neuordnung) concluded that, in addition to the Workgroup for Area
Studies, the Reichsbauernführer, and the Central Office for Regional
Administration, the Office for the Strengthening of the German Peoples should
also be represented. It was also agreed that the Reichskommissar should finance
the research he ordered. The habilitated rural sociologist Herbert Morgen, lecturer
at the University of Berlin, was made his assistant on the advisory board. Morgen
was head of the division Rural Sociology (Bodenordnung und ländliche
Soziologie) at the Department of Rural Studies and Policy (Institut für Agrarwesen
und Agrarpolitik) of the University of Berlin. This institute was led by
SS-Oberf hrer, Professor Konrad Meyer, chief of the planning office of the
Reichskommissar. Morgen was also chief of the Research (Forschungsdienst) of
the working groups on rural studies (Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaften der
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 145
NOTES
1 A first impression of the extent of the exile of German social scientists can be gained
from the lists of exiled social and political scientists of Lepsius (1981b; this list
however includes persons born after 1930) and by examining the dates in the
biographies of the sixty-six representatives of sociology in the Biographical
Handbook of the German-Speaking Emigration (Mertens 1987). The surveys of
university sociology in 1932/33 of Lepsius (1979) and Fornefeld et al (1986) provide
quantitative comparisons. Biographies, case studies, memoirs and dialogues about,
of and with exiled social scientists are provided in Greffrath (1979), Lepsius (ed.)
(1981), Lepenies (ed.) (1981, vol. 4), Srubar (ed.) (1988), Wiggershaus (1986) as
well as the report of 1939 by an official of the ‘Ministry for Science, Education and
Adult Education’ on German university teachers in Turkey (Grothusen 1987).
2 As Neumann has pointed out, the few sociologists who returned from exile played
a marginal role in the postwar consolidation of the discipline (1984, cf. the opposing
interpretation by Srubar, 1988).
3 Indeed, the exiles were not all anti-fascists. Arnold Bergstraesser, a Heidelberg
sociologist, was interned twice during his US exile for pro-Nazi intrigues (Krohn
1986). Other later emigrants were nationalists, among them the Jewish university
sociologists who were veterans of the First World War and consequently had at first
been protected from dismissal, and who waited, in vain, for recognition of their
patriotism (Käsler 1985).
4 The Akademie für Deutsches Recht (ADR), into which Hans Freyer had tried without
success to incorporate the German Sociological Society, was founded by Hans Frank,
who later became Governor-General of the so-called ‘Rest-Polen’ (remnants of
Poland). Although it never achieved its original aim of significantly participating in
the development of new laws, the ADR nevertheless built up an impressive advisory
apparatus and gained some public interest by means of its monthly journal, its annual
report, and a publication series. The sociologist of law, Carl August Emge, was
scientific leader and vice-president of the ADR for several years. Some forty
sociologists were active in commissions and other ADR groups. The infamous
Polen-Denkschrift (Poland memorandum), presented at the Nuremberg trials as
evidence against Hans Frank, which was meant to improve German policy in
occupied Poland, was the work of social scientists in the ADR who had been active
in the areas of economic, social, and legal policy. Other sociologists had been
consulted as experts on questions of Volkstumspolitik (assimilation policy) in the
East, i.e. the concrete problems of German policy of occupation, exile, and
annihilation.
5 Another social scientist, Eduard Willeke, also worked for the ‘Reichskommissar für
die Festigung deutschen Volkstums’. In 1941, by order of the Reichskommissar,
Willeke joined a research commission. He had the task of describing and evaluating
manufacturing, particularly in the industrial sector of the Elsass. In the FRG he was
affiliated with the Sozialforschungsstelle in Dortmund.
148 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
6 The list in (Fassler 1984) is most vaguely defined and there are only a few
overlapping cases between his list and mine.
REFERENCES
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Identifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus. Berlin (West).
Bergmann, Waltraud et al. (1981) Soziologie im Faschismus 1933–1945. Darstellung
und Texte. Kōln.
Bernsdorf, Wilhelm and Knospe, Horst (eds) (1980) Internationales Soziologenlexikon,
Bd. 1. Stuttgart 1980, 2nd edn.
——Internationales Soziologenlexikon, Bd. 2. Stuttgart 1984, 2nd edn.
Fassler, Manfred (1983) ‘“Geistige SA” und “politische Hochschule”. Selbstverst ndnis
und Gesellschaftsbilder der nicht emigrierten Sozialforschung 1933–1945’, in U.
Jaeggi et al.
Fornefeld, Gabriele et al. (1986) ‘Die Soziologie an den reichsdeutschen Hochschulen
zu Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in S.Papcke (ed.).
Greffrath, Mathias (ed.) (1979) Die Zerstörung einer Zukunft. Gespräche mit
emigrierten Sozialwissenschaftlern, Reinbek bei Hamburg.
Grothusen, Klaus-Detlev (ed.) (1987) Der Scurla-Bericht. Die Tätigkeit deutscher
Hochschullehrer in der Türkei 1933–1939, Frankfurt am Main.
Heim, Susanne and Aly, Gōtz (1991) Vordenker der Vernichtung, Hamburg.
H lsd nker, Josef and Schellhase, Rolf (eds) (1986) Soziologiegeschichte. Identität und
Krisen einer ‘engagierten’ Disziplin, Berlin.
Jaeggi, Urs et al. (1983) Geist und Katastrophe. Studien zur Soziologie im
Nationalsozialismus, Berlin.
Käsler, Dirk (1983) ‘In Search of Respectability: The Controversy over the Destination
of Sociology during the Conventions of the German Sociological Society, 1910–
1930’, Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present.
A Research Annual. Robert A.Jones and Henrika Kuklick (eds) vol. 4. Greenwich,
Conn./London: JAI Press, pp. 227–272.
——(1984) Die frühe deutsche Soziologie 1909 bis 1934 und ihre Entstehungs-Milieus.
Eine wissenschaftssoziologische Untersuchung, Opladen.
——(1991) Sociological Adventures. Earle Edward Eubank’s Visits with European
Sociologists, New Brunswick/London.
Kaupen-Haas, Heidrun (1986) Der Griff nach der Bevölkerung. Aktualität und
Kontinuität nazistischer Bevölkerungspolitik , Nōrdlingen.
Kern, Horst (1983) Empirische Sozialforschung. Ursprünge, Ansätze,
Entwicklungslinien, M nchen.
Klingemann, Carsten (1981) ‘Heimatsoziologie oder Ordnungsinstrument?
Fachgeschichtliche Aspekte der Soziologie in Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1945’,
in M.R.Lepsius (ed.).
——(1985) ‘Soziologie im NS-Staat. Vom Unbehagen an der
Soziologiegeschichtsschreibung’, Soziale Welt, 36. Jg., 1985, H. 3.
——(1986a) ‘Vergangenheitsbew ltigung oder Geschichtsschreibung? Unerw nschte
Traditionsbest nde deutscher Soziologie zwischen 1933 und 1945’. In S.Papcke (ed.).
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE THIRD REICH 149
Muller, Jerry Z. (1987) The other God that failed. Hans Freyer and the deradicalization
of German conservatism, Princeton.
Neumann, Michael (1984) ‘Lektionen ohne Widerhall. Bemerkungen zum Einfluss von
Remigranten auf die Entwicklung der westdeutschen Nachkriegssoziologie’,
Exilforschung. Ein internationales Jahrbuch, Bd. 2.
Pahl-Weber, Elke and Schubert, Dirk (1987) ‘Grossstadtsanierung im
Nationalsozialismus: Andreas Walthers Sozialkartographie von Hamburg’,
Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen, 16, H. 2 (May 1987).
Papcke, Sven (ed.) (1986) Ordnung und Theorie. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Soziologie
in Deutschland, Darmstadt.
Pasemann, Dieter (1985) ‘Zur Faschisierungstendenz in der “Deutschen Gesellschaft
für Soziologie” 1922–1934. Untersuchung an den Nachl ssen von Werner Sombart
und Ferdinand Tönnies’, Arbeitsblätter zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte,
Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg, 15.
Rammstedt, Otthein (1986) Deutsche Soziologie 1933–1945. Die Normalität einer
Anpassung. Frankfurt am Main.
Rōssler, Mechthild (1990) Wissenschaft und Lebensraum’. Geographische
Ostforschung im Nationalsozialismus. Berlin/Hamburg.
Roth, Karl Heinz (1986) ‘Städtesanierung und “ausmerzende Soziologie”. Der Fall
Andreas Walther und die “Notarbeit 51” der “Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen
Wissenschaft” 1934–35 in Hamburg’. In C.Klingemann (ed.).
Sch fer, Gerhard (1990): ‘Wider die Inszenierung des Vergessens, Hans Freyer und die
Soziologie in Leipzig 1925–1945’, Jahrbuch für Soziologiegeschichte, Opladen.
Schuster, Helmuth and Schuster, Margrit: (1984) ‘Industriesoziologie im
Nationalsozialismus’, Soziale Welt, 35. Jg., 1984, H. 1/2.
Siegfried, Klaus-Jörg (1974) Universalismus und Faschismus. Das Gesellschaftsbild
Othmar Spanns, Wien.
Srubar, Ilja (ed.) (1988) Exit, Wissenschaft, Identität. Die Emigration deutscher
Sozialwissenschaftler 1933–1945, Frankfurt am Main.
——(1988) ‘Es wurde kein Kalb geschlachtetSozialwissenschaftliche Emigration
und Deutschland vor und nach 1945’. In Christoph Cobet (ed.) Einführung in Fragen
an die Soziologie in Deutschland nach Hitler 1945–1950, Frankfurt am Main.
Stölting, Erhard (1986) Akademische Soziologie in der Weimarer Republik. Berlin.
Wassner, Rainer (1985) Andreas Walther und die Soziologie in Hamburg. Dokumente,
Materialien, Reflexionen, Hamburg.
——(1986) ‘Andreas Walther und das Seminar für Soziologie in Hamburg zwischen
1926 und 1945: Ein wissenschaftsbiographischer Umriss’. In S.Papcke (ed.).
Wess, Ludger (1986) ‘Hans Wilhelm J rgens, ein Repräsentant bundesdeutscher
Bevölkerungswissenschaft’. In H.Kaupen-Haas (ed.).
Wiggershaus, Rolf (1986) Die Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte. Theoretische
Entwicklung. Politische Bedeutung, München.
6
‘SOCIOLOGISTS’, SOCIOGRAPHERS,
AND ‘LIBERALS’
Hungarian intellectuals respond to fascism
Dénes Némedi
Fascism as ideology and as a political system was relevant for Hungary in two
respects, internal and external.
INTERNAL
Even if the Hungarian political system in the interwar period cannot properly be
characterized as fascist (as it was by Stalinist ideologists), there were periods when
it was moving toward the establishment of a fascist-type system. And there were
political groupings which aimed at the transformation of the political regime into
totalitarian fascism (Lackó 1975a; Magyarország 1976; Ormos 1987). The
dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy and the dismemberment of the ancient
greater Hungary led to a short-lived revolutionary experiment in 1918–1919 which
was followed by a bloody counter-revolutionary regime with fascist aspects
(including anti-Semitism, agrarian social demagogy, and direct political influence
by the military). Extreme rightist tendencies remained alive even after the
restoration of the conservative, slightly authoritarian ancien régime. In the 1930s,
right-wing radicalism gained in popularity among the ruling elite and a Nazi-style
movement came into being (the so-called Arrow-Cross movement, an array of
coalescing and dissolving parties, most popular in the lower middle classes and
in some fragments of the working classes and reaching its peak of popularity in
1939) (Lackó 1966). Gyula Gömbös, the Prime Minister in 1932–36, was a former
counter-revolutionary and outspokenly sympathetic to Italian and German
totalitarianism. Under German influence, anti-Semitic laws were passed (the first
one in 1938). Hungary was a reluctant ally of Germany in the war against
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Toward the end of the war, the Arrow-Cross
men established a puppet regime. However, the political system as a whole
remained firmly conservative-authoritarian until 1944. It did not possess the
modernistic characteristics of the fascist regimes: it was not supported by any mass
movement or organization, and carefully avoided the use of social demagoguery
and rejected any form of plebiscitary legitimation. Perhaps this was due to the
relative backwardness of the Hungarian social structure. The peasantry as a social
category remained relatively intact. In spite of the intrusion of capitalist elements
in agriculture it was not differentiated unequivocally along class lines. Sections
of the upper and middle strata conserved their feudal characteristics (large estate
owners, bureaucratic middle classes with roots in the nobility). The recently
urbanized non-Jewish lower middle classes (which were the most enthusiastic
supporters of the Nazis in Germany) were relatively small.
EXTERNAL
Whereas Italian fascism did not threaten Hungary as a national state, and was
therefore unequivocally popular with the right-wing public, in the eyes of many,
even among those with rightist attitudes, Nazism embodied well-known German
expansionist tendencies. But German expansionism helped Hungary to recover
HUNGARIAN INTELLECTUALS RESPOND TO FASCISM 153
some of the territories lost in the Trianon treaty (which was considered as unjust
by the overwhelming majority) after 1938, and was popular for this reason. But
after the Annexation of Austria, Germany became a neighbour that was too
powerful. This power made itself felt when Hungary was reluctant to fulfil German
economic, political, and military demands and when the Nazis began to win the
loyalty of Hungary’s relatively large German minority. The question of German
imperialism could not be separated from the problem of fascism and Nazism, and
many who became ardent anti-fascists were motivated more by Hungarian
patriotism than by conscious democratic anti-fascism.
The relatively low level of professionalization in the social sciences reflected
the relative backwardness of Hungarian society (Lackó 1981a). Sociology was
among the last developed disciplines. The conservative cultural government was
not actively hostile to sociology. It was simply not interested in it and consequently
did nothing to overcome the resistance of the old-fashioned faculties to its
introduction in the universities (Saád 1989). The sociological activity that existed
was restricted to amateur intellectual groupings and to a tolerated existence on the
fringe of more traditional and secure disciplines, such as law and history.
Sociological ideas, research, and sociological interest were present in three
groupings. The first of these was the ‘official’ conservative sociology which was
almost totally driven out of the memory of the profession after 1945.1 The group
was centred around the review Társadalomtudomány and consisted of lawyers,
philosophers, economists and historians who had an occasional and in most cases
superficial interest in sociology or social philosophy. There was only one
‘professional’ among them, the Privatdozent István Dékány, a hard-working
compiler (Saád 1985).2 The most interesting members of this grouping were the
law philosopher Barna Horváth (Nagy 1985) and the history professor István
Hajnal (Glatz 1988).3, 4
Although they were unable to institutionalize a genuine social science, the
Társadalomtudomány group accepted the academic model of the role of social
science. They argued that political ideology and political purposes should be
excluded from ‘pure’ sociology. But the majority of the group were firmly
conservative in their socio-ethical and political convictions, and in this respect
they were not immune to the influence of certain fascist ideas. These influences
can be discerned in the very learned discussion of the concept of ‘leader’ by
Dékány, who treated the Führerprinzip as a legitimate formulation of the problem
of leadership in modern societies (Dékány 1937), and in the uncritical analysis of
the Lebensraum as a stage in economic development (Dékány 1940). Gyögy
Szombatfalvy, the rival of Dékány for the direction of Társadalomtudomány, was
even more sympathetic to certain right-wing ideas.5 Although he distanced himself
from the Nazi variant of racism, he accepted Hungarian anti-Jewish legislation on
‘objective’, ‘scientific’ grounds. ‘The feeling of difference,’ he argued, ‘was
developed on both sides (i.e. Hungarian and Jew) to such a degree that the only
conceivable basis for quiet cooperation is peaceful inner separation’
(Szombatfalvy 1940:81).
154 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
political problems produced by the great economic crises. They embraced the idea
that the Hungarian social reality (first of all the real situation of the ‘people’, the
peasantry) needed to be ‘discovered’. This movement produced an amateur
sociology called ‘sociography’ (Borbándi 1976; Lackó 1975b, 1975c, 1981b,
1981c; Némedi 1985a).
‘Sociographies’ were written mostly in impressionistic, literary manner. They
were based on firsthand observations of rural life. Generally there was no attempt
made to use more ‘objective’, scientific procedures. The books were written for
the general public and their professed aim was to enlighten the middle strata about
the plight of the rural poor. There was a discernible general scheme which
influenced the presentations: they were interested in the remnants of the old
peasant community and culture and they deplored the ‘deformed
embourgeoisement’ of the Hungarian peasantry, for its contradictions of its place
in an economy dominated by urban capitalism and feudal landlordism. The
incredible misery of the servants on the big estates (Illyés 1936), the fate of the,
in many cases unemployed, agricultural labourers (Féja 1937; Kovács 1937; Veres
1936), the stagnant smallholder societies of the small villages (Elsüllyedt 1936;
Erdei 1938, 1940; Némedi 1988; Szabó 1936, 1938), the social structure of the
big agricultural towns of the Hungarian plains (Erdei 1937, 1939)—these were
themes of the main works of the sociographers. Even today they are vivid works.
Ferenc Erdei’s works were in many respects exceptional: although he, too,
wrote impressionistic, pseudo-literary books (Erdei 1937, 1938), he was interested
in more scientific procedures too.6 He systematically studied foreign sociological
literature. His synthetical analysis of peasant society (Erdei 1943) is in every
respect scientific and professional. Utilizing the existing statistical materials and
analysing the few available observations, he developed a theory of peasantry
which was based on the distinction between the ‘social forms’ produced by
traditional reproduction and the social positions determined by the market
processes: the combination of the two resulted in a detailed typology of the
peasantry (Némedi 1985b).
The sociographer’s movement was not immune to fascist influences. The
peasant orientation first developed among the proto-fascist youth movements of
the counter-revolutionary period (1919–1921). The populist groups of the 1930s
could not totally rid themselves of this heritage. Each of the sociographers was
influenced in his formative years by the controversial novelist and journalist Dezsō
Szabó (Gömbös 1966; Nagy 1964).7 His passionate love of the peasantry, his
advocacy of social reform and his chauvinist anti-Jewish and anti-German
attitudes attracted many young intellectuals. The Bartha Miklós Society which
was very active toward the end of the 1920s (B.Bernát 1987; Sebestény 1981;
Szabó 1978) was highly typical of the curious populist mixture of rightist and
leftist social reformism. However, the prevalence of anti-German attitudes
contributed to decreased sympathy for the fascist movements, especially after
1933.
156 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
Even so, it cannot be said that in the 1930s there were no traces of radical
right-wing influences in the populist, sociographic movement. The völkisch ideas
and the Boden myth of the Nazi movement had an impact on many populists. Signs
of this influence can be found in occasional remarks and in private correspondence.
Mihály Kerék, a well-informed agrarian economist, had written a very sympathetic
review of the Nazi settlement plans and in a private letter he was very enthusiastic
about the reformist dynamism of the Nazi regime (Kerék 1934a, 1934b, 1934c).8
Even more characteristic is the case of Ferenc Erdei, who early combined romantic
populism and Marxist ideas with his sociological insights (Huszár 1979). When
he travelled in Western Europe in 1934–1935 he was impressed by the new regime
in Germany. This can be seen in his sociological account of the journey, which
was published in part shortly afterwards. He believed earnestly that there was a
social revolution in Germany (Erdei 1988a) or, as he somewhat later put it, a
thorough transformation led by the cult of the peasantry and by communitarian
ideals (Erdei 1988b). The agrarian economist Mátyás Matolcsy, who was a close
collaborator of the populist sociographers and who had earlier published a very
influential and well-received book on agrarian reform (Matolcsy 1934), defected
from the group and entered the fascist Arrow-Cross Party in 1938.9 Apparently
he came to the conclusion that the populist movement was too weak to achieve
any reform in the face of the opposition of the conservative government, and he
believed that the radical right was earnest in its social reformism. He was later
bitterly disappointed in this hope (Kisfaludy 1974).
The real or supposed right-wing sympathies of the populists were passionately
criticized by the ‘urban’ liberal-democratic intelligentsia and by the exponents of
the various left-wing groupings. Sometimes the populists were denounced as
fascists, as they were in the debate around the so-called ‘New Spiritual Front’, the
product of an ill-judged alliance between the prime minister, Gömbös, and some
populist intellectuals (Lackó 1975c). The accusations were repeated time and time
again, both by liberal journalists and by orthodox communists (Gaál 1935; Ignotus
1936). The suspicions were justified because the position occupied by the
populists, particularly in the Jewish question, was ambiguous. The anti-Semitism
prevalent in the right-wing student organizations was criticized by them but they
did not repudiate racial categorization totally. They qualified their position by
stressing repeatedly that ‘race’ should not be understood as a biological category
which determined the fate of individuals; rather it was understood by them as a
spiritual categorization. Those with a liberal or socialist anti-fascist outlook did
not accept this qualification. The issue was in the centre of the debate between
Ferenc Fejtö and Peter Veres.10,11 Fejtō pointed out that Veres’s argumentation
contained many unclear concepts and statements which could be exploited by the
radical right (Fejtō 1937a; 1937b). Veres confirmed that for him class solidarity
and racial-popular solidarity were equivalent, and, under pressure, reverted to a
biological conception of ‘race’.
HUNGARIAN INTELLECTUALS RESPOND TO FASCISM 157
I could find the basic characteristics of my human ideal type, the form of
behaviour necessary and possible in a collectivist society, in the ‘rough’
peasantry of the plains as well as among the young workers. My ‘racial
reaction’ is therefore nothing other than the combination of my ideological
and biological ideal type as it can be found in the peasantry and among
young workers.
(Veres 1937:428)
Veres later combined his concept of race and nation with the idea that socialism
(which meant for him agrarian collectivist radicalism) cannot triumph without the
help of powerful leading personalities (Veres 1939, 1940, 1942). However, Veres
remained a member of the Social Democratic Party and hostile to the various
right-wing movements and groups.
There is nothing anomalous in this because the populist movement as a whole
was rather on the left of the Hungarian political spectrum. In 1937 they organized
the short-lived March Front, a loose alliance between populists and young
Communist intellectuals. The Front held meetings where the authoritarian regime
was criticized and people warned of the German menace and of the activity of the
Hungarian fascists. One year later the Front was practically dissolved by the
government (Salamon 1980). In general, apart from the slips mentioned above,
the political journalism of the sociographers’ movement was anti-fascist (and
anti-German). Among the best examples of its efforts are the vivid and
sociologically informed accounts of right-wing radicalism among the poor
peasants of the plains written by Imre Kovács (Kovács 1936, 1938).12 The decline
of sociographic activity after the Annexation of Austria did not change the attitudes
of the majority in this regard. Many of the former sociographers were connected
with the anti-German, liberal-reformist newspaper Magyar Nemzet. It was there
that Zoltán Szabó launched his campaign for the defence of the spiritual
independence of Hungary.13 The campaign was directed against German and Nazi
influences (Szabó 1940).
The sociographers responded to fascism as citizens and Hungarian patriots, not
as sociologists or social scientists. They did not produce an analysis of the fascist
phenomenon. This was not due to a detached scholarly attitude, as was the case
of the ‘official’ sociologists. The sociographers were engaged in reformist politics.
They considered themselves as political exponents of the peasantry and they
believed that sociography was a means in the process of emancipation. However,
their inability to confront fascism analytically was not just personal neglect. It was
determined by the structure of their thinking.
Populist sociography started from the assumption that the Hungarian peasantry
was not and could not be integrated into national society. They believed that the
sheer economic exploitation of the peasantry effectively restricted its capacity to
participate in the national cultural and political life. They also showed that there
were important status differences, power mechanisms and political inequalities
which prevented the peasantry from progressing toward full citizenship. The big
158 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
His study of European balance and peace (Bibó 1986; Kiss 1984), which was
not published until the 1980s, is an ambitious undertaking. He attempts to interpret
the world war in the light of European history. He analyses German fascism in
this context. The key concept in his analysis of fascism (and many related systems)
is ‘hysteria’, which he understands as a collective phenomenon. Hysteria prevails
if ‘the community abandons reality, if it becomes incapable of solving the
problems posed by life, if its self-evaluation is uncertain and exaggerated, if its
reactions to the impact of the world are unreal and disproportionate’ (Bibó
1986:374). He knows the dangers of the ‘metaphysics of community’, he accepts
that psychical states can be attributed only to human individuals, but he believes
that the aggregation of these psychical states results, in certain cases, in collective
attitudes ‘which are analogous to the reactions of hysterical men’ (Bibó 1986:375).
German fascism was a hysterical phenomenon because it was ‘deformed’,
dominated by the absurd conception that the historical forces which were engaged
in the struggle for freedom and nationhood could be won over for the cause of
nationhood alone (Bibó 1986:467). Hitlerism negates the three basic evolutionary
tendencies of European society: international unity, democracy and socialism,
says Bibó, and this demonstrates its incapacity to understand historical reality
(Bibó 1986: 479). Bibó knows that the emergence of Hitlerism can be explained
by specific historical circumstances. But he maintains that one cannot fully
understand it without taking into account the social-psychological factor of
‘hysteria’ (Bibó 1986:480–481).
Bibó is fully aware that fascism cannot be understood purely in
political-historical terms. At the same time, he knows that there is an essential
political moment in fascism. As he was not engaged very actively in the populist
movement, he was immune to the ‘metapolitical’ illusions of his friends. He
stressed many times the importance of political processes and ideas. But he always
tried to avoid the reduction of historical processes to political decisions (and to
the political ideas informing those decisions) alone. In this respect he was deeply
influenced by the sociology of Erdei. He knew that the ideas and ideals constituting
the core essence of Europe depend on the development of civil society and
rationality alone was not enough to ensure their predominance. The
social-psychological concept of ‘hysteria’ was the result of these considerations:
it was the social cause of the absence of rationality in fascist thought.
However, ‘hysteria’ is a specious solution. It does not describe any real social
processes. Bibó himself conceives it as a logical error, a form of cognitive
incapacity. The conceptualization of Hitlerism as a ‘hysterical’ phenomenon
derives its plausibility from the fact that the public appearance of Hitlerism had
many ‘hysterical’ features in the common-sense meaning of the word. However,
Bibó had another meaning in mind. According to his definition even a philistine,
quiet political system would be ‘hysterical’ if it was incapable of comprehending
‘reality’. This was how he described the Hungarian political evolution in the period
of the dual monarchy. Hitlerism appears as the consequence of an inner, logical
contradiction. The idea that fascism is the result of some gigantic failure of
160 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
The most interesting and profound analyses of fascism were written by the
emigrant moral and social philosopher Aurel Kolnai.19 Borrowing some key
Marxist concepts, he described fascism as the outcome of the contradiction
between political democracy and capitalist economy. Fascism attempts to defend
capitalism by creating a castrated socialism. It is not the bourgeoisie or the
proletariat, he says, which serves as the social base of fascist movements, but it
creates its own social base: the ruling groups of the fascist ‘gang state’ (Kolnai
1930). He stressed that fascism restricts the power of the oligarchic ruling classes.
The fascist elite has its roots in the popular classes. Therefore, he says, the fascist
state will be different from the ancien regime. While it is allied to the
representatives of anti-democratic forces (to the big estate owners, to big industry,
and military circles), it is in its essence an illegal popular movement aiming at the
establishment of a new type of dictatorial power. Kolnai’s explanation was only
one among many European attempts to explain fascism by a revisionist Marxist
approach. It had no discernible influence on the thinking of the inner Hungarian
group of the Századunk.
For Csécsy and the whole group of the Századunk fascism was a problem that
was political stricto sensu. Csécsy’s orientation was clearly stated in his
well-known article on the decline of democracies. He criticized equally fascism,
Bolshevism and the New Deal because all three were contrary to the democratic
ideal based on natural rights. He opposed to them democratic values (liberty,
equality, fraternity) which were supra-historical. Csécsy adopted an ethical
standpoint which implicated that the ‘essence’ of individuality was more important
for him than any social bonds. The social form of existence, he said, was not ‘the
highest possible form of life for us. It is not adherence to something which is
valuable in life. It is only the personality which counts’ (Csécsy 1935:2). In a letter
written to Jászi in 1936, Csécsy explained that he had given up the sociological
point of view, and no longer sought the ‘laws’ of history. The task of the thinker
is, he explained, ‘to preach the norms of the right moral conduct even if they are
contrary to the predetermined course of history’ (Kerékgyarto 1989:99). This
position excluded any attempt to analyse fascism sociologically while it
encouraged its ethical and political condemnation. Other members of the group,
including Berend (1936), Gōrög (1938) and Vámbéry (1936), reacted to the rise
of Nazism similarly.20
The anti-sociological evaluation of fascism by the heirs of liberal sociology is
fully understandable in the circumstances. They were closely connected with the
urban, largely Jewish, culture of Budapest which was menaced by right-wing
tendencies. They were in a defensive minority position which was not very
congenial to a detached, ‘objective’ sociological analysis of their adversary. It was
quite natural that they considered it to be their primary duty to defend the
threatened values themselves. They stressed that democratic values were valid
and did not enter into a sociological discussion, which would inevitably lead to
the relativization of these cherished values. As citizens they did their best to oppose
fascism and in this respect they exploited their connections and the fact that the
162 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
NOTES
1 ‘Official’ was the epithet chosen by the opponents of this grouping. It was taken
over by historians. It does not mean that they possessed an ‘office’ as sociologists:
there was no such office. It was intended as a shorthand description of their positive,
uncritical or softly critical attitudes toward the authorities. In fact, many of them
were civil servants or employees of agricultural corporative organizations.
2 István Dékány 1886–1965, Philosopher, sociologist: Doctoral degree 1909;
Privatdozent and secondary school teacher from 1920; 1942–1946, professor of
social theory at the Budapest University; extensive literary activity; forced retirement
in 1946, later deported to a provincial township.
3 Barna Horváth 1896–1973, Lawyer: Doctoral degree 1920; 1925–1949 professor of
philosophy of law at the University of Szeged; 1949, emigration to the USA; 1950–
1956, professor of The New School of Social Research, visiting professor in many
European universities, publications on the philosophy and sociology of law.
4 István Hajnal 1892–1956, Historian, official of various public and private archives:
from 1921 Privatdozent; 1930–1949 professor of modern history at the Budapest
University; later official at the Hungarian National Museum. Main areas of interest:
medieval and modern social history, history of technology, the relation of history
and sociology.
5 Gyōrgy Szombatfalvy 1888-?, Sociologist, public official: Secondary school
teacher; later official of the Ministry of Education; founding member, later secretary
of the Hungarian Social Scientific Association; editor of Társadalomtudomány.
6 Ferenc Erdei 1911–1971, Sociologist, politician: son of peasants; student of law in
Szeged; friendship with István Bibó; between 1937 and 1943, publication of several
important sociological and sociographical works; 1944–1949, one of the leaders of
the National Peasant Party, sympathetic to collaboration with the Communists; 1949–
1956, various governmental functions; after 1956, scholar in agrarian economics
and organizational activity in the Academy of Sciences.
HUNGARIAN INTELLECTUALS RESPOND TO FASCISM 163
REFERENCES
Berend, Béla (1936) ‘A modern diktatúrák elmélete’, Századunk 11:12–26.
Bernát, István (1987) A népi ideológic elözményeihez. A Bartha Miklós Társaság
torténete (1925–1930), unpublished manuscript, Budapest
Bibó, István (1986) ‘Az európai egyensúlyról és békéröl’, in Bibó István, Válogatott
tanulmányok 1:295–635, Budapest: Magveto.
Borbándi, Gyula (1976) Der ungarische Populismus, Mainz: Hase & Koehler.
Csécsy, Imre (1935) ‘Megbukott-e a demokrácia?’, Századunk 10:1–20.
Dékány, István (1937) ‘A társadalom vezetöi. A vezetō-kategóriák kérdése’,
Társadalomtudomány 17:1–29.
——(1940) ‘A gazdasági élet fokai és az “elettérgazdaság”’, Közgazdasági Szemle 83:
539–575.
Elsüllyedt falu a Dunántúlon (collective work) (1936) Budapest: Sylvester.
Erdei, Ferenc (1937) Futóhomok, Budapest: Athenaeum.
——(1938) Parasztok, Budapest: Athenaeum.
——(1939) Magyar város, Budapest: Athenaeum.
——(1940) Magyar falu, Budapest: Athenaeum.
——(1943) Magyar paraszttársadalom, Budapest: Franklin.
——(1988a) M ncheni level. II. Az emberek. III. Urak és többiek, in Erdei Ferenc,
Politikai irasok 1, Budapest: Akademiai, pp. 38–42 (originally published 1 Dec. 1935,
in Makói Ujság).
——(1988b) ‘A parasztság németországi divatja’, in Erdei Ferenc, Politikai irások 1,
Budapest: Akadémiai, pp. 103–104 (originally published 20 June 1937, in Makói
F ggetlen Ujság).
Féja, Géza (1937) Viharsarok, Budapest: Athenaeum.
Fejtö, Ferenc (1937a) ‘A “faji” szocializmusról’, Szocializmus 30:253–258.
HUNGARIAN INTELLECTUALS RESPOND TO FASCISM 165
Robert C.Bannister
THE PROBLEM
‘For the two years from ‘38 to ‘40, I never discussed democracy or Nazism,’ the
sociologist William F.Ogburn confided to his diary once the war was over.
Although he had broken this silence briefly during 1941, his lectures were ‘wholly
analytical’, he continued. ‘I knewthat to refer to Hitler without at the same time
calling him a son-of-a-bitch, was to be classed as pro-Nazi. But we were not at
war, and I have never been much concerned with what people thought of me.’ Nor
did the outbreak of hostilities shake this resolve. ‘When the war came on I never
made any speeches referring in anyway to Nazism or democracy.’ When in his
classroom he occasionally discussed democracy, he approached the subject as one
might the ‘mores of the Eskimo’. ‘The classes,’ he observed, ‘were sometimes
resentful, sometimes quiet, sometimes, maybe, sullen.’1
During the interwar years, Ogburn’s was a voice that counted in American
sociology. During the 1920s, most of the prewar founders had passed from the
scene: Albion Small of Chicago (died 1926), Charles Horton Cooley of Michigan
(1929), and Franklin Giddings of Columbia (1931). Remaining founders included
Charles Ellwood of Duke and Edward A.Ross of Wisconsin, both secondary
powers in the profession. A third was W.I.Thomas, whose use of the ‘case study’
in The Polish Peasant (1918) provided a model for one brand of Chicago sociology
but whose prestige declined after his dismissal from the University of Chicago on
a bogus morals charge in 1918.
In their place appeared new contenders for professional power and prestige.
During the 1920s, the urban sociologist Robert Park and his students made the
‘Chicago school’ virtually synonymous with American sociology. At the
University of North Carolina, Howard W.Odum (Ph.D. Columbia, 1909) launched
the discipline’s first formal research institute and published Social Forces, the
first new sociological journal in the United States since the founding of the
American Journal of Sociology (1895). At the University of Southern California
Emory S.Bogardus established a West Coast enclave and a second new journal,
Sociology and Social Research. With W.F.Ogburn’s election to the presidency of
168 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
Historiography
Although historians of sociology have addressed these issues only tangentially,
earlier debates provide a focus for this discussion. An overarching question has
been whether fascism was rooted in religious, idealist, or romantic thought, or in
the tradition of positivism dating from Auguste Comte. Defending the first view,
a British pro-fascist argued that sociology provided no basis for social policy
precisely because it was narrowly positivistic. Italian fascism, in contrast, provided
the missing moral guide because it was rooted in religion and tradition. Enemies
of fascism reversed this judgement while accepting its premise. So viewed,
fascism marked a resurgence of the forces of traditionalism, authoritarianism, and
various forms of irrationalism (Barnes 1928; Ellwood 1938: 289).
In this interpretation, sociologists who set the stage were Vilfredo Pareto (‘the
Karl Marx of Fascism’); Ludwig Gumplowicz and others of the Austrian ‘struggle
school’; and a potpourri of racialists, nationalists, and eugenists now branded
‘social Darwinists’ (McGovern 1941; Hofstadter 1944).3
Others added that Comte, Durkheim, and Tönnies must also shoulder blame, a
charge later commonplace so far as concerned Tönnies. Despite their embrace of
science, each of these sociologists allegedly harboured secret affection for an
organic order characterized alternatively as theological (Comte), as Gemeinschaft
(Tönnies), and as mechanic solidarity (Durkheim) (Ranulf 1939:16–34).
Other critics meanwhile rooted fascism in positivism itself. Within American
sociology, this charge fuelled the ongoing battle between Ogburn’s rigorously
scientistic faction and Bernard’s loose coalition of social evolutionists, reformers,
and others increasingly marginalized within the profession. ‘If fascism comes, I
surmise that [some of the sheltered sociologists who are commanding the strategic
positions within the academic world] might be willing to surrender their birthright
for a mess of pottage,’ one of Bernard’s allies wrote him in 1938. ‘At the present,
some of them for the lack of vision, are drifting into the intellectual desert of
Logical Positivism where they will be brooding upon their empty eggs of
thought.’4 In Reason and Revolution (1941), the émigré philosopher Herbert
Marcuse argued that positivism, in separating sociology from philosophy,
narrowed the former to the study of immediate experience while exempting from
critical reason wider realms of experience which Comte proceeded to fill with the
elaborate rituals and symbols of his Religion of Humanity. Positivism thus
provided a defence of middle-class society, while bearing within itself ‘the seeds
of a philosophic justification of authoritarianism’ (Marcuse 1941:340–43). An
American critic, charging Lundberg with pro-fascist views, turned Marcuse’s
argument against ‘operationalism’, the latest attenuation of the extreme positivist
spirit (Hartung 1944:330, 335, 337, 340–41).5
170 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
Summary of argument
On balance, the following account supports the second rather than the first of these
interpretations, although insisting that national, international, and professional
politics were inextricably bound up with a positivistic orientation. In American
sociology’s response to fascism, principle, politics, and profession each played a
part.
Some American sociologists early developed a distaste for fascism. But those
who spoke out against the new movements in Italy and Germany laboured under
a dual disadvantage. At the level of theory, their passion was often deeper than
their analysis, as they viewed fascism rather narrowly in terms of class struggle
or as the logic of capitalism, both legacies of the domestic political battles of the
prewar Progressive Era.6 Despite some truth, these analyses were more revealing
of the concerns of left-of-centre American liberals or radicals than of the complex
nature of fascism. Nor, from a later perspective, were they really sociological.7
Within the profession, the most outspoken anti-fascists also lacked clout.
Although the four leading sociological journals gave some space to discussions
of fascism, and regularly reviewed books on the subject,8 authors and reviewers
were typically relative unknowns (often without Ph.Ds), European émigrés (and
hence also outsiders), or in fields other than sociology. Often right for the wrong
reasons, they were easy to ignore.
At the other extreme, Ogburn’s studied silence, if notable in its frankness, was
not unique among the profession’s leaders. During Mussolini’s rise to power
surprisingly few sociological big shots mentioned Italian fascism, while even
fewer criticized it. From the triumph of National Socialism in 1933 through the
Nazi-Soviet pact six years later, an amalgam of value-free objectivism, political
isolationism, and veiled anti-Semitism kept public discussion to a minimum.
Privately, younger objectivists speculated that a social scientist as scientist could
function as effectively in Hitler’s Germany as in Franklin Roosevelt’s America.
In his presidential address to the ASS in 1943, George Lundberg seemed to some
to verge on open anti-Semitism, while his other public statements appeared to
repudiate democracy.
During the early 1940s, a gradual recognition of the complex nature of German
fascism transformed the debate—due in part to new perspectives drawn from
earlier European sociology, and in part to growing recognition of the true meaning
of Hitler’s attack on the Jews. In the end, the debate over fascism worked to the
disadvantage of both versions of objectivism, most especially the narrowly
positivistic faction represented first by Ogburn, then by Lundberg. The
beneficiaries, however, were not the reformers and dissidents of the 1930s, but a
new generation who proposed to bring American sociology more squarely within
the European tradition. Chief among these was Talcott Parsons, whose analysis
of fascism in the early 1940s moved the debate to a new level, while directing
American sociology along a new path. Just as the First World War had hastened
the demise of a reformist social evolutionism and brought the rise of value-neutral
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 171
scientism, so the events of the Second World War paved the way for the emergence
of the Parsonian paradigm within the discipline.
In considering these issues, ‘response’ must be interpreted within an American
context. Unlike their Italian or German colleagues, American sociologists faced
no momentous decision to support or to oppose regimes that demanded their
loyalty. Rather they enjoyed the luxury of a wait-and-see attitude throughout most
of the 1930s. Once war was declared, theoretical discussions of the nature and
sources of fascism were subordinated to more general issues concerning
America’s war effort and, later, to the postwar reconstruction of Germany. Nor
were sociologists alone in responding too little and too late, as the historian John
Diggins has shown in his exhaustive study of American reactions to Mussolini
(Diggins 1972). No American sociologist here considered was openly pro-fascist,
as was the case with certain Italian and German social scientists.9 Rather, the case
was one of collective myopia in the face of distinctly modern developments that
cast a shadow not only on human history but on the very concept of modernity.10
ANTI-FASCIST VOICES
Charles A.Ellwood
During the 1920s, the professionalization of American sociology translated in
practice into close, empirical study of domestic issues rather than comparative or
historical studies of social systems or ideologies. The result was evident in the
response to international affairs. Despite their important contributions to urban
ecology and regionalism, for example, neither Robert Park nor Howard Odum
apparently studied or commented on the rise of Mussolini or German fascism.11
The task of speaking out instead fell initially to two men trained in the prewar
years: Charles A.Ellwood, an early Chicago Ph.D. (1899) who continued to
represent the religious, reformist impulse of prewar sociology; and Emory S.
Bogardus, also a Chicago Ph.D. (1911), whose ‘social distance’ scale won him a
minor reputation during the 1920s.
Born in upstate New York, Ellwood (1875–1946) began his career as a charity
worker before teaching at the universities of Nebraska and Missouri, and finally
Duke (appointed 1929). Convinced that the First World War was the product of
unbridled materialism, he launched a one-man crusade for spirituality in
scholarship against all forms of ‘objectivism’, a term he first used in 1916. In the
early 1920s he fought (and lost) battles against military conscription, immigration
restriction, and the racism that was endemic in his adopted state of Missouri.
Ellwood early observed fascism firsthand during a visit to Italy in 1927–28.
‘Perhaps the three and one half months which I spent [there] were the most
stimulating of the nine and one half months which I spent on the continent of
Europe,’ he wrote in an unpublished sketch of his career a year later. Although he
had once believed that social evolution guaranteed the triumph of democracy, he
172 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
was now less sure. ‘I now see that the Democratic Movement is not certain of
victory in our culture,’ he continued, ‘unless strong efforts are made in the
direction of social and political education.’12
From the late 1920s onward, Ellwood warned audiences throughout the nation
of fascism’s perils. ‘Never before has democracy in all its forms been challenged
so boldly, so determinedly, and so logically as by the fascist regime in Italy,’ he
observed in a public lecture at Vanderbilt. ‘Fascism is doomed before it starts
because it is built on false doctrines of social theory,’ he added before another
audience at Northwestern. ‘Even if fascism is well integrated within the nation—
and notice I am not saying that it is—but even if it is, it is headed for disaster,
because it leads inevitably to war.’13 Although Ellwood contributed little or
nothing in the way of formal analysis in these lectures or in his published work,
the menace of fascism also echoed through his escalating attack on sociological
objectivism (an ‘emasculated sociology’, he termed it), and surfaced again in The
Story of Social Philosophy (1939). ‘Hegellives again,’ he wrote of the roots of
Nazism, ‘in the “Authoritarian Volk State” that Hitler and his followers have set
up.’ Writing to praise E.A.Ross’s New Age Sociology the following year, he added:
‘The trend at the moment, as you know, is so strongly for fascism, and possibly
even toward a totalitarian form of the state, that our youth need to have their faith
re-awakened in the social and political principles which lie at the foundation of
our republic.’14
By the 1930s, however, Ellwood’s frank religiosity and armchair theorizing
branded him as a voice of sociology-past, while a diminutive stature, a nervous
manner, and a tendency to appropriate the theories of others made him an easy
target for ridicule among younger colleagues. At the University of Missouri years
before, the students called him ‘Little Charlie’ behind his back. During lectures,
Bernard recalled of his former professor, Ellwood had a habit of shrugging his
shoulders as if to ‘worm out’ of a jacket always too big for him, and had an
‘annoying habit’ of ‘sucking air or saliva through his teeth with a characteristic
sound, possibly because his lips were too big for his Irish type mouth’. At the
University of Chicago, Bernard added, sociologists resisted inviting Ellwood to
their seminars for fear he would publish their ideas before they did (Bannister
1987:115–16, 134–35, 192–94). When in 1935 Ellwood was elected president of
the soon-controversial International Federation of Sociology, one of Bernard’s
allies branded the election ‘utterly preposterous’.15
However estimable his attacks on fascism, and prescient his predictions
concerning war, Ellwood’s warnings were unlikely to have much impact on his
fellow-sociologists.
needs’, he wrote of his early life. After graduating from Northwestern University
(BA 1908, MA 1909), he received a Ph.D. at Chicago for a thesis on ‘The Relation
of Fatigue to Industrial Accidents’. To finance his studies, he worked at the
Northwestern University Settlement on Chicago’s North Side, where he developed
a lifelong interest in the relations of different immigrant groups. During his long
career at USC (1911–1946), he published some 275 articles, most on theory and
group relations, although twelve (as he counted them) in the area of ‘world
community and organization’. In creating the ‘social distance scale’,16 Bogardus
contributed to the 1920s passion for quantification. But, unlike the more extreme
quantifiers, he continued to insist that sociology must serve democracy and social
welfare.17
Bogardus, accordingly, opened the pages of Sociology and Social Research to
discussions of fascism and international affairs. Typically brief, rarely penetrating,
these contributions nonetheless championed democracy against both fascist and
Communist alternatives. ‘As a means, fascism may be good,’ Bogardus concluded
an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of Mussolini’s programme in
1933; ‘but it contains the seeds of its own destruction in its autocracy.’ The
platforms of Hitler’s movement, a second commentator warned the same year,
‘reveal the party’s inbred anti-Semitic stand’ (Bogardus 1933:569–74; Mohme
1933: 409–15; Yankwich 1934:365–71). National Socialism was not socialism
despite its name, insisted John E.Nordskog, a colleague of Bogardus whose
training had included studies at the London School of Economics. In a column of
‘International Notes’, Nordskog also informed readers of the latest European
developments, while in book reviews drew attention to works critical of fascism,
among them John F.Holt’s Under the Swastika (1936) and Gaetano Salvemini’s
Under the Axe of Fascism (1939) (Nordskog 1939; 1937a; 1937b).
Sociology and Social Research thus reinforced Ellwood’s warnings. But
Bogardus faced similar problems impressing the sociological community with the
urgency of the situation. Not only were West Coast institutions still relatively
isolated, but he personally enjoyed little prestige among his eastern colleagues,
indeed was ‘very much disliked’, as Bernard put it to Read Bain, explaining why
a plan to make Sociology and Social Research one of three ‘official’ journals of
the ASS was doomed to fail.18 Although elected president of the Society for 1931,
Bogardus played little role in its affairs during the decade. More importantly, as
was also the case with Bernard and his allies, the contributors to Sociology and
Social Research, despite their defences of democracy, often made curious
concessions in the attempt to balance pros and cons of fascism. Although
anti-Semitism was excessive, continued the author of the article cited above, ‘a
racial problem does exist’. Even Hitler’s ‘frequently Nordic extravaganzas’, he
concluded, ‘may be viewed as moral regeneration’ (Mohme 1933:411, 415). In
Bogardus’s own analysis, and in others, admiration for fascist planning showed
through the criticism (Bogardus 1933; Wilson 1936). Although discussions of
fascism appeared sporadically into the 1940s, they were slight in both volume and
174 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
substance when compared with growing interest in the topic in the profession
generally.
of nudism, and Bolshevism, Fascism and the Liberal Democratic State brought
him notoriety and near-disaster when Congressman Martin Dies in the early 1940s
managed to have him fired from his post with the Board of Economic Warfare for
espousing nudism and Communism (‘Dies in the Spring’ 1942).
An inveterate traveller, Parmelee observed the rise of Italian fascism and
National Socialism at first hand. In 1920, he returned to Germany to study
economic conditions for the State Department, remaining in Berlin until the spring
of 1923. During 1928–29 he travelled for a year in the Soviet Union and through
Italy to observe Bolshevism and fascism. During the summer of 1933 he was back
in Germany to witness the results of the Nazi takeover. Among American
sociologists, Parmelee was thus uniquely privileged to comment on fascism.
The fact that he finally had little more impact than Ellwood or Davis is thus
especially instructive. Although Parmelee’s Yale education and wide international
experience distinguished him from most objectivists, he shared their desire to
make sociology more ‘scientific’, albeit more ‘liberal’, as he once explained to
Bernard. In practice, this programme translated into a prevailing animus against
social workers, rural sociologists, and other ‘meliorists’ (his favourite pejorative).
This animus extended to European sociologists, particularly when they threatened
to siphon foundation funds from American sociologists, among them Parmelee,
who perennially sought such grants. ‘Last winter it occurred to me that if these
foundations would spend this money [given to European researchers] in America,
the problem of the unemployed American social scientists could readily be
solved,’ he wrote to Bernard in 1933, explaining a plan to persuade the
Rockefellers and others to buy American.26
Unfortunately, Bolshevism, Fascism, like most of Parmelee’s work, was bold
in scope, rich in detail, but rather short on critical analysis and systematic research.
Both Italian fascism and National Socialism, as expressions of nationalism, had
roots in history, he argued, the first ‘in imperial Rome, the medieval city state,
and the Catholic Church’, the second in the ‘traditions of the ancient Teutons’.
Although appealing to various groups in early stages, both were finally expressions
of ‘monopolistic capitalism’. Without denying the extreme denial of civil liberties
and individual rights under these regimes, he insisted that liberal-democracy under
capitalism ‘had also resulted in destroying in large part the civil liberties’.
Although National Socialism was a ‘close variant of fascism’, both differed
markedly from Bolshevism, despite contemporary opinion to the contrary
(Parmelee 1934:193, 7, 195, 362, 293).
Although one of Parmelee’s defenders later described his book as a ‘vigorous
attack on bolshevism and fascism and a paean for the liberal democratic state’
(Gibbons 1974:407), its emphasis on fascism-as-monopoly-capitalism, as with
Davis’s analysis, marked it as a product of American left-of-centre liberalism. To
be sure, Parmelee pulled few punches. Although stressing the pragmatism in
Mussolini’s philosophy, his characterizations of this strain as ‘opportunism’ made
it clear that he had little sympathy with it. His description of Nazi book-burning
and anti-Semitism were detailed and forthright.
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 177
On balance, however, Parmelee added little to current debate. Less extreme but
also less reasoned than contemporary analyses along similar lines (for example,
R.Palme Dutt’s Fascism and Social Revolution [1934]), his view of fascism as an
expression of capitalist interests, and as an authoritarian response to the problems
of liberal democracy, was by now the standard line of leftist writers, many of
whom Parmelee read and cited. Indeed, as one reviewer noted, Parmelee tended
to report on published sources rather than provide ‘his first hand reactions to what
he actually saw’ (‘Review’ 1935a: 499). His view of Communism, written while
New Deal policies seemed to be foundering and before Stalin’s purges were under
way, expressed the sort of sympathetic optimism many American intellectuals
still harboured toward the Soviet experiment. His prognosis for capitalism was
accordingly gloomy. ‘This is a vain hope for them’, he concluded of recent
attempts at economic planning in capitalistic societies. ‘Planning is wholly
inconsistent with and impossible under capitalism’ (Parmelee 1934:418).
Although Parmelee’s book was more widely reviewed than Davis’s
Contemporary Social Movements, the reviews suggested why he was even easier
to dismiss. The North American Review thought his chapters on Italian fascism
‘especially interesting’ because they exposed the economic realities behind the
‘bold, showy, and wonderfully well publicized Italian front’. But the reviewer also
cautioned readers that Parmelee must be ‘read with care’ because he ‘does not
always think as clearly as he might’. The Saturday Review of Literature wondered
where Parmelee himself stood politically. If not capitalism or socialism, then
what? Perhaps ‘technocracy’, the reviewer opined. But like most supporters of
technocracy, Parmelee dodged the question of what political and social objectives
would guide the technocrats —a charge similar to that often levelled against most
proponents of a more strictly scientific sociology and social policy (‘Review’
1935b:92; ‘Review’ 1935a:499).
Nor did Parmelee’s position in the profession redeem these shortcomings. He
was ‘a most insignificant looking person’ who ‘never achieved any standing’, one
contemporary recalled. He was not a very ‘conspicuous’ figure, added another,
and ‘was generally looked on as a mediocre scholar’. For whatever reasons, his
colleagues in sociology virtually ignored his analysis of fascism, just as most
would later fail to support him during the Dies investigation (comments quoted
by Gibbons 1974:413).
Luther L.Bernard
Although Luther Bernard (1881–1951) published less than his fellow dissidents
on the subject, he was perhaps the most adamant in private in opposing all
tendencies of ‘fascism’ whether at home, abroad, or within his own profession.
Born in Kentucky, raised in the bleaker parts of west Texas and southwest
Missouri, Bernard was one of sociology’s most complex figures—personally,
intellectually, and politically. After attending an obscure Baptist college in
Missouri, he received a doctorate in sociology under Albion Small at Chicago, in
178 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
the process breaking from his mentor and offending most of the faculty. Partly as
consequence, he became one of the profession’s most peripatetic practitioners,
teaching finally at half a dozen universities before an unwilling retirement from
Washington University in St Louis in the mid 1940s.
During his graduate school days, Bernard considered himself an ‘intelligent
liberal’, that is to say, one who favoured a social policy based on science rather
than on sentiment. During a summer on the Chautauqua lecture circuit in 1909,
he opposed socialists, reactionaries, and do-good sentimentalists alike.27 His goal
was ‘an objective standard of social control’, the title of his dissertation. But
Bernard’s politics, like those of Parmelee, could be somewhat confusing. Like
other social controllers, including many who supported Theodore Roosevelt’s
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party in 1912, he mingled praise of democracy with
calls for an ‘objective standard’ that seemed to denigrate democratic politics.
During the 1930s, Bernard was a political enigma—an amalgam of populist
instincts, an elitist faith in efficiency, and a distrust of the two major parties. In
1932, he urged two former Bull Moosers to run on a third-party platform of
‘constitutionalism, agrarian defense, and the welfare of the workers and the
unemployed’.28 In one unpublished attack on then-President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, he charged that the New Deal’s chief beneficiaries were ‘speculative
business’, ‘speculative overcapitalized railroads’, ‘credit speculators and
professional stock waterers’. F.D.R. himself was ‘the face debonair and the
ingratiating radio voice’; the ‘hero of the Hudson’; and ‘ninety percent Eleanor
[the President’s wife] and ten percent mush’.29 Then and later, however, the
politics of Bernard’s own utopia of perfect adjustment remained regrettably vague.
From this uncertain perspective, Bernard monitored the rise of Nazism with
growing concern. Unlike some champions of social control, he rejected the
argument that a Hitler or Mussolini could provide order and stability superior to
that in the democratic societies. Such stability was ‘illusory’, and indeed
destructive of the ‘most valuable elements in our society’, Bernard observed in
the spring of 1935 when a member of the audience at one of his lectures made this
argument. The coming of the dictatorships was but ‘a last desperate attempt to
hold a decaying civilization together a little longer’. Confronting a group of
Germans while returning from Europe that fall, he chided them for not
overthrowing Hitler. A year later, more apprehensively, he asked fellow
sociologist Charles Ellwood whether the older man thought that fascism was
‘going to overrun the world’.30
Tutored by his wife Jessie, Bernard acquainted himself with the growing
literature on fascism in preparation for his forthcoming study of Social Control
(1939). In the autumn of 1936 Jessie reported on John Strachey’s The Menace of
Fascism (1933), a left-wing attack widely criticized by American reviewers as
being pro-Communist. After reading Stephen H. Roberts’ The House that Hitler
Built (1937) and another work by a ‘British journalist’, Jessie commented on the
power of German propaganda, a theme of special interest to social control
sociologists. Shortly after Munich, Luther himself condemned the ‘effete
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 179
democracies’ of Europe for not calling Hitler’s bluff. ‘[War] would have been the
best thing,’ he wrote to Jessie, ‘war now—for it will certainly be war in earnest
in a few years, after Hitler has fully armed, and after Fr. and Eng. are ruined by
armament races. Only Russia, Germany, and Italy will survive (in Europe) this
cowardly policy.’31
In Social Control, Bernard cited examples of terrorization and regimentation
under the Nazi regime. His bibliography provided a full listing of recent treatments
of fascism. In War and its Causes (1944), an encyclopedic survey of the nature
and future of war as a social institution, he castigated the Nazis’ sneak attack on
other nations, their plundering of wealth from other countries, and their ‘unsound
racial ideology’. Although German nationalism was a minor motivation in
Nazism, the appeal to pan-German sentiments was ‘a convenient working
camouflage’ of motives that included ‘the desire of Hitler personally to play a
hero role in world affairs,of the capitalistic interests in the state to establish
economic imperialism over the world, of the military clique to regain their lost
professional prestige, and of the masses of the German people to have revenge
upon the peoples they had been told had despoiled them of their place in the world’.
In these and similar statements, Bernard thus introduced psychological and
cultural factors absent from the work of Davis and Parmelee (Bernard 1972:87,
335–36, 380).
Bernard also worked actively to offset the consequences of fascism for the social
sciences in Europe. At the 1937 meeting of the ASS he supported a motion by
Maurice Parmelee that would have blocked affiliation with the International
Federation of Sociological Societies, an organization dominated by the French
International Institute of Sociology, then (or soon to be) subject to fascist
influences.32 As editor of the American Sociologist, a publication he launched
after resigning from the ASS in the late 1930s, Bernard invited comments from
fellow sociologists concerning the role of refugee intellectuals. These refugees
were welcome, Harry Elmer Barnes intoned in a lead article in the American
Sociologist, so long as they ‘expose the methods of fascism, not flirt with them’
(Barnes 1944:1–2).
Linking fascism to a narrow and sterile positivism, Bernard also anticipated the
idealist-positivist argument then taking shape in the work of Marcuse and others.
His particular focus was the ‘fascist’ sympathies that allegedly motivated the
sociological elite who formed the core of the Sociological Research Association,
an invitation-only club organized in 1936, from which Bernard had been excluded.
Its members—which he termed ‘particularistic mystical sociologists’—included
two quite different types. One wing denied any regularity in human affairs, and
hence the possibility of social control through science. ‘Many, perhaps most of
the sociological mystics are Fascists at heart, and, when they can overcome their
repugnance to the espousal of a cause, are so in fact,’ he wrote. In their view,
sociology was ‘a mere esthetic exercise’, the universities ‘a natural product of
human stupidity, made to serve the function of providing them with incomes and
intellectual amusement’. A second type of mystic inhabited the house of science
180 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
itself: ‘he often regards himself as a statistical methodologist (and indeed does
frequently play with numbers and equations and with fact gathering)’ (Bernard
1940:340–50).
In the early 1940s Bernard sharpened this attack in the pages of the American
Sociologist. In one draft editorial—initially titled ‘Little Sociologist, What
Now?’—he summed up his case in especially vitriolic terms.33 The SRA, having
‘drawn ridicule’ for the ‘poverty’ of its research and the ‘mediocrity’ of its
candidates for election, now proposed to secure its grip on the ASS by creating
different categories of members (a proposal at the 1941 meetings). This report
would be accepted ‘by the “Heil Hitlers” of the Society’. So bitter were his feelings
that he temporarily succumbed to an adolescent temptation to jibe at the Society’s
initials—ASS. The result would be the domination of the Society by the SRA’s
‘fascistic machine’.34
Although Bernard’s friends persuaded him to delete the reference to the ‘Heil
Hitlers’, the charge contained a point worth exploring seriously: idealism and
empiricism, although philosophically opposed, boiled down to the same thing.
Denying a natural order, the ‘sociological mystics’ despaired of reintroducing
order in ‘this world of chaos’ other than through the imposition of an external
‘dictator’, just as the ‘theologically minded had earlier turned to “priestly
hierarchies”’. The worship of ‘fact‘ led down the same path. Coming from a
positivist, the charge against idealism was nothing new. What distinguished it now
was the related allegation that the trouble was with positivism itself. ‘Strange
bedfellows indeed!’ Bernard commented, thinking again of the cosy alliances
within the SRA (Bernard 1940:343).
Whatever their merits, however, Bernard’s fulminations diluted principle with
provincial prejudice and professional politics even more obviously than was the
case with most of his colleagues. Although he did not finally agree with
isolationists concerning the coming and conduct of the war, he shared their
anti-British animus, seeing British and German imperialism as the twin devils in
international affairs, and fearing a resurgence of fascism in British clothing with
war’s end (Bernard 1943a: 1–2; 1943b:1–2). Domestically, as the reference to
effete democracies suggested, his own version of democracy was something other
than that actually practised in Britain, France, and the United States—in fact closer
to a populist authoritarianism than he cared to admit.
Professional infighting also muddied devotion to pure principle. In the battle
over affiliation with the International Sociological Society, ongoing feuds within
the ASS (especially over the SRA), even perks in the form of the appointment of
delegates, reinforced lines drawn over isolationism, internationalism, and the Nazi
menace. On the issue of refugee sociologists, concern over their pro-fascist leaning
(as in Barnes’s article) joined considerations based on job security and
often-parochial nationalism.35 Whether or not some members of the SRA were
actually soft on fascism (Ogburn among them), Bernard provided no particulars.
Although his ‘fascist’ name-calling may be excused as the sort of hyperbolic
excess in which Americans often indulge, it also expressed his personal pique at
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 181
a genuinely sociological analysis revealed more about the American past than the
German or Italian present. The absence of such analysis, in turn, revealed the
interwar isolation of American sociology from its European roots (indeed a general
animus against theory altogether). Nor were these political convictions (and, as it
will turn out, anti-Semitism) unrelated to this theoretical orientation since both
ultimately reflected a crisis within a provincial, culturally impoverished, segment
of American Protestant culture from the 1910s onward.37
William F.Ogburn
Although Bernard never named the ‘fascists’ in the SRA, he and his associates
regularly referred to the ‘T-O-R’ faction that controlled ASS affairs by the mid
1930s—the ‘O’ in this unholy Trinity being William Fielding Ogburn (1886–
1959), probably the most prominent and influential of the proponents of
‘scientific’ sociology within the profession.38 Born and educated in the South,
Ogburn had done his graduate work under Franklin Giddings at Columbia, and in
1912 earned his Ph.D. for a statistical study of child labour legislation. In Social
Change (1922), he introduced the phrase ‘cultural lag’ into the sociologists’
vocabulary. During the 1920s, he represented the discipline at the Social Science
Research Council, and was soon a power in the world of foundation politics. In
1927 he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, later chairing the sociology
department. Ogburn’s pioneering study of the 1928 election earned him a minor
footnote in histories of quantitative social science (Ogburn 1929–1930; Easthope
1974:114–19, 133–34, 145–46; Maus 1962:136–38; Gow 1985:1–18). As
research director of President Herbert Hoover’s Committee on Social Trends, he
played a pivotal role in producing the pathbreaking Recent Social Trends (1931).
During the depression years, he served on several New Deal agencies.39
Despite a lifelong penchant for travel to exotic places, Ogburn early developed
a distrust of Europe and things European. During a visit to Paris in 1906, his first
trip out of Georgia, he was repulsed by his discovery of a bohemian world of
‘Russians, poets, artists, Jews’ (‘But nearly all queer’, he confided to his diary).
During the First World War, he saw firsthand evidence of wartime hysteria in the
activities of his Columbia mentor, Franklin Giddings, whose pro-war excesses
provided many younger sociologists with a powerful lesson of what sociology
should not be (Gruber 1975:60–1, 85–6). Attracted to socialism, he toyed first
with the economic explanations of Louis Boudin’s Socialism and the War (1916)
before settling into profound disillusionment at the outcome in the postwar era.
Ogburn’s programme for sociology, as outlined in his presidential address
before the ASS in 1929, was uncompromising. Sociology was ‘not interested’ in
improving the world, he told his colleagues. ‘Science is interested directly in one
thing only, to wit, discovering new knowledge.’ This goal required a ‘wholly
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 183
colorless literary style’ and a rigorous method, preferably statistical. The truly
scientific sociologist, a service intellectual rather than a policy maker, would not
pretend to ‘guide the course of evolution’, but rather would generate the
‘information necessary for such supreme direction to some sterling executive who
will appear to do the actual guiding’. The enemy was ‘emotion’: the goals
‘efficiency’ and ‘adjustment’ (Ogburn 1930).
Although Ogburn’s enthusiasm for this vision gradually eroded during the
1930s, his devotion to it shaped his reaction to fascism. As a matter of principle,
he tried to avoid statements on public issues entirely. When circumstances forced
him to discuss fascism, his references were brief and muted. For example, in
Sociology (1940), a textbook written with Meyer Nimkoff, Ogburn included one
three-page discussion of fascism and a second brief mention of totalitarianism,
both treated within the context of economic organization, social efficiency, and
‘different systems of interrelation of state and industry’. A ‘new type of
government’, totalitarianism posed ‘a challenge to democracy’, the authors told
students. But too much could be made of the differences between the two systems.
‘The propaganda regarding democracies and totalitarian states serves to
exaggerate the differences.‘Just as fascism in Germany and Italy was largely a
product of war preparations, so ‘many of the characteristics usually associated
with totalitarian societies are found in the democratic states in wartime’. Would
the totalitarian states evolve toward democracy? Answering this question, Ogburn
equivocated, concluding with a homily on the need to balance freedom and
organization (Ogburn and Nimkoff 1940: 765, 651, 654).
Meanwhile, Ogburn learned that such detachment had its price. Attending a talk
on German propaganda by the head of the Berlin Associated Press Bureau in mid
1942, he was curiously torn. ‘The questions and his stories related chiefly to the
interferences of the Nazis with liberty and to their brutalities’, he wrote in his
diary. He had ‘listened with great admiration at the skill and efficiency’ of the
German propaganda machine (‘not admiration of course for the end, but for the
means’), a manipulation of opinion that seemed to him not much different from
what any family or college fraternity does to its members. Others in the audience,
however, ‘seemed to listen with contempt, disgust and horror at the domination
and the interference with the liberty of the press and the distortion of fact’. While
they were consumed by hate, he assumed that atrocities ‘were a function of war,
instead of being a correlate of one side’, he continued, reverting to the language
of statistics. ‘As the discussion progressed, I felt alone, as though no one thought
the same way I thought.’ Was he ‘psychotic?’ Was he ‘in anyway abnormal?’ No,
he decided. But he disliked seeing his colleagues ‘so emotional and so hating’.40
When it came to explaining Nazism, or America’s motives in fighting the war,
Ogburn fell back on an economic analysis more extreme than that offered by the
ASS radicals. Attending a talk on the causes of the war a month later, he rejected
the speakers’ contention that the Allies fought for ‘human dignity’. If so, why
were those who cared about human dignity not at war all the time? Why not fight
at home for the rights of minorities? And weren’t the Germans fighting for their
184 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
deeply, even when directed against an Adolf Hitler. Nor, given a lifetime of
training, was Ogburn able or willing to remove the cloud in his postwar writings.
Debating the merits of freedom versus organization, he continued to insist that the
question was one of relative merits rather than absolute values. Thus the war
imposed some restrictions on all of us’, albeit that in Nazi Germany ‘the
curtailment of liberty was general’. In a passing reference, he used Goebbels’ work
as minister of propaganda as evidence of the misuse of knowledge, but left his
own judgement in the form of a question: ‘who shall say he used such knowledge
for the good of society?’ (Ogburn 1948:256; 1949:208).
George A.Lundberg
During the early 1940s, the defence of value-neutral sociology fell to a new
generation, and with it the problem of responding to fascism during wartime.
Among these stalwarts, few were more outspoken, or more colourful, than George
A.Lundberg (1895–1966) of Bennington College, and, after 1945, the University
of Washington. Although never enjoying Ogburn’s prestige, Lundberg exerted
greater influence within the profession than his academic positions might suggest:
as author of Foundations of Sociology (1941) and Can Science Save Us? (1947);
as president of the ASS for 1943; and as chief exponent of what he termed
‘operationalism’.
Lundberg’s troubles with fascism began in the late 1930s, at first almost as a
joke. ‘I know you are quite Fascist in speech, but I imagine you wouldn’t like it
if you had to live under it—because you dearly love your “inalienable right” to
shoot off your mouth,’ his friend Read Bain of Miami University wrote in March
1937. To this Lundberg replied: ‘Whence came this idea that I “am quite Fascist
in speech”? I hate the bastards as much as any Hebrew.’ Still bantering, the
sociable Bain confessed a year later that such talk was not making him very
popular. ‘I have already been run out of 2 or 3 households almost for saying that
I believe I could get along in Nazi Germany as a scientist, about as well as here—
some better. If I got into trouble it would be because I stuck my neck out, i.e. tried
to play a part in policy making, and value promoting—instead of doing my stuff
—find out what is.’46
In the end, however, it was Lundberg’s attitudes toward fascism, rather than
Bain’s, that caused the greatest controversy. Born in Fairdale, North Dakota, the
son of Swedish immigrants, Lundberg sought in ‘science’ a security and
respectability missing during his youth. Since there were no high schools in his
area, his education consisted of a college preparatory course from a Chicago
correspondence school, and a degree in education at the University of North
Dakota. From there it was an appointment as superintendent of schools in a place
called Hope, North Dakota (1920), an MA. under E.A.Ross at the University of
Wisconsin (1922), and a Ph.D. at Minnesota (1925) under Bernard and F.Stuart
Chapin.
186 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
method and results over theory and truth. Scientific statements, so conceived, had
a similar formulation whether dealing with disease or social problems: ‘if you
want this, ‘then’ do that. Statements of any other sort—whether political, ethical,
or aesthetic—were not scientific even when uttered by scientists. Social scientists
often form pressure groups to advance their preferences. But neither the likes, the
dislikes, nor the organizations were thus scientific (Lundberg 1947:27–33).
By this time, Lundberg’s views were taking a toll on his reputation. In
September 1940, Jessie Bernard warned that his anti-war sentiments, Olympian
objectivity, and apparent disdain of democracy were harming him professionally.
‘It has occurred to methat in the past decade or so you have allowed yourself
to become a bit too removed from the ordinary human values’, she wrote to her
old friend. ‘Are you not a bit too Olympian? pontifical? unsympathetic?’ Others
soon seconded the comment. ‘Positivistic sociology had its origin in a conservative
and reactionary mission, and this function characterizes it even today’, another
critic charged in the wake of his presidential address to the ASS, citing Marcuse
among others. Lundberg’s ‘advocacy of the isolation of science from society, and
a contempt for democracy’ together illustrated the ‘proto-fascist aspect of
positivism’. Years later, Jessie Bernard repeated her earlier warning. ‘I know you
are not a fascist; at least you never were. But your theories are definitely fascistic
in implication’ (Hartung 1944).48
Perhaps even worse, Lundberg had discredited all sociologists when it came to
government service, another student of Luther Bernard wrote to him once the war
was over. ‘I would say in the late emergencyI saw no evidence of any
practitioner of sociology (of either the scientific or intuitive school) being in any
policy making or agency role as a sociologist,’ he continued. ‘Being a sociologist
was a positive disadvantage in acquiring a strategic position in government and
you are not wholly without blame.’49
New departures
That interest in empirical research and a high level of professionalism need not
necessarily breed indifference to fascism was demonstrated by two apparent
exceptions to the Olympian detachment of Ogburn, Lundberg, and others: Clifford
Kirkpatrick’s Nazi Germany: Its Women and Family Life (1938); and Theodore
Abel’s Why Hitler Came Into Power (1938). Contemporaries of Lundberg, and
representatives of American sociology’s third generation, both men moved in
circles where scientific detachment was at a premium. An undergraduate at Clark
(B.A. 1920), Kirkpatrick (b. 1898) received his doctorate at the University of
Pennsylvania (1925), and later taught at the University of Minnesota (1930–49),
a bastion of positivist sociology. Abel (b. 1896), in turn, received both an M.A.
(1925) and Ph.D. (1939) at Columbia where he taught from 1929 until his
appointment at Hunter College in 1951.
Yet, in other respects, their backgrounds and experiences differed significantly
from Lundberg’s. While Lundberg first sat out, then regretted the First World War,
188 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
Kirkpatrick won a Distinguished Service Cross for service in the Army Ambulance
Corps. Before going to Minnesota, he moved through a series of elite eastern
schools, Andover and Brown (where he taught 1920–21 and 1923–24
respectively), in addition to Clark and Penn. Abel, a Pole by birth, served in the
Polish army during the First World War before coming to the United States, living
his entire life in New York, New Mexico, and Indiana. Steeped in European social
theory, he published his first book on Systematic Sociology in Germany (1929).
In their studies of fascism, Abel and Kirkpatrick employed empirical
techniques, setting their works apart from many similar efforts. Awarded a
Guggenheim for 1936–37, Kirkpatrick conducted extensive interviews in
Germany, many with National Socialists. In addition, he consulted a wide range
of German newspapers and other relevant publications. Abel, more ingeniously,
devised a contest wherein Nazi party members could win four hundred marks in
prizes for essays on their life histories. The enterprise yielded some 683
manuscripts, a number of which he reprinted verbatim in a final section of his
study.
What distinguished their works, however, was a new theoretical sophistication
that for the first time approached a genuinely sociological interpretation. National
Socialism, argued Kirkpatrick, was more than the product of leadership, terrorism,
class struggle and monopoly capitalism, or militarism—although each played a
part. Viewed sociologically, Germany was rather ‘an experiment in regression to
tribal-group intimacy on a national scale by means of modern agencies of
communication’. Initially, modern transportation and communication disrupt
primary-group intimacy, he continued, employing a distinction between primary
and secondary, in- and out-group going back to Charles Horton Cooley, William
Graham Sumner, and their European mentors. But these same forces also facilitate
attempts to revitalize this community on a national scale, a ‘tribal engineering’
with modern propaganda techniques. Since confusions concerning family life and
woman’s place were a central element in this dislocation, sociological analysis
provided the key to the Nazi programme for women, no less than to National
Socialism generally. Abel, targeting psychoanalytic and Marxian theories in
particular, also opposed simplistic, monolithic explanations. Rather, a complex
interaction of discontent, a flexible ideology, organization and propaganda, and
charismatic leadership brought Hitler to power, he argued in an analysis that drew
on Weber’s conception of charisma (Kirkpatrick 1938: Ch. 1; Abel 1938: Chs. 6–
8; Abel 1945).
Both Kirkpatrick and Abel also stated explicitly that careful scholarship did not
require detachment or disinterest. ‘The writer has no illusions about his capacity
for purely objective description,’ Kirkpatrick confessed. ‘In political outlook, he
is liberal in the sense that he values reason, toleration and co-operation.’ He was
also a ‘hedonist’ and thus disliked any system that made people manifestly
unhappy. To understand all was not to forgive all, Abel observed, challenging
Mme de Stael on this point. In later years, he returned to Germany to record exit
interviews with concentration camp inmates (Kirkpatrick 1938: xi-xii).50
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 189
But was the conflict between scholarship and commitment, medium and
message thus finally resolved? Had the shadow that objectivism shed over
analyses of fascism been dispelled? Despite their personal revulsion to Nazism,
and the merits of their analyses, neither the authors nor their reviewers answered
these questions very satisfactorily. Having disagreed with de Stael, Abel added
somewhat enigmatically: ‘I therefore declare myself willing to bear the accusation
of impartiality, but plead “not guilty” to a charge of intended approval or
disapproval of the movement’ (Abel 1938:9).51 Apologies aside, Kirkpatrick also
left no doubt that he intended a ‘scientific’ study. Indeed, in a variation of a
dilemma many social scientists have faced, he regretted that many Nazis he had
interviewed would view a ‘scientific analysis’ of their movement as a ‘betrayal
of friendship and ingratitude for hospitality’ (Kirkpatrick 1938:xii).
Reviewers applauded their detachment, rather than their convictions. ‘The
author will doubtless be attacked in these hysterical times for his impartiality’,
Kirkpatrick himself wrote of Abel. ‘From the standpoint of the sociologist that is
an achievement.’ While he had put down most such books ‘because the authors
have obviously written with their glands rather than their brains’, added a reviewer
of Nazi Germany, ‘not so Kirkpatrick, for this book is a model of tireless sifting
of evidence, patient inquiry, testing of interpretations, and scientific detachment’
(Kirkpatrick 1939; Waller 1940). Sophisticated analysis, it appeared, did not
resolve the dilemma of advocacy and objectivity.
Lundberg was never crudely anti-Semitic, and might even claim to oppose
discrimination against Jews. But his way of talking about them left doubts. ‘I am
breakfasting with two-of the fairest Bennington Hebrews’, he wrote to Bain in
late 1936, adding: ‘They have insisted on meeting me at the train with the family
limousine—I wouldn’t get out to meet Jesus Christ at a Chicago station at such
an hour of the morning.’ Equally ambivalent was his comment to Bain that he
hated the Nazi ‘bastards as much as any Hebrew’.
As translated in his presidential speech to the ASS in 1943, this ambivalence
caused a public furore. Although the subject was Sociologists and the Peace’,
Lundberg lost no time getting to religion, the source of those moral and ethical
views that had consistently frustrated true social science. A ‘minor illustration’,
he noted, were ‘large numbers of organized and articulate Jews in their unhappy
predicament devoting themselves to legalistic and moralistic conjurings so that
their attention is entirely diverted from a realistic approach. They demand
legislation prohibiting criticism and they demand international action outlawing
anti-Semitism, instead of reckoning with the causes of the antagonism’. These
‘firebrands’ would probably attack his remarks as anti-Semitic, he concluded this
lengthy harangue. But this fact merely showed ‘how a primitive, moralistic,
theological, legalistic attitude obstructs a scientific approach’.
As it happened, Lundberg did not have to wait. ‘I am compelled to report’, he
later wrote of the reception, that the talk ‘was interrupted with some hisses and
boos—not a usual recognition at this annual occasion’. In fact, he had not seen
such ‘an accolade’ in thirty years of attending scholarly meetings! When the
address was published, others continued to wonder. ‘Have you read Lundberg’s
presidential address?’ Parmelee wrote to Bernard the following spring. ‘It has
raised the question whether he is anti-semitic, although he protests against it’
(Larsen 1968:21).58
For the next decade, Lundberg continued a running battle with prominent Jewish
leaders and organizations, all the while claiming that he was really on their side.
The more he protested, however, the more you wondered. The Council for Judaism
are loud in their praises for my views and apparently regard me as a second Moses
called to lead the Chosen People out of the Wilderness’, he wrote to his close
friend Harry Elmer Barnes at the height of this controversy. ‘If this continues, I
expect to be eligible for honorary circumcision by the time commencement roles
[sic] around, or what does one get for high achievement among the Hebrews?’59
intended the work to aid the Jewish cause in the developing crisis, they insisted
that theirs was a book in which ‘experts from a number of fieldsexamine the
problems of anti-Semitism in a dispassionate, objective manner’. Contributors
were to include a number of non-Jewish scholars (‘in the interest of tact and
effectiveness’, the editor wrote to one contributor) (Graeber and Britt 1942:v-viii).
In the end, eight sociologists joined nine other contributors, making the volume
the most sustained address of the situation of Jews and the nature of anti-Semitism
by sociologists to date.
Their contributions included the worst and the best in the collection. Arguably
the worst was a survey of ‘Anti-Semitism through History’ in which Joyce O.
Hertzler of the University of Nebraska appeared to argue that the solution to the
problem of anti-Semitism was nothing less than the elimination of the Jew as Jew.
Among the better was Jessie Bernard’s ‘An Analysis of Jewish Culture’. Although
she too blamed Jews as well as non-Jews for the long history of anti-Semitism,
she argued for modification of conflicting cultural traits on both sides. Probably
the best, certainly the most sophisticated conceptually, was Talcott Parsons’s ‘The
Sociology of Modern Anti-Semitism’, the first of several analyses of fascism he
published during the early 1940s. In these articles, Parsons raised analysis of
fascism to a new level and in the process eventually established a new paradigm
for the discipline.
authority and privilege in the name of equality and individual liberty, while at the
same time creating an economic order of capitalist free enterprise that threatened
these values; and to Vilfredo Pareto for the idea that the ‘rationalistic scheme’ of
scientific culture leads to an underestimation of the ‘non-logical’ aspects of human
behaviour, including ‘the sentiments and traditions of family and informal social
relationships, of the refinements of social stratification, or the peculiarities of
regional, ethnic or national culture—perhaps above all of religion’.
Since the process of rationalization affected social groups differentially —
professional and business groups leaning in the rational direction, for example,
and rural ones in the traditional—the result was not only inherent ‘strains’ within
the social system, but social struggle. The ‘uneven incidence ofemancipation’
explained why certain marginal groups within society (women, youth, the lower
middle classes) felt these tensions most acutely, and hence were ripe for the appeals
of fascism’s radical traditionalism. In a second article on the social structure of
pre-Nazi Germany, Parsons described how and why these social factors had
combined to create a seedbed for National Socialism (Parsons 1942a).
From this perspective, anti-Semitism was an integral part rather than an
incidental by-product of fascism. Again, Parsons’s argument unfolded in a series
of interrelated propositions. For ‘smooth functioning’ a social system requires ‘a
relative stability of expectations’ and ‘a sufficiently concrete and stable system of
symbols around which the sentiments of the individual can crystallize’. Where
social disorganization produces ‘anomie’ the disruption of expectations and
absence of suitable symbols lead to a generalized aggression and insecurity. This
‘free-floating’ aggression then attaches itself to ‘symbols only remotely connected
with their original sources’. In this situation, scapegoating characterizes public
discourse. Since Jews are most intimately involved in, and hence identified with,
the spheres of rationalized activity (business and the professions) that are furthest
removed from Gemeinschaft patterns, ‘they easily become targets of the
frustrations and aggression of those groups least touched by the “process of
rationalization”’. Thus, Parsons concluded his contribution to Jews in a Gentile
World, ‘the most important source of virulent anti-Semitism is probably the
projection on the Jew, as a symbol, of free-floating aggression, springing from
insecurities and social disorganization’ (Parsons 1942d: 125–26, 134; 1942a:121).
Viewed in the light of European theories of fascism, most of this was hardly
new. Parsons’s anomie mass man, consumed by ‘free-floating aggression’, stood
in the tradition of Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd (1895), Ortega y Gasset’s The
Revolt of the Masses (1932), and most recently, Emil Lederer’s The State of the
Masses (1940), even though Parsons cited only Durkheim.61 His notion of the
differential impact of modernization likewise echoed Karl Mannheim’s analysis
of the ‘sphere of knowledge’ of different social groups in Ideology and Utopia
(1929, Eng. trans. 1936), although Parsons did not mention any source other than
Weber.62
This is not to say that American sociology immediately embraced Parsons’s
interpretation. Before Howard Odum accepted ‘Some Sociological Aspects of
194 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
Fascism’ for Social Forces, Herbert Blumer turned it down for the American
Journal of Sociology, claiming that it was too long.63 Between 1945 and 1960, the
American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and Social
Forces together published fewer than a dozen articles even nominally dealing with
fascism or Nazism, none of them mentioning Parsons or developing a similar
analysis.64
But new questions had been asked, and the basis laid for a more systematic
understanding. Where fascism was concerned, Parsons had moved American
sociology to a new level of analysis. Gone were unrelated generalizations
concerning the logic of capitalism, the revolt of the lower middle classes, the
strength of German nationalism, or the humiliation at Versailles. In its place was
a psycho-sociological explanation which anticipated similar arguments in
American social science and historical writing for the next two decades.
As the ‘frustration-aggression’ model gained adherents, Parsons’s brief efforts
were quickly eclipsed by an outpouring of new studies of fascism and
anti-Semitism. Among the most prominent of these were Theodor W.Adorno et
al., The Authoritarian Personality (1950), Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism (1951) and a growing number of studies by émigré social
scientists. In Political Man (1960), Seymour Martin Upset (Ph.D. Columbia 1949)
fused these interpretations—including Parsons’s—into probably the fullest
account of fascism by an American-born sociologist to that date. Without claiming
too much for these psycho-sociological interpretations, or attempting to analyse
subsequent debates over theories of ‘the authoritarian personality’ or mass society,
one can say that Parsons’s work thus marked a turning point in American
sociology’s thinking about fascism.65
Parsonianism in practice
As the war approached, Parsons also took an active part in opposing German
totalitarianism—a public role that belies later images of him as an abstract, ‘grand’
theorist. Warning that Nazism threatened a return to the ‘Dark Ages’, he publicly
opposed the ‘appeasers’ at the time of the Munich conference in 1938. ‘This war
is not “just another European squabble” from which we can remain aloof, he
lectured, in effect answering the Ogburns and Lundbergs. ‘Our institutions are in
danger because a fight to the death is already being waged against them.’66
In Cambridge, Parsons helped establish the Harvard Defence Committee, an
organization formed to mobilize public opinion against Nazism and for aid to
Britain. Chairing its Morale and National Service subcommittee, he gave
numerous speeches (including one at a dramatic campus meeting disrupted by
isolationists), wrote frequent letters to congressmen, and spoke often on local radio
stations on behalf of intervention. When the isolationist Harvard Student Union
requested that he excuse a class to participate in a peace demonstration in the
spring of 1940, he refused on the basis both of his obligations to his students and
of his opposition to a ‘peace’ movement which, in his words, ‘can only mean peace
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 195
at any price’. ‘In the present juncture such agitation plays directly into the hands
of the Nazis;’ he added. ‘I can just hear Goebbels’ chuckle, as he hears of them.’67
So far as anti-Semitism was concerned, Parsons’s frustration-aggression model
did not please everyone, as the editor of Jews in a Gentile World soon made clear,
with respect to his contribution to that volume. In one of several uncomfortable
exchanges, one of the editors nagged Parsons about the tone of his article. ‘Mind
you, none questions your sociological analysis,’ he wrote, ‘but merely the political
effect of your conclusions upon the public’, since these conclusions would
‘confirm the average Gentile in his most complacent attitudes of snobbishness’.
Among Parsons’s sins were a seemingly derogatory reference to Jews as a
‘minority’, an allegation that Jews occupied the ‘most conspicuous places’ in
German society and government in the Weimar years, and a characterization of
Jewish sensitivity. ‘On the whole,’ Graeber added, ‘I find the
aggression-frustration hypothesissomewhat unsatisfactory.’68
Yet this flap told more about the editor’s hypersensitivity, however
understandable in the face of events in 1940, than of anti-Semitism on Parsons’s
side. In response to the complaints, he went out of his way to placate the editor,
qualifying the first and last points in footnotes, and replacing ‘most conspicuous’
with ‘prominent’. Privately, he complained to a friend that the editor was chopping
and rewriting his prose to cut the heart from his analysis.69
More importantly, Parsons’s later activities and associations had about them
none of the aroma of anti-Semitism that tinged the private and public musings of
some of the leading objectivists. Quite the opposite. In subsequent writings, he
continued to couple anti-Semitism and aggressive nationalism as twin ills of
modernization.70 His many Jewish colleagues and students consistently expressed
nothing but gratitude for his efforts on their behalf. During the McCarthy years,
Parsons defended younger colleagues, Jews and gentiles alike. Although the full
story of Parsons’s opposition to Nazism, and his support for German sociologists,
Jew and gentile, Marxist and bourgeois, remains to be told, his record appears to
have been one of firm opposition to bigotry and intolerance in all its forms.71
In the postwar years Parsons’s sociological theory, itself steadily evolving,
served a political agenda that remains in contention. Just as the writings of Ogburn,
Lundberg, and others masked the programme of isolationists, British bashers, and
America Firsters, so Parsons’s for a time supported the emerging anti-Communism
of the Cold War era. While their narrow economic interpretations were a pale echo
of socialist or Marxist originals, and rooted deeply in post-First World War
revisionism, his analysis was anti-Marxist by design and fervently anti-Stalinist
in practice. While the concerns of Ogburn, Bernard and others ranged from
isolationism to anti-business populism, the Harvard sociologist spoke for an
Eastern internationalism now reconciled to post-New Deal, mixed economy,
welfare capitalism.
To his critics, this Parsons of the 1940s-1950s appears a leading proponent of
an emerging ‘corporate liberalism’ and a Cold Warrior par excellence.72 To his
defenders, in contrast, his postwar activities seem a natural extension of his earlier
196 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
CONCLUSION
What, then, should be the final judgement of American sociology’s response to
fascism? For émigré intellectuals such as Hans Gerth, as well as for a younger
generation of radicals in the 1960s, the answer later seemed clear, as the response
to fascism became something of a bellwether to those who attacked the ‘value-free’
ideal. Lamenting the emergence of this ‘scientific ethos’, Gerth in particular noted
that the American Journal of Sociology published only two articles on National
Socialism from 1933 to 1947, one, his own account of Nazi leadership, accepted
only ‘after the hot war was underway’ (Gerth 1959:7–14).
198 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
For Gerth, the explanation lay in the increasing specialization of the discipline
and the emphasis on ever-narrower ‘empirical’ studies. While agreeing in part,
this essay suggests both modification and extension of the argument. For one thing,
Gerth’s view understates the opposition voiced by Ellwood, the many
lesser-knowns who wrote articles and reviewed books on fascism in the
sociological journals, and by the Bernard dissidents, however superficial and
unheeded their analysis. For another, Gerth’s emphasis on developments within
sociology ignores the relation between sociological theory and the professional
and political pressures that shaped debate. As sociology professionalized, a rising
cult of scientific objectivity inhibited public statements on public issues while at
the same time marginalizing those most inclined to speak out against
developments in Europe. Intellectually, the treatment of fascism during the 1930s
and 1940s revealed the continuing isolation of American sociology from European
social theorists (Marx, Weber, and Freud among others), an isolation that grew
more marked as a second and third generation of American sociologists, unlike
the founders, sought their training at home. Compounding this myopia were
parochial concerns derived from the American experience during the progressive
era, specifically the tradition of opposition to ‘big business’, isolationism in
international affairs, and anti-Semitism, however veiled or convoluted.
The combined results could be seen in simplistic economic explanations that
obscured the revolutionary nature of fascism as combining a racial pathology with
the latest in science and technology; and in a behaviouristic psychology that
focused attention on propaganda techniques rather than the psychodynamics of
the fascist appeal.
Finally, in blurring differences between the Value-free ideal’ as preached and
practised by such interwar objectivists as Ogburn and the theories and activities
of Talcott Parsons, Gerth’s analysis obscures both the breakthrough in Parsons’s
writings on fascism and the extent of his public opposition to it before and during
the war. In the process, it also obscures the role of fascism, in shaping, if only
indirectly, a fundamental reorientation of the discipline in the postwar years.
NOTES
4 Christopher J.Bittner to Luther Bernard, November 11, 1939, Luther Bernard Papers,
Pennsylvania State University [hereafter BPPS].
5 A second source was Robert A.Nisbet (1943). Some intellectual historians
generalized this position into a criticism of the ‘relativism’ of the entire pragmatic
tradition. See John Diggins (1966:487–506), and Robert Skotheim (1971).
6 Although many writers capitalize ‘fascism’ when speaking of the Italian movement,
and use lower case for what is termed ‘generic fascism’, I employ the lower case
except when the author of a quotation has done otherwise.
7 On changing interpretations of fascism see A.James Gregor (1974); Frederick L.
Carsten (1976); and Renzo De Felice (1977).
8 In addition to books and manuscript sources, this study is based on a comprehensive
reading of articles and book reviews on fascism in the American Journal of
Sociology, Social Forces, Sociology and Social Research and the American
Sociological Review (est. 1936), although space precludes a systematic content
analysis of each.
9 Indeed, it would be fairer to say that some of those most sympathetic to fascism (the
Humanists of The American Review, for example, or the iconoclastic H.L. Mencken)
were inclined to be anti-sociological. See Stone (1960).
10 If this analysis is correct, the sociologists stand in marked contrast to the natural
scientists as described in Kuznick (1987).
11 This statement is based on the absence of any mention of the subject in Fred H.
Matthews (1977) and Wayne D.Brazil (1975). The latter deals with Odum’s career
only through the early 1930s.
12 Charles A.Ellwood, ‘Sociological Life’, Luther Bernard Papers, University of
Chicago [hereafter BPUC].
13 ‘Modern Democracy is the Offspring of Christianity’, ‘Ellwood Views Fascism as
Greatest Threat to U.S’, clippings in Scrapbook, Charles Ellwood Papers, Duke
University. For bringing these and other clippings of the 1930s to my attention, I am
indebted to Stephen Turner.
14 Charles Ellwood to Ross, May 17, 1940, Ross Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
Although Ross also kept alive the reformism of the founders, he apparently ignored
the subject of fascism almost entirely. See Julius Weinberg (1972).
15 Maurice Parmelee to Luther Bernard, June 28, 1937, BPPS.
16 The Bogardus scale measured distances between an individual and various racial
and nationality groups through a series of graded categories indicating the amount
of social intimacy the individual would allow (‘admit to citizenship’, ‘admit to my
club as a chum’, etc.).
17 On Bogardus, see autobiographical sketch, 1928, BPPS; Bogardus (1962), and
Martin H.Neumeyer (1973).
18 Bernard to Bain, April 4, 1930, BPPS.
19 For a full account see Bannister (1987:190–99).
20 A fourth academic radical to address the issue of fascism was Harry Elmer Barnes
(1889–1968), a historian-sociologist who led the revisionist battle to discredit
America’s entry into the First World War. Although space does not allow treatment
of his views here, see especially his Society in Transition (1939). For a recent
treatment of Barnes and revisionism see Peter Novick (1988: 208–23).
21 Davis [autobiography], BPUC.
200 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
22 Ross, ‘Some Aspects of the Jerome Davis Case’; and Davis to Ross, April 22, 1936,
Ross Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society [hereafter EAR].
23 Davis [autobiography], BPUC.
24 Davis to Dean Weigle, October 19, 1936, EAR.
25 On Parmelee, see Don C.Gibbons (1974).
26 Maurice Parmelee to Luther Bernard, October 21, 1933, BPPS.
27 Bernard, ‘George Vincent’ [faculty sketch], ms. 18 pp., BPUC.
28 Bernard to Gifford Pinchot, June, 1932; and to Harold Ickes, August 1932, BPPS.
29 Bernard, ‘Shall It Be “Goodbye Mr. Roosevelt”’, ms. [1935], BPPS.
30 Luther Bernard to J.A.Wolf, April 11, 1935; to Jessie Bernard, September 19, 1935;
to Charles A.Ellwood, August 22, 1936, BPPS.
31 Jessie to Luther Bernard, October 5, 1936, September 26, 1938, October 8, 1938;
Luther to Jessie Bernard, October 1, 1938, BPPS.
32 Luther Bernard to Earle Eubank, January 1, 1938, and to Maurice Parmelee, March
7, 1938, BPPS; American Sociological Society (1938:92ff). Although the radicals
in this four-year struggle revealed the same mixed motives as characterized their
activities generally, and were inexplicably slow to identify Nazi control as the central
issue, Bernard finally reviewed the episode in these terms in ‘Is Hitler Our
Fuehrer?’(1942). For background see Terry N.Clark (1973:228).
33 Bernard’s inspiration for the title was probably Hans Fallada’s Little Man, What
Now? (1933), a poignant, fictional representation of the German petite bourgeoisie
on the eve of Hitler’s takeover. Although Bernard left no record of having read
Fallada’s novel, it was widely discussed, including a review in Sociology and Social
Research (1936). For this suggestion, I am indebted to Stephen Turner.
34 Bernard, ‘Little Sociologist, What Now?’ ms. n.d. [1939], BPPS; cf. ‘The SRA Plans
to Die’, American Sociologist, p.1.
35 This generalization is based on an extensive file of replies to Bernard’s enquiry in
BPPS.
36 For drawing my attention to these themes in the American Sociologist, I am indebted
to John F.Galliher and Robert A.Hagan (forthcoming).
37 For a fuller development of this argument see Bannister (1987), especially pp. 231–
38.
38 The other initials stood for William I.Thomas, formerly of the University of Chicago,
and Stuart Rice of the University of Pennsylvania. Each was closely associated with
the educational foundations that were coming to play a large part in the funding of
the social sciences.
39 On Ogburn’s career see Duncan (1964), Huff (1973), and Martindale (1961:324–30).
40 William F.Ogburn, Diary, June 22, 1942, WFO.
41 Ibid., July 10, 1942, WFO.
42 Ibid., May 7, 1945, and September 16, 1944, WFO.
43 Mary Sims Walker to Ogburn, quoted in Ogburn ‘Journal’, May 8, 1947, WFO.
44 Harry Elmer Barnes to George Lundberg, September 8, 1949, Lundberg Papers,
University of Washington, Seattle [hereafter GAL].
45 Barbara Laslett to author, March 6, 1989. I am indebted to Professor Laslett of the
University of Minnesota for all the information in this paragraph.
46 Bain to Lundberg, March 2, 1937; Lundberg to Bain, March 22, 1937; Bain to
Lundberg, December 1, 1938. See also Bain to Lundberg, February 19; Lundberg
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 201
to Bain, February 23, 1941, Read Bain Papers, University of Michigan [hereafter
RB].
47 Jessie Bernard to George Lundberg, September 25, 1940, Lundberg to Jessie
Bernard, July 9, 1940, BPPS.
48 Jessie Bernard to Lundberg, April 22, 1949, GAL. See also Behice Boran (1947).
49 Bruce Melvin to George Lundberg, December 17, 1945, GAL.
50 Information concerning still unanalysed camp interviews from Stephen Turner to
author, September 10, 1989.
51 To this statement, an anonymous reader years later pencilled a large question mark
in the margin, adding ‘What the fuck??’ Marginalia in copy in Swarthmore College
Library.
52 On growing American awareness of the plight of European Jewry, and the nation’s
shamefully tardy response to the Holocaust, see Arthur D.Morse (1968), Henry
Feingold (1970), and David S.Wyman (1968 and 1984).
53 Read Bain to Sam Stouffer, October 17, 1936, RB.
54 Edwin B.Wilson to Talcott Parsons, May 12, 1939, Talcott Parsons Papers, Harvard
[hereafter TP].
55 Ogburn, ‘Journal’, March 15, 1948, WFO.
56 Ibid.
57 For an extended treatment of this theme, see Bannister (1991).
58 Maurice Parmelee to Luther Bernard, May 25, 1944, BPPS.
59 Lundberg to Barnes, February 22, 1949, GAL. The Lundberg papers contain
extensive correspondence on this issue.
60 On Parsons’s early life, see Peter Hamilton (1983:Ch. 3).
61 On this tradition, see Gregor (1974:Ch. 4).
62 This point is suggested in De Felice (1977:87).
63 Herbert Blumer to Talcott Parsons, July 6, 1942, TP.
64 One exception among sociologists was David Riesman (1942). Although Riesman
did not cite his future Harvard colleague, Parsons, his analysis was similar to
Parsons’s. This similarity underlines the judgement in Gregor (1974:91), that
Parsons had merely ‘conveniently summarized the efforts made until that time’.
When Riesman returned to the topic in the early 1950s it was within the context of
‘totalitarianism’—a term increasingly popular during the Cold War years to conflate
fascism and Soviet Communism. See Riesman (1964).
65 For a useful discussion of recent thinking see G.Eley (1983).
66 Parsons, ‘New Dark Ages Seen if Nazis Should Win’, Boston Evening Transcript,
September 28, 1938. I am indebted to Stephen Turner for bringing this piece to my
attention. For perceptive comments on an earlier version of this section, I also wish
to thank Dr Victor Meyer Lidz, Division of Addiction Research and Treatment,
Department of Mental Health Science, Hahnemann University. Dr Lidz, of course,
bears no responsibility for any remaining errors of fact or interpretation. In particular,
I am unable to address in the space available some important differences between
Parsons’s statements concerning Nazism in an advocacy role and in a more strictly
theoretical context, or the originality of his analyses of German social structure when
compared with sociologists before and after, including Hannah Arendt.
67 Talcott Parsons to Alan Gottlieb, April 16, 1940, quoted in Jens Kaalhauge Nielsen,
‘The Political Orientation of Talcott Parsons: The Second World War and Its
Aftermath’, in Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity, (eds) Roland Robertson and
202 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGISTS AND FASCISM, 1930–1950
Bryan S.Turner, London, Sage Publications, 1991. I am indebted to this analysis for
much information in this section, and to Jens Nielsen for sharing his findings in
greater detail in a phone conversation with the author, November 14, 1991.
68 I.Graeber to Talcott Parsons, February 19, 1940, TP.
69 Parsons to Ben Halpern, June 26, 1942, TP.
70 E.g. Parsons, ‘Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social
Structure of the Western World’, Psychiatry 1947, vol. 10, p. 179.
71 Victor M.Lidz to the author, October 20, 1991; Nielsen, ‘Political Orientation’, p.
225.
72 William Buxton, Talcott Parsons and the Capitalist Nation-State, Toronto,
University of Toronto Press, 1985, especially pp. 97–101.
73 Nielsen, ‘Political Orientation’, p. 225.
74 See Jon Weiner, ‘Bringing Nazi Sympathizers to the US,’ Nation, March 6, 1989,
pp. 304 ff., which draws heavily on the unpublished doctoral dissertation (UCLA)
of Charles O’Connell, and on Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s
Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, New York, Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1988, a book that discusses Poppe extensively.
75 Information in this and the next two paragraphs is drawn from Nielsen, ‘Political
Orientation’, pp. 220–24.
76 In addition to his own research, Nielsen bases this account on his reading of the rich
secondary literature on Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement, the most
recent being Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
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SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 203
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SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 205
Peter Lassman
There is still very little agreement concerning the nature and significance of
fascism. The emergence of fascist regimes in the 1920s and 1930s presented
contemporaries with an awkward and yet compelling question. How were they to
make sense of these new regimes when their ideology and practice seemed to defy
the categories of conventional theory? The essence of the problem has been stated
by O’Sullivan who points out that ‘fascism appeared like a bolt from the blue. The
advent of fascism in the present century, that is to say, took nearly everybody by
surprise; and surprise, of course, is at once the parent and the child of theoretical
incomprehension’ (O’Sullivan 1983:7). It is easy to forget that according to the
major political ideologies of the time, conservatism, liberalism, socialism and
Marxism, there is no room for such a movement to appear and, more significantly,
to be successful. Bearing this in mind it is clear that contemporary social and
political thinkers were faced with a very difficult task. Furthermore, it was not
until the 1930s that the success of fascism abroad provided it with a significance
in Britain that it had previously lacked. It is also important to take note of the fact
that the theoretical debate about the meaning of the fascist phenomenon was itself
situated within a context of political argument. The practical objective of the
literature of fascism, written during this period, cannot be ignored. It is certainly
correct to say of most of this literature that, as it ‘was conceived of as a function
of the anti-fascist struggle, its immediate impact was political, or ethico-political’
(De Felice 1977:5).
It appears that British public opinion, as portrayed by the press, found fascism
to be a generally puzzling phenomenon. The British press found it difficult to
believe that it was being confronted by a genuinely new form of political activity.
British journalists tended to play down the anti-Semitism and racism of the Nazi
Party, for example, because they were incredulous that men could actually mean
to put such rhetoric into action. It has been argued that this inability to recognize
the totalitarian nature of the Nazi movement is indicative of a general failure of
the political imagination. The following statement is a strong assertion of this
argument.
reasons, opposed the Marxist account of the nature of fascism came to rely upon
an appeal to the concept of totalitarianism. For example, Crick has pointed out
that Orwell, who must be considered as a ‘political thinker of genuine stature’
(Crick 1982:25), believed, in a way that is analogous to Hobbes’ Leviathan, that
‘a breakdown in good government’, by which he meant a breakdown in liberty,
tolerance and welfare, ‘could cause a leap forward into a hypothetical world order
of one-party total power, a kind of state that the world had never seen before’
(Crick 1982:25). According to Crick, between about 1936 and 1940, ‘political and
literary intellectuals’, such as Koestler, Borkenau, Silone, Malraux and Orwell,
all began to use and develop this concept quite independently of each other. It
appears that the concept itself was, if not invented by, at least first popularized by
Mussolini and the Italian fascists. Mussolini’s statement that a ‘party that governs
a nation in a totalitarian way is a new fact in history’, is typical (Mussolini
1939:175).
Contemplation of the emergence of fascism and its affinities with other regimes,
especially that of the Soviet Union, encouraged the use of the concept of
totalitarianism in Britain. The point of the concept was to warn that fascism
represented something new and dangerous that could not be grasped adequately
by the conventional categories of social and political analysis. However, in using
the concept to point to the similarities between the fascist and the Communist
regimes, there is a danger that an appreciation of the unique character of fascism
will be lost. Certainly, as the ideological debates in Britain developed during this
period, it becomes clear that the term was being used with increasing popularity.
Orwell certainly makes it perfectly clear that the virtue of the concept is that it
challenges directly the conventional wisdom of the Left for whom ‘National
Socialism was simply capitalism with the lid off’, and that ‘Hitler was a dummy
with Thyssen pulling the strings’. The uncomfortable fact that had to be recognized
was that ‘National Socialism is a form of Socialism, is emphatically revolutionary,
does crush the property owner just as surely as it crushes the worker. The two
regimes, having started from opposite ends, are rapidly evolving towards the same
system—a form of oligarchical collectivism’ (Orwell 1970:40–41).
There is a problem in considering the response to fascism of those who
explicitly defined themselves as sociologists. Sociology hardly existed in prewar
Britain as a distinct academic field. Nevertheless there was considerable debate
concerning the nature of sociology and the future prospects for the social sciences.
Given the absence of an institutionalized academic field of sociology it ought not
to come as a surprise to find that an interest in what we today might define as
sociological ideas and methods existed within many other related fields (Marshall
1936). It has been argued that there was a ‘concealed sociology’ within much of
British intellectual life (Lepenies 1988). Despite the absence of sociology as an
institutionalized academic discipline, there was a high level of interest in the nature
and development of sociology and the social sciences. Indeed, it is reported that
a foreign academic was led to remark that ‘we English, who profess to be unversed
in problems of methodology, were more passionate about such problems than the
210 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
scholars of the Continent’ (Barker 1936:8). Social and political theorists such as
Laski, Cole and Barker, if not writing what today we might want to define as
‘sociology’ as such, were writing, it can be claimed, ‘an inherently “sociological”
political theory’ (Collini 1978: 29). Laski, for example, was quite clear that
‘political theory cannot separate itself from sociology, of which, indeed, it is
clearly a branch or aspect’ (Laski 1936:115). Nevertheless, it is important to guard
against the fallacies of anachronism, in reading back into the past current
definitions of what counts as ‘sociology’. There are considerable differences
between the ideas of these thinkers that cannot be ignored. In fact, it can also be
argued that the influence of some of these thinkers was ultimately
counter-productive for the development of academic sociology (Collini 1978).
The ‘official’ sociologists such as Ginsberg, professor of Sociology at the
London School of Economics, tended not to deal directly with current political
questions. Much of Ginsberg’s work consists of essays which are mainly
philosophical in character. Fascism is only mentioned in the context of general
philosophical questions as, for example, in his essay The Individualist Basis of
International Law and Morals’ where some fascist ideas are briefly outlined
(Ginsberg 1947:258–278). Even writers such as Marshall who, although trained
as an economic historian, defined himself as a sociologist and became head of the
Social Science Department (not the sociology department) at the London School
of Economics did not concern himself, in print at least, with the problem of fascism
except to endorse the ‘new middle class’ theory of fascist support championed by,
among others, Cole (Marshall 1965:186). Also worth mentioning is the work of
the Mass Observation movement. The Mass Observation movement was founded
in 1937 by Charles Madge, Tom Harrisson and Humphrey Jennings. Madge and
Jennings shared a literary background. Madge was a poet and Jennings was making
films for the Post Office. Harrisson was a member of the Oxford University
Expedition to Malekula (now Vanuatu) and produced a widely read New Left
book Savage Civilization on the basis of his experiences there. Typical of their
work was the setting up of a National Panel of Observers who were given several
tasks to perform on every twelfth day of the month. An example of this approach
was the publication of May the Twelfth, a very detailed piece of literary collage
based on reports from observers throughout the country on the Coronation of
George VI (12 May 1937). Topics covered in the monthly surveys included
attitudes to blacks, Jews and fascists. This form of social research does not fit into
any orthodox categories of social science but was very popular during this period.
Its aim was to ‘capture social reality’ at precisely defined moments without
bothering with the excess baggage of theories and methods. Although there is
nothing systematic here and there are obvious questions concerning the reliability
of the data there are some interesting examples of popular attitudes to fascism to
be found here (Harrisson and Madge 1939).
Most of the interest in fascism was directed at the established regimes abroad
rather than at the British movement. Fascism itself had many precursors in Britain
but the first important movement was the British Union of Fascists founded in
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 211
1932. It appears that critical analysis and hostility towards fascism did not develop
fully until the 1930s and, especially, after the establishment of the Nazi regime
which provided fascism with a content and significance that it had previously
lacked (Lewis 1987; Thurlow 1987). The success of the National Socialists
demonstrated that fascism was no longer an exclusively Italian phenomenon while,
in Britain, warnings of the possibility of a fascist seizure of power began to appear
(Strachey 1934).
The early response to Italian fascism among British intellectuals was to regard
it sympathetically as an interesting social experiment. On the non-Marxist left
Italian fascism was seen by many, at first, as a development of the ideas of the
syndicalists and similar in aim to the ideas of the British Guild Socialists, who
were in favour of a decentralized economy with workers’ control of industry.
However, Cole, a leading advocate of Guild Socialism, had confessed as early as
1923 that, although he was ‘in the dark’ about fascism, it certainly had little to do
with the interests of the working class (Wright 1979:109). There was a degree of
expected sympathy for the Italian regime from many on the right. One typical
account argued that the Grand Fascist Council ‘consists of tried and trusted men,
and removes all questions of supreme national importance from the irresponsible
forces of political agitation’. Furthermore, it was asserted that fascism is
supremely successful in liberating the individual from the tyranny of the majority
(Goad and Currey 1933). However, when more analytical attention was focused
upon the Italian regime it was perceived to be a clear example of ‘totalitarianism’,
in which, if there had ever been any intention of constructing a state on syndicalist
lines, it had now been abandoned. Nevertheless, it was pointed out by one writer
that one of the lessons of Mussolini’s Italy was that it demonstrated the limits to
totalitarianism. This resided in the simple fact that total control of thought is
impossible. The libraries are still the organized opposition to the Fascist State’
(Finer 1935: 540).
Although the British fascist movement was not usually seen as the main threat
there was a considerable and growing anxiety about the danger of fascism. One
of the most perceptive accounts recognized fascism as a danger precisely because
it had its attractions and could not be written off in reductionist terms as being
simply a stage in the development of capitalism. According to Orwell, the real
danger that faced the country did not come from the British Union of Fascists but
from a ‘fascist attitude of mind’. In order to understand fascism, Orwell argued,
it is necessary to admit that ‘it contains some good as well as much evil’. It is quite
understandable that many would be drawn to fascism seeing it as ‘the last line of
defence of all that is good in European civilization’ (Orwell 1962: 187). A large
part of the responsibility for the appeal of fascism rests with the Marxist left whose
inability to take democracy seriously has had the effect of undermining its own
position. But more significantly, the tendency towards a belief in economic
determinism has also weakened the left’s case. The excessive materialism of the
left has resulted in the fact that ‘fascism has been able to play upon every instinct
that revolts against hedonism and a cheap conception of “progress”. It has been
212 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
able to pose as the upholder of the European tradition, and to appeal to Christian
belief, to patriotism, and to the military virtues’ (Orwell 1962:188). More
ominously, the end product of a ‘Fascist International’ would be the creation of a
‘totalitarian world’. Orwell’s message is pessimistic but realistic. There is no
reason to suppose, despite the optimism of the Marxist left, that economic and
technological development leads to an egalitarian and collectivist society. It was
more than likely that the future would be collectivist and totalitarian with ‘the
profit principle eliminated’ but with ‘all political, military, and educational power
in the hands of a small caste of rulers’ (Orwell 1962:189).
proletariat in the socializing of the means of production. ‘These are the only two
alternatives before the middle class. The first is the line of fascism. The second is
the line of communism’ (Dutt 1934:86). Of course, as far as Dutt and the orthodox
Marxists were concerned, the true interests of the middle classes were represented
by the proletariat. Fascism could only succeed where the proletarian movement
was weak and the responsibility for such weakness lay with the ‘revisionists’ of
social democracy who, in essence, were ‘social fascists’ themselves.
The account of the development of fascism put forward by Dutt and others on
the Marxist left, such as R.Pascal (Pascal 1934), Professor of German at the
University of Birmingham from 1939 to 1969 and a prominent Marxist scholar,
was characterized by the mechanical application of a rigid set of theoretical
categories. As a consequence there was no need to consider fascist ideology or
theory. The idea that there is such a thing as a theory of fascism is itself an illusion.
For example, the idea of a ‘corporate state’ is ‘in fact the transparent
masquerade-dress of modern capitalism’. It follows that from this standpoint all
attempts, such as those of Butler (Butler 1941) or Russell (1935) (Bertrand Russell,
the third Earl Russell, the philosopher and winner of the Nobel prize for literature
in 1950), to trace the roots of fascism back into the intellectual past were
completely pointless. Modern society can be either capitalist or socialist.
According to this logic, if fascism is not socialism, then it must be capitalism. In
economic terms, which, ultimately, are the only terms that matter, fascism is
‘identical with capitalism, representing only a special method to maintain its power
and hold down the workers’ (Dutt 1934: 193). The major difference between the
fascist capitalist state and the democratic capitalist state is that the former ‘is based
on the violent destruction of the worker’s independent organizations and the
complete abolition of the right to strike’ (Dutt 1934:203). Other capitalist states
are advancing in this same direction but they have not dared to go this far.
The Marxist account put forward by Dutt is also characterized by a form of
historicist optimism. The teleology inherent in fascism is such that it is ultimately
to be seen as an ‘episode in the long-drawn class-war advancing to the final victory
of the socialist revolution’ (Dutt 1934:223). There is nothing ‘progressive’ about
fascism. If there were to be a society of ‘stabilized fascism’ then it would be a
society of ‘organized decay’. But fascism cannot last. It is merely a transitional
form of society. Fascism is the consequence of a delay in the revolution ‘when
the whole objective situation calls for the proletarian revolution as the only final
solution and ever more visibly raises the issue of the struggle for power, but when
the working-class movement is not yet strong enough and ready owing to being
disorganized and paralyzed by reformism, and thus lets the initiative pass to
capitalism’ (Dutt 1934:270). Fascism has the effect of intensifying the class
struggle. Fascism is both a ‘punishment for the “weakness” of reformism and “the
weapon of history for purging and burning out this weakness”’ (Dutt 1934:289).
214 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
of the real world) that it corrupts, and will ultimately destroy, all those on whom
it is enforced’. But in the Soviet Union the doctrine upon which mental uniformity
is based is ‘incomparably truer (i.e., gives an incomparably better and closer
interpretation of reality) than is the fascist doctrine’ (Strachey 1941:195).
The recognition of the threat of totalitarianism played a central part in the
argument concerning the political implications of the idea of ‘democratic’ or
‘social’ planning (Mannheim 1940). Hayek’s argument against planning was
initially based upon his ‘annoyance with the complete misinterpretation of the
character of the Nazi movement in English “progressive” circles’ (Hayek 1944:
vii). His fundamental point is that the real conflict is not between the various
forms of fascist or Communist collectivism but, rather, between collectivism, as
such, and individual freedom. Of course, it is argued, the various forms of
collectivism differ from each other in terms of their aims and policies but it is
more important to recognize that they ‘all differ from liberalism and individualism
in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary
end, and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the
individuals are supreme. In short, they are totalitarian in the true sense of this new
word which we have adopted to describe the unexpected but nevertheless
inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call collectivism’ (Hayek
1944:42). Hayek and Popper take as their ‘target’ the work of another émigré,
Mannheim. Mannheim’s argument for ‘freedom at the level of planning’
(Mannheim 1940) was ridiculed by both Popper and Hayek as being, in essence,
an invitation to totalitarianism. Popper, with some malice, went so far as to
compare the ideas of Mannheim, a victim of Nazism, and the logic of his
sociological thought, with those of Carl Schmitt (Popper 1957:79).
(Laski 1934:95)
Laski denies in the strongest terms that there is such a thing as a fascist philosophy.
The ideas that fascists put forward are simply propaganda designed to give support
to a system of pure power and terror. Indeed, fascism is not a permanent
phenomenon in history and can only ‘win purpose by developing a philosophy;
but, by so doing, it would cease to be fascism’ (Laski 1943:114). ‘Fascism, in any
of its forms, is at bottom a doctrineless nihilism; the attempt to provide it with a
philosophic basis is the usual attempt of scholars to explain, or to provide a
pedigree for, something altogether remote from serious influence upon its
fortunes’ (Laski 1943:107). The difficulty here is obvious. Given this materialistic
analysis there can be no way of investigating or even recognizing the way in which
fascist ideology has the character that it, in fact, does have. It also becomes difficult
to say what is specific and novel in the fascist regimes. As a result Laski, despite
his awareness of the problem, is led to say that there is ‘nothing in the argument
of fascism which was not foreseen by Aristotle in his description of Hellenic
tyranny; all that is new in its technique is the scale upon which it has been applied
218 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
and the character of the weapons which modern science has placed at its disposal’
(Laski 1943:97).
Fascism for Laski is to be understood as the consequence of the breakdown of
capitalist democracy. The essential reason why fascism rather than socialism
succeeded is that it is, in reality, implicit within capitalism. ‘Capitalist democracy,
so to say, was always democracy on conditions approved by the capitalists. It was
admitted its place always upon the condition that it did not strain their allegiance
to democratic principles’ (Laski 1943:126). The Marxian form of analysis
favoured by Laski was simply unable to explain how and why it was that Germany,
the most advanced nation in Europe, had become a fascist state. Pointing to the
roots of fascism in German history, and making clear his rejection of ‘national
character’ forms of explanation, Laski could only describe the appeal of fascism
in terms of its claim to end political divisions and to recover a lost international
prestige. Ultimately, such a successful seizure of power could only occur under
suitable conditions. The preconditions for the possibility of ‘the outlaw’ taking
power are the breakdown of the rule of law and of agreed common principles in
society. As the foundation for his explanation Laski fell back on the orthodox
Marxist formula. A society begins to break down and its state can no longer satisfy
the demands of a large number of its citizens when its relations of production are
in contradiction with its forces of production (Laski 1943:111).
Fascism, according to Laski, is a transitional phase in the development of
capitalism but its essential character is disguised by the high level of state
intervention in the economy. Fascism is the capitalist counter-revolution. In order
to survive, the counter-revolution must suppress all forms of democracy and take
on a totalitarian form. ‘In a collectivist society based upon the world market, the
totalitarian state is the inevitable instrument of the counter-revolution’ (Laski
1943:264). However, as far as Laski was concerned, there was a fundamental
difference between the totalitarianisms of the fascists and of the Communists. The
vital difference is that ‘there is nothing in the nature of the Bolshevik state which
is alien from the democratic ideal’ (Laski 1943:265). Despite the formal
similarities between the two forms of state they are to be distinguished in terms
of their ideas and purposes. Here, at least, we can be assured that ‘fascism is a
contradiction of the objective movement of history’ (Laski 1943:113). Having no
philosophy, relying on terror, it cannot progress as an economic and social system
and without success in war it is bound to fail.
Cole initially analysed fascism in terms of the changing class structure. The fascist
movement represented a new development in the ‘politicization’ of society, the
most significant being the transformations that have taken place in Russia, Italy,
and Germany. Margaret Isabel Cole (1893–1980) was assistant secretary of the
Labour Research Department from 1917 to 1925 and was a lecturer for the
University of London Tutorial Classes from 1925 to 1949. She was a political
journalist and the author of numerous works on social and political topics.
Widely as they differ in essentials, the communist and fascist systems have
this in common, that in both the state is not merely omnicompetent but also
omnipresent, concerning itself positively in every walk of life. In a sense,
it is idle to ask a Russian or an Italian to distinguish between politics and,
say, economics for in their countries everything is political, directed and
controlled by the agents of political life.
(The Coles 1934:5)
It is not surprising that in writing from their socialist standpoint the Coles, in
attempting to analyse the appeal of fascism, had to make clear the differences
between these two political doctrines. A major difficulty here arises from the fact
that there is not only much unclarity about the precise meaning of the term
‘fascism’ but that there is also the question of the possible similarities between
these two ideologies. In fact, fascism is depicted as being, in essence, an
anti-socialist movement.
The view of the Coles is that the appeal of fascism is to be explained largely in
terms of disillusionment and the ‘widespread sense of futility aroused by the great
depression’.
In order to understand the current political situation, the Coles felt that it was
of central importance to see what ‘forces in men’s minds’ lie behind the diversity
of movements bearing the ‘fascist’ label. This strategy, it is argued, is necessary
precisely because of the confusion surrounding the correct meaning of the term
‘fascism’. Here we see a common problem that all writers of the period, and ever
since, have faced. This is the question of the nature of the differences and
similarities that are to be found when comparing the two major fascist states. This
is without considering the added difficulty of those other states and movements
which either took or were given the ‘fascist’ label. This problem, in turn, is directly
220 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
The truth is that in all the capitalist countries of the world today large sections
of the population are in a mood which makes them open to the appeal of
new political emotions enormously reinforced by the circumstances of the
time. Fascism is one form of response to this new emotional situation; but
it is by no means the only possible response, and many of the movements
that are commonly called fascist exist mainly because social classes and
vested interests of many different sorts have seen their opportunity of getting
popular support behind them in the imitation of those methods which were
effective in bringing Italian fascism to power.
(The Coles 1934:61)
What then are the causes of fascism? According to the Coles there is a definite set
of causes that can be listed which provide an explanation of this phenomenon. In
the first place, there is a widespread sense of futility with regard to the political
institutions of the parliamentary democracies. This general feeling predates the
world depression and the crash of 1929 but, clearly, it has been deepened by it.
Secondly, and following on from this observation, there is, in modern jargon, a
developing ‘crisis of legitimacy’ in most Western states. There is a widespread
feeling that parliamentary democracy is unable to cope with the demands thrust
upon it by the modern world. There is a growing ‘lack of respect’ for parliamentary
institutions and a general unwillingness, especially among the young, to speak up
for them. Furthermore, in the Coles’ estimation, this sense of the inadequacy of
parliamentary democracy is heightened by the belief that, as a system, it is
incapable and unwilling to do anything about the ‘growing sense of vast potential
wealth going foolishly to waste’. One result of this general feeling is the growth
of cynicism about politics but this, in turn, produces its own reaction. The reaction
against cynicism in politics leads to a demand for ‘new values’ to replace ‘the old
values that have decayed or ceased to appeal’. This ‘weariness of cynicism’ is felt
especially strongly among the intelligentsia, but it has spread among all sections
of the population. Here we can see an intimation that the fascist style of politics
is of a radically different kind to that of the more limited form typical of the
parliamentary or liberal democracies. Indeed, this is the implication of the Coles’
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 221
recognition that the appeal of fascism does, in fact, have deep roots within the
structure of parliamentary democracy itself.
A major background factor that helps to account for the emergence of fascism
is the ‘world-wide decline in the prestige of parliamentary institutions’. The
internal contradiction that exists in the heart of this political system is that while
‘it calls for popular participation in the work of government’, it ‘has reconciled
this demand with the practical exemption of the great mass of people from any
sustained political activity’ (The Coles 1934:41). On the other hand, both fascism
and Communism offer an ideal of ‘active citizenship’, and this is an essential
aspect of their appeal. Nevertheless, despite a common appeal to a concept of
‘active citizenship’, there are some fairly fundamental differences in operation
between the two systems. Thus, neither in Italy nor in Germany does ‘the state
belong to the workers or to the people in the same sense as in Russia. For in these
countries private property and class inequality remain’ (The Coles 1934:41). The
Coles offered the thought that if we were to look at these systems in terms of active
citizenship alone then we would have to agree that fascism and Communism were
much more democratic than the politics of the middle classes. The significance of
this was that, as the proportion of industrial workers in the labour force declined,
fascism had made a strong appeal to the ‘new middle classes’, represented, for
example, by the technicians, the salary earners and white-collar workers, who
were not tied to obsolescent methods of production. This middle-class movement
had emerged ‘as the instrument for saving capitalism from socialism or
communism’ (Cole 1933:280). Cole did not interpret this new social and political
development in a mechanistic manner. There was nothing inevitable in the spread
of fascism. In Britain, at least, it was unlikely that fascism would appeal to these
classes because the economic crisis had not been so acute. Furthermore, it was not
impossible for the middle classes to be attracted to socialism. Fascism is not a
permanent feature of the political landscape. Its probable outcome will be war and
economic collapse.
This analysis was attacked from the orthodox left. As far as Strachey was
concerned, Cole had completely misunderstood the true situation (Strachey
1935:333). In ignoring ‘the falling tendency of the rate of profit’ and concentrating
on the politics of the middle classes, Cole had not seen that, although the fascist
movements were composed of the ‘petits bourgeois’, they were not controlled by
them. Fascism, according to Strachey and the orthodox left, was monopoly
capitalism and nothing else. The real nature of fascism is that ‘it is a movement
owned and controlled, bought and paid for, from start to finish by these great
capitalists themselves’ (Strachey 1935:349). Even Hitler’s actions against the SA
were ‘capitalistically correct’ measures to restore the rate of profit.
In A Guide to Modern Politics (1934), co-authored by Cole and his wife,
Margaret, the Coles point out that, among the major social and political
developments of the time, such as the growth of bureaucracy and the
‘politicization’ of society, the most significant were the transformations that had
taken place in Germany, Italy and Russia. What then is fascism? One definition
222 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
that they offer is that ‘fascists are anti-socialists who are prepared to go to any
length in order to prevent the socialists from getting their way, and, distrustful of
the “freedoms” of parliamentary democracy, mean to make sure of defeating the
socialists by establishing a rival dictatorship of their own’ (The Coles 1934:43).
Another factor that accounts for the appeal of fascism is the fear of insecurity
felt especially among the property-owners, including those whose ‘property’ is
their education. This is a motivating force for supporting any anti-socialist
movement that offers a hope of maintaining the distribution of property. A more
extreme fear is generated by the prospect of Communism, which in contrast to
West European Socialism, is perceived as an alien ideology. Thus, the Nazis ‘with
their constant stress on their mission to defend Western Europe against the menace
of barbarism from the East, are only exaggerating a sentiment which finds a wide
response in minds which have been formed by a culture based on an age-long
system of class-inequality’ (The Coles 1934:64).
In addition to these factors, the Coles mention two further aspects of the appeal
of fascism. Here they come close to what later writers, such as O’Sullivan, have
regarded as a defining characteristic of fascism. This is the idea that fascism is
best understood as the most extreme form of an ‘activist style of politics’ that has
its origins in the development of a number of distinct motifs in modern European
political thought. A feature of this ‘activist style’ of politics is its theatricality.
‘Men want to march about the streets, dress up in special shirts, make loud political
noises on all possible occasions. For these activities give them the sense that they
are doing something instead of merely sitting still’ (The Coles 1934:66). This
desire for direct action tends to be felt more strongly by the young and this helps
to account for the fact that the fascists draw a disproportionate degree of support
from this social group. For among the young there is to be found, more than
elsewhere, a growing sense of futility with the orthodox parties, which are
committed to a more limited concept of politics. The Coles themselves express
some sympathy with this point of view, for it is true, they argue, that ‘socialist
leadership has been weak and ineffective in most of the parliamentary countries’
(The Coles 1934:65).
A central feature of fascism that most analysts have found difficult to come to
grips with is its fusion of socialist and nationalist ideas. As a result fascism has
not been easy to place on a conventional left-right continuum. There has also been
much disagreement concerning the extent to which the fascist regimes could be
called revolutionary. The Coles could point out that the revival of nationalism had
played an important role in the success of fascism. From their socialist standpoint
nationalism represented a paradoxical development. It contained both old and new
ideas. Nationalism had emerged in Europe with the French Revolution and was
therefore of relatively recent origin, but as a mass phenomenon it appealed to
something primitive in human societies. Nationalism is ‘at bottom a flight from
the terrifying complications of modern world problems back to a notion deeply
rooted in man’s social tradition’ (The Coles 1934:66). The Coles could see very
little that was positive in nationalism. They were able to make sense of it only in
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 223
terms of a form of social regression. The modern nation state becomes a symbol
for the reassertion of ‘tribal solidarity’ and as a reaction, especially among
politically unsophisticated peoples, against the progressive force of
internationalism.
The success of fascism can also be attributed to some other ‘secondary factors’.
Among these are the reassertion of the right to private property that has arisen as
a direct response to the threat of socialist control. In the struggle between socialism
and capitalism which the Coles take to be fundamental it is highly probable that
the mass of small property-owners will take the capitalist rather than the socialist
side. The defence of property coexists with a seemingly contradictory trend of
opinion. This is the belief that the state ought to intervene in order to support any
section of society that feels threatened by economic change. Such state support
has nothing to do with socialism. In fact, it is often a sign of desperation and can
be linked quite strongly with a belief in the qualities of personal leadership as an
alternative to democratic institutions.
Furthermore, the Coles perceived a ‘growing demand for state intervention to
help any section of the community which feels the pinch of economic adversity’
(The Coles 1934:69). This demand is not to be equated with a demand for
socialism. More ominously, there is also, linked to this desire, a decline in the
legitimacy of representative institutions and a corresponding growth in the respect
felt for personal leadership as a response to the perceived failures of intervention
by democratic states. The problems of democracy are compounded by a decline
in the belief in the value of politics itself, when political activity is understood in
terms of debate and discussion rather than coercion and violence. Indeed, the Coles
go so far as to say that this attitude, born out of frustration, is the most dangerous
of all the factors at work in the political arena. Fascism, then, for the Coles, is one
possible response to the political and social crisis of the age.
It is important to distinguish the fascist form of politics from those other forms
of state intervention that were often, mistakenly, labelled as ‘fascist’, especially
by theorists on the left. An example of this is the New Deal in America. From an
orthodox Marxist point of view it would appear that Roosevelt’s New Deal
programme had all the significant characteristics of a fascist policy. As far as the
Coles were concerned this could not be an accurate picture. If we compare the
policies of the European fascists with those of the Americans then we will see
more clearly the specific nature of fascism. The New Deal was an attempt to
strengthen and preserve industrial capitalism, while European fascism is a
genuinely revolutionary system in its desire to transform permanently the political
structure. The general conclusion that the Coles came to was that fascism is best
seen as an attempt to rebuild capitalism but upon state-directed lines and in the
interests of the middle classes and of the rentiers. European fascism can be
characterized as a form of capitalism that has emerged as an alternative to the
largely discredited form of relatively unregulated capitalism. The fundamental
objective of fascism is the destruction of socialism. The concept of the corporate
224 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
of capitalism’ (The Coles 1934:333). It is the judgement of the Coles that fascism
is, in essence, a reactionary system in the sense that it merely aims to preserve
threatened institutions, whereas Communism is a truly transformative and
revolutionary social and political system. Both fascism and Communism are
examples of the new development of ‘totalitarian’ dictatorship but, from the Coles’
standpoint, it is essential that they are clearly distinguished, even if this means
that we are forced to conclude that the Communist system is the more complete
form. In fact, it is ‘a mistake to suppose that they stand in any sense for a common
idea. They are all anti-parliamentary because it regards the parliamentary system
as incapable of being adapted to serve the purposes of establishing or conducting
a classless Society based on economic equality. Fascism, on the other hand is
anti-parliamentary because it regards parliamentarism in its modern democratic
forms as incapable of serving any longer as an effective instrument for the
preservation of class differences and the nationalist idea. For communism, though
it has found embodiment so far only in the national state, is essentially
cosmopolitan, denying not only class privilege but also that national exclusiveness
upon which fascism everywhere insists’ (The Coles 1934:334).
of fascism it was necessary to investigate what its theorists claimed for it. The
fascist criticism of democracy that Barker considers is mainly that put forward by
Carl Schmitt for whom the ‘liberal-democratic’ state ‘is essentially a system—or
rather an anarchy—of unresolved dualisms’ (Barker 1942:289).
Fascism is a form of the modern totalitarian disillusion with democratic politics.
Nevertheless, the essence of fascism is not to be found in terms of a simple identity
with its doctrine. The ‘phenomenon itself is simply the party—whatever the
doctrine it holds or the theory it professes, and whatever the institutions which it
constructs in virtue of its theory or of its exigencies. The leader of the Fascist Party
has written that “a party which governs totalitarianally is a new fact in history”’
(Barker 1942:331). Furthermore, this new form of rule did not begin with the
Italian fascists. It began with the bolsheviks in 1917. The communist and fascist
parties are both single parties, which tolerate no other. They may differ in their
social and political aims: they may differ in the social and political institutions
with which they surround themselves. In themselves, and as a phenomenon of
history, they belong to the same genus. They are both of them close and exclusive
parties dominating everything in their area, and therefore “governing
totalitarianally”’ (Barker 1942:332).
The concept of ‘totalitarianism’ helps to define and make sense of a new form
of opposition to democratic politics and society. What is ‘totalitarianism’? The
opposition between totalitarianism and democracy is not simply between two
forms of government A totalitarian state is known ‘much more by what it does
than by the form of government which it employs. A totalitarian state is one which,
whatever its form of government and its method of political action, acts on the
principles (1) that the whole (however conceived, in terms of race, or of nationality,
or of class) is a transcendent being or “organism” which determines the life of its
members, (2) that the whole is “integrally realized”, or entirely comprehended, in
one association called the state, and (3) that the state has therefore a complete and
solitary control of human life and activity’ (Barker 1942:153).
There is a note of ambivalence in Barker’s understanding of the modernity of
totalitarianism. If totalitarianism is compared with absolutism it certainly goes
beyond it in its desire and ability to permeate every area of social life. But from
a historical point of view he felt that, perhaps, this impression of modernity ought
not to be taken at face value. ‘Totalitarianism professes to be modern: to be a
system of deliberate planning. But it is an old idea that men should be engineered,
and that their life should be made according to a plan. There is a sense in which
we might say that the totalitarian states are living in the sixteenth century’ (Barker
1942:166). Nevertheless, there is a recognition that, despite the similarities with
past societies, there is something new here that needs, especially in the case of
Nazi Germany, to be understood in its own terms.
It was also important to see that the rise of the totalitarian parties was not entirely
explicable in the terms of a theory of social class. Social class was obviously an
important element in any explanation but one had to be cautious. In each case the
emergence of a single party government represented the victory of a class or
SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM 227
combination of classes but its precise nature varied from country to country. Each
case must be examined in its uniqueness.
In Barker’s discussion of the totalitarian states he is careful to distinguish
between Italian fascism and German National Socialism. In both cases he pays
particular attention to their doctrines. Italian fascism seems to be the more
straightforward of the two systems. The development of Italian fascism, in
Barker’s view, was bound up in ‘chance and contingency’. When compared with
another totalitarianism, Soviet Communism, it became even more apparent that it
was ‘less planned, less continuous, and more opportunist’ (Barker 1942:329).
Italian fascism was to be interpreted as a rather eclectic system. Despite this, one
set of guiding principles could be discerned. Fascism is ‘a synthesis of the
negations and contradictions of communism’. Fascism is nationalist, anti-secular
and allied with capitalism. It also defined itself in terms of the negation of
liberalism and democracy. This was expressed in its idea of a ‘regulated’
capitalism and in its ‘corporatist’ theory of political representation.
The theory of ‘corporatism’ was one of the central features of Italian fascism.
As a response to both the liberal notion of the free competition of individuals and
the Marxist theory of class struggle, the corporatist idea becomes a defining
characteristic of the fascist movement. It was also proposed that corporativism
provided a superior form of national representation. Nevertheless, Barker stressed
that the reality of fascism does not lie in the doctrine alone.
How was fascism to be characterized? Not wanting to reduce a complex reality
to one factor, Barker argued that it is the result of an interaction of ‘leader,
nationalist creed, and social interest’ (Barker 1942:333). The dominant ‘social
interest’ was drawn from the independent and professional classes, industrialists,
businessmen, landowners, and students. However, there was another element that
ought not to be underestimated. This was the desire for political unity allied with
dissatisfaction with the international status of Italy. It was also clear that there was
no possibility of an autonomous corporatist organization of industry within a
totalitarian state. The Italian system is not a ‘corporative democracy’. ‘It is simply
a new would-be Caesarism, wearing a new democratico-corporative disguise’
(Barker 1942:359).
In comparison with Nazi Germany, Italian fascism seemed to be a political
system that presented few barriers to a rational interpretation. The political system
being constructed in Germany did present great difficulties for an explanation
because it was the most thorough and drastic rejection of democracy to be found
in any of the totalitarian states. The roots of this rejection of democracy were to
be found deep in the German political tradition. In Barker’s view, the German
intellectual tradition from the beginning of the nineteenth century had been
characterized by the two dominant motifs. These were ‘Prussianism’ and
‘Romanticism’. By ‘Prussianism’ he meant ‘the system of a transcendent state,
uniting a congeries of territories—a state expressed in the directing will of a
monarch or leader who was supported, on one side, by the army and the army
officers whom he had gathered around him, and, on the other, by a trained and
228 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
CONCLUDING REMARKS
It is clear from the work that has been discussed that in Britain, from the beginning
of the 1930s until, roughly, the end of the Second World War, there was an
important and interesting set of responses to the emergence of fascism. The main
difficulty that confronted all analysts was that they were attempting to understand
something new. The significance of this point is that we are presented here with
a specific example of what is a general problem for the social sciences in general.
Social and political reality does not generally develop in a totally predictable way.
New and unexpected phenomena arrive on the scene and we try to make sense of
them. But in trying to do so we have to make use of inherited concepts and theories
that were themselves fashioned in response to some earlier social development
Imaginative thinkers struggle to create new theories and concepts that they believe
will be adequate for a new reality.
In Britain, during this period, despite the low level of the institutional
development of the social sciences, social and political debate was characterized
by both depth and intensity. Debate of this kind did not occur in an ideological
vacuum and it, clearly, was marked by the political struggles of the period. This
230 RESPONSES TO FASCISM IN BRITAIN, 1930–1945
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Butler, R.D’O (1941) The Roots of National Socialism 1783–1933, London: Faber.
Cole, G.D.H. (1933) ‘Fascism and the Socialist Failure’, Current History, vol. 38.
Cole, G.D.H. and M. (1934) A Guide to Modern Politics, London: Gollancz.
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Crick, B. (1982) George Orwell A Life, London, Penguin.
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Crossman, R.H.S. (1940) Government and the Governed, London: Basis.
Currey, M. and Goad, H.E. (1933) The Working of a Corporate State, London: Nicholson
and Watson.
De Felice, R. (1977) Interpretations of Fascism, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard.
Dutt, R.P. (1934) Fascism and Social Revolution, London: Martin Lawrence.
Finer, H. (1935) Mussolini’s Italy, London: Gollancz.
Ginsberg, M. (1947) ‘The Individualist Basis of International Law and Morals’ (orig.
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Granzow, B. (1964) A Mirror of Nazism, London: Gollancz.
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Hayek, F.A. (1944) The Road to Serfdom, London: Routledge.
Laski, H.J. (1936) ‘Political Theory and the Social Sciences’, The Social Sciences: Their
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——(1943) Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London: Allen and Unwin.
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Lewis, D.S. (1987) Illusions of Grandeur. Mosley, Fascism and British Society 1931–
1981, Manchester University Press.
Mannheim, K. (1940) Diagnosis of our Time, London: Routledge.
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——(1965) ‘The Nature of Class Conflict’ (orig. 1937), Class, Citizenship, and Social
Development, Garden City: Doubleday.
Mussolini, B. (1939) ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, in M.Oakeshott, The Social and
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Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell vol. 2, My Country Right
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O’Sullivan, N. (183) Fascism, London: Dent.
Pascal, R. (1934) The Nazi Dictatorship, London: Routledge.
Popper, K.R. (1960) The Poverty of Historicism, London: Routledge (the ‘main outline’
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Political Quarterly in the 1930s, London: Allen Lane.
Strachey,J. (1932) The Coming Struggle for Power, London: Gollancz.
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232
INDEX
233
234 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
corporatism 17, 22, 49, 51, 55, 57, 79, 83, De Marchi, F. 72, 81
85, 87, 140, 223, 227; De Maria, Giovanni 55
conception of economic organizations De Marinis, Errico 43, 46, 81
87; De Rosa, G. 62, 83
doctrine 54, 57, 73, 119; De Sanctis, Sante 47, 53
economy 60, 116, 119; De Seta, Stefania 79, 81
fascist 49, 55; De Stael, Mme 188
functional representation 57; Declaration of Independence 190
general theorem of Pietri-Tonelli 51, Dékány, Istvan 152, 162, 164
73, 83; Del Vecchio, Giorgio 53
ideas of community 95; demagoguery 67, 71, 107
organic 57; democracy 15, 17, 20, 22, 26, 30, 88, 96,
reconstruction of Germany 24; 99, 118, 158, 182;
representation 57, 226; aristocratic 98;
science of 48, 50, 72, 73; decline of 161;
society 32, 141; as a disease 26;
state 37, 100, 212, 230; elites in 74;
structural 57; forms of 26;
theory 49, 51, 57; ideal 218;
see also St nde conception movement for 171;
Cosentini, Francesco 43, 78, 80 negative views of 97;
Cotta, M. 57, 80 order 88;
Coudenhouve-Kalergi 160 parliamentary 17, 32, 98, 220;
Counterreformation 55 party 23;
Crick, B. 208, 230 political 67, 160;
criminology 54, 77, 80, 84, 175 sociological analysis of 67;
Critical Reason 169 repudiation 169;
Critical Theorists 9, 116; social 29, 101;
see also Frankfurt School societies 70, 100, 178, 225;
Croce, Benedetto 44, 48, 53, 55, 75, 78, 80 spirit of 23, 160;
Crossman, R.H.S. 207, 230 state 91, 97;
Csécsy, Imre 160, 163, 164 system 100;
cultural lag 181 ‘true’ 23;
Curcio, C. 73, 81 values of 161
Curiel E. 64, 81 demography and demographic 41, 48, 50,
Currey, M. 210, 230 54, 78, 83, 128;
Czatania, law faculty of 48 crises of late nineteenth century 58;
Czechoslovakia 195 cycles 59;
policy 58, 60;
Daily Worker 211 senescence 58
Dartmouth College 174 Der Arbeitgeber 95, 119
Darwin, Charles 45 Der Morgen 101, 120
Darwinism 84; Deutsche Arbeitsfront 24
Social 58, 168, 198, 203 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie see
Davis, Jerome 173, 179, 199, 202 German Sociological Society
De Felice, Renzo 198, 200, 202, 206, 230 Diamant, A. 26, 36
De Man, Hendrik 3, 5, 6, 9, 12, 112, 119, 122 dictatorship 30, 67, 79, 88, 94, 96, 118, 121,
161, 164, 178, 223, 230;
INDEX 239
Institute for Economic Area Studies at German Society for Population Studies 143
142; German Sociological Society 15, 21, 28, 37,
Institut für Sozialforschung; 118, 131, 132, 136, 143, 147;
see Frankfurt School; cleansing of (S uberung) 131;
Sociographical Institute of 126, 128, Fifth Convention (1926) 21
131, 143, 149; Germanization (Eindeutschungs or
Working Group for Social Science Germanisierungs) policy 141
128, 131 Germany 2, 4, 7, 17, 21, 29, 31, 33, 59, 86
Frankfurt School 2, 17, 54, 114, 123, 126; passim, 155, 169, 175, 178, 181, 185,
see also Critical Theorists 196, 219, 220, 228;
freedom of expression 29, 71, 75, 183, 185, assimilation policy of
195 (Volkstumspolitik) 147;
Freedom of Information Act 184 Federal Republic of 7, 126, 143, 146;
Freiburg, University of 123 Americanization of sociology in 125;
Freud, S. 197 law 123;
Freyer, Hans 11, 12, 129, 132, 138, 142, nationalism 179, 193;
147, 153 political tradition of 160, 227;
Frodl, Ferdinand 26, 36, 40 postwar reconstruction of 170;
Fromm, Erich 2, 114, 117 propaganda 182, 196;
Frōschl, E. 36 rearmament of 123;
Fuchs, A. 36 social structure of 192, 201;
F hrerprinzip 152 trade unions 102;
Furiozzi, G.B. 84 universities 102;
see also specific locations;
Gaal, Gabor 156, 164 Volksstaat 90;
Galliher, John F. 200, 203 Wilhelminian 10;
Gangale, G. 79, 81 see also National Socialism, Weimar
Garofalo, R. 46, 81 Republic, Nazi era offices and
Garzia, M. 53, 81 organizations;
Gasset, Ortega y 192 Ancestral Heritage (teaching and
Gehlen, Arnold 134, 136 research Society of the SS) 135;
Geiger, Theodor 105, 108, 117, 121 Archive for Maps and Surveys (later
Gelsenkirchen, Research Group on Rural Archiv für r umliche Sozial-Struktur)
Populations in 126 145;
Gemeinschaft 5, 103, 110, 168, 192; Book Department of the Agency for
see also community the Support of German Literature
Gemelli, Agostino 54, 58, 75, 81 (Reichsstelle zur Förderung des
Geneva 163; deutschen Schrifttums) 134;
University of 53, 61 Central Office for Regional
Genoa, University of 43; Administration (Reichsstelle für
law faculty of 48 Raumordnung [RFR]) 141, 144;
Gentile, Giovanni 48, 60, 75, 78 Central Security Office
George Washington University 191 (Reichssicherheitshauptamt [RSHA])
Georgia 181 136, 139;
Gerhardt, Johannes 136 Chamber of Culture
Germans: (Reichskulturkammer) 138;
minorities in foreign countries 122, 152 Culture Office of the Central Security
Office (Hauptstellenleiter Kultur) 140;
242 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
philosophy and philosophers 41, 49, 54, 65, history of 50, 69;
81, 111, 122, 132, 135, 152, 159, 163, sociological 209
168, 213, 217; polling, political 11
authoritarian social 56; Poppe, N. 195
cognitive 48; Popper, Karl 32, 215, 231
field of 24; population see demography and
of law 64, 77, 162; demographic
moral 48; populists 153, 156, 162, 179, 190
neo-Thomist 54; Portinaro, P.P. 49, 60, 71, 74, 84
political 140; positivism 18, 39, 45, 78, 81, 168, 186;
scholastic 19; linked with fascism 179
social 41, 56, 127, 171; pragmatism 176;
of the State and Culture (Staats- und relativism of 198
Kulturphilosophie) 140 Prague, University of 127, 196
physicians 123; Prague Manifesto 196
see also medical experiments on Preglau-H mmerle, S. 27, 38
humans primary group 188
Pichler, J.H. 34, 38 Princeton University 183
Pietri-Tonelli, Alfonso de 50, 74, 83 Proctor, Robert 1, 12
Pinchot, Gifford 199 progressivism 169, 178, 197, 205
Pisa: Proletariat 2, 26, 29, 64, 67, 84, 98, 106,
law faculty of 48; 111, 212, 223;
università populari of 43 industrial 66, 67;
planning 9; new 107;
‘democratic’ 214; rural 66, 67;
economic 94, 100, 115, 117, 177; revolution 64, 213
fascist, admiration for 173; propaganda 8, 31, 50, 107, 178, 182, 188,
‘freedom at the level of 215; 198
industrial 143; property 208
regional 143, 149, 155; Protestantism 102;
for North Baden 143; American 181;
reorganizational, Nazi 130, 144; culture of 79
rural 144; Prussianism 227
of science 131 psychological warfare 130
Plato 19, 26 psychology 11, 49, 77, 82, 122, 191;
Pleyer, Kleo 138 applied 56;
Plutocracy 87 class-specific 10;
Plutocratic ruling class 70 collective 44, 77;
Poland 126, 145, 147, 187; experimental 54;
Poland Memorandum mass 10;
(Polen-Denkschrift) 147; social 4, 49, 85, 112, 122, 136, 159
‘Rest-Polen’ 144, 147 public administration 115, 122, 143
Polanyi, Karl 32, 38 public opinion research 139
political science 16, 18, 34, 47, 59, 75, 77, Puglia, Ferdinando 44, 84
81, 121, 123, 158, 163, 207; Puritanism 89
authoritarian 73
political theory 41, 61, 83, 89, 209, 218, Quebec 163
230;
252 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
Roth, Karl Heinz 125, 129, 147, 149 Schmitt, Carl 10, 98, 115, 120, 123, 160,
Rothacker, Erich 132 215, 225, 228
Rugarli, Sincero 53, 84 Schmollers Jahrbuch 91, 115
ruling class see class and classes, ruling Schopenhauer Society 135
Rumpf, Max 134, 142 Schotthöfer, F. 90, 120
rural life, first-hand observations of 154 Schubert, Dirk 129, 149
Rurali 84 Schumpeter, Joseph 15, 32, 39, 55
Russell, B. 212, 231 Schuschnigg, Kurt von 27
Russia 94, 101, 112, 151, 174, 179, 180, Schuster, Helmuth 128, 149
183, 196, 207, 214, 219, 220, 230; Schuster, Margrit 128, 149
Committee for the Liberation of the Schutz, Alfred 16, 32, 39
Peoples of 196, 201; science see specific fields;
narodnichestvo 154; philosophy of 19
see also Bolshevism scientific culture 27, 192
Rüstow, Alexander 115 scientists, as political activists 203
Sebéstény, Sándor 155, 165
Saád, Jozsef 152, 165 Segre, S. 6, 9, 84
Salamon, Konrad 165 Seiler, Karl 128, 142
Salin, E. 38 Seipel, Ignaz 23, 26
Salomon, Gottfried 101, 120, 123 Seligman, E.R.A. 38, 53, 55
Salvadori, M. 74, 84 Sereni, E. 63, 84
Salvemini, Gaetano 61, 160, 173, 204; Sergi, Giuseppe 44, 46
intellectual leadership of 61 Serpieri, Arrigo 52, 84
Samuelson, Paul 189 Siciliani, Pietro 43, 84
sanitization 129 Siegfried, Klaus-Jōrg 24, 39, 135, 141, 150
Santarelli, E. 65, 72, 84 Siena, University of 44;
Sardinia 65 law faculty of 48
Sarfatti, M. 53 Sighele, Scipio 78
Sassari, Universita Populari of 43 Silone, I. 208
Saturday Review of Literature, The 177, 204 Simmel, Georg 43
Sauermann, H. 142 Simpson, Christopher 201
Sauter, Johann 17, 18 Singer, Kurt 98, 115, 120, 123
Savorgnan, Franco 54, 59, 84 Six, Franz Alfred 130, 140
scepticism 21, 34 Skotheim, Robert 198, 204
Sch fer, Gerhard 129, 134, 149 Slavs 136
Scheler, Max 110 Small, Albion 166, 177
Schellhase, Rolf 148 Smith College 189
Schelsky, Helmut 134 Smith, Adam 18
Schering, Walther M. 129, 136 Smith, Richard L. 198, 203
Scheringer, R. 112 social change 52, 73, 181
Scheunemann, Walther 115, 120, 123 social contract theory 18
Schiattarella, Raffaele 44, 84 social control 167, 178, 180
Schleswig-Holstein 115 Social Darwinism see Darwinism, Social
Schlick, M. 40 Social Democracy 35, 102, 105, 107, 110,
Schmid, Emil 115, 120, 123 113, 117, 156, 163;
Schmidt, Péter 165 Austrian 29;
failures of 110;
ideological petrification of 107;
254 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
students 153, 156, 227 totalitarianism 10, 101, 150, 159, 162, 171,
Sturzo, Luigi 61, 63, 80, 82, 85, 160; 182, 183, 193, 201, 206, 211, 214, 218,
rejection of the totalitarian state by 62 223, 225, 226, 228;
Sumner, William Graham 188 limits to 211
Suranyi-Unger, T. 17, 34, 39 trade unions 24, 70, 87, 88, 93, 105;
Swarthmore College 200 see also specific organizations
Sweeney, J. 33, 39 Treves, Renato 63, 77
Switzerland 53 Trianon Treaty 152
syndicalism 59, 80, 210 Trier 128
Syracuse University 34 Trieste, law faculty of 48
Szabó, Dezso 154, 155, 157, 162 Tulane University 189
Szabó, Miklós 165 Turi, G. 50, 85
Szabó, Zoltan 157, 163, 165 Turin 43, 67, 78;
Századunk 159 University of 43, 65, 69, 77, 79;
Szeged 163; law faculty of 48, 68
University of, law faculty of 162 Turner, Bryan S. 201
Szekfu, Gyula 165 Turner, Stephen P. 7, 12, 199, 200
Szep Szo 163
Szombatfalvy, Gyorgy 153, 162, 166 united bourgeois front 66
United States 2, 4, 7, 9, 15, 29, 34, 44, 62,
T., K. 90, 121 149, 162, 164, 166 passim, 179;
Talos, E. 39 agencies of:
Tangorra, V. 44 Board of Economic Warfare 175;
Tarde, Gabriel 43 National Recovery Program 219;
Társadalomtudomány 152, 158, 162, 164 Railroad Retirement Board 175;
Tatarin-Tarnheyden, E. 115, 121 State Department 175, 195;
technocracy 125, 177 War Department 7
Tedeschi, E.E. 44 universalism 17, 21, 22, 27, 34, 39, 140
Teutonic Order 145 University of Birmingham 212
Texas 177 University of Chicago 58, 128, 166, 170,
Thalheim, Karl-Christ 121, 123, 134, 142 172, 176, 181, 190, 200
theocracy 25 University of Kansas 175
theological 168 University of Minnesota 167, 175, 185, 187
theology, social 26 University of Missouri 171, 175, 177
Third International 65 University of Munster in Dortmund:
Third way 95, 154, 157 Social Research Center at 126, 136, 147
Thomas, William I. 166, 200 University of Nebraska 171, 192
Thurlow, R. 210, 231 University of North Carolina 166
Thurnwald, Richard 127, 130 University of North Dakota 185
Thyssen, Fritz 24, 140, 208 University of Pennsylvania 167, 187, 200
Tillich, Paul 110, 121, 123 University of Tucuman (Argentina) 64
Timasheff, N.S. 62, 85 University of Washington 184, 186, 195
Tinti, A.R. 85 University of West Virginia 43
Tönnies, Ferdinand 5, 8, 15, 32, 39, 105, University of Wisconsin 185
107, 121, 123, 131, 153, 168 urban sociology 64, 128
Torrance, J. 33, 39 Utermann, Kurt 134
utilitarianism 18, 20
256 SOCIOLOGY RESPONDS TO FASCISM
Wurzbacher, G. 142
Wyman, David S. 200, 205