Sociology and estrangement: three sociologists of Imperial Germany

408 Pages·1973·14.518 MB·English

by  Arthur Mitzman

This important critical study of three major Ger¬
man sociologists—the nineteenth-centmy pioneers
Ferdinand Tonnies, Werner Sombart, and Robert
Michels—is rooted in the context of German social
and intellectual history. Arthur Mitzman shows
how Tonnies’ interest in community and Michels’
critique of socialist bureaucracy were both inti¬
mately connected with their allegiances to an older,
more communitarian and decentralized Germany
that was being irreparably destroyed by Prussian
domination. Under the influence of Tonnies, Som-
bart’s analysis of modern capitalism and his evolu¬
tion from supporter of revisionist sociahsm to bitter
critic of modernity are similarly related by the au¬
thor to the sociologist’s increasing estrangement
from German society.
These social theorists are here viewed as exem¬
plars of a frustrated bourgeois radicalism, men
whose intellectual accomplishment reflected their
hostihty to the German Empire’s fusion of Junker
and middle-class energies, and so gave intellectual
form and substance to the guilty conscience of the
Imperial German bourgeois. With the brilliance of
analysis that distinguished his study of Max Weber
—The Iron Cage—Arthur Mitzman’s new book will
revise long-held ideas about the beginnings of soci¬
ology-making clear that far from originating as an
antiseptic development of scientific objectivity, it
grew out of a passionate commitment to humanist
values within a social order apparently determined
to destroy them.

Also by ARTHUR MITZMAN
THE IRON CAGE:
An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber
1970
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
Published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf
Sociology and

SOCIOLOGY AND
ESTRANGEMENT
Three Sociologists
of Imperial Germany
ARTHUR MITZMAN
Alfred A. Knopf Mew York
1973
xras IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
Copyright © 1973 by Arthur Mitzman
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Pubhcation Data
Mitzman, Arthiu. Sociology and estrangement.
Revision of the author’s thesis, Brandeis.
Includes bibhographical references.
1. Michels, Robert, 1875-1936. 2. Sombart,
Werner, 1863-1941. 3. Tonnies, Ferdinand, 1855-
1936. I. Title.
HM22.G3M55 1973 30i'.092'2 71-111240
ISBN 0-394-44604-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION